Spring 2008
Women's Studies Spring 2008 Courses
Introduction to Women’s Studies
WOST 207
Professor Amanda Littauer
TR 2:00-3:15
This course will introduce students to key topics, concepts, approaches, and problems in Women's Studies as the field has developed over the past 40 years in the United States. We will focus on the lives, work, and beliefs of women in the United States but will adopt comparative and transnational perspectives at certain points. As part of the course, we will investigate the significance and meanings of gender at different periods in U.S. history and will explore the development of feminism and feminist theory. The ways in which race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and age shape experience, culture, ideology, and politics will be central areas of inquiry. We will also address the means through which women have resisted inequality and effected social and political change. This course will be interdisciplinary in its approach, meaning that we will read feminist essays from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural studies, economics, history, philosophy, political theory, psychology, and sociology. Gen Ed.
Independent Study
WOST 497
Susan Alexander, Ann Clark, Laura Haigwood, Amanda Littauer, and Catherine Pittman 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 Littauer 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 Littauer. Graded S/U. May be repeated for up to three hours. A reflection paper appropriate to the nature of the internship will be required.
Anthropology of Women
ANTH 346
Professor Erin Cressy
TR 12:30-1:45
The Anthropology of Women course is a cross-cultural comparison and analysis of the factors that affect the status of women and the relationships that exist between women and men. A variety of theoretical perspectives are referenced to investigate the following topics: marriage practices and family structure; social organization and kinship; political order; economic strategies and eschange; and ritual practices and ideologies.
Gender and Race Issues in Management
BUAD 329
Professor Ujvala Rajadhyaksha
TR 2:00-3:15
This course highlights the challenges faced by persons who are not a part of the dominant culture of management practice, namely, women and persons of non-Euro-American background, in their bid to advance in the managerial hierarchy. Topics in the course include changing nature of the workforce and its implications for management, barriers to the advancement of women in management, gender differences in managerial and communication styles, glass ceiling, career breaks and re-entry in to the workforce, work-life balance and dual career issues, sexual harassment, working with diverse groups including African Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans and Arab Americans, and organizational pay-offs of pursuing diversity.
Female Beauty: Discourse, Rhetoric, and Theory
COMM 490
Professor Terri Russ
TR 12:30-1:45
American women today are surrounded by a history of cultural practices that dictate how we should behave and appear. Cultural expectations and standards of female beauty are embodied in a number of discourses – cultural, media, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Our way in to examining these discourses will be through a critical post-structuralist lens. We will first study theories of discourse, power, and feminism in order to gain the tools necessary to help us critically engage the texts, images, and artifacts that we will be considering throughout the semester. From here we will turn to an examination of how various cultural discourses create truths that in turn operate to maintain dominant norms of femininity. We will then look at how the norms created by these cultural discourses are recreated and reified through media discourses, which operate to create and recreate tangible examples of ideal female beauty. Finally we will consider how we bring these cultural norms into our everyday lived experiences through our interpersonal discourses and our running internal beauty dialogue. Prerequisite: COMM 103 or permission of instructor. THEORY
Extraordinary Women, Challenging Works
ENLT 370
Professor Linnea Vacca
MW 3:00-4:15
Emily Dickinson, Isak Dinesen, Flannery O'Connor--each of these three extraordinary women is as remarkable for the great adventure of her life as for her achievements as a writer. For each, we'll read a standard biography, secondary critical and interpretative material, and a generous serving of the works. For Emily DIckinson this will include many of the short poems (she wrote 1775, most of them quite divergent from the "Belle of Amherst" stereotype she carries) as well as letters. For Dinesen, a Dane who wrote in English, the readings will include the masterful, magical SEVEN GOTHIC TALES and the memoir OUT OF AFR ICA. Flannery O'Connor, widely admired for her fiction with its trenchant challenges to lukewarm Christianity, also wrote about the craft of writing and we'll read some of her essays but in the main we will focus on novels and stories like WISE BLOOD and "Good Country People."
Women Coming of Age
ENLT 373
Professor Laura Haigwood
TR 11:00-12:15
“Bildungsroman” is a German term meaning “novel of education. Typically, the Bildungsroman is concerned with the construction of the self through both formal and informal education. This course will focus on a diverse range of novels of “education” (in the broadest sense) whose central characters are typically women in their late teens and early twenties, women who are just “coming of age.” The one exception, The Summer Before the Dark, will allow us to explore the mid-life female Bildungsroman and to discuss why some women’s “education” is delayed. Throughout the course we will discuss such questions as: What common plots and patterns do these novels share? What educational issues or challenges specific to women do these heroines share across historical periods? How do women become educated for their roles in different eras and in different social classes? Do male and female authors see this process differently? What is the relationship between the skills and knowledge women gain in formal educational institutions and their “real world” education outside of or after formal schooling? What motivates women to take control of their own educations? And how do they respond to forbidden knowledge? This course will also allow students some opportunity to reflect on their own educations, both formal and informal.
Avant Women Writers: A Conversation
ENLT 390
Professor Lily Hoang
T 6:00-8:30
Unlike many English literature courses, which tend to focus on the "dead, white male," this class flips the old paradigm for something new: female writers who push the limits of writing as an art form who are still alive and kicking and writing and challenging! This course invites the conversation between reader, text, and writer to emerge as a new "possibility-space" for the study of literature. Students will engage in active dialogues with these avant-women writers through author interviews and blog participation. It is through this interaction that we can learn how and why these women are "avant," why they do not submit to the status quo but struggle against it fiercely. We will be exploring texts by and conversing with writers such as: Anne Carson, Shelley Jackson, Carole Maso, Stephanie Strickland, Kate Bernheimer, and Lidia Yuknavitch.
History of Women in the US
HIST 324
Professor Amanda Littauer
TR 9:30-10:45
Over the past four decades, the field of women’s history has emerged, developed, and transformed within the U.S. academy. This course will introduce students to this dynamic and engaging field of intellectual inquiry. Our major goals in this course will be to explore the histories of women in the United States from a multicultural perspective and to relate those histories to larger themes in U.S. history. In the whirlwind of the survey format, we will begin with 17th-century Native American women and gender systems and will end in the 21st century. We will employ tools from feminist theory in order to analyze categories of race, gender, nation, sexuality, and class as constitutive elements of American women’s identities and social status. Readings will consist of articles by historians as well as primary source documents. Students will develop skills in primary source analysis, historical writing, and critical interpretation. By the end of the course, students should feel comfortable with the methodologies and vocabularies of U.S. women’s history and should feel better prepared to investigate the gendered world of their own times. THEORY
Quest for Human Rights
JUST 301
Professor Amy Cavender
MWF 1:00-1:50
Do people have rights solely because of their humanity? This course discusses the history of conceptions of rights. It also looks at the strategies involved in political debates about rights, including: whether the debate should focus on rights as opposed to power or responsibility or obligation; whether or not to use phrases like "human rights;" whether or not the rights should be listed in a document; who decides what the rights are; what are the sources of these rights; and how competing rights claims are to be adjudicated.
Beyond the Veil: Literature Interprets the “Other Worldly”
CWIL/HUST 390
Colleen O’Brien
TR 9:30-10:45
This course crosses centuries, genres, and continents to explore literary representations of the “otherworldly”: ghosts, mysticism, the gothic, and magic realism. Concealed behind veils, characterized as restless or vengeful spirits, and set in terrifying spaces, the unspeakable topics that these stories broach represent cultural taboos, danger, and trauma. Or do they? Inhabiting the space between fear and desire, these novels, stories, plays and films offer a glimpse at the “other” world where the boundaries of identity collapse and coalesce to offer frightening—yet exciting—possibilities for cultural transformation. This class uses imaginative fiction from a diverse array of international authors to explore the experience of characters whose reality is not represented in the dominant culture in which they live. The authors are primarily female, and the male authors included address issues of feminine desire and immanence that emerge in texts by women as well. As metaphor, the supernatural or “otherworldly” in this course demarcates the threshold between dominance and submission, masculine and feminine, self and other. Representations of the “otherworldly” also symbolize resistance to hierarchies of human value based on gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, mental health, or religious beliefs as they explore how one might garner the power to exist freely when one defies social expectations using alternate ways of knowing.
Women’s Health
NURS 222
Professor Ella Harmeyer
TR 3:30-4:45
This class is designed to explore the concept of health and its significance for women. We will discuss the physical, emotional, social, and cultural factors that affect the health of women. Health promotion and healthy lifestyle choices are also a strong focus, along with women's responsibilities and leadership in health awareness. Non-nursing majors
Gender and Politics
POSC/HIST 408
Professor Edith Miguda
TR 11-12:15
This course combines theoretical and empirical analysis of gender as a political issue. Case studies will permit comparative analysis of the diverse ways in which gender emerges as a political issue within distinct social, economic, cultural and political contexts. Case studies will be taken from women’s experiences in politics in Africa, The Middle East, Europe, Australia, Asia and the US. We will examine the gendered nature of politics by examining political lives of individual politicians as well as national contexts of female political participation in order to assess the value of gender analysis in the field of political science. THEORY
Psychology of Adult Development
PSYC 302
Professor Rebecca Stoddart
TR 2:00-3:15
Psychology of Adult Development 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.
Stereotyping and Prejudice
PSYC 390
Professor Bettina Spencer
TR 3:30-4:45
In this course we will examine issues of stereotyping and prejudice from a social psychological perspective. Using a mix of quantitative journal articles, novels, and films, we will identify and explore why people stereotype, how prejudices form, the effects of prejudice, how to combat stereotyping, and how members of disadvantaged groups can psychologically protect themselves against the negative effects of stigma. Although we will think broadly about social groups in general, we will also focus on particular social groups as they pertain to ethnicity and race, gender, sexual orientation, and social class. We will specifically address the intersection of gender with other social identities, and will explore issues that are particular to women of color, lesbian, queer, and transgendered populations, and women of varying class statuses. Students should have an understanding of social psychology or have taken a course in research methods. Prerequisite: Social Psychology or permission of the instructor. WOST credit pending Curriculum Committee approval.
Psychology of Women
PSYC 402
Professor Catherine Pittman
MW 2:00-3:15
This course is A discussion / seminar course that will examine the experiences of women from various psychological perspectives. We will consider the biological, intrapersonal, interpersonal, social and cognitive factors as they relate to gender. Students will be asked to reflect on and discuss the material from an objective and analytical point of view in addition to a personal point of view emphasizing personal values and subjective experiences. There will be extensive reading. Evaluation will be based on a reflection paper, journal exercises and two exams. THEORY
Women and Sexuality
RLST 362
Professor Phyllis Kaminsky
MW 11:00-12:15
This course examines Christian theological positions about women and sexuality as these positions have affected Church teaching on the role of women in society. It uses interdisciplinary, interfaith discussions to highlight the importance of constructive theological reflection on contemporary issues facing women. THEORY
Sociology of Families
SOC 257
Professors Mary Ann Kanieski (Sec 01)
and Carrie Erlin (Sec 02)
Sec 01: TR 9:30-10:45
Sec 02: M 6:00-8:45
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.
Interrogating Poverty: Race, Class & Globalization
Soc 390 Section 2
Professor Mary Ann Kanieski
TR 12:30-1:45
Poverty is a significant and growing problem in our world today. In this course, we will study the causes and explore possible solutions for poverty. In particular, we will examine the feminization and racialization of poverty. In this class, we will consider the impact of social forces such as family structure, welfare policies, and globalization on domestic and world poverty. WOST credit pending Curriculum Committee approval.
Sexuality, Intimacy, and Relationships Across the Lifespan
SW 341
Professor JoAnn Burke
M 6:00-8:30
This course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to examine human sexuality and intimacy within a lifespan, relational context. Students will address these topics through knowledge of the biological, social, spiritual, and psychological aspects of relationships, sexuality, and intimacy. We will also explore populations-at-risk—namely, those who are experiencing issues with intimacy, sexuality, and relationships. Perspectives from feminist literature will be used to strengthen the analysis. Psychosocial issues are emphasized.
The Program in Women’s Studies
The field of Women’s Studies encourages students to analyze and to re-imagine the seemingly familiar worlds of women’s lives. The program adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the study of women, gender, and sexuality by working across boundaries within the humanities and social sciences. It is guided by feminist theoretical insight into different forms of power, inequality, and privilege. Students investigate the construction not only of gender, but also of race, class, and sexuality. They examine not only the present but also the past, not only the United States but also today’s increasingly global, transnational world. Students who minor or major in Women’s Studies enroll both in courses housed in the program and in courses offered in other disciplines. Faculty who teach in Women’s Studies represent departments throughout the college. They share a commitment to helping students in our women’s college develop the skills to interpret and to analyze systems of oppression and, ultimately, to work toward a more just human society.
Student Designed Major in Women’s Studies
Women’s Studies is an ideal focus for a student-designed major because it is an inherently interdisciplinary field. Yet the fundamental assumption of Women’s Studies—that gender is a critical category, an intellectual tool for analysis and understanding—also provides a framework within which to organize specific interests.
If you are interested in pursuing the Major in Women’s Studies, you must declare your intentions by the spring semester of your sophomore year and submit a proposal which you will have prepared with the help and advice of a faculty sponsor. The Coordinator can provide you with guidelines for coursework in Women’s Studies, as well as sample proposals from previous student-designed majors in Women’s Studies. For more information, or to discuss the possibilities, feel free to approach any Women’s Studies faculty member or contact Amanda Littauer, Women’s Studies Program Coordinator (ext. 4461, Madeleva Hall 345, littauer@saintmarys.edu).
Requirements for the Women’s Studies Minor
The minor consists of a minimum of 14 hours (5 courses), including:
- Introduction to Women’s Studies (WOST 207)
- One course in feminist theory (such courses are noted on this brochure with “THEORY” after the description)
- Three additional courses, no more than one in any one department with the exception of Women’s Studies (WOST)
Why Minor in Women’s Studies?
Women's Studies minors gain awareness of their own abilities, a keen sense of justice, and a self assurance that enables them to act reflectively in the world. Women's Studies leads students to raise questions about equity and fairness and to develop the self assurance which leads them to act constructively to improve community life. Because Women's Studies students have learned to see what is invisible to many others, they have unusually positive impacts on the societies in which they live.
If I focus on Women's Studies in college, what can I do after college?
Women's Studies minors apply their knowledge and understanding in a diversity of fields. A minor or major in women’s studies supports career choices in human services, education, public policy, business, and other fields calling for social and historical awareness, critical thinking, and engagement with human diversity. Many graduates work for justice within society in service-oriented fields, still others apply their knowledge in the corporate world. Women's Studies minors have also entered graduate school in Law, Cultural Studies, English, Sociology, French, Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology.
The Comparative Women’s Studies in Europe Study-Abroad Program
Comparative Women’s Studies in Europe Program—a fall semester program in the European Union—is offered through an affiliation with Antioch College. This program offers a unique opportunity to explore feminist theory in practice across Europe. The program examines the trends and dynamics of European social, economic, and political systems as they influence contemporary gender theory, policy, and women’s identities. Students attend lectures and workshops with the program director, visiting professors from European Universities, NGOs, politicians, practitioners, artists, and activists. Students will attend lectures and conduct original field research (in English) in seven cities and five countries in Europe: Brussels, Belgium; Berlin, Germany; Krakow and Warsaw, Poland; Utrecht and Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and London, England. Students will stay in hostels, pensions, hotels, and home-stays in host countries. While working on independent research questions, students are also enrolled in additional course work that totals 16 credit hours in Women’s Studies. Students must take at least one WOST course at Saint Mary’s before participating in this program, and past participants on the program recommend that students take more WOST courses than that, including, ideally, at least one upper-level seminar in feminist theory.
