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Please note: Starting in Summer 2006, the Women's and Gender Studies Program
has renumbered its courses. While a few course numbers remain the same,
many have changed.
WGST 10/Sex, Gender and Society
This course will investigate the roles of women and men in society from an
interdisciplinary point of view. We will analyze both the theoretical and
practical aspects of gender attribution — how it shapes social roles within
diverse cultures, and defines women’s and men’s personal sense of identity. We
will discuss the following questions: What are the actual differences between
the sexes in the areas of biology, psychology, and moral development? What is
the effect of gender on participation in the work force and politics, on
language, and on artistic expression? We will also explore the changing
patterns of relationships between the sexes and possibilities for the future.
Open to all students. Dist: SOC.
Professor Merino
10-hour
WGST 19.2 Sexuality, Identity, and the Law
This course will examine sexual orientation, gender identity, and the law in
the United States. Topics to be discussed will include: The roles of sex,
gender, and sexual orientation in the law and the law’s role in shaping these
categories; the rights to privacy, equal protection, free speech, and
association; workplace discrimination; family law and same-sex marriage Open to
all students. Dist. SOC. Class of 2008 and later: WCult:
CI.
Professors Susan Brison and Beth Robinson
3A-hour
WGST 23.1/HIST 27 Gender and Power in American History, 1607-1920
This course examines the history of men and women from the period of
colonial settlement to the achievement of woman's suffrage. We will explore the
construction of gender particularly as it relates to social, political,
economic, and cultural power. Topics will include: the role of gender in
political thought and practice, the intersection of gender with categories of
class and race; gender in the debate over slavery and the Civil War; and the
rise and evolution of the woman's rights movement. Open to sophomores, juniors
and seniors. Dist: SOC. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: NA. Class of 2008 and
later: WCult: W.
Professor Butler
10-hour
WGST 44.2/JWST 56/REL 19 Women in Islam and Judaism
This course will focus on how concepts of woman and gender have shaped
meanings of religious and national lives and communities within Judaism and
Islam in a variety of regions of the world and historical periods. It will
survey variations in gender with attention to historical and cultural
specificities.
We will read a variety of
sources—anthropological/sociological/historical/theological statements by
scholars, religious texts and commentaries, literary and political writings,
books of advice, and films. We will consider the different ways in which
contemporary thinkers and activists ground themselves differently in this
historical heritage to constitute contesting subject positions regarding gender
and the politics of religious and national identity formation today. We
will explore the ways in which Muslim and Jewish women seek to exercise
different forms of agency both in opposition to socio-religious prescriptions
as well as from within and in dynamic interaction with normative religious,
cultural, and political boundaries which themselves are constantly in
flux. Open to all students. Dist.
Professors Susannah Heschel and Maimuna Huq
12-hour
WGST 51.2 Monsters and Women in Fiction and Film: From Frankenstein to the
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman
We often think of monsters as the enemies by definition of all we know as
“human.” Creatures such as the harpy, the blob, the witch, and the android
threaten to destroy our sense of power and to usurp our human consciousness or
intelligence. In this way, monster myths actually work to form a culture's
“self-definition” against some “thing” else. The course takes a feminist
approach to these problems and explores how cultures juxtapose not only the
human and lesser beings but also the male and the female and their respective
powers and abilities to act (their “agency”). Topics include representations of
the “abnormal” bodies, the monstrosity of the female reproductive body, fear of
female desire, and the association of the female and the “unknown.” Open
to all students. Dist: LIT. Jewell.
Professor Jewell
10A-hour
WGST 53.5 Odi et Amo: Men, Women, and the Love Lyric in
English
What we call “love poetry” has generally been a way of expressing much more
than the emotional and erotic fascination of one person with another. Often it
seems to bypass the love-object altogether, and has on different occasions
been: a careerist display for beginning poets, an allegory of the poet’s fusion
with the spirit of poetry, a congratulation upon one’s own taste and
discernment, a place to consolidate political power, a way of bonding with
other men, a feminist response to existing power relations. Beginning with
several Renaissance and contemporary sonnet sequences, and moving on to a
variety of other forms, our course will place poems by men and women in the
context of an ongoing poetic tradition and of recent feminist criticism and
theory.
Professor Zeiger
12-hour
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