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All courses offer 4 credits unless otherwise noted (click on course name for full description). Please check 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. All course times will be added before Spring registration. Offerings often change between prior to Spring registration. Five College course listings are available HERE, courtesy of UMass Women's Studies
SWG 150 Introduction to the Study of Women and Gender
SWG 205 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in the United States, 1945-2003
SWG 222 Gender, Law and Society
SWG 260 The Cultural Work of Memoir
SWG 323 Seminar: Sex, Trade, and Trafficking
AAS 366 Black Women, Work and Family
CLS 236 Cleopatra: Histories, Fictions, Fantasies
CLT 229 The Renaissance Gender Debate
CLT 268 Latina and Latin American Women Writers
CLT 293 Writings and Rewritings: Topic: Antigones
EAL 245 Writing Japan and Otherness
EAS 280 Modern Girls and Marxist Boys: Consumerism, Colonialism, and Gender in East Asia
ENG 276 Contemporary British Women Writers
ENG 310 Early Modern Women: “‘The Life of Me’: Reading Early Modern Women’s Lives”
ENG 333 Seminar: A Major British or American Writer Topic: Virginia Woolf
FRN 320 Women Writers of the Middle Ages
GOV 269 Politics of Gender and Sexuality
HST 209 Aspects of Middle Eastern History: Women and Gender in the Middle East
HST 223 Women in Japanese History from Ancient Times to the 19th Century
HST 253 Women and Gender in Contemporary Europe
IDP 208 Women's Medical Issues
REL 110 Women Mystics’ Theology of Love
SOC 213 Ethnic Minorities in America
SOC 229 Sex and Gender in American Society
SPN 372 Topics in Latin American and Iberian Studies: Women, Environmental Justice and Social Action
THE 319 Shamans, Shapeshifters, and the Magic IF
SWG 150 Introduction to the Study of Women and Gender
M W F 11:00-12:10
Elisabeth Armstrong, Carrie Baker, Ambreen Hai
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.
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 205 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in the United States, 1945-2003
Daniel Rivers
T Th 10:30-11:50 am
This course offers an overview of LGBT culture and history in the United States from 1945 to 2003. We will use a variety of historical and literary sources, including films and sound clips, to examine changes in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered lives and experiences during the last half of the twentieth century. The course will encourage the students to think about intersections of race, sexuality, and class, and how these categories have affected sexual minority communities. The course will also explore the legal and cultural impact sexual minority communities have had in the United States. Prerequisite SWG 150 or permission of the instructor.
SWG 222 Gender, Law and Society
Carrie Baker
M W F 1:00-2:30
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 260 The Cultural Work of Memoir
Susan Van Dyne
M W 1:10-2:30
This course will explore how queer subjectivity intersects with gender, ethnicity, race, and class. How do individuals from groups marked as socially subordinate or non-normative use life-writing to claim a right to write? The course uses life-writing narratives, published in the U.S. over roughly the last 30 years, to explore the relationships between politicized identities, communities, and social movements. Students also practice writing memoirs. Prerequisites: SWG 150, and a literature course.
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.
PRS 305 Cultural Literacy
Kevin Quashie (Afro-American Studies) and Susan Van Dyne (Study of Women and Gender)
M W 9-10:20
This seminar investigates the interdisciplinary knowledge and critical skills that we need in order to understand the cultures we inhabit. The heart of our work is to consider a selection of resonant artifacts and icons from US cultural history, and learn, as a result, how shared social meanings are created, commodified and contested. Prerequisites: an introductory or methods course in AAS, AMS, SWG, and/or prior coursework in any department focusing on race, gender, and culture. Enrollment limited to 15 juniors and seniors.
SWG 323 Seminar: Sex, Trade, and Trafficking
Carrie Baker
T 1:00-2:50
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. Prerequisites: SWG 150, one additional course in the major or a literature course and permission of the instructor.
AAS 366 Black Women, Work and Family
Riché Barnes
R 1:00-2:50
Black women have always been in a precarious position as it pertains to work and family. They have been portrayed as hard workers and “lazy” welfare queens. They have held the position of cold, callous mothers to their own children, and loving mammy’s to white children. They have been hyper-sexualized erotic jezebels and domineering, unfeminine matriarchs. And when the work and family sociological literature seeks answers to the ways in which Americans balance the challenges of work and family in the contemporary global economy, African American women and their families are invisible. This seminar will provide students with an analytic framework to understand the ways gender, race, and class intersect in defining the world of work in our society and affect the available choices African American women have to best support their families. Utilizing ethnography, fiction, film, and forms of popular culture, we will explore policies that affect both the family and institutions of work, explore the ways that black men and women balance the demands of family, and pay particular attention to the development of gender roles and strategies that affect African American women's work and family decisions.
ANT 272 Women in Africa
Caroline Melly
This course will focus on the experiences and situations of women in contemporary Africa. We aim to interrogate and complicate both popular and scholarly representations that present African women as the West’s “other.” The course will be organized around various topics - such as marriage and family, economy and markets, health and reproduction, and politics and participation - and will present ethnographic insights from various locations on the African continent. Enrollment limited to 30.
CLS 236 Cleopatra: Histories, Fictions, Fantasies
Nancy Shumate
T R 10:30-11:50
A study of the transformation of Cleopatra, a competent Hellenistic ruler, into a historical myth, a staple of literature, and a cultural lens through which the political, aesthetic and moral sensibilities of different eras have been focused. Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Orientalist, Postcolonial, Hollywood Cleopatras; reading from, among others, Plutarch, Virgil, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Dryden, Gautier, Shaw, historical novelists; some attention to Cleopatra in the visual arts.
CLT 229 The Renaissance Gender Debate
Ann Jones
M W 1:00-2:20
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 waste of time 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*, women scholars’ 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. Recommended: a previous course in classics, medieval or Renaissance studies, or Women’s Studies.
CLT 268 Latina and Latin American Women Writers
Nancy Sternbach
M W F 11:00-12:10
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.
CLT 293 Writings and Rewritings: Antigones
Ann Jones
M W 2:40-4:00
A study of how literary texts written in a particular historical and cultural moment are revised and transformed in new geographies, ideological frameworks, and art forms. Oedipus’ daughter Antigone, executed for burying her brother against the decree of the tyrant Creon, has been read as a sister defending family bonds against state power, as a woman supporting private good over brutal law, as a feminist resisting male domination, and as a challenger of normative kinship relations. Why has she been interpreted in such different ways in different times and places? We’ll analyze her transformations from ancient Greece to the 21st century in drama and film from Sophocles to Anouilh, Brecht, the Congolese dramatist Sylvain Bemba, and the modern American playwright Martha Boesing, and in theorists from Hegel to Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, Gayle Rubin, Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler.
EAL 245 Writing Japan and Otherness
Kimberly Kono
M W 2:40-4:00
An exploration of representations of “otherness” in Japanese literature and film from the mid-19th century until the present. How was (and is) Japan’s identity as a modern nation configured through representations of other nations and cultures? How are categories of race, gender, nationality, class and sexuality used in the construction of difference? This course will pay special attention to the role of “otherness” in the development of national and individual identities. In conjunction with these investigations, we will also address the varied ways in which Japan is represented as “other” by writers from China, England, France, Korea and the United States. How do these images of and by Japan converse with each other? All readings are in English translation.
EAS 280 Modern Girls and Marxist Boys: Consumerism, Colonialism, and Gender in East Asia
Jina Kim
T 1:00-4:00
This course seeks to explore discourses of modern “femininity” and modern “masculinity” through the study of the two most iconic figures to emerge in the early 20th century: Modern Girls and Marxist Boys. We will use these figures as a way to enrich our understanding of gendered politics, consumer culture, colonial modernity, and international relations. Also of concern is the important historical relationship between Modernity and Marxism in Korea and whether or not these two ideologies were reconcilable just as Modern Girls and Marxist Boys were often brought together as scandalous but typically romantic bedfellows. Students will be introduced to interdisciplinary studies and will learn to critically read and use historical, sociological, fictional, and visual texts.
ENG 276 Contemporary British Women Writers
Robert Hosmer
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 310 Early Modern Women: “‘The Life of Me’: Reading Early Modern Women’s Lives”
Sharon Seelig
R 3:00-4:50
Beginning with the early diaries and autobiographies of some remarkable women writers, moving to more imaginative narrative and dramatic forms, and finally to an early novel, we will consider the developing modes of self-understanding and self-representation, from fact to fantasy, record-keeping to romance, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Open to Juniors and Seniors, admission by permission of the instructor.
ENG 333 Seminar: A Major British or American Writer Topic: Virginia Woolf
Robert Hosmer
A close study of representative texts from the rich variety of Woolf’s work: novel, essay, biography, and short story. Preliminary, essential attention to the life, with particular concern for the Victorian/Edwardian world of Woolf’s early years and the Bloomsbury Group. Works to be studied will include Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves, Between the Acts, A Room of One’s Own, and Three Guineas, as well as essays drawn from The Common Reader and stories. Supplementary readings from biographies of Woolf and her own letters, journals, and diaries.
ESS 550 Women in Sport
Christine Shelton
T R 9:00-10:20
A course documenting the role of women in sport as parallel and complementary to women's place in society. Contemporary trends will be linked to historical and sociological antecedents. Focus is on historical, contemporary, and future perspectives and issues in women's sport. Admission of undergraduates by permission of the instructor.
FRN 320 Women Writers of the Middle Ages
Eglal Doss-Quinby
T R 10:30-11:50
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.
FYS 169 Women and Religion
Lois Dubin and Vera Shevzov
T R 1-2:20
An exploration of the roles played by religion in women’s private and public lives, as shaped by and expressed in sacred texts, symbols, rituals, and institutional structures. Experiences of Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Wiccan women facing religious authority and exercising agency. We will consider topics such as feminism and gender in the study of religion; God-talk and goddesses; women’s bodies and sexuality; family, motherhood and celibacy; leadership and ordination; critiques of traditions, creative adaptations, and new religious movements. Sources will include novels, films, poetry, and visual images in addition to scriptural and religious texts. Enrollment limited to 18.
GOV 269 Politics of Gender and Sexuality
Gary Lehring
An examination of gender and sexuality as subjects of theoretical investigation, historically constructed in ways that have made possible various forms of regulation and scrutiny today. We will focus on the way in which traditional views of gender and sexuality still resonate with us in the modern world, helping to shape legislation and public opinion, creating substantial barriers to cultural and political change.
HST 209 (C) Aspects of Middle Eastern History: Women and Gender in the Middle East
Nadya Sbaiti
T Th 10:30-11:50
Covers discourses on gender as well as lived experiences of women from the
rise of Islam to the present. Topics include the politics of personal
status; women's political and economic participation; modernity;
masculinity; sexuality; impact of nationalist and Islamist movements.
Provides introduction to main themes, and nuanced historical understanding
of approaches to the study of gender in the region. Enrollment limited to 18.
HST 223 (C) Women in Japanese History from Ancient Times to the 19th Century
Marnie Anderson
M W 1:10-2:30
The dramatic transformation in gender relations is a key feature of Japan’s premodern history. How Japanese women and men have constructed norms of behavior in different historical periods, how gender differences were institutionalized in social structures and practices, and how these norms and institutions changed over time. The gendered experiences of women and men from different classes from approximately the 7th through the 19th centuries. Consonant with current developments in gender history, exploration of variables such as class, religion, and political context which have affected women’s and men’s lives. Enrollment limited to 18.
HST 253 Women and Gender in Contemporary Europe
Darcy Buerkle
T R 3:00-4:15
Women's experience and constructions of gender in the commonly recognized major events of the twentieth 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 twentieth-century European history of women and gender. Enrollment limited to 40.
HST 383 Seminar: Research in U.S. Women’s History:
The Sophia Smith Collection (19th and 20th Centuries)
Jennifer Guglielmo
T 1:00-2:50
A research and writing workshop in U.S. women's history, working with archival materials from the Sophia Smith Collection (letters, diaries, oral histories, newspaper articles, government documents, etc.) and historical scholarship, to research, analyze and write a paper of your own choice.
IDP 208 Women's Medical Issues
Leslie Jaffe
T R 10:30-11:50
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. While the course focus will primarily be on the physiological aspects of these topics, some social, ethical and political implications will be considered including the issues of violence, the media's representation of women and gender bias in health care.
REL 110 Thematic Studies in Religion: Women Mystics’ Theology of Love
Elizabeth Carr
This course studies the mystical writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch, Julian of Norwich, and Teresa of Avila, and their relevance to contemporary spirituality. Focus on their life journeys in terms of love, creativity, healing, and spiritual leadership. Occasional films and music.
SOC 213 Ethnic Minorities in America
Ginetta Candelario
The sociology of a multiracial and ethnically diverse society. Comparative examinations of several American groups and subcultures.
SOC 229 Sex and Gender in American Society
Nancy Whittier
T R 9:00-10:20
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.
SOC 244/LAS 244 Feminisms and Women’s Movements: Latin American Women’s and Latinas’ Pursuit of Social Justice
Ginetta Candelario
This course is designed to familiarize students with the history of Latin American and Latina (primarily Chicana) feminist thought and activism. A central goal of the course is to provide an understanding of the relationship between feminist thought, women’s movements and local/national contexts and conditions. The writings of Latin American and Latina feminists will comprise the majority of the texts; thus we are limited to the work of those who write and/or publish in English. (Students who are proficient in Spanish or Portuguese will have an opportunity to read feminist materials in those languages for their written projects.) Prerequisites: SOC 101, LAS 100 or WST 150.
SPN 332 The Middle Ages Today: Queer Iberia
Ibtissam Bouachrine
This course examines the medieval and early-modern Iberian understanding and expressions of sexuality within the context of modern critical theory. Special attention will be given to the complex and ambiguous representations of same-sex desire, and the manner in which such representations are shaped by the discourses about nation, disease, and race (limpieza de sangre). Texts include Ibn Hazm’s Tawq al-hamÿma, Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor, selections from al-Himyÿri’s al-Rawad al mi’tÿr, Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina, Francesc Eiximenis’s Lo Llibre de les dones, as well as poems by Yehuda Halevi, Wallÿda, al-Mu’tamid, and Abraham Ibn Ezra. Course conducted in Spanish, all readings in Spanish translation. Enrollment limited to 12.
SPN 372 Topics in Latin American and Iberian Studies: Women, Environmental Justice and Social Action
Michelle Joffroy
This multi-disciplinary course explores key debates and theoretical
approaches involved in understanding environmental concerns, as well as 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 12.
THE 319 Shamans, Shapeshifters, and the Magic IF
Andrea Hairston
T 3:00-5:00, W
7:00-9:30 pm
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, Wole Soyinka, Dael Olandersmith, Derek Walcott, Bertolt Brecht, Lorraine Hanberry, Craig Lucas, and Doug Wright, as well as films such as Quilombo, Pan’s Labyrinth, Children of Men, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, X-Men, Contact, and Brother From Another Planet.