To view Spring 2025 course descriptions, please click HERE.

 

Course Descriptions

Please use the search field below to search the course titles or descriptions:

16:988:515 Feminism: Theory and Practice (3 credits)

This course aims to illuminate the interconnections between theory and practice by exploring particular modes of feminist activism and the complex theoretical issues that feminist praxis raises. The course seeks to foster an understanding of the multiple ways that feminist theory has opened our imaginations to the possibilities for inclusive democratic practices and has expanded the repertoire of strategies for realizing social change.

16:988:516 Social Justice Movements (3)

The opening decades of the 21st century have been characterized by growing inequalities within and across nations, war, terrorism, and devastating climate and environmental crises. The U.S. “War on Drugs” has contributed to the growth of the “prison-industrial complex,” which incarcerates 2.2 million Americans, 70% of whom are people of color. Hyper-surveillance, police harassment and brutality, and the deaths of unarmed African Americans in police custody have given rise to the Black Lives Matter campaign. New reproductive and genetic technologies have raised a host of ethical issues not only about how to conceive human life but also about who should be born. Trans* activists have mobilized against surgical interventions and state practices that coerce people to conform to binary gender formations. These developments make it clear that social justice continues to be a pressing and unresolved issue. This course is designed to introduce students to competing theories of social justice and the complexity of social justice issues, while also familiarizing them with various social justice strategies and the demands of successful social justice advocacy and activism. In examining social justice activism, the course focuses on women’s mobilizations for economic, environmental, and reproductive justice, as well as immigrant, Indigenous, LGBTQ, and Trans struggles for livelihoods, rights, and recognition. The course will help students not only to deepen their understanding of the dynamics of oppression with particular attention to issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality, but to develop their ability to participate in social change.

16:988:520; Agency, Subjectivity and Social Change

This course focuses on new feminist and queer movements, and their knowledge production, in post-colonial and colonial contexts. How do these movements practice, theorize, and refuse agency and subjectivity as defining ways to understand queer and feminist life and politics?

16:988:561 Black Feminist Theory (3 credits)

This course provides a broad survey of contemporary Black feminist theory, including the emergence of Black feminist thought and political action, key actors and debates, theoretical engagements with questions of gender, racial, and sexual difference.

16:988:584,585 Practicum in Women's and Gender Studies (BA credits)

Field work for M.A. degree candidates.

16:988:590 Independent Study

WGSS Graduate Students with an interest in a specialized area not represented in the current curriculum may arrange an Independent Study under the supervision of a member of the Graduate Faculty.

16:988:601 Readings in Women's and Gender Studies (3 credits)

Open to Ph.D. students preparing for qualifying exams.

16:988:603 Feminist Knowledge Production

This course is an introduction to many of the methods used in feminist interdisciplinary research. The course looks at how to formulate a research question, collect data, interpret and analyze evidence, and report research results. The course will be a forum to apply knowledge of methods and methodologies to students’ own research and research-activist interests.

16:988:604,605 Women's and Gender Studies Dissertation Proposal (3,3 credits)

Open to Ph.D. students preparing dissertation proposals.

16:988:701,702 Research in Women's and Gender Studies (BA credits)