Introduction to Women’s Studies
WOST 207
Professor Isis Nusair
MW 3:00-4:15
This interdisciplinary course traces the socio-political meaning and practice of gender in our lives. It examines whether gender is biological or socially constructed, and the ways in which notions of masculinity and femininity are produced. The course closely analyzes the working of power and the social production of inequality in society. It traces the intersection between gender, race, class, ethnicity, nationality and sexuality. The central aim of the course is to develop critical reading and thinking about women's lives and the ways in which women have resisted these inequalities and engaged in local/global politics for social transformation and change.
Third Wave Feminism
WOST 390, section 01
Professor Astrid Henry
TR 3:30-4:45
The term “third wave feminism” is often used as though its referent and meaning are transparent—that is, one need only point to the proliferation of self-proclaimed third wave books, magazines/zines, web sites, music, and activism of the last decade to know what it is. Yet outside of a nickname for younger feminists in their twenties and thirties, what constitutes third wave feminism, let alone whether it exists as a distinct movement and/or theory from second wave feminism, is still very much under debate. In this course, we will explore the emerging third wave of feminism—and its relationship to feminisms of the past—by reading a variety of recent texts by young feminists, all of which have argued for the existence of, or need for, a “new,” and/or “third wave,” of U.S. feminism. Texts will include (in chronological order): The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism (1993); To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (1995); When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (1999); Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000); Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation, 2nd edition (2001); Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (2002); Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (2003); and, The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (2004). Prerequisite: WOST 207 or permission. THEORY
Women and War
WOST 390, section 02
Professor Isis Nusair
MW 11:00-12:15
This course aims to make feminist sense of contemporary wars and conflicts. It will trace the intersections between gender, race, class, and ethnicity in national conflicts. The class will analyze the gendered processes of defining citizenship, national identity and security. It will examine the role of institutions like the military in the construction of femininity and masculinity. The course will focus on the gendered impact of war and conflict through examining issues like torture, mass rape, genocide, and refugee displacement. It will analyze the strategies used by women’s and feminist movements to oppose war and conflict, and the gendered impact of war prevention and post-war reconstruction and peacekeeping. The class will focus on the following countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, India, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and the USA. The class is interdisciplinary and will give equal weight to theory and practice while drawing on writings by local and global activists and theorists. THEORY
Independent Study
WOST 497
Susan Alexander, Laura Haigwood, Astrid Henry, and Isis Nusair are among the Women's Studies faculty willing to direct independent study projects. Students interested should speak first to the Women's Studies faculty member who will guide the project, then contact Professor Henry to formalize the proposal and ensure proper registration.
Internship
WOST 499
Practical off-campus experience in a Women's Studies related field at an approved site. Jointly supervised by a faculty member and a representative from the sponsoring agency. Open to junior or senior Women's Studies majors or minor who have taken at least two Women's Studies courses. Must be approved by Professor Henry. Graded S/U. May be repeated for up to three hours. A reflection paper appropriate to the nature of the internship will be required.
History & Criticism of Public Address
COMM 302
Professor John Pauley
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course focuses on the principles of public communication. These concepts are illustrated by examining the communicative acts of others. Particular attention is given to the public speaking of women and challenges or obstacles women face in the arena of public communication.
Family Communication
COMM 490
Professor Kamiko Akita
TR 11:00-12:15
Family communication examines everyday interactions in families and focuses on how such interactions shape a family's communication patterns, identity, culture, and life. The fundamental communication instruments we use to live our lives are shaped within the family, and we then apply them to other interactive (communicative) situations (i.e., communication with friends and strangers, organizational communication, cross-cultural communication, intergenerational communication, etc.). This course will take theoretical approach as well as practical approach. We will study various social interaction theories first. We will apply the theories to study and analyze various relational situations that take place in families. During the process, we will learn the complexity and the difficulty of family communication management. Since gender plays a significant role in family relationships, we will also study the role of gender such as how gender is taught in a family, expected roles and responsibilities depending on gender, differences between fathering and mothering, feminist perspectives on women in the family, etc.
Feminist Memoirs
ENLT 331
Professor Astrid Henry
TR 11:00-12:15
The last decade has seen the memoir become one of the most popular forms of critical non-fiction. Memoir writing, however, is never just a reporting of facts, never history recorded as it really was. Rather, it always involves deliberate decisions regarding what aspects of one’s life will be revealed, what will be emphasized or ignored, and ultimately, what story of the self will be told. In this course, we will read a wide range of memoirs by feminist writers in order to critically analyze the memoir as a literary form. Central to our course will be the ways in which feminist writers have used memoir writing to describe both personal and political experiences and to theorize from these experiences. As such, our course will be centered on the feminist notion that “the personal is political” and that personal experience can be the basis for feminist analysis. We will explore how feminist writers have used memoir to develop feminist theory and how memoirs function as theoretical texts. In addition to selected critical essays on memoir and autobiography, we will read recent memoirs by feminist writers such as Jane Gallop, bell hooks, Jane Lazarre, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Audre Lorde, and others. THEORY
Novel Women
ENLT 341
Professor Tom Bonnell
TR 2:00-3:25
This course charts the origins and progress of the predominant literary form of the last 250 years—the novel. Women have played a key role in this genre from the very start. Not until the development of the novel did women become so widely influential as writers, and their burgeoning numbers as readers were crucial to the market for the new form. Given their pervasive presence as audience, it is not surprising that so many novels of the eighteenth century are preoccupied with women characters and, consequently, women’s concerns. These characters and concerns will be the focal points of the course, as we situate our discussions in the wider contexts of literary history and life in the eighteenth century. Texts will include: Austen’s Persuasion; Behn’s Oroonoko; Burney’s Evelina; Defoe’s Moll Flanders; Lennox’s The Female Quixote; Radcliffe’s The Italian; and, Richardson’s Clarissa.
Women and Film
ENLT 367
Professor Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly
T 6:00-8:30
What’s the relationship between women film directors and female representation? Does the gender of the film spectator affect the way she or he makes sense of images on screen? What textual and social significance has Hollywood historically imposed on female characters such as the African-American mammy, the “tragic mulatto” and the “working” mother? What does it mean for female characters to “behave like men”? In this course, we will engage these questions and many more as we examine a wide range of U.S.-produced mainstream and “independent” films. Through film screenings, readings, class discussions and writing, students will develop the skills to critically analyze both film texts and the cultures in which they are produced and consumed. THEORY
Poetry Writing: An Eco-Feminist Poetry Workshop
ENWR 323
Professor Maria Meléndez
W 6-8:30
Theorists and activists have, at various times, claimed the following as foundational to ecofeminist praxis: (1) that common roots exist between the domination of women by men, of people of color by Whites, of the poor or less powerful by the wealthy and militaristic, and the domination of more-than-human nature by humans. The work of resisting domination should address these common roots; (2) that “nature” is often viewed as female (e.g. Mother Nature) and that, conversely, women are often viewed as having more “animal” or “natural” attributes that men, and that these equations between constructed definitions of the “feminine” and constructed definitions of “natural” have complex ramifications for the lives of women; (3) environmental issues and problems affect women in unique, specific ways; (4) that art and activism aren’t mutually exclusive; they can be mutually enriching; (5) international and multicultural perspectives, whether spiritual, research-based, or experiential, are essential to the field’s development. This course will explore how the above tenets are applied, adapted or rejected in the work of women poets and how theoretical and practical approaches to ecofeminism can nourish or inform our own creative work as women writers. Texts will include: The Alphabet in the Park, Adelia Prado (tr. Ellen Watson); When Living Was a Labor Camp, Diana García; Spring Essence, H_Xuân H__ng, tr. John Balaban; The Wild Iris, Louise Glück; Seeing Through the Sun, Linda Hogan; Spices of Our Sky/Ikuku Si Ikke, Nwando Mbanugo; The Cane Groves of the Narmada River: Erotic Poems from Old India, ed. & tr. Andrew Schelling; Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, Susan Griffin; Streamers, Sandra McPherson; In Exchange for a Homeland, Yosefa Raz.
Experience of Women in American History
HIST 324
Professor Kelly Hamilton
TR 2:00-3:15
A study of the significance of women in American history from the colonial period to the present. While sufficient attention will be given to notable individuals and feminist movements, major emphasis will be placed on the continuous importance of women in all aspects of American life: social, economic, cultural and political.
Quest for Human Rights
JUST 301
Professor Marianne Farina
MW 4:00-5:15
This course will provide the students with an overview to the historical, theoretical and practical underpinnings that have shaped and continue to shape the development of human rights in both domestic and international arenas. We will discuss the origin of the human rights concept and how these ideas have been crafted into international declarations, domestic law and policies that enforce and monitor the human rights record of global, national and local communities. The class will also explore specific human rights issues concerning women, children, immigrants, refugees, the environment and other topics.
Women in Music: International Perspectives
MUS 490
Professor Joanne Swenson-Eldridge
TR 2:00-3:15
Composers, performers, scholars, teachers, conductors, and patrons—from Medieval times and the Renaissance to the present day—will be studied within their historical and cultural context. Additionally, through music listening, women's musical creativity will become more familiar and provide a foundation for examining music as gendered discourse. Women's roles in classical music throughout many parts of the world—modern Europe, Israel, Australia and New Zealand, North America , and Central America—as well as ethnomusicological studies relating to northern Africa and Latin America, including Bolivian women of the African diaspora, will be addressed. Finally, the role of women in American blues and jazz will receive attention, and American popular music will be analyzed from a woman's perspective in light of recent scholarship.
Introduction to Feminist Philosophy
PHIL 243
Professor Amanda Walker
MW 5:00-6:15
This course examines the relationship between practices of knowing and the intersectional differences of race, class, and gender. Through an examination of central themes in feminist epistemology, we will consider the ways in which feminist scholars have critiqued Western philosophical claims about knowledge and knowers as well as the ways in which feminist philosophers have spun new and critical understandings of how differences play into learning and knowledge claims. We will closely consider feminist rewritings of the mind/body dualism, the significance of reason and emotion to epistemological concerns, and other questions central to epistemological methodologies. Additionally, this course will introduce students to practices and theories developed within recent feminist epistemologies that stretch the vocabulary and contexts of this philosophical field. These practices and theories include the notions of code-switching, knowing praxis, traveling, border thinking, and embodied positioning. THEORY
Psychology of Adult Development
PSYC 302
Professor Rebecca Stoddart
TR 11:00-12:15
This is a seminar course that focuses on personality development from late adolescence through old age. Emphasis is placed on the changing personal growth issues which the developing adult faces. The course follows Erikson’s stages, and includes the following topics: identity development, Jung’s individuation theory of adult personality development, midlife crises, intergenerational relationships, and an examination of similarities and differences in men’s and women’s development. Prerequisite: Psyc 156 and 301 or permission of the instructor.
Marriage and the Family
SOC 257
Professor Mary Ann Kanieski
Sec 01: MWF 10:00-10:50
Sec 02: MWF 11:00-11:50
In this course, we will consider the various forms of families and their relationships to their social environments. For example, we will examine historical trends, economic pressures, and the impact of public policies. We will also consider life within families as we examine gender, childrearing, household labor, divorce, and family violence. Finally, we will always examine the ways in which family life varies because of gender, cultural differences, class position, race, and sexualities.
Women, Population, and Development
SOC 390
Professor Carolette Norwood
M 6:00-8:45
This course will address issues of third word development and the so called “population problem.” It will largely focus on women and third world societies. It will provide a historical overview of theories that links population to development and/or poverty. We will begin the course with theories of development and/or underdevelopment and concluded the course with discussions of current theoretical applications that explicitly integrate women, population, and development into a single dialogue. The intent of the course is to raise critical questions about western assumptions of the perils of population expansion in third world societies. In doing so, we will explore the political and economic underpinnings of population policies and their consequences for women in poor countries. THEORY
