Courses

Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary program focused on understanding the impact of gender and sexuality on the world around us and on the power hierarchies that structure it. This course provides an overview of key concepts, questions, and debates within feminist studies both locally and globally, focusing mainly on the experiences, historical conditions, and concerns of women as they are shaped by gender and sexuality. We will read a variety of texts--personal narratives, historical documents, and cultural criticism--across a range of disciplines, and will consider how larger structural systems of both privilege and oppression affect individuals' identities, experiences, and options. We will also examine forms of agency and action taken by women in the face of these larger systems.

Full details for FGSS 2010 - Introduction to Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

This course centers Black women who have often described their reproductive health experiences as "fighting for our lives." While grounded in an exploration of Black women 's experiences in the US, this course also looks across the diaspora to issues of access, rights, and equity in reproductive health. Deeply inspired by the field of Black Feminist Health Science Studies, a field that advocates for the centrality of activism in healthcare and its importance for Black women's overall health and well-being, this course examines how issues of gender, race, class, ability, and power intersect to inform how reproductive health is conceptualized, practiced, and experienced. Ultimately, this course will yield a deeper understanding of how Black women have transformed existential and literal threats on their lives into a robust terrain of community-based activism and a movement for reproductive justice. We will read across a range of texts and genres from the historical and theoretical, to memoir and documentary. With what we learn together, we will craft contributions to public debates around healthcare issues impacting Black women.

Full details for FGSS 2023 - Fighting for Our Lives: Black Women's Reproductive Health and Activism in Historical Perspective

The Middle Ages are usually imagined as a time of manly men and feminine women: no room for gender ambiguity in Conan the Barbarian! Yet gender, then as now, was in fact unstable, multiple, and above all, constructed. This course explores the different ways masculinity was understood, manufactured, and manipulated in northern Europe – primarily early Ireland, England, and Scandinavia – using a variety of literary, legal, historical, archaeological, and artistic sources. Students will gain new perspectives on both gender and sex, on the one hand, and the history of medieval Europe, on the other.

Full details for FGSS 2082 - Of Ice and Men: Masculinities in the Medieval North

Japanese pop culture—anime, manga, video games, music and more—has been a major phenomenon with massive worldwide popularity for the last three decades. In this course, we will explore a wide range of Japanese pop cultural forms, exploring the interactions between different media, Japanese pop culture as global pop culture, and a variety of modes of analyzing visual and audio materials. We will also see how pop cultural works themselves, in their content and form, engage with questions of gender, technology, fandom, nation, and the environment. No prior knowledge of Japanese language, culture, or history required. All readings and screenings will be available in English or with English subtitles.

Full details for FGSS 2260 - Japanese Pop Culture

This course offers an introduction to central issues, debates, and theories that characterize the field of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Studies. Starting from the assumption that neither "sex" nor "sexuality" is a private experience or category, we will explore some of the ways that these powerfully public and political terms have circulated in social, legal, economic, and cultural spheres. We will also examine how these categories are situated in relation to other formative categories including race, ethnicity, religion, family, marriage, reproduction, the economy, and the state. Using a comparative and intersectional approach, we will read from various disciplines to assess the tools that LGBT studies offers for understanding power and culture in our contemporary world.

Full details for FGSS 2290 - Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

Medicine has become the language and practice through which we address a broad range of both individual and societal complaints. Interest in this medicalization of life may be one of the reasons that medical anthropology is currently the fastest-growing subfield in anthropology. This course encourages students to examine concepts of disease, suffering, health, and well-being in their immediate experience and beyond. In the process, students will gain a working knowledge of ecological, critical, phenomenological, and applied approaches used by medical anthropologists. We will investigate what is involved in becoming a doctor, the sociality of medicines, controversies over new medical technologies, and the politics of medical knowledge. The universality of biomedicine, or hospital medicine, will not be taken for granted, but rather we will examine the plurality generated by the various political, economic, social, and ethical demands under which biomedicine has developed in different places and at different times. In addition, biomedical healing and expertise will be viewed in relation to other kinds of healing and expertise. Our readings will address medicine in North America as well as other parts of the world. In class, our discussions will return regularly to consider the broad diversity of kinds of medicine throughout the world, as well as the specific historical and local contexts of biomedicine.

Full details for FGSS 2468 - Medicine, Culture, and Society

This course focuses on the human condition of Chinese women after 1949. In the name of the Women's liberation movement since the early 1900s, do Chinese women eventually hold up the half sky? From the cradle to the grave, what was most challenging in women's life? How did political, economic, and cultural forces frame women's professional careers and private life? No judgments nor imaginations. Using multi-media, such as Chinese independent documentary films, music, and photographs, students will discover the hidden stories behind the mainstream narratives. Workshops with film directors, pop music singers, and photographers offer students an unusual way of accessing all backstage field experiences.

Full details for FGSS 2575 - Tyranny and Dignity: Chinese Women from the Cultural Revolution to the White Paper Revolution

This course introduces students to ancient Greek drama, with a particular focus on the genre of tragedy and its relation to the cultural, political, and performance context of Athens in the 5th century BC. Students will read plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in English translation and explore how they address key themes such as gender, racialization, slavery, war, mourning, trauma, empathy, and justice. Students will also study how contemporary artists, writers, and communities have adapted and restaged Greek drama, transforming and animating these ancient scripts across various media (theater, film, literature, etc.) to speak to complex and urgent social issues today (e.g., state/institutional violence; sexual violence; racism and xenophobia; queer bodies and desires; mental health; disability and caregiving).

Full details for FGSS 2652 - Ancient Greek Drama

This course presents a cultural and historical perspective on ideas of agency, responsibility, and punishment through foundational texts of western law. We will primarily focus on three main areas of law: (1) slavery and (2) family (both governed by the Roman law of persons), and (3) civil wrongs (the law of delict or culpable harm). Through an examination of the legal sources (in translation) and the study of the reasoning of the Roman jurists, this course will examine the evolution of jurisprudence: the development of the laws concerning power over slaves and women, and changes in the laws concerning penalties for crimes. No specific prior knowledge needed.

Full details for FGSS 2806 - Roman Law

Why are boys more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism, and why are women more likely than men to be diagnosed with depression? Are there different "gay" and "straight" brains? And how does brain science interact with gender and sexuality in popular debate? Reading and discussing the original scientific papers and related critical texts, we will delve into the neuroscience of gender. In this course, we will delve into the neuroscience of gender difference. Reading the original scientific papers and related critical texts, we will ask whether we can find measurable physical differences in male and female brains, and what these differences might be. Do men and women solve spatial puzzles differently, as measured physiologically? Do nonhuman animals display sex-specific behaviors mediated by brain structure, and can we extrapolate these findings to human behavior? Why are boys three times more likely than girls to be diagnosed as autistic, and is there any connection between the predominantly male phenomenon of autism and other stereotypically male mental traits? Are there physical representations of sexual orientation in the brain, and how are these related to gender identity? And how are scientific studies represented and misrepresented in popular debate?

Full details for FGSS 3210 - Gender and the Brain

This course examines the ways in which sex and gender impact the expression of severe psychopathology. We will study biological, psychological, and cultural factors associated with sex and gender as they influence the epidemiology, phenomenology, etiology, diagnosis, and course of illness in major forms of psychopathology: specifically, schizophrenia, major affective illness, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and personality disorders. We will also examine the complicated roles of race, class, sexuality, and gender identity as they relate to these conditions. These topics will be examined through the frameworks of psychological science and feminism in an attempt to understand the effects that gender and science have on one another and the ways in which they influence the understanding of mental illness.

Full details for FGSS 3320 - Gender and Psychopathology

"My existence is a scandal," Oscar Wilde once wrote, summing up in an epigram the effect of his carefully cultivated style of perversity and paradox. Through their celebration of "art for art's sake" and all that was considered artificial, unnatural, or obscene, the Decadent writers of the late-nineteenth century sought to free the pleasures of beauty, spirituality, and sexual desire from their more conventional ethical moorings. We will focus on the literature of the period, including works by Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, A. C. Swinburne, and especially Oscar Wilde, and we will also consider related developments in aesthetic philosophy, painting, music, theater, architecture, and design.

Full details for FGSS 3550 - Decadence

This course will examine the range of issues surrounding the experience of gender in the modern workplace. Topics may include the historical role of women in the workplace; sex segregation in the workplace; norms of masculinity; the intersectionality of issues including race, lgbtq, and disability; gendered legal issues; work-family issues; pay equity; gender discrimination; harassment and bullying; union representation; and many others. Students will be exposed to both research and practical applications of various topics. This class will have a different guest speaker each week. Each speaker will assign readings for their topic, to be read before their class meeting.

Full details for FGSS 3820 - The Gendered Workplace

Individual study program intended for juniors and seniors working on special topics with selected reading or research projects not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with a FGSS faculty member who has agreed to supervise the independent study.

Full details for FGSS 3991 - Undergraduate Independent Study

This senior seminar constitutes the culmination of the FGSS major-it provides a unique opportunity to come together with all the other FGSS seniors to both put to use what has been learned and explore new aspects of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. In this particular seminar, we will attempt to answer, in short, the question of what it means to be a feminist today, at this point in time and place. Pursuing the intersections of theory and practice, we will explore issues and concerns in the areas that you have identified as central to your concept and/or critique of feminism.

Full details for FGSS 4000 - Senior Seminar in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

What does it mean to be Black and Indigenous? For much of United States history, at least, to be Black and Indigenous was a legal if not social impossibility. Even as societies around the world have embraced the pluralism of multiraciality Black-Indigenous peoples have found themselves largely absent from both historical and contemporary conversations surrounding blackness and indigeneity. This course does the important work of excavating the histories of Black and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. We will do so by examining case studies alongside the writing and artwork of Black-Indigenous figures in order to understand more about the relationships, politics, and meanings of Black-Indigenous identity.

Full details for FGSS 4023 - Black and Indigenous Histories

A recognition of the importance of intersectionality has become increasingly key to not only understand the complexity of social identity and lived experience, but to combat discrimination and oppression. While the course has a centering focus on the disability experience-in part because of the way in which disability is often left out of intersectional considerations-it will reveal how the economic, legal, and political structures of power and privilege that disadvantage people with disabilities cannot be looked at on a disability-specific basis alone. Thus we will give necessary attention to the disability experience as it overlaps and connects with lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and citizenship, among others. In looking particularly at the realms of employment, education, the law, and health care, we will explore the efficacy of legal and policy initiatives that are already in place, and in doing so, strongly consider the growing need for, and value of, intersectional approaches to discrimination and oppression.                                                       

Full details for FGSS 4035 - Intersectional Disability Studies

Visions of bodily corruption preoccupy ruler and ruled alike and prompt campaigns for moral, medical, and legal reform in periods of both stability and revolution. This seminar explores the links between political, sexual, and scientific revolutions in early modern and modern Asia. The focus is on China and Japan, with secondary attention to South Asia and Korea. Interaction with the West is a major theme. Topics include disease control, birth control and population control, body modification, the history of masculinity, honorific violence and sexual violence, the science of sex, normative and stigmatized sexualities, fashion, disability, and eugenics. The course begins with an exploration of regimes of the body in "traditional" Asian cultures. The course then turns to the medicalization and modernization of the body under the major rival political movements in Asia: feminism, imperialism, nationalism, and communism.

Full details for FGSS 4127 - The Body Politic in Asia

Full details for FGSS 4261 - Topics in 20th C. Philosophy

What are the poetics and politics of ethnographic writing? How is this genre, what many would call the signature of cultural anthropology, distinct from other modes of scholarly writing? What are its possibilities, limits and effects? In this course we will read classic and experimental ethnographies and undertake exercises in ethnographic writing as a means to investigate ethnography as epistemology, genre and craft.

Full details for FGSS 4418 - Writing Ethnography: Theory, Genre and Practice

This seminar will investigate the narrative uses of history and memory in US fiction, focusing particularly on the impact of gender on these representations. How do US writers use history in their fiction, and to what ends? What are the effects on drawing on received historical narratives? What challenges does the attempt to represent a historical event pose for a writer of fiction and how might the author negotiate those challenges? Is History a gendered category and, if so, would "male" and "female" and "trans" histories be narrated differently? We will look at the effects of constructing one's own history to fill a void in the received historical narrative, exploring the relationship between history (or History) and memory as well as the fictional representations of that relationship.

Full details for FGSS 4521 - Gender, Memory, and History in Twentieth Century Fiction

This advanced seminar centers underthought fissures within the field of Trans Studies. These fissures take the form of failed crossings between incommensurable positions. We will examine: the vexed relation between queer theory and Trans Studies, between the field's analytic of  "transing" and its originary focus on transgender people, between the specific violence faced by Black trans women and the possibility that Blackness itself might be para-ontologically trans; between turns to historical materialism and to new materialism, between understandings of gendered selfhood in the West and in the non-West; and between transmasculine and transfeminine experiences and heuristics. This seminar encourages students to view such failed crossings as generative sites in which future scholarship might take root.

Full details for FGSS 4688 - Trans Studies at a Crossroads

Seemingly timeless concepts of natural sex and gender have a history. In fact, they have many histories, some of which are only just starting to be written. This class examines the relationship between the (human and non-human) natural world and concepts of sex-gender variance in pre- modernity. It asks: How might crossing pre-modern conceptions of sex and gender with those of our contemporary moment lead us to approach cultural objects from the past differently? And what can pre-modern sources reveal about the histories behind the sex-gender diversity of today's natural world? We will pursue these questions through readings of contemporary scholarly literature on the topic and through the analysis of historical examples comprised of visual and textual materials studied in translation.

Full details for FGSS 4689 - Sex, Gender, and the Natural World in Medieval Culture

To graduate with honors, FGSS majors must complete a senior thesis under the supervision of an FGSS faculty member and defend that thesis orally before an honors committee. To be eligible for honors, students must have at least a cumulative GPA of 3.3 in all course work and a 3.5 average in all courses applying to their FGSS major. Students interested in the honors program should consult the DUS late in the spring semester of their junior year or very early in the fall semester of their senior year.

Full details for FGSS 4991 - Senior Honors Thesis II

Visions of bodily corruption preoccupy ruler and ruled alike and prompt campaigns for moral, medical, and legal reform in periods of both stability and revolution. This seminar explores the links between political, sexual, and scientific revolutions in early modern and modern Asia. The focus is on China and Japan, with secondary attention to South Asia and Korea. Interaction with the West is a major theme. Topics include disease control, birth control and population control, body modification, the history of masculinity, honorific violence and sexual violence, the science of sex, normative and stigmatized sexualities, fashion, disability, and eugenics. The course begins with an exploration of regimes of the body in "traditional" Asian cultures. The course then turns to the medicalization and modernization of the body under the major rival political movements in Asia: feminism, imperialism, nationalism, and communism.

Full details for FGSS 6127 - The Body Politic in Asia

This graduate seminar examines Asian American racialization, gender, and sexuality. Q & A marks several meanings, the first being the intersectional subjectivity of Queer and Asian. Q & A also signals the questions and answers that emanate from queer and Asian considerations. How might we view "queer" and "Asian" within multiply entangled intellectual genealogies, political formations, and relational socialities? Where is the queer within Asian American studies, and what horizon of possibilities is afforded by a queering of Asian American studies? Conversely, how does Asian racialization complicate queer studies, particularly in engagement with or in addition to queer of color critique? Beyond, how might we locate queer Asian influences in fields of study including disability studies, performance studies, and environmental studies?

Full details for FGSS 6633 - Q and A: Asian American Gender and Sexuality

This advanced seminar centers underthought fissures within the field of Trans Studies. These fissures take the form of failed crossings between incommensurable positions. We will examine: the vexed relation between queer theory and Trans Studies, between the field's analytic of  "transing" and its originary focus on transgender people, between the specific violence faced by Black trans women and the possibility that Blackness itself might be para-ontologically trans; between turns to historical materialism and to new materialism, between understandings of gendered selfhood in the West and in the non-West; and between transmasculine and transfeminine experiences and heuristics. This seminar encourages students to view such failed crossings as generative sites in which future scholarship might take root.

Full details for FGSS 6688 - Trans Studies at a Crossroads

Seemingly timeless concepts of natural sex and gender have a history. In fact, they have many histories, some of which are only just starting to be written. This class examines the relationship between the (human and non-human) natural world and concepts of sex-gender variance in pre- modernity. It asks: How might crossing pre-modern conceptions of sex and gender with those of our contemporary moment lead us to approach cultural objects from the past differently? And what can pre-modern sources reveal about the histories behind the sex-gender diversity of today's natural world? We will pursue these questions through readings of contemporary scholarly literature on the topic and through the analysis of historical examples comprised of visual and textual materials studied in translation.

Full details for FGSS 6689 - Sex, Gender, and the Natural World in Medieval Culture

This course offers an introduction to theoretical and practical aspects of the interdisciplinary field of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, providing graduate students with a range of disciplinary approaches and issues. We will explore both the disciplinary specifics of FGSS scholarship and the interdisciplinary breadth of gender/sexuality's reach as an analytic lens. While many of our graduate courses train students in highly specialized areas of feminist theory, this course aims to teach students how to find common intellectual ground from interdisciplinary perspectives without sacrificing the complexity of any disciplinary approach.

Full details for FGSS 6880 - Proseminar in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Independent reading course for graduate students on topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students develop a course of readings in consultation with a faculty member in the field of Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies who has agreed to supervise the course work.

Full details for FGSS 6990 - Topics in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

What are the poetics and politics of ethnographic writing? How is this genre, what many would call the signature of cultural anthropology, distinct from other modes of scholarly writing? What are its possibilities, limits and effects? In this course we will read classic and experimental ethnographies and undertake exercises in ethnographic writing as a means to investigate ethnography as epistemology, genre and craft.

Full details for FGSS 7418 - Writing Ethnography: Theory, Genre and Practice