Spring GWS Courses
Below are the Gender & Women’s Studies courses being offered this spring. Students pursuing the certificate may be particularly interested in these offerings. Remember you can take up to two courses in another department with permission from Dr. Radcliffe.
GWS 8000: Critical Perspectives on Gender
Dr. Elizabeth Kolsky
R 7:30-9:30
An interdisciplinary study of gender, women, and sexuality, this course surveys contemporary developments in feminist, gender, and queer theory. It also applies those theories to a variety of topics, such as the representation of gender, the history of sexuality, the science of sexual difference, gender in the workplace, and gender in the digital age. Throughout the semester, we will consider how ideas about gender are bound inextricably to ideas about race and class.
Sample student comments on the Spring 2018 course: "Amazing course taken as an elective outside my department. Everything I learned can be integrated into the way I conduct science and engage with the world."
"What a phenomenal class! ... I learned so much I now think this is a class that every intro major should take as gender affects everyone at all times."
EDU 8676-001: Multiculturalism, Gender in Schools
Dr. Rachel Skrlac Lo
R 5:20-7:20
Issues of race, culture, sexual orientation, and special education as they are related to the understanding and practice of education.
Why does diversity matter?
There are over seven billion people in the world and we each have a different story to tell. Studying diversity - and the ways we recognize and define diversity - is an opportunity to learn about our world. Building up our knowledge resources about the experiences of others better prepares us when we encounter people whose worldview is different from others. Unless we live in a bubble, we will have the encounters. It is essential that educators - and this is an education class - be open to diversity, to recognize that
ENGL 8640: Virginia Woolf
Dr. Megan Quigley
R 5:20-7:20
Over the semester we will ask: Why are audiences as fascinated by Virginia Woolf's life as they are by the novels she wrote? Why does she think that every woman needs A Room of One's Own? What is the border between fiction and autobiography? What role does Woolf's gender play in her status as a literary celebrity? This course will posit that Woolf's novels and essays themselves instigate these debates. In seeking to destroy the conventions of the realist novel and simultaneously to explain new forms through what life is like "here, now," Woolf's novels interrogate the relationships among fiction, biography, gender and autobiography.
We will read five novels by Woolf as well as extracts from her Essays and Diaries. We will study explosive issues in Woolf studies (snobbery, anti-Semitism, sexual molestation, lesbianism) while we also learn about literary high modernism by immersing ourselves in Woolf's own writing. Finally, we will consider an impact of a century of Woolf’s influence and legacy. What have been the limitations of her vast authority? How do contemporary British writers (for example, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, Rachel Cusk) show Woolf’s imprint?
LST 7100: Sex and Gender in the Ancient World
Dr. Kelly Diamond
T 7:30-9:30
Often relegated to the footnotes, many women from the ancient world are not aptly represented in modern accounts of ancient history. In actuality, many women led intriguing and fascinating lives and have been under-represented in the modern sources.
This course will concentrate on the role of women in some of the most ancient civilizations, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia and Nubia, beginning ca. 3200 BCE. These disciplines are often descriptive rather than explanatory and analytical, but this course will attempt to explore explanations for changes in gendered constructions (legal position, religion, marriage, etc.). We will also investigate how gender research outside these fields appears to have influenced the reinterpretations of some women who had been seen in a negative light. Topics such as the rise of patriarchy, a Mother-Goddess cult, gender in mortuary art, gender and language, women’s passivity in art and female rebirth will also be explored.
Classes will be organized in a seminar style with emphasis placed on student participation. There will be several short writing assignments and a final term paper. All ancient sources will be read in translation.
THE 8220-001: Gender, Politics and Performance
Prof. Bess Rowan
Time/Date TBD
Topics of gender and sexuality are frequent themes both in and around the theatre, and theatre-makers, of today. This course provides an opportunity to study intersectional feminist theory, gender theory, and queer theory alongside plays dealing with issues of gender and sexuality in a broad sense. This course is theory-based, but with the intention of providing students with a framework and vocabulary for important discussions likely to happen in and around production processes as well as those occurring in the academy.
GWS 8000: Critical Perspectives on Gender
Dr. Elizabeth Kolsky
R 7:30-9:30
An interdisciplinary study of gender, women, and sexuality, this course surveys contemporary developments in feminist, gender, and queer theory. It also applies those theories to a variety of topics, such as the representation of gender, the history of sexuality, the science of sexual difference, gender in the workplace, and gender in the digital age. Throughout the semester, we will consider how ideas about gender are bound inextricably to ideas about race and class.
Sample student comments on the Spring 2018 course: "Amazing course taken as an elective outside my department. Everything I learned can be integrated into the way I conduct science and engage with the world."
"What a phenomenal class! ... I learned so much I now think this is a class that every intro major should take as gender affects everyone at all times."
EDU 8676-001: Multiculturalism, Gender in Schools
Dr. Rachel Skrlac Lo
R 5:20-7:20
Issues of race, culture, sexual orientation, and special education as they are related to the understanding and practice of education.
Why does diversity matter?
There are over seven billion people in the world and we each have a different story to tell. Studying diversity - and the ways we recognize and define diversity - is an opportunity to learn about our world. Building up our knowledge resources about the experiences of others better prepares us when we encounter people whose worldview is different from others. Unless we live in a bubble, we will have the encounters. It is essential that educators - and this is an education class - be open to diversity, to recognize that
ENGL 8640: Virginia Woolf
Dr. Megan Quigley
R 5:20-7:20
Over the semester we will ask: Why are audiences as fascinated by Virginia Woolf's life as they are by the novels she wrote? Why does she think that every woman needs A Room of One's Own? What is the border between fiction and autobiography? What role does Woolf's gender play in her status as a literary celebrity? This course will posit that Woolf's novels and essays themselves instigate these debates. In seeking to destroy the conventions of the realist novel and simultaneously to explain new forms through what life is like "here, now," Woolf's novels interrogate the relationships among fiction, biography, gender and autobiography.
We will read five novels by Woolf as well as extracts from her Essays and Diaries. We will study explosive issues in Woolf studies (snobbery, anti-Semitism, sexual molestation, lesbianism) while we also learn about literary high modernism by immersing ourselves in Woolf's own writing. Finally, we will consider an impact of a century of Woolf’s influence and legacy. What have been the limitations of her vast authority? How do contemporary British writers (for example, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, Rachel Cusk) show Woolf’s imprint?
LST 7100: Sex and Gender in the Ancient World
Dr. Kelly Diamond
T 7:30-9:30
Often relegated to the footnotes, many women from the ancient world are not aptly represented in modern accounts of ancient history. In actuality, many women led intriguing and fascinating lives and have been under-represented in the modern sources.
This course will concentrate on the role of women in some of the most ancient civilizations, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia and Nubia, beginning ca. 3200 BCE. These disciplines are often descriptive rather than explanatory and analytical, but this course will attempt to explore explanations for changes in gendered constructions (legal position, religion, marriage, etc.). We will also investigate how gender research outside these fields appears to have influenced the reinterpretations of some women who had been seen in a negative light. Topics such as the rise of patriarchy, a Mother-Goddess cult, gender in mortuary art, gender and language, women’s passivity in art and female rebirth will also be explored.
Classes will be organized in a seminar style with emphasis placed on student participation. There will be several short writing assignments and a final term paper. All ancient sources will be read in translation.
THE 8220-001: Gender, Politics and Performance
Prof. Bess Rowan
Time/Date TBD
Topics of gender and sexuality are frequent themes both in and around the theatre, and theatre-makers, of today. This course provides an opportunity to study intersectional feminist theory, gender theory, and queer theory alongside plays dealing with issues of gender and sexuality in a broad sense. This course is theory-based, but with the intention of providing students with a framework and vocabulary for important discussions likely to happen in and around production processes as well as those occurring in the academy.
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