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All courses offer 4 credits unless otherwise noted (click on course name for full description). Please verify with home departments for any prerequisites/changes to all cross-listed courses. The official Smith College Catalog should be considered the definitive source for up-to-date information prior to registering for the course.
FYS 125 Midwifery in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective
SWG 315 Sexual Histories, Lesbian Stories
SWG 317 Seminar: Feminist Legal and Policy Theory
AAS 209 Feminism, Race and Resistance: History of Black Women in America
AAS 348/ENG 334 Black Women Writers
ANT 254 Gender, Media and Culture in India
CLT 234 The Adventure Novel: No Place for a Woman?
CLT 268 Latina and Latin American Women Writers
EAL 244 Construction of Gender in Modern Japanese Women’s Writing
EAS 230 Women of Korea from the Three Kingdoms Period to the Present
ENG 238 What Jane Austen Read: The 18th-Century Novel
ENG 276 Contemporary British Women Writers
ENG 278 Writing Women Topic: Asian American Women Writers
ESS 340 Women's Health: Current Topics
FRN 320 Topics in Medieval Renaissance Literature: Women Writers of the Middle Ages
HST 101 Introduction to Historical Inquiry: Topic: Geisha, Wise Mothers, and Working Women
HST 252 Women in Modern Europe, 1789-1918
MUS 100 Music and Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective
REL 238 Mary: Images and Cults
SOC 323 Seminar: Gender and Social Change
SPN 250 Survey of Iberian Literatures and Society I: Sex and the Medieval City
THE 215 Minstrel Shoes from Daddy Rice to Big Mama's House
Further work in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender usually requires SWG 150, Introduction to the Study of Women and Gender, as a prerequisite.
SWG 225 Women and the Law
Gwendolyn Mink
T Th 10:30-11:50 am
This course will examine U.S. constitutional and statutory developments affecting women’s legal rights and gender equality. Through a close reading of judicial opinions, we will consider how the law historically has officiated gender relations; how the law has responded to women’s gender-based claims for equality; how inequalities based on class/race/sexuality inform (or not) feminist law reform; and how gendered asymmetries in families, the economy, and society challenge conceptions of and strategies for equality. Readings and lectures will emphasize: 1) constitutional and statutory frameworks for equality; 2) fundamental rights and intimate life; and 3) legal remedies for inequality.
All 300-level courses in the Study of Women and Gender are seminars and are normally limited to 12 juniors or seniors; seminars have prerequisites and all require permission of the instructor to enroll.
SWG 315 Sexual Histories, Lesbian Stories
Marilyn Schuster
T Th 1:00-2:50 pm
In this seminar we will focus on two moments in twentieth-century gay and lesbian history: the 1920s and the 1950s. The 1920s saw the publication and trial of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness in England, the Harlem Renaissance in the U.S. and an active cultural life in Paris in which American expatriates played an important role. We will look at historical studies and texts by early sexologists of this period along with fiction, blues lyrics, memoirs and other narratives by sexually transgressive women. The post World War II homophile movement in the U.S. in the 1950s has been the focus of groundbreaking historical studies. In addition to historical narratives we will study the Daughters of Bilitis and The Ladder, pulp fiction, butch/femme histories, novels and short stories. Throughout the seminar we will ask: What contradictions and continuities mark the expression and social control of female sexualities that were considered transgressive at different moments and in different cultural contexts? Whose stories get told? How are they read? How can the multiple narratives of control, resistance and cultural expression be useful to us in the twenty-first century? Prerequisites: SWG 150, one additional course in the major and permission of the instructor.
SWG 317 Seminar: Feminist Legal and Policy Theory
Gwendolyn Mink
T 3:00-4:50 pm
Common reading and discussion will consider U.S. feminist legal theories of subordination and difference as well as feminist legal and policy theories of sex and gender justice. We will pay particular attention to the ways in which intersecting statuses, identities, and interests based on race, class, sexuality, and gender can stratify different women’s relationships to the same laws and can undermine the distribution of women’s rights to all women. Topics addressed will include work, reproduction, family formation, violence and sexuality as sites of women’s oppressions. Throughout the course, students will be asked to theorize the problems posed for law by asymmetries of power and resources among women and between women and men; and on the significance of rights to women’s prospects for equality. Prerequisites: SWG 150 or 225, one additional course in the major and permission of the instructor.
AAS 209 Feminism, Race and Resistance: History of Black Women in America
Paula Giddings
M 7:00-9:30 pm
This interdisciplinary course will explore the historical and theoretical perspectives of African American women from the time of slavery to the post-civil rights era. A central concern of the course will be the examination of how Black women shaped, and were shaped by the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality in American culture. Not open to first-year students.
AAS 348/ENG 334 Black Women Writers
Daphne Lamothe
M W 1:10 PM-2:30 pm
In this course we will examine literature produced by African American women from the nineteenth century to the present. We will explore a variety of texts in different genres, situating them in relation to other traditions of American literature and as a part of a tradition of African American letters. Reading slave narratives, Reconstruction Era essays, fiction and nonfiction of the Harlem Renaissance and contemporary eras, we will ask and attempt to answer the question, “How does gender matter in a black context?” These discussions will reveal how black women writers interrogate and re-imagine the limits and possibilities of categories of racial, gendered and sexual identity. We will read works by authors such as Phillis Wheatley, Frances Harper, Ida Wells Barnett, Nella Larsen, Zora Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones and Audre Lorde. Prerequisite: one college-level literature course or permission of the instructor.
AAS 366 (Section 2) Seminar: Contemporary Topics in Afro-American Studies: Stress and Coping of Black Women in the United States
Carlotta Arthur
M W 2:40-4:00 pm
This interdisciplinary course will examine the stress and coping of Black women in the US. We will review definitions of stress and briefly examine research on the psychosocial and physiological pathways through which it acts. We will explore the various forms and sources of stress experienced by Black women of the African Diaspora in the US, the multitude of coping strategies employed by these women, and their resilience in the face of such stress. Emphasis will be placed on the ways in which psychological factors interact with the social, cultural, economic, and environmental contexts of stress and coping. This course will examine multidisciplinary literature (e.g., Psychology, Afro-American Studies, Sociology, Women’s Studies) as well as current knowledge gaps in this area. Prerequisite: AAS 111, PSY 111, or permission of the instructor.
ANT 254 Gender , Media and Culture in India
Ravina Aggarwal
T Th 1:00-2:50 pm
This course starts by examining the representations of Indian women in colonial and postcolonial media. Informed by ethnographic studies and sources drawn from radio, television, documentaries, Bollywood films, the advertisement industry, and print journalism, students learn to assess gender roles and feminist interventions in debates surrounding nationalism, violence, religion, caste, sexuality, family, and political economy.
BIO 110 (Sec 1) Introductory Colloquia: Life Sciences for the 21st Century:
The Biology and Policy of Breast Cancer
Rob Dorit
M W F 10:00-10:50 am
This colloquium examines the genetic and environmental causes of cancer, focusing on the molecular biology and epidemiology of this suite of diseases. We will pay particular attention to the health and policy implications of recent discoveries concerning the genetic causes of predisposition to breast cancer. (These colloquia provide entering and non-major students with writing-intensive and/or quantitative-intensive interactive courses focused on particular topics/areas of current relevance in the life sciences. The small-class format is intended to foster discussion and active participation. Students engage with the topic of the colloquium using the many tools and styles of inquiry available to contemporary biologists. While the emphasis will be on the subject matter, we will also be concerned with developing fundamental skills necessary for success in the sciences, including reading of primary literature, writing about science, data presentation and analysis, and hypothesis construction and testing. Individual colloquia are designed to emphasize a variety of skills, including writing (W), quantitative skills (Q), reading skills (R) or laboratory/field-skills (L), and are designated accordingly. May be repeated for credit with a different subject. Enrollment limited to 20 unless otherwise indicated.
CLT 234 The Adventure Novel: No Place for a Woman?
Margaret Bruzelius
M W 2:40-4:00 pm
This course explores the link between landscape, plot and gender: how is the adventure landscape organized? Who lives where within it? What boundaries mark safe and unsafe places? Beginning with essays on cartography by Denis Wood, we’ll read two classic 19th-century boys’ books by Stevenson and Verne, then focus on adventure fictions with female protagonists by E.M. Forster, Ursula Le Guin, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Laura Ingalls Wilder among other in order to explore the ways in which this genre has embraced and resisted female heroes.
CLT 268 Latina and Latin American Women Writers
Nancy Saporta Sternbach
M W F 11:00-12:10 pm
This course examines the last twenty years of Latina writing in this country while tracing the Latin American roots of many of the writers. Constructions of ethnic identity, gender, Latinidad, “race,” class, sexuality, and political consciousness are analyzed in light of the writers’ coming to feminism. Texts by Esmeralda Santiago, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Denise Chávez, Demetria Martínez, and many others are included in readings that range from poetry and fiction to essay and theatre. Knowledge of Spanish is not required, but will be useful. First-year students must have the permission of the instructor.
EAL 244 Construction of Gender in Modern Japanese Women’s Writing
Kimberly Kono
T Th 1:10-2:30 pm
This course will focus on the construction of gender in the writings of Japanese women from the mid-19th century until the present. How does the existence of a “feminine literary tradition” in premodern Japan influence the writing of women during the modern period? How do these texts reflect, resist, and reconfigure conventional representations of gender? We will explore the possibilities and limits of the articulation of feminine and feminist subjectivities, as well as investigate the production of such categories as race, class, and sexuality in relation to gender and each other. Taught in English, with no knowledge of Japanese required.
EAS 230 Women of Korea from the Three Kingdoms Period to the Present
Jennifer Jung-Kim
T Th 10:30-11:50 am
This course examines Korean history from the perspective of women. Basing our study on the proposition that gender roles and identities are socially constructed, we will consider how concepts relating to gender have been continuously reconstituted over time. We will see how women’s identities arise from a continual negotiation by women and men with larger processes of political, social, and cultural changes, such as the formation of centralized bureaucratic systems, propagation of Confucian social values, introduction of modern Western ideas, colonization by Japan, war, urbanization, industrialization, and democratization.
ENG 238 What Jane Austen Read: The 18th-Century Novel
Elizabeth Harries
M W 2:40-4:00 pm
A study of novels written in England from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen and Mary Shelley (1688-1818). Emphasis on the novelists’ narrative models and choices, with special attention to novels by and about women.
ENG 276 Contemporary British Women Writers
Robert Hosmer
T Th 1:00-2:20 pm
Consideration of a number of contemporary women writers, mostly British, some well-established, some not, who represent a variety of concerns and techniques. Emphasis on the pleasures of the text and significant ideas--political, spiritual, human, and esthetic. Efforts directed at appreciation of individuality and diversity as well as contributions to the development of fiction. Authors likely to include Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, Isabel Colegate, Eva Figes, Penelope Fitzgerald, Molly Keane, Penelope Lively, Edna O'Brien, Barbara Pym, Jean Rhys, Muriel Spark, and Jeanette Winterson; some supplementary critical reading.
ENG 278 Writing Women: Asian American Women Writers
Floyd Cheung
M W 1:10-2:30pm
The body of literature written by Asian American women over the past one hundred years has been recognized as forming a coherent tradition. What conditions enabled its emergence? How have the qualities and concerns of this tradition been defined? What makes a text central or marginal to the tradition? Writers to be studied include Maxine Hong Kingston, Sui Sin Far, Mitsuye Yamada, M. Eveline Galang, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Paisley Rekdal, Lynda Barry, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Bharati Mukherjee, and Smith College alumna Frances Chung.
ENG 279 American Women Poets
Susan Van Dyne
M W F 1:10-2:30 pm
A selection of poets from the last 50 years, including Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Sharon Olds, Cathy Song, Louise Glück, Rita Dove and Diane Gilliam Fisher. An exploration of each poet's chosen themes and distinctive voice, with attention to the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the poet's materials and in the creative process. Not open to first-year students. Prerequisite: at least one college course in literature.
ENG 284 Victorian Sexualities
Cornelia Pearsall
M W 1:10-2:30 pm
The Victorians have long been viewed as sexually repressed, but close attention reveals a culture whose inventiveness regarding sexual identity, practice and discourse knew few bounds. This course will explore a range of literary, visual and scientific representations of Victorian sexuality. We will read novels, nonfiction prose and poetry by authors such as Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Charles Darwin, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti and Oscar Wilde. We will make use of visual materials, including Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Aubrey Beardsley illustrations and photographs by Carroll and others. Literary readings will be informed by Victorian sexologists such as Freud, Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, as well as contemporary historical and theoretical writings. Writing intensive. Prerequisite: ENG 120, 199, or equivalent writing-intensive course.
ESS 340 Women's Health: Current Topics
Barbara Brehm-Curtis
T 1:00-2:50 pm
A seminar focusing on current research papers in women’s health. An exploration of the scientific method used to test research questions about health, and consideration of the implications of research data for health care decisions. Prerequisites: 140 or a strong biological sciences background, and permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 14. Writing Intensive.
FRN 320 Topics in Medieval Renaissance Literature: Women Writers of the Middle Ages
Eglal Doss- Quinby
T Th 1:10-2:30 pm
What genres did women practice in the Middle Ages and in what way did they transform those genres for their own purposes? What access did women have to education and to the works of other writers, male and female? To what extent did women writers question the traditional gender roles of their society? How did they represent female characters in their works and what do their statements about authorship reveal about their understanding of themselves as writing women? What do we make of anonymous works written in the feminine voice? Reading will include the love letters of Héloise, the lais and fables of Marie de France, the songs of the trobairitz and women trouvères, and the writings of Christine de Pizan. This course is taught in French.
FYS 114 Turning Points
Marilyn Schuster
T Th 10:30-11:50 am
How have women (and some men) in the Americas understood defining moments in life? We will read fictional and autobiographical narratives and view films and documentaries that seek to understand different kinds of turning points: coming of age, coming out, coming to freedom, coming to consciousness. We will consider turning points in history (migrations, internment, war) as well as personal turning points (falling in love, leaving home, resisting oppression) and ask how history and memory, the political and the personal define each other. We will ask how these stories can help us understand and tell stories about turning points in our times and lives? Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students.
FYS 125 Midwifery in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective
Erika Laquer
M W F 8:30-9:50 am
While most births worldwide are still attended by midwives, the midwife in the U.S. today is a rare birth attendant. Alternately feared and revered, the midwife has often served as a bellwether to how a society values its women and children. This course will examine the history of midwives and midwifery in the European and American traditions, with particular attention to the manuals written by midwives to instruct other women about birth and women’s health. The course will also study the varieties of birth experiences in other societies from cross-cultural perspectives, with special emphasis on health for women in the developing world today. Because the Pioneer Valley is an area with particularly active groups of professional and direct-entry (lay) midwives, there will be opportunities to meet and discuss these issues with current practitioners. Writing intensive.
HST 101 Introduction to Historical Inquiry (Section 1): Geisha, Wise Mothers, and Working Women
Marnie Anderson
M W 1:10-2:30 pm
Images of Japanese women that are prevalent in the West, and to some extent Japan. Focus on three key figures considered to be definitive representations of Japanese women: the geisha, the good wife/wise mother, and the working woman. Popular treatments including novels such as Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, primary sources including an autobiography written by a geisha, and scholarly articles. Sorting through these images, distinguishing prescription versus reality. Writing intensive. Enrollment limited to 15 first-years and sophomores.
HST 252 Women in Modern Europe, 1789-1918
Darcy Buerkle
T Th 1:00 -2:20 pm
A survey of European women’s experiences from the French Revolution through World War I, focusing on Western Europe. Women’s changing relationships to work, family, politics, society, and the body, as well as shifting conceptions of femininity and masculinity, as revealed in treatises, letters, paintings, plays, and various secondary sources.
HST 383 Research in U.S. Women's History: The Sophia Smith Collection: Topic - American Women in the 19th and 20th Century
Helen Horowitz
W 1:10 PM-3:00 PM
MUS 100 Music and Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Margaret Sarkissian
M W 2:40-4:00 pm
This course explores the ways in which music functions in society to reflect or construct gender relations and the degrees to which a society’s gender ideology and resulting behaviors affect its musical thought and practice. Using non-western case studies as points of departure, particular emphasis will be placed upon the ways scholars write about gendered musical lives.
REL 238 Mary: Images and Cults
Vera Shevzov
T Th 10:30-11:50 am
Whether revered as the Birth-Giver of God or remembered as a simple Jewish woman, Mary has both inspired and challenged generations of Christian women and men. This course focuses on key developments in the “history of Mary” since Christian times to the present. How has her image shaped Christianity? What does her image in any given age tell us about personal and collective Christian identity? Topics include Mary’s “life”; rise of the Marian cult; differences among Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians; apparitions (e.g., Guadalupe and Lourdes); miracle-working icons; Mary, liberation and feminism. Liturgical, devotional, and theological texts, art, and film. Enrollment limited to 30.
SOC 323 Seminar: Gender and Social Change
Nancy Whittier
T 3:00-4:50 pm
Theory and research on the construction of and change in gender categories in the United States, with particular attention to social movements that seek to change gender definitions and stratification, including both feminist and anti-feminist movements. Theoretical frameworks are drawn from feminist theory and social movement theory. Readings examine historical shifts in gender relations and norms, changing definitions of gender in contemporary everyday life, and politicized struggles over gender definitions. Themes throughout the course include the social construction of both femininity and masculinity, the intersection of race, class, and sexual orientation with gender, and the growth of a politics of identity. Case studies include feminist, lesbian and gay, right-wing, self help, anti-abortion, and pro-choice movements.
SPN 250 Survey of Iberian Literatures and Society I: Sex and the Medieval City
Ibtissam Bouachrine
M W 1:10-2:30 pm
This course examines the medieval understanding of sex and the female body within an urban context. We will read medieval medical treatises on women’s sexual health by physicians such as Ibn Sina. We will also address women’s role as physicians in the medieval Iberian Peninsula. Texts include The Book of the Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sina, Milagros de Nuestra Senora by Gonzalo de Berceo, El Collar de la paloma by Ibn Hazm, Medical Aphorisms of Moses by Maimonides, and La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas. Enrollment limited to 19.
THE 215 Minstrel Shows from Daddy Rice to Big Mama's House
Andrea Hairston
T Th 10:30-11:50 am, Lab W 7:00-9:30 pm
This course explores the intersection of race, theatre, film, and performance in America. We consider the history and legacy of minstrel shows from the 1820s to the present. Reading plays by Alice Childress, Loften Mitchell, Lorraine Hansberry, Douglas Turner Ward, Ntozake Shange, George Wolfe, Pearl Cleage, Carlyle Brown, and Suzan Lori Parks, we investigate the impact of the minstrel performance of blackness on the American imagination. What is the legacy of this most popular of forms in the current entertainment world? How have monumental works such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin shaped American performance traditions and identity? How have historical and contemporary films incorporated minstrel images and performances? How have artists and audiences responded to the comedic power of minstrel images? Is a contemporary audience entertained in the same way by Martin Lawrence as they were by say Stepin Fetchit?