Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Courses (988)

• Spring 2022

• Instructor: Kyla Schuller
• Course Delivery: W 23 1020 A - 0120

In this capstone to the Gender and Media minor, students will develop, discuss, produce and critique a project related to gender, media, and technology. Students will articulate and present the project in written and oral formats and will have the option to also (1) create an in-depth multimedia component to the project; 2) complete an internship; or 3) complete a service learning experience.

As a 400-level, seminar-style class, this course involves a great deal of participation, independent and self-directed work, and a large-scale project that is built throughout the semester. The capstone project will address a major problem, question, or issue of interest related to gender, media, and technology, preferably one rooted in the student's major discipline. We will workshop these products together and share internship and service learning experiences during class. All internship and service learning placements must be approved by the program’s internship coordinator by the end of Week Two, or the student must do the multimedia project option for the course.

• 988
• All Semesters

This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive overview of the emergence and development of fiction written by Arab women. Emphasis will be laid on differences and similarities between Western and Arab feminist theories and identity issues as reflected in their literature. The course will provide a general understanding of modernist Arabic poetics, and the emergence and development of new literary genres of Arabic writing in the 19th and 20th centuries. Students will become familiar with the development and transformation of literary language, structures and imagery as embodied in selected texts by leading authors. Students will explore processes of change and the search for personal and cultural identity on the literary level in relation to the political and social spheres.

• 988
• All Semesters

This course is an introduction to the field of women's gender and sexuality studies, focusing on its theories, methods, and interdisciplinary nature. We will cover main themes including sex, gender, the waves of feminism, indigenous and transnational feminisms, intersectionality, privilege and power. The class will then explore the wellness/self-care industry through the lens of race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion to address the following questions: What is wellness? In a "post" pandemic world threatened by climate catastrophe, staggering inequality, social and political upheaval, how possible is it to truly be well? Who is it possible for? What does healing, wellness, and self-care have to do with global capitalism? With colonialism? We will read selections from Ed Cohen's "On Learning to Heal: Or, What Medicine Doesn't Know", Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, and Fariha Róisín's "Who is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind."

• 988
• All Semesters

This course explores the intersection of religion and reproduction in the United States. During the semester we will focus primarily on pronatalism and abortion as two key aspects of reproduction. For each of these issues we will focus on how Jews and Christians, as well as Judaism and Christianity, in the US understand these issues, and wrestle with them internally. A few themes will continually arise: how religious ideas about kinship, women’s sexuality, and concern for demographic continuance are applied through forms of reproduction and reproductive interruption. Gender and religion will form the two primary modes of analysis for the study of reproduction. At the end of the semester we will also consider how class and race shape reproductive ideas and practices in the US.

• 988
• All Semesters

What is the relationship between environmental degradation and gender inequality? This class will explore the importance of intersectional feminist thought and practice in combatting climate change and other global environmental crises. We will examine connections between the exploitation of the natural world and the subjugation of human populations, focusing on the links between colonialism, racial capitalism, and the climate. Particular attention will be paid to the emergence and development of ecofeminism, a branch of feminist thought which tracks the relations between gender and nature; the evolving focus on racial and social justice within environmental activism; and how BIPOC and queer writers, artists, and activists address climate change and other environmental concerns. Throughout, we will highlight the necessity of feminism in creating and sustaining what Vandana Shiva calls “a democracy of all life.”

• 988
• All Semesters

This introductory course explores the ways that love, sex, and desire are negotiated through technology and are structured by race, gender, and sexuality. Theoretically rooted in Black and Caribbean feminist thought, we will unpack and assess the ways that anti-blackness and white supremacy, as axes of power, stratify racialized people according to the most and least desirable as well as those most and least worthy of love. Black and Caribbean feminist thought offer a critical lens that helps us understand how power acts upon and determines the kinds of love available to Black women and other people of color. Through this lens, we will explore and critique controlling images and stereotypes through which Black women and men are presented and against which people across racial difference are contrasted. Discussions for this course will pivot around cultural objects called “desire machines” that include social media and dating apps which produce and circulate knowledge about racial “preferences” in dating culture. Finally, we will explore two emergent responses, therapy and theory, to love, sex, and desire. Women of color who struggle to find love and to feel desired have turned to technology to help contextualize love’s fugitivity. Advice that circulates on digital platforms leans toward self-management and individual choice which ignores the ways that structures of power intervene into people’s love lives. However, radical love, as a theory of justice, presents a more comprehensive framework that troubles systems of oppression, queers love, and offers community as a way to rethink how love can be accessed and enacted. Some key questions animating the arc of this course include: how is technology influencing the ways people actualize love in their personal lives? In what ways are their choices determined by race, gender, and sexuality?

• 988
• All Semesters

• 988
• All Semesters

• 988
• All Semesters

• 988
• All Semesters