Department of Women's and Gender Studies

WOS 100. Body Politics: Gender, Culture, and Representation. 3 Credits.

This course examines the body as a contested site of both pleasure and oppression. Students will focus on the impact of culture on our understandings of the body, including ideas about gender, race, and sexuality. Course materials and lectures will illuminate how popular representations of the body such as advertising images are manipulated, but students will also discuss how even scientific representations of the body are shaped by cultural values and political goals. Over the semester, they will be asked to consider the ways in which bodies are highly politicized cultural constructs, not simple and natural facts of human existence. To understand this, students will look at the body as a site of social regulation through systems of oppression and resistance to that oppression. They will use an intersectional approach and draw on theories of oppression as articulated by Kimberle Crenshaw, Michel Foucault, and Frantz Fanon. To demonstrate how embodiment is both a physical and political condition, students investigate how meanings associated with the body change depending on the time and context in which we live. As such, we are all encouraged to consider how our own body image has been shaped by social norms that are often simultaneously accepted and resisted. This course provides an opportunity to question a variety of norms surrounding the body including ideas about beauty, size, shape, and ability.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities

WOS 199. Women's & Gender Studies Transfer Credit. 1-15 Credits.

Transfer Credit

Repeatable for credit.

WOS 200. Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies. 3 Credits.

An interdisciplinary inquiry into the nature and causes of social conflict. The aim throughout is to find ways of avoiding destructive conflict, whether through negotiation or other means. The issue of justice as a factor in conflict receives special attention.

Gen Ed Attribute: Global Awareness Pathway, Interdisciplinary

Equivalent courses: PAX 200

WOS 225. Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies. 3 Credits.

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of women’s and gender studies. It is designed to help them develop a critical framework for thinking about questions relating to sex, gender, and sexuality and the ways that they are constructed and institutionalized – in our relationships, in our families (broadly defined), in our schools and workplaces, and in our culture. This course connects theory with “real life.” Further, because women’s and gender studies is an inherently disciplinary field, we will be reading scholarship from a number of disciplines and will have particular representation from philosophy, history, and psychology. Students will examine how these disciplines have approached gender, privilege and oppression, power, and identity. Through all of this work, they will seek to expand their knowledge of women’s and gender studies in terms of issues of race, ethnicity, culture, and class through readings, films, and other resources. Throughout all of this work, students will use an intersectional feminist framework to think through feminism(s), feminist praxis, and in particular how each of us exists in relationship to power via gender and race. A central goal of this course is to foster an informed and reasoned openness to, and understanding of, difference.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Interdisciplinary, Writing Emphasis

Distance education offering may be available.

WOS 227. Let's Talk About Race. 3 Credits.

This course is an introduction to the study and critical discussion of race within the field of Women’s and Gender Studies. In particular, students will reflect on and learn skills about effective communicating on and around matters of race, race relations, and racial justice in the U.S. The course offers broad overviews of some critical themes regarding race and more specifically, the prevalence of racial dialogues. Students are encouraged to learn skills about effective and productive communication that leads with empathy and mutual respect as a means to enhance their competency on such issues, as outlined through the scholarly and methodological tools in the course. With resources ranging from scholars in the field of critical race studies to public intellectuals leading public discussions regarding race, students will be exposed to resources from a range of voices in order to hone their own skills in the discussion and understanding of systems of power and domination as they relate to race. The class primarily serves as a means to sharpen communication skills, applicable in multiple social environments ranging from interpersonal, small group, and large group settings. This work is inherently feminist and intersectional, and in addition to the critical race frameworks previously mentioned, students will learn through a Women’s and Gender Studies framework asserting that the understanding of multi-faceted identities is critical in grasping the dynamics of race and gender as they relate to systems of power, governance, violence, and subjugation.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Speaking Emphasis

WOS 240. How to Do Things with Feminism. 3 Credits.

This course is an introduction to the study of Women's & Gender Studies as an interdisciplinary field. In particular, students will reflect on the academic, professional, and community activist dimensions of the field. The course offers an overview of the development of Women's and Gender Studies within the academy and ongoing collaboration with and tensions between academic feminism and feminist activism. Students will become familiar with the methodological and theoretical tools used by feminist researchers and activists. Beyond feminist methods and theories, students will also become familiar with the professional and academic side of WGS: they will discuss the wide range of women's and gender-focused journals, professional organizations, and conferences in their subfields/disciplines. They will use an intersectional feminist framework to think through feminism(s), feminist praxis, and in particular how each of them exists in relation to power via gender and race. The ultimate goal is that they will gain the foundation for fostering feminist skills in order to create a more just and equitable society.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Speaking Emphasis

WOS 250. Women's Self Representation. 3 Credits.

This course will explore the ways in which women have utilized various forms of self-representation (art, craft, music, performance, etc.) in order to create meaning, express culture, and actively resist oppression. It is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Women’s and Gender Studies with a particular focus within the arts and humanities. One of the key aspects of this class is to examine women and their cultural position at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation. Additionally, students will examine the ways in which the media and its various forms/genres represent women and how using a feminist lens can help them to scrutinize the ways in which language, power, image, and location interact within these representations. They will have the opportunity to analyze popular culture (music, movies, TV, etc.), art, poetry, and graphic novels. A central goal of this course is to foster an informed and reasoned openness to, and understanding of, difference.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Interdisciplinary

Distance education offering may be available.

WOS 260. Globalization and the Ethics of Sustainability. 3 Credits.

This course examines the forces of globalization and ethical issues related to the environment and sustainability. The process of globalization (commercial, technological, political, and cultural) has contributed to widening inequality within and among countries. Multinational corporations employ vulnerable people (especially women of color) for cheap labor, exploit local resources, and contribute to environmental degradation. Since the planet has its limitations, attending to the conservation of natural (and limited) resources, climate change, fossil fuel industry, food chain, industrial agriculture, and military industrial complex are at the heart of environmental and ethical issues and sustainability efforts. Using ecofeminism as a theoretical framework, we will engage in these topics. Ecofeminism shows the ways women and marginalized communities both locally and globally are disproportionately affected by environmental destruction and the ways most environmental issues can be traced back to those who hold power in society. The course helps us to embrace better ways of living for a more sustainable world.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Ethics Requirement, Sustainability Pathway

WOS 276. Sexual Identity. 3 Credits.

Interdisciplinary introduction to meanings attached to human sexuality, exploring intersections between theories of sexual identity and theories of gender, class, race, ethnicity, age, and nationality.

Gen Ed Attribute: Interdisciplinary

WOS 303. Intro to LGBTQ+ Sexualities & Activism in the U.S.. 3 Credits.

The past several decades have seen an unprecedented shift in attitudes in the United States toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, yet many in LGBTQ communities still face extreme levels of discrimination and oppression. Simultaneously, there have never been more LGBTQ people and issues in the news, movies, books, and on TV. In this class, students will consider how LGBTQ experiences are influenced by these representations, as well as how systems of privilege and oppression shape the experience of LGBTQ people in the U.S. They will question the ethics of various approaches to LGBTQ justice and liberation as they examine both historical and contemporary constructions of gender and sexuality. Students will also consider what ethical approaches might look like when engaging with legal, medical, and activist discourses in relation to LGBTQ communities. Throughout this work, they will attend to the ways in which LGBTQ identities exist at the intersections of race, class, citizenship, and disability. Ultimately, this course will cultivate an informed and reasoned openness to, and understanding of, difference and its relationship to power.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Ethics Requirement

WOS 306. Transnational Feminisms. 3 Credits.

This course critically engages a range of transnational feminist theories, movements, and praxis to analyze structures of power shaping people's lives in global contexts. The course seeks to decenter a body of feminist scholarship that often assumes shared visions of gender equality. Such studies conceptualize gender issues and concerns through a Eurocentric/colonial viewpoint by overlooking differences among people with respect to race, class, sexuality, and nationality. Course readings explore the ethics of cross-cultural knowledge production, activism, warfare, commodification of women's bodies, sexualities, and local resources. The main goals of the course are to expose students to a broad range of feminist thought and action and locate transnational feminist theories in relation to colonial and post-colonial narratives. It urges students to examine their own positions within global systems that connect the (often uneven) exchange of persons, capital, and ways of knowing. Ultimately, this course will cultivate an informed and reasoned openness to, and understanding of, difference and its relationship to power.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities

WOS 310. Feminist Activism. 3 Credits.

Although often misrepresented or ignored, women were and continue to be active in a wide range of social justice movements. This course focuses specifically upon women and feminist activists in the United States and their resistance to structural inequalities based upon gender. As the course focuses on social justice movements, it uses intersectionality as a theory to recognize feminists who work against racial, economic, sexual, and other oppressions.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Writing Emphasis

Distance education offering may be available.

WOS 320. Independent Study. 3 Credits.

Independent research and study for upper-division students. Topic to be approved by supervising faculty member.

WOS 320 Prerequisite: Successful completion of WOS 225.

Repeatable for credit.

WOS 325. Special Topics. 3 Credits.

Selected (and changing) topics, e.g., Ethnic Women; Women and Work; Love and Sexuality. Offered as projected enrollments warrant.

Repeatable for credit.

WOS 326. Women and Witchcraft in Africa. 3 Credits.

This course utilizes witchcraft belief and accusation as a lens through which to examine the oppression of women in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines historical and contemporary beliefs and manifestations of witchcraft, and analyzes the centrality of women (and children) as victims. It also examines the impact of witchcraft accusation on women's social and economic development.

WOS 329. Gender and Peace. 3 Credits.

An examination of the ways in which social constructions of gender intersect with perceptions and the experience of war.

Gen Ed Attribute: Interdisciplinary

WOS 335. Gender, Race and Science. 3 Credits.

Is race biological? Do people of different genders really have different brains? As scholars of WGS, we are trained to seek out the social sources of difference between individuals or groups, and we often take for granted that race and gender are socially constructed. Yet, every day we hear of studies claiming that hormones, genes, or brains determine differences between men and women (and that those are the only choices) or among racial and ethnic groups. In this course students will learn how to think about these scientific claims using a framework of intersectionality as they explore gender, race, sexuality, science, and medicine. They will begin by examining how scientific thought about race and gender has changed over time, how it is socially and culturally influenced, and what is at stake in scientific practices of categorization. They continue by exploring how medical research has incorporated race and sex, as well as how medicine constitutes and acts on raced and gendered bodies. Students conclude with a consideration of genetics. Throughout these discussions, they will pay close attention to the processes through which knowledge is produced, to science as a practice and an institution, and to the question of who is provided with the power to “do science” and how this affects the knowledge produced. Ultimately, this course will cultivate an informed and reasoned openness to, and understanding of, difference and its relationship to power using a feminist framework. Further, this course will allow students to utilize and integrate information from multiple academic disciplines (WGS, History, Biology, Law, Sociology) to consider how science is not an objective field of study and has been fundamentally shaped by systems of privilege and power – directly impacting our understanding of and relationship to gender and race.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Interdisciplinary

WOS 350. Lesbian Studies. 3 Credits.

This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to lesbian studies that focuses on the historical and contemporary diversity of lesbian genders and sexualities, especially as shaped by race, class, culture, and nation. Special attention will be placed upon lesbian activism as well as contestations within lesbian communities about racism, classism, and cissexism.

Gen Ed Attribute: Interdisciplinary

Distance education offering may be available.

WOS 366. Gender, Labor and Globalization. 3 Credits.

This course uses sociological and women's and gender studies theories to understand, analyze, and present on domestic work, care work, sex work, and reproductive work as invisible and gendered labor that contributes to global economies. Through critical reading, writing, discussion, and speaking assignments, students will learn how to analyze and speak about how the experiences of international women workers change mainstream definitions of gender, labor, family, immigration, and globalization.

Gen Ed Attribute: Speaking Emphasis

Equivalent courses: SOC 366

WOS 368. Violence, Systems, and Resistance (VSR). 3 Credits.

This course will teach students how to recognize, understand, and resist three primary forms of power-based violence that are interrelated: (1) those perpetrated by individuals, e.g. sexual assault, partner violence, mass shootings; (2) those perpetrated by hate groups, e.g. lynching, bombing, violence against trans and non-binary people; and (3) those perpetrated by the state, e.g. war, police violence. Students will study multiple forms of violence to understand the root causes and dynamics of violence (how it happens); the effects on people, families, and communities (what is the cost); and personal, community, and national resistance methodologies (what can be done about it).

Gen Ed Attribute: Interdisciplinary

Equivalent courses: SOC 368

WOS 381. The Forgotten Queens of Islam. 3 Credits.

Students will learn about prominent women in Islamic history, with a focus on the medieval period. Students will learn to read historical texts "against the grain" through the lens of feminist history.

Gen Ed Attribute: Arabic Culture Cluster, Diverse Communities, Speaking Emphasis

Equivalent courses: HIS 381

WOS 399. Women of Color and Material Culture. 3 Credits.

This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the ways that gender and race shape the histories of cultural production and material culture, aiming to problematize the historical sidelining of the contributions of women of color in global history, recognizing their deep impacts on their respective communities, on racial identity, and cultural authenticity. By centering the lived experiences and the labor of women of color, we are able to perceive of a more just and equitable world, where traditional histories have commonly elided, appropriated, or violated these contributions in historical and cultural accounts. The course will interrogate the concept of labor and production from a number of disciplinary vantage points, focusing primarily on foodways and commodity culture, all while situating women of color as the core category of analysis.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Interdisciplinary

WOS 400. Internship. 3 Credits.

This course is designed to allow students the opportunity to put into practice, outside the academic setting, the knowledge regarding women's experiences gained in other courses. Some possible sites might be a women's health clinic, a business, a newspaper, a social service agency, or an electoral campaign. There will be both an on-site and a faculty supervisor.

WOS 400 Prerequisite: Successful completion of WOS 225 or WOS 240; and two other women's studies courses.

Repeatable for credit.

WOS 405. Feminist Theory. 3 Credits.

This course focuses on the development of contemporary feminist theoretical constructs, beginning in the 1970s. Students will study classic feminist theories and ideas from this period. They will use a feminist pedagogy which emphasizes learning that is collaborative and student-centered. We value participatory, experiential, diverse, and student-centered knowledge production. Because we believe that students serve as sources of knowledge for themselves and each other, we encourage students to take initiative in and responsibility for the learning process.

WOS 405 Prerequisite: Successful completion of two WOS courses, with minimum grades of D-.

Equivalent courses: PHI 405

WOS 407. Queer Theory. 3 Credits.

This course is an introduction to the study of Queer Theory, as both a discipline and a form of political resistance. Queer theory is, in a very basic nutshell, the study of identities that exist outside of rigid binary categories. For this reason, we must understand queer theory as separate from, even if closely aligned with, GLBT or sexuality studies. Queerness, in this context, does not refer to sexuality and gender, but to any identity rejected by or resistant to normative, binary categories. Thus, this course utilizes a "queer" approach (drawing on feminist, race, sexuality, psychoanalytic, literary, etc.) to ask fundamental questions about our identities (whether sexuality, gender, race, class, nationality, etc.) and how our identities are determined by and resistant to social regulation.

WOS 407 Prerequisite: Successful completion of one WOS course.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities

Equivalent courses: PHI 407

WOS 410. Feminist Research Methodologies. 3 Credits.

This course examines feminist critiques of and approaches to various research methodologies. It will focus on how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge and the major qualitative methodologies employed in the social sciences and humanities such as interview, ethnography, participatory research, grounded theory, archival research, and oral history. Students will discuss how research is shaped by the kinds of research questions we ask and the types of materials we use. The course also gives them the opportunity to develop a research proposal, including selecting method(s) of their own interest. The following questions are central to the course: do feminist methods exist? What counts as evidence? How does feminist research approach issues of objectivity and subjectivity? What is the relationship between the researcher and the subject? What key questions guide feminist research and how can we apply those questions to a variety of research topics? Since feminist research methodologies aim to dismantle power structures that perpetuate inequality and oppression, they particularly pay attention to the feminist standpoint theory (centering women’s experiences and knowledge), reflexivity (researcher’s social position), and intersectionality (compounding experiences of discrimination due to overlapping of social identities).

WOS 410 Prerequisite: Successful completion of WOS 405 and WOS 240.

Gen Ed Attribute: Diverse Communities, Writing Emphasis

WOS 415. Senior Project. 3 Credits.

Preparation of research in any area of women's studies, to be decided by student and adviser. Supervision includes exercises in method and bibliography. Usually, a lengthy research paper will be the final result.

WOS 415 Prerequisite: Successful completion of WOS 225 and two other womens studies courses, with minimum grades of D-.

Repeatable for credit.