Academics

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.

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.

Around 1990, “queer” got a major make-over.  Before that queer was more likely to be used as an epithet to disparage Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, and Transsexuals, than to be enthusiastically embraced as a form of self-affirmation. “Queer!” was much more likely to be hurled as an insult, than proclaimed as an identity. Then, quite suddenly, the tables turned:  “We’re here. We’re queer. We’re fabulous. Get used to it.” Queer heralded a new way of declaring “who” we are.  It also changed who “we” are (insofar as we embrace our “queerness.”)  So, what happened?  Why did queer get “resignified” (to invoke Judith Butler’s idiom) and with what effects?  

In this course, we will explore the changes in thinking “sex” and “sexuality” during the 1970s and 1980s that preceded the new queer apotheosis in order to understand the problems and questions to which “queer” provided a possible answer.  In the 1970s and 1980s, “Lesbian and Gay”, or “Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual” (and sometimes “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual”) named political movements as well as academic fields.  Yet as questions about these identities got more troubling and as thinking about sexuality got more complicated, these names had increasing difficulty bearing the weight of both historical events and theoretical inquiry. Theoretically speaking, after publication of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality, vol. 1 in 1976 (and its translation into English in 1978), “sexuality” began to be understood as (a) problematic, rather than appearing as a self-evident aspect of human experience.  Historically speaking, after the emergence of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, the notion that “sex” could (or should) serve as the basis for political affinity seemed less clear-cut, and even the notion of what “sex” means—or should mean--became less obvious (as the debates about “safe sex” revealed).  

Using Foucault’s insights, feminist theorists like Gaye Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, and Judith Butler began to rethink the intellectual work that “sexual identity” performs.  Or, in Butler’s terms, they began to imagine sexual identities as performances.  Their insights opened up new fields of inquiry and new ways of asking questions about sex and sexuality.  Over the course of the 1980s, these new intellectual tools intersected with the new forms of political activism catalyzed in response to AIDS (e.g. ACT-UP) and from this turbulent field of thinking and acting a new form of sexual identification and sexual subjectification was born: Queer.  By tracing this “queer” genealogy, we will explore the ways that sexuality both fictions identities and informs how we experience ourselves in their terms.

• Course Code: 01:988:101
• Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
• Credits: 3
• SAS Core Certified: CCD, CCO

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• 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.