Courses

Courses

Spring 2008 Courses

  • Visit Bearings to search for courses by title, instructor, department, and more.
  • Login to Blackboard. Instructional materials are available on a course-by-course basis.
019. Femmes Fatales, Lady Killers, and Other Dangerous Women
Aviva Briefel T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Explores a popular cinematic image: the dangerous—and sometimes deadly—woman. By analyzing a range of films from classical Hollywood cinema to the present day, explores the various forms that this female figure assumes: the femme fatale, the jealous or vindictive woman, the murderous lesbian, the revenge seeker, etc. In addition to examining the various permutations of the dangerous female, explores why she has attained such a prevalent place on the silver screen. What is so seductive about the deadly woman? Also introduces students to film criticism. Films may include Basic Instinct, Carrie, Eve’s Bayou, Fatal Attraction, Gilda, Kill Bill, Mildred Pierce, Rebecca, and Thelma and Louise.

023. Lesbian Personae
Peter Coviello T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
A study of the varied representations of same-sex desire between women across a range of twentieth-century novels and films. Concerned with questions of the visibility, and invisibility, of lesbian life; of the contours of lesbian childhood and adolescence; of the forms of difference between and among lesbians; and of the tensions, as well as the affinities, that mark relations between queer women and queer men. Authors may include Nella Larsen, Willa Cather, Carson McCullers, Ann Bannon, and others.

101. Introduction to Gender and Women's Studies
Jennifer Scanlon T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
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.

218. Sex and Socialism: Gender and Political Ideologies of the Twentieth Century
Kristen Ghodsee T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
Focuses on gender issues in nations whose social, cultural, political, and economic histories have been shaped and/or influenced by Marxist-Leninism. Begins with a thorough examination of socialist ideas about the role of men and women in society and how these ideas evolved over time in the different countries and regions. The practical ramifications of these ideologies are studied through a survey of policies, programs, and projects that were implemented by socialist governments around the world. Addresses how socialist ideologies of gender influenced everything from the rise of the second wave feminists in the United States to the political ascendance of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Considers the political and economic changes that have occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically deals with issues of race, class, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and gerontocracy, as they directly relate to the (re)construction of identity taking place throughout the former and/or transitioning socialist countries.

221. Dostoevsky and the Novel
Jane Knox-Voina T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
Examines Fyodor Dostoevsky’s later novels. Studies the author’s unique brand of realism (“fantastic realism,” “realism of a higher order”), which explores the depths of human psychology and spirituality. Emphasis on the anti-Western, anti-materialist bias of Dostoevsky’s quest for meaning in a world growing increasingly unstable, violent, and cynical. Special attention is given to the author’s treatment of urban poverty and the place of women in Russian society. Conducted in English.

224. Introduction to Human Population
Nancy Riley T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
An introduction to the major issues in the study of population. Focuses on the social aspects of the demographic processes of fertility, mortality, and migration. Also examines population change in Western Europe historically, recent demographic changes in Third World countries, population policy, and the social and environmental causes and implications of changes in births, deaths, and migration.

235. Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl: Gender and the Suburbs
Jennifer Scanlon T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
The suburbs, where the majority of the nation’s residents live, have been alternately praised as the most visible sign of the American dream and vilified as the vapid core of homogeneous Middle America. How did the “burbs” come about, and what is their significance in American life? Begins with the history of the suburbs from the mid-nineteenth century to the post-World War II period, exploring the suburb as part of the process of national urbanization. In the second part, explores more contemporary cultural representations of the suburbs in popular television, film, and fiction. Particular attention is paid to gender, race, and consumer culture as influences in the development of suburban life.

247. Modernism/Modernity
Marilyn Reizbaum M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Examines the cruxes of the “modern,” and the term’s shift into a conceptual category rather than a temporal designation. Although not confined to a particular national or generic rubric, takes British works as a focus. Organized by movements or critical formations of the modern, i.e., modernisms, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, cultural critique. Readings of critical literature in conjunction with primary texts. Authors/directors/works may include T.S. Eliot, Joyce’s Dubliners, Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, Sontag’s On Photography, W. G. Sebald’s The Natural History of Destruction, Ian McEwen’s Enduring Love, Stevie Smith, Kureishi’s My Son the Fanatic, and Coetzee’s White Writing. Formerly English 261.

249. History of Women's Voices in America
Sarah McMahon M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25
Seminar. Examines women’s voices in America from 1650 to the twentieth century, as these emerged in private letters, journals, and autobiographies; poetry, short stories, and novels; essays, addresses, and prescriptive literature. Readings from the secondary literature provide a historical framework for examining women’s writings. Research projects focus on the form and content of women’s literature and the ways that it illuminates women’s understandings, reactions, and responses to their historical situation.

253. Constructions of the Body
Susan Bell M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Explores the body as a reflection and construction of language, a source of metaphor, and a political and social “space.” Considers historical and cross-cultural studies about men’s and women’s bodies, sexuality, gender, and power. Throughout, draws from and compares theories of the body in sociology, women’s studies, and gay and lesbian studies.

257. Classic Twentieth-Century LGBT Cultural Texts
Guy Foster T 8:30 - 9:55, TH 8:30 - 9:55
Analyzes some of the most enduring, and in some cases infamous, lesbigay and transgendered cultural texts of the twentieth century. Whether authored by avowed LGBT authors or by non-LGBT cultural producers, such works reflect some of the specific challenges that U.S. and European writers and others have continued to face in depicting portrayals of same-sex identities and desires that seek to reject totalizing narratives of pathology and criminalization. Possible texts include: The Well of Loneliness, Death in Venice, Giovanni’s Room, The Boys in the Band, The Front Runner, Stone Butch Blues, Hitchcock’s Rope, The Children’s Hour, “Will and Grace,” and “Six Feet Under.” Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

272. Asian-American Female Gothic
Belinda Kong T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
A study of Gothic elements in contemporary fiction by Asian-American women writers. Investigates crossovers between realism and supernaturalism, with attention to how Gothic motifs such as the ghost and the doppelgänger are mobilized to negotiate cultural identity, racial politics, and historical traumas. Also explores the relationship between gender and genre in Asian-American literature. Authors may include Maxine Hong Kingston, Lan Samantha Chang, lê thi diem thúy, Lan Cao, Mia Yun, Nora Okja Keller, Cynthia Kadohata, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, and Vyvyane Loh. Note: This course fulfills the literature of the Americas requirement for English majors.

277. Applied Research Practicum: Chinese Rural to Urban Migration
Rachel Connelly T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Highlights applied research methods in microeconomics. Students work throughout the semester in research teams to analyze data from Chinese rural women on their migration and/or the migration of their husbands. While topics of Chinese economic life and economic models of migration are studied, the course primarily focuses on methods: how applied researchers work with data to analyze a set of questions. Elementary statistics is a prerequisite. Statistical techniques beyond the elementary level are taught.

301. Doing Gender Studies: Ethnographies of Gender
Kristen Ghodsee T 1:00 - 3:55
Explores how research and scholarship on gender can be an engine for social change. Students learn how to use the different “tools” of the scholar: interviews, surveys, oral history, archival research, participant observation, and discourse analysis. Through a semester-long research project, each student has a hands-on experience of designing and implementing an in-depth study on the gender issue of the student’s choice. Open to Gender and Women’s Studies majors and minors, or with permission of the instructor.

310. Gay and Lesbian Cinema
Patricia Welsch T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Considers both mainstream and independent films made by or about gays and lesbians. Four intensive special topics each semester, which may include classic Hollywood’s stereotypes and euphemisms; the power of the box office; coming of age and coming out; the social problem film; key figures; writing history through film; queer theory and queer aesthetics; revelation and revaluations of film over time; autobiography and documentary; the AIDS imperative. Writing intensive; attendance at evening film screenings is required.

326. A Body "Of One's Own": Latina and Caribbean Women Writers
Nadia Celis M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
What do bodies tell or conceal? What does it mean to live in a female body? How a body does become a Self? are some of the questions addressed in this study of contemporary literature by women writers from the Hispanic Caribbean and the US-Latina community. Films, popular music, soap operas and advertising dialogue with literary works to explore the relationship between corporeality, power and the development of female subjectivity, as well as the representation of female bodies in the construction of Caribbean and Latino identities. Authors include Julia Álvarez, Fanny Buitrago, Magali García Ramis, Judith Ortiz Cofer and Mayra Santos-Febres, among others.

390. Robots, Vamps, and Whores: Women in German Culture and Society, 1880-1989
Jill Smith T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
An examination of gender roles and female sexuality as central controversies of modern German culture. Analyzing nineteenth- and twentieth-century artifacts (works of literature, films, and paintings) from four distinct periods in German history—the fin-de-siècle, the Roaring 20s, the Nazi era, and divided Germany—the course compares historical and artistic representations of women, particularly those women who push the boundaries of normative sexual and social behavior. Uses a variety of texts to discuss such diverse social phenomena and contested territory as the women’s movement/feminism, morality crusades, sexology, prostitution, marriage reform, abortion and lesbianism. Frequent short writings, several critical interpretive essays, and a final project based upon visual images of women spanning the time periods discussed are required.