01:988:317:01, Index 99051, GENDER & CONSUMPTIONS

MTWTHF 1:00 - 4:25 p.m., Murray Hall - 212, CAC

Instructor:  Stina Soderling

What is a commodity? How are goods feminized? Why do we buy things? These are some of the questions that we will investigate in this course. Through readings, classroom exercises, and mini-fieldtrips, we will explore various forms of consumption, including shopping, eating, and sex work. Sources will include not only texts and documentaries, but also your own observations and interviews. At the end of the course, you will write a research paper drawing on what you have studied.

01:988:318:01, Index 99023, THE GENDERED BODY

MTWTHF 1:00 - 4:25 p.m., Murray Hall - 213, CAC

Instructor:  Debotri Dhar

This course is designed to enable an exploration of the gendered ways in which 'the body' is constructed in society and across cultures. We will examine scientific, social, political, economic and literary perspectives on gendering the body, tracing how gender intersects with race, class and other social markers to produce complex bodies-as-effect. Instead of assuming the body to be a natural given, the course therefore looks at how the material body and its discursive regimes are mutually constitutive.

How have male and female bodies been framed as ‘different’ in science, and what does it tell us about the nature of scientific ‘evidence’ as opposed, for instance, to the philosophical in ‘making’ the body? What do we mean by the lived body, the dis/abled body, the body of ‘lack’ and of ‘excess’, the desiring body, the body as performance? How is the body imag(in)ed as the nation, and deployed in contemporary global and nation-state politics? How are bodies gendered by economic hegemonies and neo-liberal discourse? How might these understandings impact upon the aesthetic body, the body in art, the body as spoken/written in language, the body-as-text? We will examine some of these questions through a feminist lens, using theoretical and analytical texts, film, art, fiction and poetry.

01:988:490:01, Index 99206, SEMINAR:  WOMEN & CONTEMPORARY ISSUES - ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

MTWTHF 1:00 - 4:25 p.m., Murray Hall - 210, CAC

Instructor:  Ari Rotramel

This seminar explores contemporary women’s efforts to promote environmental justice as grassroots activists, researchers, and theorists. During the course, students develop a familiarity with environmental justice activists’ work in the interstices of race, class, nation as well as gender.