Courses

Courses

Fall 2008

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013. Jane Austen
Ann Kibbie M 8:00 - 9:25, W 8:00 - 9:25
A study of Jane Austen’s major works, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion, and their film adaptations.

017. Sex and the Church
Elizabeth Pritchard T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
An examination of the themes, varieties, and conflicts of Christian teachings and practices regarding sex and sexuality. Source materials include the Bible, historical analyses, Church dogmatics, and contemporary legal cases. Although the focus of the course is on Catholic traditions, the course will include comparative analyses of the sexual ethics of other Christian denominations.

101. Introduction to Gender and Women's Studies
Kristen Ghodsee T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
An interdisciplinary introduction to the issues, perspectives, and findings of the new scholarship that examines the role of gender in the construction of knowledge. Explores what happens when women become the subjects of study; what is learned about women; what is learned about gender; and how disciplinary knowledge itself is changed.

102. Cultural Choreographies: An Introduction to Dance
June Vail T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Dancing is a fundamental human activity, a mode of communication, and a basic force in social life. Investigates dance and movement in the studio and classroom as aesthetic and cultural phenomena. Explores how dance and movement activities reveal information about cultural norms and values and affect perspectives in our own and other societies. Using ethnographic methods, focuses on how dancing maintains and creates conceptions of one’s own body, gender relationships, and personal and community identities. Experiments with dance and movement forms from different cultures and epochs—for example, the hula, New England contradance, classical Indian dance, Balkan kolos, ballet, contact improvisation, and African American dance forms from swing to hiphop—through readings, performances, workshops in the studio, and field work.

201. Feminist Theory
Jennifer Scanlon T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
The history of women’s studies and its transformation into gender studies and feminist theory has always included a tension between creating “woman,” and political and theoretical challenges to that unity. This course examines that tension in two dimensions: the development of critical perspectives on gender and power relations both within existing fields of knowledge, and within the continuous evolution of feminist discourse itself.

209. Gender in Islam
Jorunn Buckley M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25
Explores categories for interpreting, first, female symbolism in Islamic thought and practice and, second, women's religious, legal, and political status in Islam. Attention is given to statements about women in the Qur'an, as well as other traditional and current Islamic texts. Emphasis on analysis of gender in public versus private spheres, individual vs. society, Islamization vs. modernization/Westernization, and the placement/displacement of women in the traditionally male-dominated Islamic power structures. Religion 208 is helpful, though not a prerequisite.

230. Science, Sex, and Politics
David Hecht M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Seminar. Examines the intersection of science, sex and politics in twentieth-century United States history. Issues of sex and sexuality have been contested terrain over the past hundred years, as varying conceptions of gender, morality, and "proper" sexual behavior have become politically and socially controversial. This course explores the way that science has impacted these debates-- often as a tool by which activists of varying political and intellectual persuasions have attempted to use notions of scientific objectivity and authority to advance their agendas. The course explores debates over issues such as birth control, sex education, same-sex marriage, and abortion. Readings include Margaret Sanger, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kinsey.

233. Gender and Secularisms: Comparative Cultures of Church-State Relations
Kristen Ghodsee T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
This course will examine the gendered implications of different ideologies informing the post-Enlightenment separation of Church and State. Students will be expected to engage with recent critical scholarship on secularism, post-secularism and the process of secularization. The course asks how different configurations of religion and politics shape collective definitions of the public and private sphere and how these particular conceptions then affect gender relations between men and women. The course will examine competing histories of secularization as well as engage with recent controversies such as the headscarf bans in Turkey and France and the issue of abstinence-only sex education in school in the United States. In particular, the course seeks to explore the paradox of trying to simultaneously uphold gender equality and protect religious freedoms when these two goals are seemingly at odds.

237. Gender and Family in Latin America
Krista Van Vleet T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Focuses on family, gender, and sexuality as windows onto political, economic, social, and cultural issues in Latin America. Topics include indigenous and natural gender ideologies, marriage, race, and class; machismo and masculinity; state and domestic violence; religion and reproductive control; compulsory heterosexuality; AIDS; and cross-cultural conceptions of homosexuality. Takes a comparative perspective and draws on a wide array of sources including ethnography, film, fiction, and historical narrative.

245. Bearing the Untold Story: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States
Jennifer Scanlon T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
Women of color are often ignored or pushed to the margins. There is a cost to that absence, obviously, for women of color. As Zora Neale Hurston put it, “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” There is also a cost to those who are not women of color, as women of color are encountered as objects, rather than subjects. Addresses the gaps and explores the histories and contemporary issues affecting women of color and their ethnic/racial communities in the United States.

259. History of Sexuality, Gender, and the Body in South Asia
Rachel Sturman T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Seminar. Explores changing conceptions of the body, sexuality, and gender in South Asia, with a focus on modern formations since the late eighteenth century. Topics include: practices of female seclusion; ideas of purity, pollution, and the care of the self; religious renunciation and asceticism; the erotics of religious devotion; theories of desire; modern conjugality; and the emergence of a contemporary lesbian/gay/queer movement.

278. China, Gender, Family
Nancy Riley M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
Examines issues surrounding gender and family in China, focusing on contemporary society but with some historical work. Topics to be examined include: footbinding, constructions of gender during the Cultural Revolution, the role of family in society and in gender construction, the effect of new economic changes on families and genders.

355. Modernism and the Nude
Pamela Fletcher T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
An examination of the central role that images of the female nude played in the development of modernist art between 1860 and the 1920s. Topics include the tradition of the female nude in art; the gendered dynamics of modernism; and the social, cultural, and artistic meaning of nudity. Artists considered include Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Picasso, and Valadon.