05. The Dao of Sex: Sexuality in China, Past and Present. (Also Asian 28.) See Asian 28.
Limited to 25 students. First semester. Professor Zamperini.
06. Women in Art in Early Modern Europe. (Also Fine Arts 84.) See Fine Arts 84.
Limited to 15 students. Second semester. Professor Courtright.
10. Witches, Vampires and Other Monsters. (Also Fine Arts 85.) See Fine Arts 85.
Limited to 25 students. First semester. Professor Staller.
11. The Cross-Cultural Construction of Gender. This course introduces students to the issues involved in the social and historical construction of gender and gender roles from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. Topics will include women and social change; male and female sexualities including homosexualities; the uses and limits of biology in explaining human gender differences; women’s participation in production and reproduction; the relationship among gender, race and class as intertwining oppressions; women, men and globalization; and gender and warfare.
First semester. Professors Bumiller and Saxton.
13. Fashion Matters: Clothes, Bodies and Consumption in East Asia. (Also Asian 29.) See Asian 29.
Limited to 25 students. Second semester. Professor Zamperini.
20. Topics in the History of Sex, Gender, and the Family. (Also History 74.) See History 74.
Limited to 20 students. Second semester. Professor Hunt.
24. Gender Labor. In this course we will explore the intimate relations of gender and labor: both the necessary labor of genders’ production as well as the gendered organization of labor itself. In general the course will use gender to focus on contemporary concerns in the American workplace--class, ethnicity, sexuality, and race—but will also make critical comparisons with developments in other nations. The biological labor of reproduction and its intersection with the labor of production will necessarily be a constant concern in our discussions. We shall have to become familiar with certain terms: glass ceiling, glass escalator, mommy-track, affirmative action, child care, sexual harassment, welfare to workfare. We certainly might want to ask what constitutes work? But we also might need to wonder if work is done for love, is it still work?
Second semester. Professors Barale and Olver.
28. Reading Popular Culture. (Also English 13.) See English 13.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2007-08. Professor Parham.
32. Human Rights Activism. (Also Political Science 24.) This course is intended to give students a sense of the challenges and satisfactions involved in the practice of human rights work as well as a critical sense of how the discourses calling it forth developed and continue to evolve. We intend to provide specific historical and cultural context to selected areas in which human rights abuses of women and men have occurred, and to explore how differing traditions facilitate and inhibit activism within these areas. The semester will begin by exploring the historical growth of human rights discourse in Europe and the United States, culminating in the emergence of the post-World War II Universal Declaration. We will then turn to the proliferation of these discourses since the 1970s, including the growing importance of non-governmental organizations, many of them internationally based, the use of human rights discourse by a wide range of groups, and expanding meanings of human rights including new conceptions of women’s human rights. The third part of the course will explore criticisms of human rights discourses, particularly the charge that for all their claims to universalism, these discourses reflect the values of European Enlightenment traditions which are inimical to conceptions of rights and justice that are grounded in culture and religion. Throughout the course, rights’ workers will discuss their own experiences, abroad and in the U.S., and reflect on the relationship between their work and formal human rights discourse.
Second semester. Professors Basu and Saxton.
39. Women in Judaism. (Also Religion 39.) See Religion 39.
Omitted 2007-08. Professor Niditch.
44. Global Women’s Activism. (Also Political Science 63.) Globally as well as locally, women are claiming a new voice in civil society by spearheading both egalitarian movements for social change and reactionary movements which would restore them to putatively traditional roles. They are prominent in local level community-based struggles but also in women’s movements, perhaps the most international movements in the world today. This course will explore the varied expressions of women’s activism at the grass roots, national and transnational levels. How is it influenced by the intervention of the state and international agencies? How is it affected by globalization? Among the issues and movements which we will address are struggles to redefine women’s rights as human rights, women’s activism in religious nationalism, the international gay-lesbian movement, welfare rights activism, responses to state regulation, and campaigns around domestic violence. Our understanding of women’s activism is informed by a richly comparative perspective and attention to cases from diverse regions of the world.
Omitted 2007-08. Professor Basu.
53. Representing Domestic Violence. (Also Political Science 53.) This course is concerned with literary, political and legal representations of domestic violence and the relations between them. We question how domestic violence challenges the normative cultural definitions of home as safe or love as enabling. This course will consider how these representations of domestic violence disrupt the boundaries between private and public, love and cruelty, victim and oppressor. In order to better understand the gaps and links between representation and experience, theory and praxis, students as part of the work for this course will hold internships (three hours per week) at a variety of area agencies and organizations that respond to situations of domestic violence.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2007-08. Professors Bumiller and Sánchez-Eppler.
56. Women and Islamic Constructions of Gender. (Also Religion 56.) See Religion 56.
Omitted 2007-08.
61. Women and Politics in Africa. (Also Political Science 29 and Black Studies 25.) See Political Science 29.
Second semester. Five College Professor Newbury.
62. Women in the Middle East. (Also History 62 and Asian 63.) See History 62.
First semester. Professor Ringer.
63. Women’s History, America: 1607-1865. (Also History 45.) See History 45.
Omitted 2007-08. Professor Saxton.
64. Women’s History, America: 1865 to Present. (Also History 46.) See History 46.
Second semester. Professor Saxton.
67. Women and Politics in Twentieth-Century America. (Also History 47.) See History 47.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2007-08. Professor Saxton.
68. Globalization, Social Movements and Human Rights. (Also Political Science 86.) See Political Science 86.
Omitted 2007-08. Professor Basu.
77, 77D, 78, 78D. Senior Departmental Honors. Open to senior majors in Women’s and Gender Studies who have received departmental approval.
First and second semesters.
85. States of Poverty. (Also Political Science 85.) See Political Science 85.
Limited to 20 students. Second semester. Professor Bumiller.
97, 98. Special Topics. Independent Reading Courses.
First and second semesters.
Related Courses
The Evolution of Human Nature. See Biology 14.
Second semester. Professor Zimmerman.
Sex Role Socialization. See Psychology 40.
Limited to 15 students. Second semester. Professor Olver.
Sociology of Family. See Sociology 21.
Limited to 20 students. Second semester. Visiting Lecturer Souza.