Women's and Gender Studies (WGST)

An interdisciplinary study of women in society through overview of the major issues, innovations, and debates that have characterized the field of Women's and Gender Studies. Course introduces history of feminist activism and discourse in the U.S. University Core fulfilled: Foundations: Studies in American Diversity.

An introduction to critical thinking skills about concepts such as gender, race, class, and sexuality, how these intersect in lives of women of color together with women's strategies of surviving, resisting, and overcoming barriers. University Core fulfilled: Foundations: Studies in American Diversity.

This course explores gender and sexuality within transnational frameworks, focusing on feminist analyses of issues like globalization, colonialism, war, militarism, and labor from Global South perspectives. University Core fulfilled: Foundations: Studies in American Diversity.

This course explores the history and politics of women's health, bodies, and sexualities. Using an intersectional framework, students understand how bodies become a site for the social construction of race and sexuality. Course topics include: phenomenology, reproductive health, health and sexuality, health care access, the politics of disease, disability justice, and transgender health. University Core fulfilled: Explorations: Understanding Human Behavior.

(See MATH 261.)

An introduction to the interdisciplinary field of LGBTQ studies. Students gain critical thinking skills to examine norms about gender and sexuality and the relationship between these norms and systems like empire, heteropatriarchy, and settler colonialism. Students are introduced to histories of LGBTQ liberation movements.

Introduction to Disability Studies provides an overview of the interdisciplinary field of critical disability studies and “crip” theory. Disability studies focuses on the ideology of ableism, or the political, cultural, economic, and social privilege of non-impaired bodies and minds. Course texts and conversations take an intersectional approach to the question of normalcy, examining the ways in which “defect” and “impairment” have been mapped onto other marginalized social categories. University Core Fulfilled: Studies in American Diversity

Required course for all WGST Majors and open to all minors. In preparing for their capstone project, students will examine feminist methodologies through hands-on research and considers the complex relationships between researchers and their subjects, the impact of social location on our field of vision, ethical issues in the research process, as well as research that facilitates social and gender justice. Juniors and seniors only. University Core fulfilled: Flags: Engaged Learning. Offered Fall semester.

This course explores the relationships between peoples and environments, focusing on the roles and resources, identity, power relations, and geography. The course explores the theoretical and material implications of the different ways in which environmental injustice leads to the degradation of gendered environments and bodies. The course will provide multiple interdisciplinary perspectives on the state of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and the environment. University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

This course explores how the space of the graphic novel can serve as a cultural space for critical engagement with ideologies of race, gender, nation, class, and sexuality. Critically examining visual language that is presented in the graphic novel, students will examine the ways it challenges iconographic images of ethnic and gendered representation. University Core fulfilled: Explorations: Creative Experience.

The course explores contemporary literature by women of color in the United States and their immigrant experiences. It attends to the ways that authors imaginatively use genres to represent and challenge gender and race construction.

(See ENGL 3342.)

(See ENGL 3343.)

(See ITAL 3580.)

(See MDGK 3343.)

A cross-cultural interdisciplinary exploration of social, cultural, and literary representations of female madness from antiquity to the present. University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections; Flag: Engaged Learning. Same as MDGK 3346.

(See CMST 3110.)

(See CLST 3302.)

From Muslim-led rebellions of the enslaved, civil rights organizing, Afro-Asian solidarities, and anticolonial movements to feminist, queer, and abolitionist interpretations of Islam, this course focuses on Muslim histories and social movements in the United States. We take a two-part approach to “Muslim movements:” First, we historicize the migratory movements of Muslims in the Americas—from enslaved African Muslims to Asian and Arab Muslim immigrants and refugees—in relation to state histories of racism, labor, imperialism, and policing. Second, we take intersectional and transnational approaches to Muslim American social movements. In addition to social struggles and liberation theologies within US-based Islam, we explore how Muslims and Islamic ethics have influenced broader justice movements ranging prison abolition, transnational feminism, anti-imperialism, and Palestine solidarity. We learn from Ethnic Studies, Islamic Studies, and Feminist of Color scholarship on Islam in the US as well as the work of Muslim writers, artists, and activists.

(See AFAM 4342.)

(See AFAM 4422.)

(See BIOL 3500.)

(See SOCL 3210.)

(See SOCL 3160.)

(See SOCL 3211.)

(See THST 3022.) University Core fulfilled: Explorations: Historical Analysis and Perspectives.

(See HIST 4225.)

(See HIST 4430.)

(See HIST 4431.)

(See PHIL 4175.)

(See CHST 3310.) University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Faith and Reason

(See THST 3285.) University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Faith and Reason

(See THST 3237.) University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Faith and Reason; Flag: Writing.

This course uses the discipline of critical urban geography and feminist theory to explore the following questions: 1) What is a city? 2) Why do humans live in cities? 3) How does living in a city shape who humans are? We explore the phenomena of racial and gender segregation in cities, investigate the spatialization of race, the construction of vice and crime in the city, and discuss the gender of the division between the public and the private in urban geographies. University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

Gender, Race, and Disability is a critical feminist study of disability justice, hetero-ableism, and normality. This course examines: the ways in which disability and gender are socially constructed and co-constructed via rhetorics of dependence and autonomy; the centrality of "interdependence" to both feminist and disability justice movements; the entanglement of disability and gender in over-diagnosis, underdiagnosis, and over- and under-representation of disability in cultural texts; disability and sex, including consent, competence, and access; and legal and cultural issues of disability justice in the current political moment. University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

Focuses on the historical roots of feminist political thought in relation to other social movements. Examines the intellectual traditions within feminist theory today such as postmodernism, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, and the intersectional analyses produced by women of color. Juniors and seniors only.

This course explores the emergence, conceptual frameworks, themes, and critical tools of queer theory with a specific attention to the genealogies of queer theory known as Queer of Color critique. At its root, queer theory attempts to interrogate the structuring logics, or norms, that produce queer subjects. Queer of Color critique situates such analysis in an attention to the logics of racial formation, capitalism, labor, migration, imperialism, and the police state. Juniors and seniors only.

The course will address issues of racism, sexism, classism, and violence against women who are trafficked and those who also work as sex workers. We will discuss the relationship between ethics and human trafficking as well as who benefits from such approaches. University Core fulfilled: Integrations: Interdisciplinary Connections.

Examines the lived experiences of LGBTQ migrants in the U.S. and the diaspora through a feminist, queer, and transnational lens. The course analyzes systems such as heteronormativity, immigration control, colonization and colonial borders, and the carceral system as well as liberation practices that are queer.

(See AFAM 4642.)

(See FTVS 3300.)

(See POLS 4330.)

(See CLST 4404.)

In this course, students will be matched with local partners to explore feminist social justice work in a community setting. Students will plan and conduct an independent community-based learning project. Simultaneously, students will explore career options in the non-profit/public service sector. As such, students will gain valuable experience and mentorship as they explore future career options. University Core Fulfilled: Flags: Engaged Learning.

Designed as a last course for students obtaining the Women's and Gender Studies major or minor. Stress is on the organization and integration of knowledge gained regarding women in society. Prerequisites: WGST 3100 Feminist Research Methods. Juniors and seniors only. Majors or minors only. Offered Spring semester.