WGST 07/First Year Seminar: He, She, or It? Reconstructing Gender in
Science Fiction
Speculative or "science" fiction has often been the domain of
male-oriented, rocket-propelled, fantasy writers who have often relegated women
into secondary roles of submission or exploitation. However, feminist
writers of speculative fiction have created alternative worlds and explored
radical feminist theory in order to challenge concepts of gender, genetics, and
the intractability of patriarchal societies. In this class we will
explore these worlds of resistance which confront our current conceptions of
gender as we boldly go where no man has gone before. Some of our course
readings include: Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Donna
Harraway, Marge Piercy, and Joanna Russ. Dist: LIT.
Professor Moody
10-hour
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. Class of 2008 and later: WCult:
CI.
Professor A'Ness
10-hour
WGST 15/Roots of Feminism: Texts and Contexts
This course will examine pre-twentieth century texts and historical events
that set important precedents for the development of contemporary feminist
theories and practices. We will survey some of the writings that consolidate
legitimated patriarchal/misogynist ideologies in Western worlds (e.g. Plato,
Aristotle, the fathers of the Church, the philosophers of the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Rousseau). We will analyze different ways in
which women historically have articulated strategies of contestation and/or
resistance to systems of power based on gender differentiation. Readings may
include works by French medieval thinker Christine de Pizan; sixteenth-century
Spanish cross-dresser Catalina de Erauso; seventeenth-century Mexican
intellectual and nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz; Mary Wollstonecraft; Maria
Stewart, the first African-American political woman writer; the
nineteenth-century American suffragists; and anarchist leader Emma
Goldman.
Open to all students. Dist: SOC. Class of 2008 and later: WCult:
CI..
Professor Spitta
12-hour
WGST 26.1/HIST 29 Women in American Radicalism Left and Right
This course will trace the involvement of U.S. women in radical political
movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present including:
Abolitionism; Anti-lynching; Socialist Trade Unionism; the Ku Klux Klan; the
Communist Party; the National Welfare Rights Organization; the Civil Rights
Movement; the New Left; the New Right; the direct-action wing of the
anti-abortion movement; Earth First; and the neo-nazi American Front. It will
also examine the relationship between feminist ideologies and
non-gender-specific radical political ideologies centered on race, class, and
other social identifiers.
Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors. Class of 2007 and earlier: Dist:
PHR; WCult: NA. Class of 2008 and later: Dist: SOC; WCult:
CI.
Professor Orleck
11-hour
WGST 30.1/Geog. 26 Women, Gender and Development
This course examines aspects of economic development on the lives of men and
women in “development zones”, through a geo-historical and feminist approach
gender and development to critically analyze its “promises” and
“opportunities”. Readings, class discussions, and critical
inquires into the spaces and scales of gender and economic development will
include issues of: mobility, migration, intra and inter-state conflicts,
post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. This will be juxtaposed with
feminist responses, resistance and transnational activism.
Open to all students. Dist: SOC. Class of 2008 and later: WCult:
CI.
Professor Fluri
10A-hour
WGST 36.2/AAAS 41 Women in Africa
This course will examine different aspects of the female experience in
Africa. Beginning with a consideration of roles of women in precolonial
African societies, with particular reference to descent, marriage and the
family, ritual and religion, productive and reproductive systems, and
political organization, the focus will then move through the colonial and
contemporary periods to assess changes in female roles. Contrasting experiences
for contemporary African women will be emphasized through exploration of their
participation in national liberation and politics, of urban and rural
lifestyles, Muslim, Christian, and animist religious traditions, educational
background, and status differences arising out of social class. The focus for
the course includes an analysis of formal political, social, and economic
institutions, yet it assumes that African society has also been shaped by the
‘muted’ perceptions and models of society held by women themselves, and by
social processes to which both females and males have contributed.
Open to all students. Dist: INT; WCult: NW.
Professor Amadiume
2A-hour
WGST 36.3/Black Feminism/Womanism in Contemporary U.S. Popular Culture
In this course we will explore the emergence of Black feminism(s)/
womanism(s) in twentieth- and twenty-first-century U.S. popular culture. We
will specifically address how the work of African-American women
artists-scholars critiques sexism, racism, classicism, ethnocentrism and
heterosexism within the U.S. context. In order to examine Black feminism(s) and
womanism(s) in popular culture from myriad perspectives, the required readings
for this course reflect a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, as well as a
range of genres.
Open to all students. Dist: SOC. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult:
NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: CI.
Professor Naylor
12-hour
WGST 42.4/ENGL 62 War and Gender
Throughout history, war has been constructed into a powerfully gendered
binary. From The Iliad onward, battle is posed as a sacred domain for
initiating young men into the masculine gender and the male bond, and the
feminine as that which both instigates male-male conflict and that which wars
are fought to protect. With a special concentration on U.S. culture of the past
century, this course will examine the way our modern myths and narratives
instantiate this cultural polarity through film, fiction, non fiction and
various media material. Dist: LIT; Class of 2007 and earlier:
WCult: NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W
Professor Boose
2A-hour
WGST 43.4/REL 40 Goddesses of India
This course will use both elite and popular Hindu religious texts in
conjunction with contemporary sociological and anthropological accounts,
scholarly analyses, visual art, and film to explore the diverse identities and
roles of India’s many goddesses, both ancient and modern. Special emphasis will
also be given to the relationship between goddesses and women.
Open to all students. Dist: PHR; WCult: NW. Class of 2008 and later:
Dist: TMV; WCult: NW.
Professor Ohnuma
2-hour
WGST 47.2/COLT 52 The Borderlands: Latina/o Writers in the United
States
In this course we will focus on the writings of US Latina/o writers. We
will analyze how writers (Anzaldua, Alvarez, Cisneros, Castillo and others)
negotiate a path between the two cultures (the US and Latin America) and the
two languages that inform their literary production and shape their identity.
This in-between status translates into an experimentation with genres and a
questioning of traditional gender divisions as well as the construction of
transcultural icons and objects.
Open to all students. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier:
WCult: NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W.
Professor Spitta
10-hour
WGST 56.1/FILM 46 Television and Histories of Gender
This class examines the ways American commercial television has historically
“assumed” gendered positionings of its audience, as well as operates as one of
the strongest cultural touchstones of gendered identity in patriarchal,
consumer society. After tracing television’s place in the
construction of gendered ideals through the history of the situation comedy, we
examine “gender-specific” genres, such as sports, westerns, cop shows, and soap
operas. Representative programs will be screened, and feminist essays on
television history/theory are among assigned readings.
Open to all students. Dist: ART. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult:
NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: CI.
Professor Desjardins
10A-hour
WGST 62.1/GEOG 9 Women, Gender and Science
Women have played a small role in western science, and their gradual
inclusion influences what we know and how we know it. We explore what science
is, and how “what we know” has been affected by societal ideas, past and
present. Evaluating scientific critiques ranging from Kuhn to feminists such as
Fox Keller and Haraway, we ask: how many women are in science, what are the
obstacles, and has feminist critique changed science?
Open to all students. Dist. SOC. Class of 2008 and later:
WCult: CI.
Professor Conkey
10-hour
Associated WGST Courses
AAAS 43/REL 50 Indigenous African Religions
Professor Amadiume
10A-hour
AMES 22/Sex, Death and Identity in Modern China
Professor Rudelson
11-hour
COCO 02/Assisted Reproduction
Professor Cramer and Staff
10A-hour
GEOG 11/Qualitative Methods
Professor Fluri
2A-hour
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