Graduate Core Courses (required for the Gender Studies Ph.D. and open to others as well):

 

G599 Feminist Theory: Classic Texts and Founding Debates Explores founding texts of contemporary feminist theory, asking questions about identity, knowledge, sexuality, and ethics. Such works have emerged in relation to a variety of theoretical discourses, such as Marxism, structuralism, cultural studies, and others. Examines the intellectual history of feminist theory and its resonance with more recent trends in gender studies.

 

G600 Concepts of Gender Introduces historical, theoretical, behavioral, philosophical, scientific, multi- and cross-cultural perspectives on gender and its meanings, exploring its disciplinary and interdisciplinary uses and implications. Attention is given to the emergence of the category "gender"itself, and its variable applications to different fields of knowledge, experience, cultural expression, and institutional regulation. As the founding concept of our scholarship, "gender"will be thoroughly interrogated as it intersects and fractures along racial, ethnic, class, and national lines.

 

G702 Researching Gender Issues Research methodologies and approaches relevant to Gender Studies are explored, and students apply them to a particular scholarly project. The impact of Gender Studies on epistemological and methodological issues in a variety of academic disciplines is examined according to student/instructor backgrounds and interests.

 

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Elective Courses

 

G601 Scientific Practices & Feminist Knowledge Examines intersections of gender and knowledge, focusing on feminist analyses of scientific epistemology and practice. Explores the implications of various feminist theories about the social meaning and gendered construction of scientific research. Particular focus is placed upon race, class, sexuality and cultural difference in scientific accounts of "human nature." Specific topics for students' research projects may include: the history and politics of sexual difference in scientific discourse; feminist perspectives on, and appropriations of, the concept of objectivity; the circulation of scientific findings and technologies in popular culture; and the formulation of alternative scientific methods and knowledge.

 

G602 Gender Dimensions of Cultural Production & Criticism This course evaluates a diverse array of arguments concerning the gendered nature of cultural production and criticism. Controversies related to the gendered dimensions of aesthetics, cultural meanings, content, or genres are examined, as are vested claims about the constitution of genius or creativity, and the role of identities in cultural production. The critical issue of theorizing audience/reader/viewer and the often gendered nature of cultural criticism warrant particular scrutiny, especially in a cross-cultural frame.

 

G603 Contemporary Debates in Feminist Theory The course analyzes current feminist debates within and sometimes against numerous intellectual movements, including but not limited to poststructuralism, ethnic studies, critical race theory, and cultural studies. Most assuredly NOT a review of "2nd wave feminism,"this course instead assumes prior study of the major schools of feminist thought and pushes students to wrestle with critical issues that have emerged out of that earlier scholarship.

 

G604 Knowledge, Gender, and Truth Examines feminist contributions to epistemological questioning of knowledge formations through comparison of case study disciplines and through cross-cultural analysis. Debates about "truth," "objectivity," "validity," "reason" and "representativeness" as gendered categories receive scrutiny in relation to fields such as historiography, ethnography, science, psychology, or cultural studies.

 

G605 Cultures of Disability: Gender, Medicine and Society Investigates intersections among disability and gender, medicine, and culture through analysis of modern texts. Poses fundamental questions concerning the relationship of physically handicapped, or otherwise "disabled" and marginalized, individuals (male and female) to society. Interrogates the physiological and social construction of disability, and examines the articulation of disability with discourses of the body and sexuality.

 

G607 Gender and Health: Research Issues and Policy Implications Examines a variety of gendered topics related to health and well being, which may include: sexual development and differentiation, adult sexuality, menstrual cycles and disorders, sexual dysfunctions, pregnancy, contraception, abortion, sexual abuse and rape, breast cancer, hysterectomy, cosmetic surgery, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, and sex research particularly as it relates to understanding female and male sexuality. Topics examined are linked to gender issues in public health, research priorities in medicine, and policy outcomes affecting women, men, and children.

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G695 Graduate Readings and Research in Gender Studies [1-6 credits] This course provides for graduate students' intensive independent study of specific topics. Study is supervised by an appropriate core or affiliated faculty member whose research expertise matches the student's area of interest. These student projects are developed in consultation with this faculty member and the Director of Graduate Studies. Obtain permission form from the Gender Studies Office and have it signed by the faculty member agreeing to work with you.

 

G696 Research Colloquium in Gender Studies [1-3 credits] Active participation in Gender Studies research colloquia. Introduces students to the problems, interpretations, theories, and research trends in all areas related to gender and sexuality studies. Colloquia also cover themes in Gender Studies professional development (identification of funding sources, resume and job interview preparation, etc). Topics vary throughout the semester. May be repeated more than once for credit.

 

G701 Graduate Topics in Gender Studies [variable titles, 3-4 credits]: Addresses particular problems or topics arising within interdisciplinary gender studies at an advanced research-oriented level. Topics for each offering of the seminar are chosen according to instructor expertise and are rotated regularly. Students design and complete original research projects in light of seminar themes and assessments of existing scholarship.

 

G700 Sexualized Genders/Gendered Sexualities This course engages students with complex debates around sex, gender, sexuality, and the body that push beyond binary models reliant on a simple "nature/culture"distinction. Drawing heavily on queer theory, sexuality studies, and trans theory, we scrutinize the collision, intersection, and interaction between theories of gender and theories of sexuality. Rather than attempt to "bring it all together,"we will instead provoke continued debate about the complicated relationship between gender, gendered identities, sexuality, sexual "identities,"racialized bodies and identities and forms of power and coercion.

 

G704 Cultural Politics and Twentieth Century Sexuality This course interrogates the complex relationships among and developments in sex research, sex reform, sexual behavior and cultural politics in the United States and comparable countries during the twentieth century, through the exploration of the writings of key reformers, researchers, scholars, and popularizers of changed understandings of sexuality.

 

G705 Sex Differences in Life Cycles Compares and contrasts differently gendered experiences, options, and identities at key phases of development through life cycles. Evaluates competing explanations of life cycle variations, with special attention to race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, demographic factors, family forms, and cross-cultural differences.

 

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G707 Social Change and Knowledge in Feminist Theory Explores feminist uses of knowledge in order to effect social change, surveying some of the key texts that exemplify the complexities of feminism's relationship to democratic political theory, society, culture, and education since Mary Wollstonecraft [1792]. The course may examine generational issues in academic feminism, popular feminism's critique of women's/gender studies, the history of feminism in the academy, contemporary curricular change in women's/gender studies, race and gender in feminist pedagogy, postmodern challenges to feminism, and/or feminist conceptions of political action and political organization.

 

G708 Contested Masculinities This course examines masculinity at sites of contestation -- between disciplines, historical moments, nationalities, regions and bodily ontologies. By tracing the resonances of transnational, transdisciplinary, and transhistorical masculinities, our aim is to critically examine masculinities, particularly in the context of feminist challenges to hegemonic and violative gender ideologies.

 

G710 Gender, Medicine and the Body Examines interdisciplinary topics related to medicine and the body as they interact with gender. Theoretical works are positioned against primary texts, the latter drawn from both fiction and non-fiction works, which may be drawn from both Western and non-Western cultural traditions. Variable offerings of the course address particular topics of interest and research controversy, such as hormone replacement therapies, gender associated cancers, contraception, sexual dysfunction therapies, eating disorders, psychiatric illness, geriatric conditions, and other related subjects.

 

G718 Transnational Feminisms and the Politics of Globalization This course interrogates recent interventions into the debates around globalization and gender, focusing on how gender plays out in the flows of money, people, and culture that characterize "globalization." In what ways is migration a gendered experience? How does gender become configured by geographic dislocations and re-routings? How are women and men differently situated as agents and subjects of global change?

 

G719 Sexuality and Citizenship in the Age of Visibility Examines the intersections between concepts of citizenship and gendered and sexed identities in a climate where sexual minorities are increasingly visible and "spectacularized." Focus will be on the transition from abject and invisible minority to increasing engagement in the everyday fabric of cultural life - both nationally and internationally.

 

G720 Research Seminar in Gender Studies Undertakes an in-depth study of a particular theme, issue, problem, theorist(s) or debate within research and scholarship related to gender and/or feminism. Students design assignments and original research projects according to interest and undertake further research related to the seminar's questions and discussions.

 

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Topics of Past Graduate Seminars:

 

* Women, Sexuality, and Health: Research Issues and Policy Implications

* Gender and Sexuality in Modern North African and Middle Eastern Narrative

* Gender Medicine and the Body- East and West

* Feminism, Sexuality, and Cultural Politics

* Women in Modern British History

* Writing Women in Early Modern England

* Gender, Religion, and the Body in 19th Century England

* Feminist Studies and Ethnographic Practice

* The Culture of Disability: Gender, Medicine, and Society

* Gender and Diversity Issues in Art and Education

* Foundations of Feminist Art: History, Philosophy, and Context

* Ethnography of the U.S.

* Law, Sex, and Scandal: The Lewinsky Affair

* Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Early 20th Century American Social Science

* Gender in the Victorian Age

* Law and Culture

* Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Early American Social Science

* Feminism Between Women's Suffrage and the Pill

* Gender and Comic Strips

* Aesthetics and Gender

* Masculinities in Early America

* Contraception, Gender, & Culture

 

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