- 2023–2024 Courses:
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Fall 2023
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GWSS 100: Queer and Trans Memoir
From Audre Lorde’s biomythography detailing black lesbian life in 1950s Harlem, to Andy Warhol’s famous-for-more-than-fifteen-minutes pop art star diaries, Alison Bechdel’s tragicomic comic books, Chelsea Manning’s whistleblower tell-all, or Carmen Maria Machado’s experimental memoir about same sex domestic abuse, LGBTQ+ autobiographical works provide us with richly subjective, historically situated insights into the lived experiences of queer and trans individuals. Interdisciplinary in scope, this course considers a variety of LGBTQ+ takes and twists on the memoir genre, including photo diaries; video selfies; illustrated works; self-ethnographies; life-as-art performances; stand-up specials; auto theoretical works; and literary or lyrical forms centering on the personal.
6 credits; Argument and Inquiry Seminar, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Fall 2023 · Candace Moore -
GWSS 243: Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe Program: Situated Feminisms: Socio-Political Systems and Gender Issues Across Europe
This course examines the history and present of feminist and LGBTQ activisms across Western and East-Central Europe. We study the impact of the European colonial heritage on the lives of women and sexual/ethnic minorities across European communities, as well as the legacies of World War II, the Cold War, and the EU expansion into Eastern Europe. Reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, “anti-genderism,” sex work, trafficking, and issues faced by ethnic minorities are among topics explored. These topics are addressed comparatively and historically, stressing their ‘situated’ nature and considering their divergent sociopolitical national frameworks.
Prerequisites: Acceptance into the WGST Europe OCS Program required 7-8 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, International Studies; offered Fall 2023 · Iveta Jusova -
GWSS 244: Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Cross-Cultural Feminist Methodologies
This course explores the following questions: What is the relationship between methodology and knowledge claims in feminist research? How do language and narrative help shape experience? What are the power interests involved in keeping certain knowledges marginalized/subjugated? How do questions of gender and sexuality, of ethnicity and national location, figure in these debates? We will also pay close attention to questions arising from the hegemony of English as the global language of WGS as a discipline, and will reflect on what it means to move between different linguistic communities, with each being differently situated in the global power hierarchies.
Prerequisites: Acceptance into the WGST Europe OCS Program required 7-8 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, International Studies; offered Fall 2023 · Iveta Jusova -
GWSS 325: Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Continental Feminist, Queer, Trans* Theories
Addressing the impact of Anglo-American influences in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, this course examines European, including East-Central European, approaches to key gender and sexuality topics. It raises questions about the transfer of feminist concepts across cultures and languages. Some of the themes explored include nationalism and gender/sexuality, gendered dimensions of Western and East-Central European racisms, the historical influence of psychoanalysis on Continental feminist theories, the implications of European feminisms in the history of colonialism, the biopolitics of gender, homonationalism, as well as Eastern European socialist/communist theories of women’s emancipation.
Prerequisites: Acceptance to WGST Europe OCS Program 7-8 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, International Studies; offered Fall 2023 · Iveta Jusova -
GWSS 391: Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Independent Field Research in Europe
This is a self-designed project, and the topic will be determined by each student’s research interests. It will build on readings and work by European women and/or sexual minorities, feminist and queer theory, cross-cultural theory and (if applicable) principles of field research. It should be cross-cultural and comparative, and ideally should involve field work. Drawing on skills developed in feminist theory and methodology seminars, students select appropriate research methods and conduct sustained research in two of the countries visited. The progress of each project will be evaluated regularly in relation to parameters established in conjunction with the Program Director.
Prerequisites: Acceptance into the WGST Europe OCS Program required 7-8 credits; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Fall 2023 · Iveta Jusova -
GWSS 400: Integrative Exercise
1-6 credit; S/NC; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024 · Candace Moore
Winter 2024
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GWSS 110: Introduction to Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies
This course is an introduction to the ways in which gender and sexuality structure our world, and to the ways feminists challenge established intellectual frameworks. However, since gender and sexuality are not homogeneous categories, but are crosscut by class, race, ethnicity, citizenship and culture, we also consider the ways differences in social location intersect with gender and sexuality.
6 credits; Social Inquiry; offered Winter 2024, Spring 2024 · Iveta Jusova, Zosha Winegar-Schultz -
GWSS 334: Feminist Theory
This seminar explores key feminist theoretical perspectives and debates, using a historical framework to situate these ideas in relationship to philosophical and political discourses produced during specific cultural moments. This seminar ultimately aims to interrogate the positionality of the theorists we study, considering the cultural privileges as well as vectors of marginalization that influence those viewpoints. We follow feminist thinkers as they propose, challenge, critique, subvert, and revise theoretical traditions of liberalism, Marxism, Socialism, radicalism, separatism, utopianism, multiculturalism, postmodernism, queerness, and post-colonialism. We ask: What gets counted as feminist theory? What gets left out?
6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Winter 2024 · Zosha Winegar-Schultz -
GWSS 400: Integrative Exercise
1-6 credit; S/NC; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024 · Candace Moore
Spring 2024
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GWSS 110: Introduction to Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies
This course is an introduction to the ways in which gender and sexuality structure our world, and to the ways feminists challenge established intellectual frameworks. However, since gender and sexuality are not homogeneous categories, but are crosscut by class, race, ethnicity, citizenship and culture, we also consider the ways differences in social location intersect with gender and sexuality.
6 credits; Social Inquiry; offered Winter 2024, Spring 2024 · Iveta Jusova, Zosha Winegar-Schultz -
GWSS 200: Gender, Sexuality & the Pursuit of Knowledge
In this course we will examine whether there are feminist and/or queer ways of knowing, the criteria by which knowledge is classified as feminist and the various methods used by feminist and queer scholars to produce this knowledge. Some questions that will occupy us are: How do we know what we know? Who does research? Does it matter who the researcher is? How does the social location (race, class, gender, sexuality) of the researcher affect research? Who is the research for? What is the relationship between knowledge, power and social justice? While answering these questions, we will consider how different feminist and queer studies researchers have dealt with them.
6 credits; International Studies, Social Inquiry, Writing Requirement; offered Spring 2024 · Meera Sehgal -
GWSS 212: Foundations of LGBTQ Studies
This course introduces students to foundational interdisciplinary works in sexuality and gender studies, while focusing on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities in the United States. In exploring sexual and gender diversity throughout the term, this seminar highlights the complexity and variability of experiences of desire, identification, embodiment, self-definition, and community-building across different historical periods, and in relation to intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and other identities.
6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies; offered Spring 2024 · Candace Moore -
GWSS 233: Feminist Cultural Studies
Who does popular feminism speak for; what does it stand for? How are earlier feminist movements reimagined, remediated, and rebranded to make feminism “cool” or “empowering”? What gendered subjectivities, knowledges, and practices are constituted—and marginalized? How do new technologies, media, practices of everyday life, and self-representations contribute to the making and unmaking of feminist activism and social change? We use an interdisciplinary approach: scholarship in queer theory, affect theory, Marxism, media studies, cultural studies, and sociology alongside the ephemera of mass culture, to illuminate intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, religion, nationality, and ability and intersectionality’s role in creating new feminist theory and praxis.
6 credits; Humanistic Inquiry, Intercultural Domestic Studies, Writing Requirement; offered Spring 2024 · Zosha Winegar-Schultz -
GWSS 400: Integrative Exercise
1-6 credit; S/NC; Does not fulfill a curricular exploration requirement; offered Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024 · Candace Moore