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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. Course offerings may change prior to Fall semester. The official Smith College Catalog should be considered the definitive source for up-to-date information prior to registering for the course. Seniors, click HERE to view seminars only for 2008-2009. Five College course listings are available HERE, courtesy of UMass Women's Studies
SWG 110 Colloquium: Feminist Public Cultures
SWG 200 Queer Theories/Queer Cultures
SWG 222 Gender, Law and Society
SWG 223 Sexual Harassment in History, Law, and Culture
SWG 230 Feminisms and the Fate of the Planet
SWG 312 Queer Resistances: Identities, Communities, and Social Movements
AAS 366 Seminar: Contemporary Topics in Afro-American Studies: Black Feminisms
EAL 238 Literature from Taiwan
EAL 244 Construction of Gender in Modern Japanese Women’s Writing
ENG 277 Postcolonial Women Writers
ESS 340 Women's Health: Current Topics
FYS 125 Midwifery in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective
FYS 168 Scribbling Women (formerly AMS 120)
GOV 232 Women and Politics in Africa
GOV 367 Seminar in Political Theory Topic: Queer Theory
HST 216 Women in Chinese History
HST 252 Women and Gender in Modern Europe, 1789-1918
HST 278 Women in the United States since 1865
HST 355 Seminar: Modern Europe Topic: The Smith College Relief Unit
HST 372 Seminar: Problems in American History: Women's Activism and Oral History
ITL 344 Italian Women Writers: Women in Italian Society Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
REL 238 Mary: Images and Cults
SOC 323 Seminar: Gender and Social Change
SPN 230 Topics in Latin American and Peninsular Literature: A Transatlantic Search for Identity
SPN 250 Survey of Iberian Literatures and Society I: Sex and the Medieval City
THE 215 Minstrel Shows from Daddy Rice to Big Mama’s House
SWG 110 Colloquium: Feminist Public Cultures
Elisabeth Armstrong
M W 9:00-10:20
This course spans the early second wave women’s movement in the mid-sixties to present women’s activism to understand how feminist protest shapes public culture in the United States. In the early sixties, women began to speak the private and the personal in public, about reproductive health, sexual desire, forced sterilization and abortion. Their audacity demanded new forms of expression and carved out new feminist publics in relation to other emerging social movements and the wider public sphere. This course looks at the history of feminism in post-war United States through the lens of its cultural production: of high art and everyday contestation. We will trace the history of DIY (do-it-yourself) feminist cultures from consciousness raising groups to blogs, mimeographed newsletters to zines, and super 8 film to video. Course assignments will include use of the Sophia Smith archives, frequent writing assignments, and interview projects to develop local histories of feminist public culture. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students only.
200- and 300-level SWG courses require SWG 150, Introduction to the Study of Women and Gender, as a prerequisite.
SWG 200 Queer Theories/Queer Cultures
Daniel Rivers
T R 1:00-2:20
This course will offer an introduction to the central historical and contemporary issues, concerns, and debates in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) studies. Using the course readings, film screenings, and class discussions, we will challenge ourselves to complicate our understandings of seemingly natural ideas such as sex/gender, man/woman or homosexual/heterosexual, as we experience them in our own daily lives and perceive them in the world around us. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we will explore the history, critical theory, cultural production, and politics of queer life in the United States, as well as queer identities in a transnational diasporic context. We will pay particular attention to how ideas of gender and sexuality intersect with social understandings of race, class, and citizenship. Prerequisite: SWG 150.
SWG 222 Gender, Law and Society
Carrie Baker
M W F 9:00-10:20
This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the legal status of women and men in the United States historically and today, particularly focusing in the areas of employment, education, reproduction, sexuality, the family, and violence. This course will examine U.S. constitutional and statutory laws 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; and how inequalities based on class/race/sexuality inform (or not) feminist law reform. Readings and lectures will emphasize: 1) constitutional and statutory frameworks for equality; 2) fundamental rights and intimate life; and 3) legal remedies for inequality. Prerequisite: SWG 150.
SWG 223 (C) Sexual Harassment in History, Law, and Culture
Carrie Baker
M W 1:10-2:30
This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of sexual harassment in the United States. We will examine the history and incidence of sexual harassment, the social movement opposing sexual harassment, and the development of law and public policy on the issue. We will study sexual harassment in a variety of contexts, including the workplace, primary and secondary schools, higher education, the military and prisons, housing, and on the street. Finally, we will consider the significance of gender, race, and sexuality for sexual harassment. Readings include first person accounts, feminist theory, legal cases, social science research, and primary and secondary sources. Prerequisite: SWG 150. Enrollment limited to 18.
SWG 230 Feminisms and the Fate of the Planet
Elisabeth Armstrong
M W F 11:00-12:10
We begin this course by sifting the earth between our fingers as part of a community learning partnership with area farms in Holyoke, Hadley, and other neighboring towns. Using women’s movements and feminisms across the globe as our lens, this course develops an understanding of current trends in globalization. This lens also allows us to map the history of transnational connections between people, ideas and movements from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Through films, memoirs, fiction, ethnography, witty diatribes and graphic novels, this course explores women’s activism on the land of laborers, and in their lives. Students will develop research projects in consultation with area farms, link their local research with global agricultural movements, write papers and give one oral presentation. Prerequisite: SWG 150.
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 312 Queer Resistances: Identities, Communities, and Social Movements
Nancy Whittier
R 1:00-2:50
How do we know what it means to identify as lesbian, gay, queer, bisexual, or transgender? Why do these terms mean different things to different people and in different contexts? How does claiming or refusing to claim a sexual identity affect community formation or social change? This seminar will explore constructions of queer collective identities, communities, and social protest. We will pay explicit attention to how queer identities, communities, and movements are racialized, shaped by class, gendered, and contextual. Drawing on historical, theoretical, narrative, and ethnographic sources, we will examine multiple sites of queer resistance including local communities, academic institutions, media, the state, social movement organizations, and the Internet. We will examine the consequences of various theories of gender, sexuality, and resistance for how we interpret the shapes that queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identity, community, and social movements take. Prerequisites: SWG 150, one additional course in the major and permission of the instructor.
AAS 366 Seminar: Contemporary Topics in Afro-American Studies: Black Feminist Theories
Riché Barnes
T 1:00-2:50
This course will examine historical, critical and theoretical perspectives on the development of Black feminist theory/praxis. The course will draw from the 19th century to the present, but will focus on the contemporary Black feminist intellectual tradition that achieved notoriety in the 1970s and initiated a global debate on “western” and global feminisms. Central to our exploration will be the analysis of the intersectional relationship between theory and practice and between race, gender and class. We will conclude the course with the exploration of various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe as a way of broadening our knowledge of feminist theory.
EAL 238 Literature from Taiwan
Sabina Knight
T Th 1:20-2:50
How do works from Taiwan contend with legacies of political trauma and the social consequences of modernization and democratization? In the face of dislocation, marginality, and materialism, how does writing nurture memory, belonging, social repair or change? Close readings of stories and, some semesters, essays, poetry, novels or films will explore traditional aesthetics, the modernist, nativist and localist movements of the 1960s to 1980s, and the pluralism of the 1990s and since, with special attention to feminist and queer fiction. Class participation will include student-centered contemplative and collaborative exercises, including short written meditations and dramatizations. No background in Chinese required. Enrollment limited to 19.
EAL 244 Construction of Gender in Modern Japanese Women’s Writing
Kimberly Kono
M W 1:10-2:30
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.
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ENG 277 Postcolonial Women Writers
Ambreen Hai
M W 1:10-2:30
A comparative study of primarily twentieth-century women writers in English from Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia and Australia. We will read novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and autobiography in their historical, cultural and political contexts as well as theoretical essays to address questions such as: how have women writers challenged both colonial and postcolonial assumptions about gender, identity or nationhood, diaspora? How do they call attention to or address issues often ignored by their male contemporaries or forebears, such as sexuality, desire, motherhood, childhood, sickness, poverty, relations among women? Writers may include Attia Hosain, Anita Desai, Kamala Das, Thrity Umrigar, Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head, Nawal-el-Saadawi, Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, Shani Mootoo, Zadie Smith, Sally Morgan. Prerequisite: a WI course.
ENG 279 American Women Poets
Susan Van Dyne
M W F 1:10-2:30
A selection of poets from the last 50 years, including Sylvia Plath, Diane Gilliam Fisher, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Sharon Olds, Cathy Song, Louise Glück, and Rita Dove. 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
T R 10:30-11:50
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 explores a range of literary, visual, and scientific representations of Victorian sexuality. We read novels, nonfiction prose, and poetry by authors such as Darwin, Dickens, H. Rider Haggard, Christina Rossetti and Oscar Wilde. Literary readings are informed by Victorian sexologists such as Freud, Krafft-Ebing, and Havelock Ellis, as well as contemporary historical and theoretical writings. We also make use of visual materials, including Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Aubrey Beardsley illustrations, and photographs. Prerequisite: ENG 120, 199, or equivalent writing-intensive course.
ENG 292 Crafting the Memoir
Ann Boutelle
R 1:00-2:50
In this workshop, we will explore, through reading and through writing, the presentation of self in the memoir. A major focus will be on the interweaving of voice, structure, style, and content. As we read the work of ourselves and of others, we will be searching for strategies, devices, rhythms, patterns, and approaches that we might adapt in future writings. The reading list will consist of writings by 20th and 21st century
women writers. Admission by permission of the instructor.
ESS 340 Women's Health: Current Topics
Barbara Brehm-Curtis
T 1:00-2:50
A seminar focusing on current research papers in women's health. Recent topics have included reproductive health issues, eating disorders, heart disease, depression, autoimmune disorders and breast cancer. Prerequisites: 140 or a strong biological sciences background, and permission of the instructor. Open to juniors and seniors. Enrollment limited to 14. This course may not be taken for S/U grading option.
FYS 125 Midwifery in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective
Erika Laquer
M W F 9:00-10:20
While most births worldwide are still attended by midwives, and almost all births before 1900 occurred at home in the presence of friends and midwives, the midwife in the U.S. today is a rare attendant. 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. Alternately feared and revered, the midwife has often served as a bellwether to how a society values its women and children. The course will also examine the varieties of birth experiences possible from cross-cultural perspectives. 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.
FYS 159 What’s in a Recipe?
Nancy Saporta Sternbach
M W F 9:00-10:20
What stories do recipes tell? What cultural and familial information is embedded in a recipe? Who wrote the recipe? Why? How does it reflect her (or his) life and times? What do we learn about the geography, history and political economy of a location through recipes? Are recipes a way for an underrepresented group to tell its story? Does a recipe bolster or undermine national cooking? This seminar will look at recipes and cookbooks from the Spanish-speaking world (in English) and theories of recipes from a variety of different sources. Our reading will inform our writing as we try to establish such connections as the politics of chocolate, olive oil cooperatives, avocado farms, the traveling tomato, potatoes, and the cultural milieu from which each recipe emerged. Knowledge of Spanish is useful but not required. Writing intensive. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students.
FYS 168 Scribbling Women (formerly AMS 120)
Sherry Marker
M W 1:10-2:30
With the help of the Sophia Smith Collection and the Smith College Archives, this writing intensive course looks at a number of 19th and 20th century American women writers. All wrestled with specific issues that confronted them as women; each wrote about important issues in American society. Enrollment limited to 15. Priority given to first year students.
GOV 232 Women and Politics in Africa
Catharine Newbury
M W 2:40-4:00
This course will explore the genesis and effects of political activism by women in Africa, which some believe represents a new African feminism, and its implications for state/civil society relations in contemporary Africa. Topics will include the historical effects of colonialism on the economic, social, and political roles of African women, the nature of urban/rural distinctions, and the diverse responses by women to the economic and political crises of postcolonial African polities. Case studies of specific African countries, with readings of novels and women's life histories as well as analyses by social scientists.
GOV 347 Seminar in International Politics and Comparative Politics:
North Africa in the International System
Gregory White
T 1:00-2:50
This seminar examines the history and political economy of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria - the Maghreb - focusing on the post-independence era. Where relevant, Mauritania and Libya will be treated. The seminar sets Maghrebi politics in the broader context of its regional situation within the Mediterranean (Europe and the Middle East), as well as its relationship to sub-Saharan Africa and North America. Study is devoted to: 1) the independence struggle; 2) the colonial legacy; 3) contemporary political economy; and 4) post-colonial politics and society. Special attention will be devoted to the politics of Islam, the “status” of women, and democratization.
HST 216 Women in Chinese History (Colloquium)
Jonathan Lipman
T Th 9:00-10:20
The history of Chinese women from early classical texts to the present: their places and behaviors in society and culture, their relationships with one another and with men, and the evolution of gender roles and attitudes in China's long and complex story. Topics include ideals of femininity and beauty, sexuality, women's place in family life, life-cycles and rites of passage, the participation of women in the revolutions of the 20th century, and contemporary women's lives. Enrollment limited to 18.
HST 252 Women and Gender in Modern Europe, 1789-1918
Darcy Buerkle
T Th 10:30-11:50
A survey of European women’s experiences and constructions of gender from the French Revolution through World War I, focusing on Western Europe. Gendered relationships to work, family, politics, society, religion, and the body, as well as shifting conceptions of femininity and masculinity, as revealed in novels, films, treatises, letters, paintings, plays, and various secondary sources. Enrollment limited to 40.
HST 278 Women in the United States, 1865-present
Jennifer Guglielmo
W F 1:10-2:30
Survey of women’s and gender history with focus on race, class, and sexuality. Draws on feminist methodologies to consider how study of women’s lives changes our understanding of history, knowledge, culture, and the politics of resistance. Topics include labor, racial formation, empire, im/migration, popular culture, citizenship, education, religion, science, war, consumerism, feminism, queer cultures, and globalizing capitalism. How have women contested and contributed to systems of inequality? Emphasis on class discussion and analysis of original documents, with short lectures. Enrollment limited to 40.
HST 355 Seminar: Topics in Social History: Women and World War I: The Smith College Relief Unit
Jennifer Hall-Witt
T 3:00-4:50
Students undertake archival research in the papers of the Smith College Relief Unit to explore relationships between women and the Great War. Between 1917 and the late 1920s, forty-seven Smith alumnae led reconstruction efforts in the Somme valley in France, one of the areas most devastated by the war. Drawing on materials in the Sophia Smith Collection--diaries, letters, photograph albums, newspaper clippings, and financial records--the class compares this first women's college relief unit with other Americans and Europeans who contributed to the war effort.
HST 372 Seminar: Problems in American History: Women's Activism and Oral History
Kelly Anderson
T 1:00-2:50
This seminar will examine women's activism of the past fifty years with an emphasis on second-wave feminisms. Our texts will include secondary literature as well as primary sources from the Sophia Smith Collection, including oral histories. Students will be introduced to the techniques of oral history and will conduct, transcribe, edit and analyze their own interviews for their final project. The course objectives are: an understanding of contemporary women’s movements from a historical perspective, basic skills in and knowledge of oral history methods, and the rich experience of “playing historian” by creating new records of women’s lives.
ITL 344 Italian Women Writers: Women in Italian Society Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Giovanna Bellesia
T R 10:30-11:50
This course provides an in-depth look at the changing role of women in Italian society. Authors studied include Sibilla Aleramo, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, and Dacia Maraini. A portion of the course is dedicated to the new multicultural and multiethnic Italian reality with a selection of texts written during the last ten to fifteen years by contemporary women immigrants. Limited enrollment, permission of the instructor required. Conducted in Italian.
REL 238 Mary: Images and Cults
Vera Shevzov
T R 10:30-11:50
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 35.
SOC 323 Seminar: Gender and Social Change
Nancy Whittier
T 3:00-4:50
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 230 Topics in Latin American and Peninsular Literature: A Transatlantic Search for Identity
María Estela Harretche
T R 10:30-11:50
A quest for the self and its relation to otherness through a one-poem per class approach. Readings in Modern and Contemporary works by poets from both sides of the ocean, complemented by the study of related music and visual art. We will examine the consequences of political exile as a journey to the unknown (Jiménez, Cernuda, Cortázar, Neruda, Alberti), as well as the voluntary exile of the artist in search of a new aesthetic identity (Darío, Lorca, Vallejo). Special attention will be given to the problems of subjectivity, gender and sexuality, as poets searched within themselves: Agustini, Storni, Parra and Pizarnik, four women. Students will have the option of composing an original poem to supplement their final grade. Prerequisite: SPN 220 or above. Enrollment limited to 19.
SPN 250 Survey of Iberian Literatures and Society I: Sex and the Medieval City
Ibtissam Bouachrine
M W 2:40-4:00
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 Ibu 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 Señora by Gonzalo de Berceo, El Collar de la paloma by Ibn Hazm, Medical Aphorisms 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 R 10:30-11:50 am, 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?