988:101

Women, Culture, and Society

Study of women's lives as they very within a culture and across cultures. Differences according to sex, gender, class, ethnicity and age examined.

988:130

Knowledge & Power : Issues in Women's Leadership

Study of gender, in the construction of knowledge in different fields and the factors that encourage women to achieve agency and leadership.

988:160

Women Working in the Global Economy: Feminist Perspectives

988:201

Feminist Practices
Examines development of women's and gender studies as interdisciplinary field of study; explores relationship of feminist scholarship to activism; introduces students to basic research techniques. Required for major.

988:202

Gender, Culture, and Representation
Examines how gender is represented in cultural texts and artifacts, introduces students to theories of representation.

988:235

Dynamics of Class, Race, and Sex
Examination of dynamics of, and connections among, classism, racism, and sexism in contemporary American society; ways they influence and are influenced by the structure of society at large; their effect on individuals; strategies of personal and social change.

988:240

Gender and Science
Role of gender, race, and class in production and use of scientific and medical knowledge. Impact of gender bias on research in the life, physical and social sciences.

988:250

Feminist Perspectives

Feminist examination of significant contemporary issues. The issue chosen will vary each year. Students should check the department's website for information. Issues to be considered include war, trafficking, poverty, environment, migration, globalization, religion.

988:255

Gender, Art & Society - Online Course

Woman artists, their achievements and impact. Social and cultural reasons for their neglect in the visual arts and how that neglect is being remedied today. Different ways in which men and women are depicted in art and how those differences relate to culture and society. Please note that this is a online course.

988:260

The Modern Girl

Course examines the so-called "modern girl" of the 1920s and 1930s and considers her complicated relationship to a new "modern" lifestyle. It analyzes how the modern girl was represented in fiction, film, and advertisement. Course concentrates on the West with comparative evidence from Asia and Africa.

988:270

War: Critical Perspectives

Critical examination of the nature, functions, and effects of war with particular attention to racialized and gendered dynamics of militarization, terrorism, counter-terrorism, and genocide.

Introduction to Critical Study of Masculinities

Interdisciplinary and comparative introduction to te study of masculinities in the United States. Includes social history, and analyses of contemporary national and international contexts.

988:285

Lesbians and Gay Men and Society
Introduction to various disciplines' contributions to understanding the relationship of homosexuality, particularly lesbianism, to society. Includes a section on the political organization and recent theory coming out of the gay movement.

988:290

Introduction to Critical Sexuality Studies

988:299

Mentoring Leadership & Practices

Explores meaning of women's leadership, knowledge and power through the mentor experiences. Topics incude how gender shapes knowledge and power; the challenges women's colleges present to orthodox conceptions of leadership; practical and theoretical application of feminst pedagogies.

988:301

Feminist Theory: Historical Provocations
(Pre-req: 988:101 or 235)
Introduces students to feminist theories about women, sex, gender, sexuality, embodiment, politics, social relations, examines feminist theories challenge to Western literary, philosophical, and scientific traditions.

988:302

Feminist Theory: Contemporary Engagements
(Pre-req: 988:101 or 235)
Introduces basic concepts central to contemporary feminist thought, and explores the critical, productive relationship between feminist and patriarchal theory.

988:303

Contemporary Feminisms
(Pre-req: 988:101 or 235)
Compares the development of feminist writing in several historical periods across different cultures.

988:307

Women and the Law
Areas of law that regulate the position of women, including birth control, abortion, marriage, alimony, child support and custody, child care, education, employment, criminal law (including rape, prostitution, women in prison, and the juvenile justice system), and constitutional rights. Readings include court decisions and statutes.

988:310

South Asian Feminism
Women's activism in South Asia in autonomous feminist movements, as participants in organized political movements, and in family and community.

988:312

African Feminism
What feminism means to Africa; how gender affects female socialization, women as state subjects, how diverse African feminist strategies differ from and/or parallel other feminisms.

988:317

Gender and Consumption
Introduces feminist approaches to consumption through readings that examine the relation of consumption to body, race, nation, sex, and work.

988:318

The Gendered Body
Explores the processes by which the body is gendered in different cultures. How is the relationship between physical body, gender and sexuality forged?

988:321

Queer Contexts: Same Sex Desire, Culture, and Representation
Cultural construction and representation of same-sex desire in Western societies. Debates about identity, subjectivity, and the uses of experience included.

988:326

Psychology of Women and Gender
Evaluation of some major psychological conceptualizations of women in light of current research. The bases for these formulations and their influence on the position of women today.

988:329

Race, Gender, Nation
Feminist theories about race, gender, and nation. Focuses on U.S. nation formation, gender and American nationalism, and U.S. hegemony in a globalizing world.

988:330

Memoir and Autobiography
Involves intensive and extensive reading of several women's memoirs, all written within the last 50 years.

988:331

Theorizing Gender and Sexuality
Examines how sexuality and gender became meaningful categories in Western culture through the emergence of sexual politics and queer theory.

988:332

The Color of AIDS: The Politics of Race During the AIDS Crisis
Focuses on AIDS crisis, explores relationships between illness, race, ethnicity and gender in health policy, research and care for communities of color.

988:333

Power, Subjectivity and Resistance in US & Globally
Examins development of feminist concepts of power and the relations between feminist and patriarchal theories.

988:338

Transnational Sexualities

Considers how globalization alters conceptualizations of sexuality and its relationship to gender. Issues include global, diasporic, and postcolonial gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender activism, tourism and travel, HIV/AIDS organization, "sexual rights" discourses, sex work, and asylum based on gender and sexual orientation.

988:339

Research on Sexuality (Pre-req: 988:280)
Historical, cross-cultural and multidisciplinary approaches to sexuality research. Social, moral and political meanings of sexuality in U.S. and transnational contexts. Current issues and debates around sexual norms.

988:341

Gender & Popular Culture
Use of varied theoretical approaches to examine how popular culture texts shape everyday perceptions of race, gender, family, nation. Texts including film, television, radio.

988:344

Women and Leadership
Course explores women's leadership for social change at work, in politics, communities, and the household in a variety of historical and contemporary meetings. By special permission of instructor. Students for this course must have applied and been accepted into the IWL Leadership Scholars Program.

988:350

Gender and Spirituality
This class explores women's spirituality, feminist theology, and spiritual systems from around the world. How are spiritual systems and practices gendered?

988:368

Producing Identities : Race, Gender, Class and Sexualities
Social constitution of the self and communities through emergence and transformation of concepts and categories (race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality) associated with personal identity.

988:369

Feminism, Space, and Visuality
Examines how space and vision have been associated with historically developed concepts of femininity and masculinity.

988:370

Critical Feminist Investigation
(pre-req: 988:201)
Introduces modes of knowledge production, research methods, and strategies for interdisciplinary feminist scholarship. Required for students pursuing Honors in Women's and Gender Studies.

988:371

Making Change
In-depth analysis of different ways women have organized for change. Focus on three or four case studies using cross-cultural perspectives to illustrate various themes of gender and collective action by women.

988:372

Contemporary Feminist Activism
Autonomous women's movements in the 20th and 21st centuries. Selected case studies to illustrate themes of gender and collective action.

988:387

Feminism, Signs & Representation
Introduces major theories in contemporary critical theory including structuralism, recent critiques of structuralism, focuses on the models and criteria to analyze cultural and social life.

988:392

Thinking Bodies
Examines work of theorists questioning the subordination of body to mind in modern Western Thought.

988:394

Black Women in the United States

Examines cultural stereotypes, political, economic, social challenges confronting black women in the U.S. and strategies of resistance developed by black women.

988:395

Race, Gender, Media, and the Law

Considers relationship between gender, law, and race in contemporary popular and political culture. Addresses impact of rise in televised court cases on preceptions of legal system and in stimulating public debates about justice.

988:396

Topics in Women's & Gender Studies
Selected topics in women's and gender studies. Topics vary each term. Consult department.

988:397

Freud & Feminism 1 - Sexuality

Introduces Freudian concepts, methods and terminology, and the corresponding issues and debates in feminist theory.

988:398

Freud & Feminism 2 - The Unconscious
Examines Freud's account of unconscious and its relevance to theories of subjectivity, especially to feminist throy and antiracist theory.

988:399

Service Learning Internship
Community service placement in women's studies and gender studies. Corequisite: Must be taken in conjunction with a designated CASE (Citizenship and Service Education) course offered in the women's and gender studies program.

988:405

Gender and Human Rights
Examines history and discourse of women’s human rights; uses of humanitarian law in wartime; issues of gender-based violence, health, and sexuality.

988:406

Women, Work, and Social Change
Study of problems faced by women working in industry, unions, the home, and professions in light of modern agitation and social trends; analysis of sex-differentiated occupations, legislation, and service roles with attention to biological, psychological, and social differences between the sexes.

988: 407

Women’s Global Health Movements

Informed by the history of the International Women and Health Meetings (IWHMs), this course investigates the political vision and organizational structure for women’s health movements around the world. It contrasts early strategies driven by coalitions of activists from the North, which focused on reproductive rights, self-help, and a definition of health based largely in the physiology of women’s bodies with approaches advanced by activists from the global South, which attend to the social, cultural, and economic factors that affect women’s access to the most basic healthcare.  This course examines how and why contemporary feminist conceptions of health are grounded in a comprehensive framework attentive to international power dynamics, globalization, macroeconomic policy, national and global poverty, conflict and war, and debt crises in various countries.  Beginning with an overview of women’s contemporary health challenges, the class then analyzes the political tactics and strategies women have devised to secure access to healthcare for themselves, their families, households and communities.  Introducing students to the global institutions, organizations, and policies that impact health, course material also traces  how women’s nongovernmental organizations have attempted to transform existing institutions and policies of global health governance to enable women in all regions of the world to lead physiologically, psychologically, and emotionally healthier, more dignified lives.

988:408

Impacts of Economic Inequality on Women’s Health

988:409

The Growth Imperative, Global Ecology, and Women’s Health

Over the past half-century, scholars have debated the relationship between the quest for “endless growth”--capital accumulation on a global scale--and resource exhaustion.  This course situates women’s health in the context of these debates, investigating the health consequences of environmental crises linked to various market-based development strategies and technological innovations.  Analyzing externalized business costs in the currency of human health, the course investigates illness caused by toxic industrial products and byproducts, injury from resource extraction processes such as nuclear fission and deep-water oil drilling, the manifold health hazards stemming from violent conflict over control of scarce resources in postcolonial states, and dangers that attend dislocation resulting from climate change.

988:410

Debt, Crisis, and Women’s Health

Growing national debt has become a feature of increasing numbers of nations over the past 60 years, heightening dependence on international financial institutions and restricting the sphere of freedom of national policy makers. Health care provision has been subjected to severe cuts as nations struggle to meet their debt obligations and stabilize their economies. Framing ongoing global economic crisis as a consequence of excess rather than scarcity, this course unsettles the conventional moral calculus of credit and debt, exploring the relationship between debt and economic crisis, and examining the impacts of austerity policies on women’s health.  Comparing experiences of nations in various regions of the world, the course considers the effects of continued borrowing to pay debt interest on humanitarian concerns.  In particular, the course analyzes who suffers for the sake of debt repayment and the magnitude of that gendered suffering in highly leveraged societies.

988:411

Gendered Health Impacts of Structural Adjustment Programs

Since the 1980s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have conditioned loans to poor countries on implementation of economic policy requirements known collectively as structural adjustment.  Liberalizing trade, increasing export manufacturing, shifting from subsistence to export-oriented agriculture, and privatizing national assets and industries have been hallmarks of structural adjustment policies.  This course considers the gendered effects of structural adjustment.  It investigates why women are over-represented among those most negatively affected by cuts in public services, how their caretaking burdens increase and their paid employment decreases disproportionately with privatization.  Comparing experiences in the global South with more recent developments in the European Union, this course provides a gendered analysis of the global health impacts of structural adjustment programs.

988:412

Health Consequences of Global Trade in Food Commodities

Close to one billion people suffer from malnutrition and many more from food deprivation in the 21^st century.  As neoliberal trade policies have restructured national economies, new speculation in global commodities markets has limited access to food by the poor.  This course investigates shifting modes of food production as local practices of subsistence agriculture have been replaced by export agriculture and global commodities markets.  The course compares the consequences of these changes for women as consumers in the global North as well as for women as producers of subsistence in the global South.   Examining impacts of global commodities markets on food distribution, diet, and health, the course also analyzes the health effects of the creation of consumer markets for processed foods. 

988:413

Health Consequences of Global Trade in Pharmaceuticals

Multinational pharmaceutical companies remain the primary developers of new drug regimens.  The health effects of drug research and development, however, vary markedly from one region of the world to another.  This course explores the political economy of the global pharmaceutical industry, analyzing the geopolitical distribution of burdens and benefits.  It examines ethical issues such as clinical trials on populations in the Global South,  continuing sales of drugs across the Global South after they have been banned in the North,  disproportionate investment in drugs for minor health problems while serious diseases affecting the poor remain insufficiently studied; inadequate vaccine development and manufacture; restrictions on the distribution of life-saving generic drugs in third world countries; overuse of antibiotics and the emergence of  antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the role of pharmaceutical lobby in influencing healthcare within particular nations.

988:414

Gendered Professions and the Transnational Care Economy

Nursing and teaching—two women-dominated professions—lie at the heart of the “care economy.”  Involving work that requires intensive physical labor, person-to-person communication, and spatial proximity, the intimate nature of care work resists mechanization.  In contrast to the production of commodities, the highly personalized labor of care is driven by human need rather than profit maximization.  This course provides an overview of distinctive gendered professions whose object of labor is the human subject.  In nursing and teaching, skill entails the effective exercise of professional judgment.  Focused on the cultivation and preservation of human capacities, this professional labor resists routinization and automation.  In addition to examining the distinctive nature of these caring professions, the course explores recent efforts to heighten the profit-making potential of the care economy, and it considers the long-term implications of efforts to deskill and outsource care work.

988:416

Special Topics in Women’s Global Health

Topic varies with instructor.

Including gender analysis in health studies is a recent phenomenon.  The NIH, for example, only began including women in clinical trials in the mid-1980s and only began disaggregating research findings by gender in the early 1990s (when mandated to do so by the Women’s Health Equity Act). Globally, women’s health became a subject of intensive concern only the aftermath of the 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development. Capitalizing on Rutgers strength in feminist science studies, feminist international political economy, and women’s leadership, the proposed certificate program offers an innovative approach to the study of women’s global health that incorporates social, political, economic, and environmental issues as well as women’s mobilizations across the world to address those issues.

988:422

Internship in Women's & Gender Studies (permission of undergraduate director required)
Students work in organizations related to women's and gender studies. Supervision by assigned staff at the placement. Paper, student journal, and assessment of work performed at placement required.

988:425

Internship in Women's & Gender Studies
(permission of undergraduate director required)
Interns work in organizations related to women's studies. Supervision by assigned staff at the placement site. Seminar, student journal, paper, and assessment of work experience required.

988:426

Internship for IWL Leadership
(Pre-req: Acceptance into IWL Leadership Scholars Program and 988:344 or by permission of instructor.) Examination of women, community activism, and leadership for social change; explores how women's leadership shapes organization, social movements, and policy development. Interns work in placements relevant to their policy interests, and produce proposals for social action projects.

988:429

Engendering Development
Examines gender differences in economic opportunity, human rights and political representation across developing countries.

988:430

IWL Social Action Project (BA)
Independent action projects designed to address a particular problem or women's policy issue relevant to the work done at the internship site. Projects include a gender component and development of leadership skills. Class meets bi-weekly.

This course IS NOT accepted to fulfill any of the major/minor requirements.

988:480

Ethics and Leadership
This course will explore contemporary relations between ethics and politics; between conceptions of leadership and the production of depoliticized masses, between individual values and public beliefs.

988:481

Feminism & Visual Cultures
Examines the history and cultural contexts of visual narratives that address gender and sexuality and their influence on cultural policies.

988:482

Feminism, Policy, and the Poor
Explores the contributions of feminist analysis, advocacy, and policymaking to anti-poverty policy and social justice politics.

988:485

Motherhood: Nature and Culture, Policy and Politics
Investigates how motherhood is shaped by intentional public policies and social, economic, political, and cultural forces in the U.S. and globally.

988:486

Gender, Development, Environment: Policy, Politics & Perspectives
Using ethnography and gender as a category of analysis, examines the experiences and implications of transnational developement and environmental policies in specific localities.

988:487

The Language of Women's Health & Health Policies
Examines the creation of narratives of women's health and health policy; through visits from health care experts, considers the impact of these narratives on practice.

988:490

Seminar: Women and Contemporary Issues
Intensive reading and discussion; designed for graduating seniors. Topic changes annually.

988:491

Seminar in Women's & Gender Studies
Advanced course on a selected topic in Women's & Gender Studies. A paper is required.

988:492

Seminar: Special Topics in Women's & Gender Studies
Selected interdisciplinary topics in Women's & Gender Studies. Past topics included sexuality, popular culture, women and religion, and women and the arts.

988:493, 494

Independent Study
Independent study project under the guidance of a faculty supervisor. Permission of associate director required.

988:497, 498

Honors Research in Women's & Gender Studies
Individual research project to be written as honors thesis. Open to seniors who are candidates for honors in women's and gender studies. Permission of undergraduate director required. Both semesters requires.