Courses

Courses

Spring 2009

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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 tragic mulatto, the jealous or vindictive woman, the murderous lesbian, the revenge seeker, etc. Examines why the various permutations of the dangerous female have 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, Double Indemnity, Fatal Attraction, Gilda, Kill Bill, Mildred Pierce, Sunset Boulevard, Thelma and Louise, and Vertigo.

021. Bad Girls of the 1950s
Jennifer Scanlon M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25
Explores the representation and life experiences of women who did not fit the cultural norm of suburban motherhood in 1950s America. Focuses on issues of class, race, sexuality and gender in a decade shaped by fears about nuclear war and communism, and by social and political conformity. Topics include teenage pregnancy, women's grassroots political leadership, single womanhood, civil rights, emergent feminism, and, finally, the enduring cultural resonance of the apron-clad 1950s mom. Engages a variety of primary and secondary sources.

101. Introduction to Gender and Women's Studies
Jennifer Scanlon M 8:00 - 9:25, W 8:00 - 9:25
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.

104. Introduction to Black Women's Literature
Guy Foster T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
Examines the twin themes of love and sex as they relate to poems, stories, novels, and plays written by African American women from the nineteenth century to the contemporary era. Explores such issues as Reconstruction, the Great Migration, motherhood, sexism, group loyalty, racial authenticity, intra- and interracial desire, homosexuality, the intertextual unfolding of a literary tradition of black female writing, and how these writings relate to canonical African American male-authored texts and European American literary traditions. Students are expected to read texts closely, critically, and appreciatively. Possible authors: Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, Jessie Faucet, Ann Petry, Ntozake Shange, Suzan-Lori Parks, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gayle Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Terry McMillan, Sapphire, Lizzette Carter.

204. Families: A Comparative Perspective
Nancy Riley M 1:00 - 2:25
Examines families in different societies. Issues addressed include definition and concept of the “family”; different types of family systems; the interaction of family change and other social, economic, and political change; the relationships between families and other social institutions; the role of gender and age in family relationships; and sources and outcomes of stability, conflict, and dissolution within families.

210. Global Sexualities, Local Desires
Krista Van Vleet M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
Explores the variety of practices, performances, and ideologies of sexuality through a cross-cultural perspective. Focusing on contemporary anthropological scholarship on sexuality and gender, asks whether Western conceptions of “sexuality,” “sex,” and “gender” help us understand the lives and desires of people in other social and cultural contexts. Topics may include Brazilian transgendered prostitutes (travestí), intersexuality, and the naturalization of sex; “third gendered” individuals and religion in Native North America, India, and Chile; language and the performance of sexuality by drag queens in the United States; transnationalism and the global construction of “gay” identity in Indonesia; lesbian and gay kinship; AIDS in Cuba and Brazil; and Japanese Takarazuka theater. In addition to ethnographic examples of alternative genders and sexualities (so called “third genders” and non-heterosexual sexualities) in both Western and non-Western contexts, also presents the major theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches used by anthropologists to understand sexuality, and considers how shifts in feminist and queer politics have also required anthropologists to focus on other social differences such as class, race, ethnicity, and post-colonial relations

218. Sex and Socialism: Gender and Political Ideologies of the Twentieth Century
Kristen Ghodsee M 2:30 - 3:55, W 2:30 - 3:55
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.

219. Anthropology of Science, Sex, and Reproduction
Jan Brunson T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Explores anthropological approaches to reproductive health and procreation in developed and developing countries. Locates science as one epistemology among many and explores the hegemonic aspects of science in relation to sex and reproduction. Examines sex and reproduction as sites of intervention for public health, development, and biomedical specialists, while also considering local constructions and strategies. Topics include cervical cancer, family planning, and new reproductive technologies. Draws primarily from ethnographies.

223. Cultural Interpretations of Medicine
Susan Bell T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Explores a series of topics in health studies from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences: medical ethics, the development and use of reproductive technologies, relationships between doctors and patients, disability, public health, and the experience of illness. Encourages reflection about these topics through ethnographies, monographs, novels, plays, poetry, and visual arts, such as Barker’s Regeneration, Squiers’, The Body at Risk: Photography of Disorder, Illness, and Healing, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Bosk’s Forgive and Remember, and Alvord’s The Scalpel and the Silver Bear.

232. Transatlantic Crossings
Terri Nickel T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Traces the circulation of narratives at the height of Britain’s colonial power in the Americas. Situates such literary commerce alongside the larger exchange of people and goods and focuses on the fluctuating nature of national, racial, and sexual identities in the circum-Atlantic world. Explores how literary texts attempted, and often failed, to sustain “Englishness” in the face of separation, revolution, or insurrection. Of special interest are figures who move across the Atlantic divide and exploit the possibility of multiple roles—sailors, pirates, freed or escaped slaves, female soldiers. Texts may include General History of the Pirates; The Woman of Colour; Moll Flanders; The History of Emily Montague; Obi, or the History of Three-Fingered Jack; The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; the Journals of Janet Schaw; The History of Mary Prince; The Female American.

238. Monotheism and Masculinity
Elizabeth Pritchard T 2:30 - 3:55, TH 2:30 - 3:55
Focuses on the emergence of and continuing elaborations of transcendent monotheism in the Abrahamic traditions. Of particular interest in this examination is the relationship between portrayals of the divine and assumptions about gender, class, and race. Other topics include whether it is possible or permissible to obtain knowledge of the divine (and perhaps be able to see or depict the divine); the relationship between transcendent monotheism, cultural identity, and violence; and the ways in which monotheism informs various renderings of morality and politics. Readings include selections from the Bible, Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, Ibn-Arabi, and Luther.

243. Russia’s “Others”: Siberia and Central Asia through Film and Literature
Jane Knox-Voina T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Films, music, short stories, folklore, art analyzed for the construction of national identity of Asian peoples from the Caucasus to the Siberian Bering Straits—Russia and the Former Central Asia (the “stans” and Mongolia). Themes: Multicultural conflicts along the Silk Road, the transit zone linking West to East. Changing roles of Asian women as cornerstone for nations. Survival and role of indigenous peoples in solving cultural, economic, and geopolitical issues facing the twenty-first century. Arrival of “outsiders”: from early traders to Siberian settlers and exiled convicts; from early conquerors to despotic Bolshevik rulers, from Genghis Khan to Stalin. Impact of Soviet collectivization and industrialization on traditional beliefs, destruction of environment and subsistence cultures, Eastern spiritualities (Muslimism, shamanism). Questions how film and literature both tell and shape the story of “nations.” Films include S. Bodrov’s Prisoner of the Mountains (Caucasus) and Mongol; V. Pudovskin’s Storm Over Asia, A. Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, N. Mikhalkov’s Close to Eden, A. Konchalovsky’s Siberiade, G. Omarova’s Schizo.

244. Victorian Crime
Aviva Briefel T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Investigates literary representations of criminality in Victorian England. Of central concern is the construction of social deviancy and criminal types; images of disciplinary figures, structures, and institutions; and the relationship between generic categories (the detective story, the Gothic tale, the sensation novel) and the period’s preoccupation with transgressive behavior and crime. Authors may include Braddon, Collins, Dickens, Doyle, Stevenson, and Wells.

266. Chinese Women in Fiction and Film
Shu-chin Tsui T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25
Approaches the subject of women and writing in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century China from perspectives of gender studies, literary analysis, and visual representations. Considers women writers, filmmakers, and their works in the context of China’s social-political history as well as its literary and visual traditions. Focuses on how women writers and directors negotiate gender identity against social-cultural norms. Also constructs a dialogue between Chinese women’s works and Western feminist assumptions. Part of the Other Modernities course cluster.

271. The Modern Girl and Female Citizen in China and Japan
Karen Teoh M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55
Seminar. With the rise of East Asian nationalisms and global commercialism in the early twentieth century appeared two distinct yet related figures in China and Japan: the Modern Girl, characterized by her physical appearance and consumerism, who broke with social conventions regarding domesticity, sexuality, and politics; and the Female Citizen, idealized for her role in contributing to the establishment of the modern nation in a “scientific” and “progressive” way. These two images offer a comparative perspective on women’s symbolic roles in the nation, and how anxieties over the persons and actions of women reflected larger concerns about the tensions evoked by a rapidly changing world. Discussion themes include globalization and commercialization, changing cultural notions of womanhood, family and labor systems, female education, feminism, and gendered nationalisms.

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.

302. The Economics of the Family
Rachel Connelly T 11:30 - 12:55, TH 11:30 - 12:55
Seminar. Microeconomic analysis of the family—gender roles, and related institutions. Topics include marriage, fertility, married women’s labor supply, divorce, and the family as an economic organization.

325. The Psychology of Stigma
Rachel Kallen T 10:00 - 11:25, TH 10:00 - 11:25
A critical examination of classic and contemporary theories and research on stigma. Emphasis will be on the psychological experiences of members of stigmatized groups; why individuals stigmatize others; sensitivity to discrimination; collective identity; methods of coping; and implications for the self, social interaction, and intergroup relations. Topics include race, ethnicity, gender, mental illness, sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and health/physical disabilities.