Course Offerings
Smith College Fall 2012 Courses
Smith College Spring 2013 Courses
UMass Amherst Fall 2012 Courses
Amherst College Fall 2012 Courses
Hampshire College Fall 2012 Courses
Mt. Holyoke College Fall 2012 Courses
Spring 2013 Courses
SWG 100 Issues in Queer Studies
Gary Lehring This course introduces students to issues raised by and in the emerging interdisciplinary field of queer studies. Through a series of lectures by Smith faculty members and invited guests, students will learn about subject areas, methodological issues and resources in queer studies. May not be repeated for credit. Offered for 2 credits, graded S/U only.
SWG 150 Introduction to the Study of Women and Gender
TBA An introduction to the interdisciplinary field of the study of women and gender through a critical examination of feminist histories, issues and practices. Focus on the U.S. with some attention to the global context. Primarily for first and second year students. Lecture and discussion, students will be assigned to sections. 4 credits. Further work in the Study of Women and Gender usually requires SWG 150 as a prerequisite.
SWG 201 Queer Black Studies, An Introduction
Kevin Quashie How does queer studies, which questions the naturalization of identity, relate to black cultural studies, where identity is both subject to criticism and the foundation of a politic? What role has the black body played in the construction of gender and sexuality? How does the performativity of racial blackness (from blackface minstrelsy to hip hop) relate to ideas from queer theory? How do we understand the particular ways that homophobia has seemed to manifest in black communities? This course will highlight these four questions through theoretical, historical and sociological texts (as well as film, music and literature). 4 credits. Prerequisites: SWG 150, or SWG 100 or AAS 111, or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 40.
SWG 270 Colloquium: Documenting Lesbian Lives
Kelly Anderson
Grounding our work in the current scholarship in lesbian history, this course will explore lesbian communities, cultures, and activism. While becoming familiar with the existing narratives about lesbian lives, students will be introduced to the method of oral history as a key documentation strategy in the production of lesbian history. Our texts will include secondary literature on late 20th century lesbian culture and politics, oral history theory and methodology, and primary sources from the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC). Students will conduct, transcribe, edit, and interpret their own interviews for their final project. The course objectives are: an understanding of modern lesbian movements and cultures from a historical perspective, basic skills in and knowledge of oral history methods, and the rich experience of being historians by creating new records of lesbian lives. 4 credits. Prerequisites: SWG 150 or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20.
SWG 312 Queer Resistances: Identities, Communities, and Social movements
Nancy Whittier 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. 4 credits. Prerequisites: SWG 150, one additional course in the major and permission of the instructor.
SWG 323 Sex, Trade, and Trafficking
Carrie Baker This seminar will examine domestic and international trade and trafficking of women and girls, including sex trafficking, bride trafficking, trafficking of women for domestic and other labor, child prostitution, sex work, and pornography. We will explore societal conditions that shape this market, including economics, globalization, war, and technology. We will examine the social movements growing up around the trafficking of women, particularly divisions among activists working on the issue, and study recent laws and funding initiatives to address trafficking of women and girls. Throughout the seminar, we will apply an intersectional analysis in order to understand the significance of gender, race and class to women’s experiences, public discourse, advocacy, and public policy initiatives around sex trade and trafficking. 4 credits. Prerequisites: SWG 150, one additional course in the major, and permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15.
SWG 360 The Cultural Work of Memoir
Susan Van Dyne This course takes the foundational premise of SWG that culture constructs subjects and asks how do queer or non-normative subjectivities come into existence? By studying a selection of literary memoirs by women and men in the last half century in the U.S., we will explore the relationships between queer subjectivities, politicized identities, communities, historical moments, and social movements. The course depends on a second more radical premise that we do not have a life until we narrate it. How does life-writing as an expressive act create livable lives? Students will produce analytical essays and a substantial memoir portfolio. Through the process of reflecting, re-imagining, and revising, we explore multiple writing strategies to turn our lives into art. 4 credits. Prerequisites: SWG 150 and at least one other course in the major. Permission of the instructor and writing sample required.
Cross-Listed Courses: Spring 2013
AAS 360 Seminar: Toni Morrison
Kevin Quashie T3:00PM-4:50PM This seminar will focus on Toni Morrison's literary production. In reading her novels, essays, lectures, and interviews, we will pay particular attention to three things: her interest in the epic anxieties of American identities; her interest in form, language, and theory; and her study of love.
This seminar will focus on Toni Morrison's literary production. In reading her novels, essays, lectures, and interviews, we will pay particular attention to three things: her interest in the epic anxieties of American identities; her interest in form, language, and theory; and her study of love.
CLT 229 The Renaissance Gender Debate
Ann Jones TTh10:30AM-11:50AM
In "La Querelle des Femmes" medieval and Renaissance writers (1350-1650) took on misogynist ideas from the ancient world and early Christianity: woman as failed man, irrational animal, fallen Eve. Writers debated women's sexuality (insatiable or purer than men's?), marriage (the hell of nagging wives or the highest Christian state?), women's souls (nonexistent or subtler than men's?), female education (a danger or a social necessity?). In the context of the social and cultural changes fuelling the polemic, we will analyze the many literary forms it took, from Chaucer's Wife of Bath to Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, story collections such as Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, women writers' dialogues, such as Moderata Fonte's The Worth of Women, and pamphlets from the popular press. Some attention to the battle of the sexes in the visual arts.
CLT/EAL 239 Contemporary Chinese Women’s Fiction
Sabina Knight TTh1:00PM-2:50PM
Same as EAL 239. An exploration of major themes through close readings of contemporary fiction by women from China, Taiwan, Tibet, and Chinese diasporas. Theme for 2011: Intimacy. How do stories about love, romance, and desire (including extramarital affairs, serial relationships and love between women) reinforce or contest norms of economic, cultural, and sexual citizenship? What do narratives of intimacy reveal about the social consequences of economic restructuring? How do pursuits, realizations, and failures of intimacy lead to personal and social change? Readings are in English translation and no background in China or Chinese is required.
EAL 242 Modern Japanese Literature
Kimberly Kono
MW1:10PM-2:30PM
A survey of Japanese literature from the late 19th century to the present. Over the last century and a half, Japan has undergone tremendous change: rapid industrialization, imperial and colonial expansion, occupation following its defeat in the Pacific War, and emergence as a global economic power. The literature of modern Japan reflects the complex aesthetic, cultural and political effects of such changes. Through our discussions of these texts, we will also address theoretical questions about such concepts as identity, gender, race, sexuality, nation, class, colonialism, modernism and translation. All readings are in English translation.
EAS 200 The Difficult Female
Jina Kim MW1:10PM-2:30PM
Focusing on a theme of significance to the region, this course is designed to introduce students to a variety of methods of inquiry used for research in the interdisciplinary field of East Asian Studies. Students will be introduced to methods of locating and analyzing information sources, developing research questions and writing during the course of the semester. Normally taken in the sophomore or junior year. Also open to non-EAS majors. This course explores the various discourses of the "modern" through the study of two iconic female figures who were often labeled as "difficult women": the New Woman and the Modern Girl. We will explore who these figures were, what was so modern and difficult about them, by examining the discourses accompanying them in China; Japan; Korea; and Taiwan. By using these figures to enrich our understanding of gendered politics, consumer culture, colonial modernity, and international relations, students will become familiar with interdisciplinary studies. We will also use historical, literary, and visual texts to consider the possibilities and problems of comparative colonial history. Enrollment limited to 18. (E)
ENG 246 South Asian English Literatures Ambreen Hai WF1:10PM-2:30PM
This course will explore the rich diversity of late 20th and 21st century literatures written in English and published internationally by award-winning writers of South Asian descent from Britain, the U.S., Canada, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. Writers range from established celebrities (Rushdie, Naipaul, Kureishi, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ondaatje, Selvadurai, Ghosh) to promising new stars (Kiran Desai, Hari Kunzru, Tahmima Anam, Monica Ali, Daniyal Mueenuddin). Among many questions, we will consider how writers craft new idioms and forms to address multiple audiences in global English, how they explore or foreground emergent concerns of postcolonial societies and diasporic, migrant, or transnational peoples in a rapidly globalizing but by no means equalizing world. Not recommended for first-year students.
ENG 285 Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory
Andrea Stone
TTh3:00PM-4:20PM
What is literature? Why and how should it be studied? How does literature function in culture and society? Does the meaning of a text depend on the author's intention or on how readers read? What counts as a valid interpretation? How do changing understandings of language, the unconscious, history, class, gender, race, or sexuality change how we read? This course introduces some of the major 20th century philosophical questions that have shaped literary studies today, drawing upon a variety of disciplines, and influential movements or approaches such as the New Criticism, structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, gender and cultural studies. Strongly recommended for students considering graduate studies. Prerequisite: ENG 199 or a 200-level literature course.
FLS 250 Queer Cinema/Queer Media
Lokeilani Kaimana MW1:10PM-2:30PM, T7:00PM-11:00PM
From the queer avant-garde of Kenneth Anger and Su Friedrich, to The Kids are Alright and Glee, the queer in film and television is often conflated with gay and lesbian representation on screen. Instead of collapsing queer cinema into a representational politics of gay and lesbian film and television, we look at theories and practices that uphold what queerness means in a contemporary framework of America neoliberalism and transnational media. Screenings include the New Queer Cinema classics Paris Is Burning, It Wasn't Love, and Poison, and work by multimedia artists including Shu Lea Cheang, Issac Julien, Carmelita Tropicana, and PJ Raval. Readings by Alexander Doty, Thomas Elsaesser, Kobena Mercer, Jasbir Puar, B. Ruby Rich, Judith Halberstam, Jose E. Munoz's, Chris Straayer and Hayden White.
GOV 347 Seminar in International Politics & Comparative Politics: North Africa in the International System
Gregory White
T1:00PM-2:50PM
Topics course.
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 253 Women and Gender in Contemporary Europe
Darcy Buerkle TTh10:30AM-11:50AM
Women's experience and constructions of gender in the commonly recognized major events of the 20th century. Introduction to major thinkers of the period through primary sources, documents and novels, as well as to the most significant categories in the growing secondary literature in 20th-century European history of women and gender.
HST 259 Aspects of African History: Women in African Colonial Histories
Jeffrey Ahlman
MW1:10PM-2:30PM
Topics course.
This course examines the political, social, and economic role of women in African history, while paying particular attention to the ways in which a wide variety of women - rural and urban, Christian and Muslim, married and unmarried, and literate and non-literate - engaged, understood, and negotiated the changing political and social landscapes associated with life under colonial rule. Key issues addressed in the course include marriage and respectability, colonial domesticity regimes, and women and religion. Additionally, students will interrogate the diversity of methodological techniques scholars have employed in their attempts to write African women's history.
HST 280 Globalization, Immigration and Transnational Cultures
Jennifer Gugliemo TTh1:00PM-2:20PM
Topics course.
Explores significance of im/migrant workers and their transnational social movements to U.S. history in the late 19th and 20th centuries. How have im/migrants responded to displacement, marginalization, and exclusion, by redefining the meanings of home, citizenship, community, and freedom? What are the connections between mass migration and U.S. imperialism? What are the histories of such cross-border social movements as labor radicalism, borderlands feminism, Black Liberation, and anti-colonialism? Topics also include racial formation; criminalization, incarceration and deportation; and the politics of gender, sexuality, race, class and nation.
HST 372 Problems in American History: Cross-Cultural Captivity in North America, 1500-1860
Neal Salisbury T3:00PM-4:50PM
Topics course.
The captivity of Europeans and European Americans -- especially women -- by Native Americans has been a persistent theme in mainstream literary and popular culture since early colonial times. This course examines several cases of such captivity in historical and cross-cultural context as well as some of the many more instances in which Native Americans and other non-Europeans were captives. Topics include captivity in pre-colonial indigenous societies, the purposes and meanings of captivity for captors and captives, the uses of captivity narratives as historical evidence, captivity and cultural and ethnic identity, captivity and gender, Native-American-African American relations and the colonial-era slave trade in Native Americans.
IDP 142 Women's Sexuality
Emily Nagoski W7:00PM-9:00PM What does it mean for women's sexuality to be "healthy"? Taking biological, psychological, and social views into account, this course offers a comprehensive overview of the nature of human female sexuality in terms of both its development across the lifespan and its evolutionary antecedents, along with awareness of the science of sexuality. The emphasis throughout the semester is on the implications of the information on women's sexual wellbeing, on both cultural and individual levels.
IDP 208 Women's Medical Issues Leslie Jaffe TTh10:30AM-11:50AM
A study of topics and issues relating to women's health, including menstrual cycle, contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, abortion, menopause, depression, eating disorders, nutrition and cardiovascular disease. Social, ethical and political issues will be considered including violence, the media's representation of women, and gender bias in health care. An international perspective on women's health will also be considered.
JUD 251 Women and Gender in Israeli Society Michal Frenkel TTh10:30AM-11:50AM
Explores the ways in which gender (both, masculinities and femininities, and gender ideologies) have shaped Israeli society, and how masculinity, femininity and gender relations are constantly reinterpreted and reconstructed. Like most other industrialized countries, one can identify instances of gender discrimination and complex gender relations in Israel. Yet, some of the unique features of Israel, such as the centrality of military service, the dominance of religious institutions, pro-natalism (high fertility rates), and the importance of traditional family structures find themselves in friction with the emergence of another Israeli society that sees itself as secular, post-Zionist, and globalized. The course takes a feminist and sociological approach to exploring how sensitivity to gender enhances our understanding of this complex society.
LAS 301: Seminar: Topics in Latin American and Latino/a Studies: Gender and Sexuality in the Modern History of Latin America
Daniel Rodriguez
Th3:00PM-4:50PM
Topics course.
This seminar shows how gender shaped the political and social history of 19th and 20th century Latin America. Focusing on the recent historiography on gender in Latin America, we will explore some of the themes at the center of this still-emerging body of scholarship, such as the role of honor and sexual morality in shaping post-independence Latin American societies, the efforts of states to regulate the family, and the role of gender in the organization of the modern labor force. Other topics include: changing conceptions of homosexualities in the twentieth century; gender and imperialism and anti-imperialism; and eugenics-inflected efforts to control reproduction. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the intersections of race, gender and class that are at the heart of changing understandings of sexual morality and ideals of modern family organization.
SOC 213 Race and National Identity in the United States
Ginetta Candelario TTh9:00AM-10:20AM
The sociology of a multiracial and ethnically diverse society. Comparative examinations of several American groups and subcultures. Enrollment limited to 35.
SOC 232 World Population Leslie King TTh1:00PM-2:30PM
This course will introduce students to environmental, economic, feminist, and nationalist perspectives on population growth and decline. We will examine current population trends and processes (fertility, mortality, and migration) and consider the social, political, economic, and environmental implications of those trends. The course will also provide an overview of various sources of demographic data as well as basic demographic methods. Cross-listed with Environmental Science and Policy. Enrollment limited to 35.
SOC Sociology of Sexuality: Institutions, Identities, and Cultures
Nancy Whittier TTh10:30AM-11:50AM
This course examines sexuality from a sociological perspective, focusing on how sexuality is constructed by and structures major social institutions. We will examine the social construction of individual and collective identities, norms and behaviors, discourses, institutional regulation, and the place of sexuality in the state, education, science, and other institutions, and social movements. Consideration of gender, race, class, time, and place will be integrated throughout. Topics include the social construction of sexual desire and practice, sexuality and labor, reproduction, science, technology, sexuality and the state, sexuality education, globalization, commodification, and social movements for sexual purity, sexual freedom, and against sexual violence. Enrollment limited to 35.
SPN 230 Topics in Latin American and Peninsular Literature
Topic: Female Visions of Mexico.
Patricia Gonzalez MWF11:00AM-11:50AM
Topics course.
In the strong male dominated environment, women have always worked, written and fought side-by-side with men in the construction of Mexican identity. Starting with the period of the Revolution of 1910, women participated actively in the transformation of their country. This course will recount history and literature through women's perspectives by studying influential women throughout the 20th century. Mexican artists include Carmen Mondragon (Nahui Olin), Remedios Varo, Frida Khalo and Leonora Carrington. Fiction writers such as Nellie Campobello, Rosario Castellanos, Elena Garro, Elena Poniatowska and more contemporary writers will encompass most of the readings for the class. Enrollment limited to 19.
SPN 245 Topics in Latin American and Peninsular Studies
Topic: Muslim Women in Spain: 756 to the Present
Ibtissam Bouachrine TTh1:00PM-2:50PM
Topics course.
This course examines the experiences of Muslim women in the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages until today. Discussions will focus on Muslim women's literary and cultural contributions to the Spanish society. Students will also be invited to think critically about categories and identities such as woman, Muslim, European, African, Amazighi, and Mediterranean. Highly recommended for students considering JYA in Spain. A satisfactory command of Spanish is required. Prerequisite: SPN 220 or above, or the permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 19 students.
SPN 372 Topics in Latin American and Iberian Studies
Topic: Women, Environmental Justice and Social Action Michelle Joffroy MWF11:00AM-12:10PM
Topics course. This multi-disciplinary course explores key debates and theoretical approaches involved in understanding environmental concerns, as well as the role of art and cultural production in social movements, in Latin America from a gender and justice perspective. With Latin American women's and environmental movements as our lens, we will map the politics and poetics of environmental justice in Latin America from the early 20th century to the present. Through films, memoirs, ethnography, music and narrative fiction we will explore how women's cultural and social activisms have articulated the multiple ways that gender, class and race mediate paradigms of political-environmental justice. Enrollment limited to 14.
THE 319 Shamans, Shapeshifters, and the Magic If
Andrea Hairston T3:00PM-4:50PM, W7:00PM-10:00PM
To act, to perform is to speculate with your body. Theatre is a transformative experience that takes performer and audience on an extensive journey in the playground of the imagination beyond the mundane world. Theatre asks us to be other than ourselves. We can for a time inhabit someone else's skin, be shaped by another gender or ethnicity, become part of a past epoch or an alternative time and space similar to our own time but that has yet to come. As we enter this 'imagined' world we investigate the normative principles of our current world. This course will investigate the counterfactual, speculative, subjunctive impulse in overtly speculative drama and film with a particular focus on race and gender. We will examine an international range of plays by such authors as Caryl Churchill, Tess Onwueme, Dael Olandersmith, Derek Walcott, Bertolt Brecht, Lorraine Hanberry, Craig Lucas, and Doug Wright, as well as films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, X-Men, Contact, and Brother From Another Planet. Enrollment limited to 18.
Fall 2012 Courses
SWG 205 LGBT History and Politics
Gary Lehring
T/Th 1:10–2:30 p.m.
This course will provide an overview of the birth and growth of the 20th century movement for GLBT visibility, community and equality in the United States through and including the contemporary 21st-century status of LGBT rights. Topics to be addressed include public opinion; state ballot initiatives; GLBT candidates, elections and interest groups; federal and state legislation; and state and federal court decisions affecting GLBT citizens. Public policy areas to be included are Defense of Marriage Act, Federal Marriage Amendment, Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Employment Non-Discrimination Act, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and US Federal AIDS policy. Prerequisite SWG 150 or permission of the instructor. 4 credits.
SWG 222 Gender, Law and Policy
Carrie Baker
M/W/F 9–10:20 a.m.
This course explores the legal status of women in the United States historically and today, focusing in the areas of employment, education, sexuality, reproduction, the family and violence. We will study constitutional and statutory law as well as public policy. Some of the topics we will cover are sexual harassment, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, as well as pregnancy discrimination. We will study feminist activism to reform the law and will examine how inequalities based on gender, race, class and sexuality shape the law. We will also discuss and debate contemporary policy and future directions. 4 credits.
Reproductive Justice
Carrie Baker M/W 1:10-2:30pm This course will explore reproductive justice in the U.S. and the influence of U.S. policy globally, addressing issues of law, policy, theory and activism. Topics include historic and contemporary state control over women’s reproduction, social movements to expand women’s control over their reproductive lives, access to reproductive care, reproductive technologies, reproductive coercion and violence, religious fundamentalism’s increasing influence over reproduction, and the discourses around women’s bodies and pregnancy. A central framework for analysis is how gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability and nationality shape women’s ability to control their reproduction. Colloquium, 4 credits.
SWG 230 Feminisms and the Fate of the Planet
Elisabeth Armstrong
M/W/F 11 a.m.–12:10 p.m.
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 as 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. 4 credits.
Cross-Listed Courses: Summer 2012
GES 302 Costa Rica at a Crossroads: Examination of Globalization and Sustainability Amy Rhodes and Gary Lehring Costa Rica is held as a model of sustainability and eco-friendly development, with legislation and regulation integral to its success. Yet, globalization is stressing the delicate balance between development and environmental sustainability. This course examines how Costa Ricas biodiversity, climate, history and politics relate to its changing economies, resource use, conservation practices, and environmental protection. Site visits include San Jose, Monteverde cloud forest, the Guancaste coast, and coastal rain and mangrove forests. Students will complete a course with a 6-8 week internship in Costa Rica. Student selection based on application and interview. Enrollment limited to 10 rising juniors and seniors. Offered Summer 2012
Cross-Listed Courses: Fall 2012
AAS 244 Black Activist Autobiography
Riche Barnes T/Th 1:00-2:30pm From the publication of "slave narratives" in the 18th century to the present, African Americans have used first-person narratives to tell their personal story and to testify about the structures of social, political, and economic inequality faced by black people. These autobiographical accounts provide rich portraits of individual experience at a specific time and place as well as insights into the larger socio-historical context in which the authors lived. This course will focus on the autobiographies of activist women. In addition to analyzing texts and their contexts, we will reflect on and document how our own life history is shaped by race. Writers and subjects will include: Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Angela Davis, Harriet Jacobs, and Audre Lorde among others.
AAS 249/ENG 248 Black Women Writers
Daphne Lamothe W/F 1:10-2:30PM Same as ENG 348. How does gender matter in a black context? That is the question we will ask and attempt to answer through an examination of works by such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, Zora Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker.
AAS 289 Women, Race and Resistance
Paula Giddings TBA 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. Enrollment limited to 25.
ENG 276 Contemporary British Women Writers
Robert Hosmer M/W 1:10-2:30PM 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.
FYS 114 Turning Points
Susan Van Dyne MWF 11:00-12:00PM 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. Counts toward the Study of Women and Gender major.
FYS Curry: Gender, Race, Sexuality and Empire Elisabeth Armstrong
MW 9:00-10:20 AM
As one early currency in the global trade of food, the spices in curry have
sustained empires and built hybrid cultures. The circulation of food and food
cultures has shaped normative gender and sexual relations and influenced how we
racialize work. In South Asia, environmental questions about how to cultivate
foods sustainably and how to distribute food equitably are vital components of
the food security movement. In this course
we will study histories of curry in
Empire, watch comedy sketches, read novels and investigate social movements
around agriculture and food allocation in South Asia and the South Asian
diaspora.
FYS 175 Love Stories Ambreen Hai
WF 1:10-2:30PM Could a Jane Austen heroine ever marry a servant? What notions about class or decorum dictate what seem to be choices of the heart? How are individual desires shaped or produced by social, historical and cultural forces, by dominant assumptions about race, class, gender, or sexuality? How do dominant love stories both reflect these assumptions, and actively create or legislate the boundaries of what may be desired? How may non-dominant (queer or interracial) love stories contest those boundaries, creating alternative narratives and possibilities? This course explores how notions of love, romance, marriage or sexual desire are structured by specific cultural and historical formations. We will closely analyze literature and film from a range of locations: British, American and postcolonial. We will also read some theoretical essays to provide conceptual tools for our analyses. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. This course can count towards the major in English, CLT or SWG.
FYS 179 Rebellious Women
Kelly Anderson
MW9:0010:20AM This writing-intensive First Year Seminar will introduce students to the rebellious women who have changed the American social and political landscape through reform, mobilization, cultural interventions, and outright rebellion. Using Estelle Freedman's No Turning Back on the history of feminisms as our primary text, we will chronicle the history of feminist ideas and movements, interweaving historical change with contemporary debate. This course will use a variety of sources as our "texts" in addition to Freedman and will rely heavily on primary sources from the Sophia Smith Collection. The intention of this seminar is threefold: 1) to provide an overview of feminist ideas and action throughout American history, 2) to introduce students to primary documents and research methods, and 3) to encourage reflection and discussion on current women's issues. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students.
GOV 205 Colloquium: Strange Bedfellows: State Power and Regulation of the Family
Alice Hearst M/W 1:10-2:30PM Explores the status of the family in American political life, and its role as a mediating structure between the individual and the state. Emphasis will be placed on the role of the courts in articulating the rights of the family and its members. Limited enrollment. Suggested preparation GOV 202 or WST 225.
HST 252 Women and Gender in Modern Europe, 1789-1918
Darcy Buerkle T/Th 1:00-2:20PM 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.
HST 278 Women in the United States since 1865 Jennifer Guglielmo W/F 2:40-4:00PM Survey of women’s and gender history with focus on race, class, and sexuality. Informed by feminist methodologies to consider how the study of women¿s lives changes our understanding of history, knowledge, culture, and the politics of resistance. Topics include emancipation from slavery, race and racism, labor, colonialism, imperialism, im/migration, nationalism, popular culture, citizenship, education, religion, war, consumerism, civil rights and the modern freedom movement, feminism, queer cultures, and globalizing capitalism.
HST 383 Research in U.S. Women’s History: The Sophia Smith Collection: American Women in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Jennifer Guglielmo T 3:00-4:50PM An advanced research and writing workshop in U.S. women's history. Students develop historical research methods as they work with archival materials from the Sophia Smith Collection (letters, diaries, oral histories, newspaper articles, government documents, photographs, etc.) as well as historical scholarship, to research, analyze and write a 25-30 page research paper on a topic of their own choosing.
IDP 320 Global Learning Seminar: Women’s Health in India Leslie Jaffe T 7:00-9:00PM The purpose of this seminar is to study women's health and cultural issues within India, with a focus on Tibetan refugees, and then apply the knowledge experientially. During J-term, the students will travel to India and deliver workshops on reproductive health topics to young Tibetan women living at the Central University of Tibetan Studies in Sarnath where they will be further educated in Tibetan medicine. The seminar will be by permission of the instructor with interested students required to write an essay explaining their interest and how the seminar furthers their educational goals. Enrollment limited to 5 students.
PRS 319 South Asians in Britain and America
Ambreen Hai Th 1:00-2:50PM This seminar will compare the cultural implications of two recent waves of migration of South Asian peoples: post-World War Two migrations of skilled/unskilled labor to Britain; and the still ongoing, post-1965 migrations to North America. We will focus on cultural production (literature, film, music) that records, reflects on, and seeks to intervene in the cultural processes of such profound shifts. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will investigate the causes and consequences of migration and diaspora in their historical, political and economic contexts, emphasizing questions of gender, globalization, community, identity, religious fundamentalism and assimilation. Writers include Rushdie, Naipaul, Kureishi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Monica Ali, among others. Open to students interested in the South Asia Concentration, literature, film, history, anthropology, AMS and SWG, and others. Enrollment limited to 12 juniors and seniors and by permission of the instructor.
SOC 214 Sociology of Hispanic Caribbean Communities in the United States
Ginetta Candelario W/F 2:40-4:00PM, Th 7:30-9:50 This service learning course surveys social science research, literary texts and film media on Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. Historic and contemporary causes and contexts of (im)migration, settlement patterns, labor market experiences, demographic profiles, identity formations, and cultural expressions will be considered. Special attention will be paid to both inter- and intra-group diversity, particularly along the lines of race, gender, sexuality and class. Students are required to dedicate four (4) hours per week to a local community based organization. Enrollment limited to 20.
SOC 229 Sex and Gender in American Society Nancy Whittier T/Th 9:00-10:20AM An examination of the ways in which the social system creates, maintains, and reproduces gender dichotomies with specific attention to the significance of gender in interaction, culture, and a number of institutional contexts, including work, politics, families and sexuality. Enrollment limited to 35.
SOC 323 Seminar: Gender and Social Change Nancy Whittier T 1:00-2:50PM 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
Topic: A Transatlantic Search for Identity
Estela Harretche T/Th 10:30-11:50AM 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 (Jimenez, Cernuda, Cortazar, Neruda, Alberti), as well as the voluntary exile of the artist in search of a new aesthetic identity (Dario, Lorca, Vallejo). Special attention will be given to the problems of subjectivity, gender and sexuality in the works of four women poets: Agustini, Storni, Parra and Pizarnik. Students will have the option of composing an original poem to supplement their final grade. Prerequisite: SPN 200 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 19.
SPN 250 Survey of Iberian Literature and Society
Topic: Sex and the Medieval City
Ibtissam Bouachrine T/Th 1:00-2:50PM This course examines the medieval understanding of sex and the woman's body within an urban context. We will read medieval texts on love, medicine and women's sexuality by Iberian and North African scholars. We will investigate the ways in which medieval Iberian medical traditions have viewed women's bodies and defined their health and illness. We will also address women's role as practitioners of medicine, and how such a role was affected by the gradual emergence of "modern" medical institutions such as the hospital and the medical profession. Prerequisite: SPN 220 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 19.
SPN 332 The Middle Ages Today Ibtissam Bouachrine T/Th 3:00PM-4:50PM Queer Iberia and North Africa. This course examines the medieval and early-modern Iberian and North African understanding of sexuality in light of modern critical theory. Special attention will be given to the Arabic and Castilian representations of same-sex desire. Readings will include texts by Ibn Hazm, Juan Ruiz, al-Tifashi, al-Nafwazi, Wallada, Ibn Sahl of Seville, Ibn Quzman, and Fernando de Rojas. All readings in Spanish translation. Taught in Spanish. Enrollment limited to 14.
THE 313 Masters and Movements in Drama: Rehearsing the Impossible: Pearl Cleage and black women playwrights interrupting the Master Narrative
Andrea Hairston TTh10:30-11:50AM, W7:00-9:30PM In their plays from the 1990's to the present, Pearl Cleage and other black women playwrights such as Lynn Nottage and Suzan Lori Parks declares themselves feminists and go about reinventing the narrative of America. What does a black woman feminist artist face then and now? How do these writers respond to the legacy of minstrel storytelling, the civil rights era, and the second wave of feminism? Building on the legacy of Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, Adrienne Kennedy, and Ntozake Shange, how do these playwrights negotiate overdetermined representations and conjure the story world they imagine?
