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 feminism, gender, and sexuality within transnational frameworks. Transnational feminism is, at its broadest, the practice of feminism across borders. Thus, this course engages feminist critique that is attentive to issues of power and knowledge as they emerge, meet, or conflict across local, national, and international relations. 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 and intersectional field of LGBT studies. This course introduces students to the histories of modern ideas and norms about sexuality, especially where such norms intersect with the workings of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and settler colonialism. Course content provides sustained attention to both modalities of oppression and how LGBT communities have built and sustained resistance movements.

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, queer theory, and the intersectional analyses produced by women of color. Juniors and seniors only. University Core fulfilled: Flags: Information Literacy, Writing.

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.)

(See MDGK 3346.)

(See CMST 3110.)

(See CLST 3302.)

This course explores the themes and variations in women's lives in the Middle East. Particular attention will be paid to family structures, rural-urban, social class and ethnic differences, social and political movements, religion, work, and education.

(See AFAM 4342.)

(See AFAM 4422.)

This course explores the relationship between sexuality and gender as well as a diversity of sexual identities. It focuses on issues of the body, sex, nature, and power within the context of history, culture, and public policy.

(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 how gender and sexuality are experienced in global contexts through neoliberal globalization, the feminization of labor and migration, environmental degradation, diaspora, sexuality, cultural displacement, and militarization. Explores the ways queer people have confronted these conditions as well as the possibilities and challenges of cross-border coalitions.

(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.