Undergraduate Courses
The Center for Gender Studies coordinates courses and activities that take up gender and sexuality as primary objects of study and category of analysis. Courses engage these domains in many different ways, including: the study of gender and/or sexuality as historical practice, scientific concept and site of representation; gendered social movements such as feminism and gay and lesbian liberation; feminist and queer theory; family structures; the gendering of labor force participation; representations of women in literature and the visual arts, intersections of race and gender, and women's and men's participation in politics.
Our courses both fall into traditional disciplinary rubrics, and use gender and sexuality as categories of analysis to track contemporary transformations in these and other domains of knowledge. We are interested in developing points of comparison within and among diverse areas of organized knowledge, not assuming that gender means the same thing in different disciplines, historical moments, epistemologies, or cultural frameworks. We are also dedicated to fostering debate about the construction and implications of categories of gender difference and sexual identity. Further, it promotes engagement with ways that gender and sexuality give us insight into other modes of social organization and change, including transformations of economic and political systems, media public spheres; forms of repression and resistance; modes of production, knowledge and experience, and everyday life.
NOTE: A course listing can be found in the course
catalog.
- 10100. Problems in the Study of Gender. (=ENGL 10200,
HIST 29306,
HUMA 22800, SOSC 28200) This course addresses the production of
particularly gendered norms and practices. Using a variety of historical andtheoretical materials, it addresses how sexual difference operates in various contexts (e.g., nation, race, class formation; work, the family, migration, imperialism, postcolonial relations). K. Schilt, Winter; D. Nelson, Spring.
10200. Problems in the Study of Sexuality. (=CHDV 20202, ENGL
10300, HUMA 22900, PSYC 22650, SOSC 28300) This course focuses on
histories and theories of sexuality: gay, lesbian, heterosexual, and otherwise. This exploration involves looking at a range of materials from anthropology to the law and from practices of sex to practices of science. S. Michaels, Autumn; B. Cohler, Winter.
21400/31400. Introduction to Theories of Sex/Gender: Ideology, Culture,
and Sexuality. (=ARTH 21400/31400, ENGL 21401/30201, MAPH 36500)
PQ: Consent of instructor required; GNDR 10100-10200 recommended. This
course examines contemporary theories of sexuality, culture, and society. We then situate these theories in global and historical perspectives. Topics and issues are explored through theoretical, ethnographic, popular, and film and video texts. R. Zorach. Winter.
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