Spring 2013 WGST Classes

Introduces students to the field of Women & Gender Studies. Examines gender issues in the United States from interdisciplinary, multicultural, and feminist perspectives. Covers such topics as sexuality, beauty ideals, women’s health, violence against women, work, the economy, peace and war, and the environment. Meets MAPS requirement for social science: general. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: human diversity.

Examines contemporary experiences of people around the world as they negotiate dominant and subversive understandings of gendered identities. Focuses on the ways in which the material and discursive circumstances of people’s lives shape their opportunities for resistance and creative construction. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: human diversity.

Explores diverse cultural forms such as film, popular fiction and non-fiction, music videos, public art, websites, blogs and zines which are shaped by, and in turn shape popular understandings of gender at the intersections of race, class, ability, religion, nation, and imperialism. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: human diversity.

Examines the positionality of women in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and power relations in a global context. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies.

Explores a variety of alternative systematic accounts of, and explanations for, gender inequities. Social norms of both masculinity and femininity are analyzed in relation to other axes of inequality such as class, sexuality, race/ethnicity, neocolonialism, and the domination of nonhuman nature. Prereq., WMST 2000.

This course examines how intersecting gender, sexual and ethnic hierarchies shape and are shaped by immigration. Students will explore how the gendered processes surrounding migration craft concepts of nation, borders and citizenship. Readings and films examine how sexual and ethnic norms are renegotiated through the selection of and regulation of immigrants. Central to our investigation is how transnational and economic forces compel migration, reshaping understandings of national belonging, workplaces, and family in the process. We will particularly consider how migrants negotiate multiple marginalizations, and in turn refashion understandings of community, identities, culture, and politics. An interdisciplinary framework combines media, literature, law, activist, film and historical accounts.
Content varies by semester and reflects relevant issues in global feminist scholarship. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours. Prereq., WMST 2000 or 2600. Restricted to sophomores/juniors/seniors.

Offers expository writing and training in analytical and descriptive skills, structures or argument, critical thinking, the rhetoric of persuasion, and the development of a personal voice. Readings and papers focus on basic issues in gender studies. Prereq., WMST 2000. Restricted to juniors/seniors. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: written communication.

Provides field experience in local and national government and non-governmental agencies focusing on women and gender-related issues. Supervision by approved field instructors. Students must relate their academic experience to their field work experience though a portfolio and a final paper. Prereq., 6 hours of course work in Women and Gender Studies and 30 cumulative credit hours. Please contact the Women & Gender Studies Program for enrollment information.

Enriches the academic experience of majors and minors within the Women and Gender Studies program. This course usually will combine readings from books with lectures and discussions, community outreach and in-house publications spanning the interdisciplinary focus of the program. May be repeated up to 4 total credit hours. Restricted to WMST majors or minors.
Contact WGST Office to enroll.

Studies the commercial trade of sexual labor in the global economy, examining theories and assumptions about sexual-economic exchanges and gendered and racialized relations of power in the sex trade. Emphasizes prostitution. Recommended prereq., WMST 2600 or 3100. Restricted to juniors and seniors.

Provides students with the opportunity to actively reflect on their education and to complete a research project that incorporates an interdisciplinary and feminist approach to the study of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. Offered each spring. Prereq., WMST 3020. Restricted to students with 87-180 credits (Senior, Fifth Year Senior) Womens Studies (WMST) majors only.

May be repeated up to 7 total credit hours. Please contact the Women & Gender Studies Program for enrollment information.

For qualified WMST majors working on the research phase of departmental honors. Prereq., junior/senior standing and 3.30 overall GPA.
Please contact the Women & Gender Studies Program for enrollment information.

Qualified Women and Gender Studies majors may write an honors thesis, an in-depth research paper, on a topic of choice. Thesis hours available to majors only after successfully completing the research phase.
Please contact the Women & Gender Studies Program for enrollment information.

Explores how feminist theorists have understood gender and how it interrelates to our understandings of race, ethnicity, sexuality, embodiment and knowledge. Meets the requirements for the WGST certificate.

Global Feminisms is the study of the various feminisms across the globe, of transnational feminisms that transcend political and geographical borders, and of global politics through feminist lenses. In this course we will examine the different meanings of “feminism” when considered from diverse political, economic, and cultural perspectives and circumstances. We will interrogate the ways in which various systems of power and oppression (along the lines of gender, race, ethnicity, colonialism, imperialism, etc.) intersect and the ways in which people unite against them. We will explore the many forms of resistance feminism takes on in local, global, and transnational contexts. And, we will analyze global projects, processes, and politics using feminist frameworks of analysis.
Offers interdisciplinary feminist perspectives on different special topics such as gender and war, gender and globalization, women’s social movements, gender and citizenship, gender and collective memory, and cultural representations of gender and sexuality. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours. Meets the requirements for the WGST certificate.