Winter 2016

Starting from the complex question on how to define and delimit gay literature (along the author's or protagonist's sexual identity, the plot, the reader's expectations, etc.?), this course will discern some central aspects of gay writing in the Americas. As the title implies, emphasis will be both on the commonalities and the differences that shaped gay experiences in North and South America, such as notions of masculinity/femininity, the influence of religion and indigenous cultural traditions, the impact of democratic or authoritarian politics, colonialism, race and ethnicity. Readings will focus on novels, essays, plays, poems, and movies from the 1950s to the present and may include texts by Reinaldo Arenas, James Baldwin, Alison Bechdel, Leo Bersani, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, Toni Kushner, Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy, Michael Warner and others. Dist: INT or LIT. WCult: CI.

Professor Milich
3B Hour

This course will investigate the roles of women and men in society from an interdisciplinary point of view. We will analyze both the theoretical and practical aspects of gender attribution—how it shapes social roles within diverse cultures, and defines women and men's personal sense of identity. We will discuss the following questions: What are the actual differences between the sexes in the areas of biology, psychology, and moral development? What is the effect of gender on participation in the work force and politics, on language, and on artistic expression? We will also explore the changing patterns of relationships between the sexes and possibilities for the future. Open to all students. Dist: SOC; WCult: CI.

2A Hour: Professor Choi
9L Hour: Professor Bergland (NEW as of 11/23/15)

This course will examine pre-twentieth century texts and historical events that set important precedents for the development of contemporary feminist theories and practices. We will survey some of the writings that consolidate legitimated patriarchal/misogynist ideologies in Western worlds (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, the fathers of the Church, the philosophers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Rousseau). We will analyze different ways in which women historically have articulated strategies of contestation and/or resistance to systems of power based on gender differentiation. Readings may include works by French medieval thinker Christine de Pizan; sixteenth-century Spanish cross-dresser Catalina de Erauso; seventeenth-century Mexican intellectual and nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz; Mary Wollstonecraft; Maria Stewart, the first African-American political woman writer; the nineteenth-century American suffragists; and anarchist leader Emma Goldman. Open to all students. Dist: SOC; WCult: CI.

Professor Rabig
11 Hour

This course examines the roles of women and men in Western Europe from late Antiquity to the Reformation period. Emphasis will be placed on the intellectual and social strictures that had a long-term effect on the concept and role of gender in European society. Topics included are biological and mythological foundations of gender concepts; attitudes toward the body and sex in pre-Christian and Christian culture; sin and ecclesiastical legislation on sex and marriage; family life and education; the individual and kinship; heresy and charismatic religious movements; and the impact of social-economic development on gender in professional life. We will discuss the textual and visual sources for our inquiry, as well as the changing contemporary views on gender roles in pre-industrial Europe. Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors. Dist: TMV; WCult: CI.

Professor Simons
12 Hour

This course examines women's movements in Latin America. Women in Latin America are perhaps the most highly mobilized population in the world. Throughout the region, women have organized around myriad issues, including the right to vote, human rights, poverty, legal rights, anticommunism, the workplace, race, ethnicity, and war. Women's efforts to challenge fiercely repressive regimes, deeply entrenched norms of machismo and extreme poverty defy conventional stereotypes about women and provide us with inspiring examples of how to sustain hope during difficult times. The seminar will introduce students to recent scholarship on women's movements in Latin America in the 20th century and seek to understand the emergence, evolution and outcomes of women's movements in particular countries and cross-nationally. Dist: SOC; WCult: NW.

Professor Baldez
2 Hour

An introduction to the radical American social change movements of the 1960’s and 70’s, we will examine the specific historical conditions that allowed each of these movements to develop, the interconnections and contradictions among them, and why they ultimately lost political power. Along with historical analysis, we will examine primary source materials, manifestos, autobiographies, and media coverage from the period, as well as relevant films, music, and fiction. Open to all students. Dist: SOC; WCult: CI.

Professor Bronski
2A hour

This course will focus primarily on the following questions: What is feminism? What is sexism? What is oppression? What is gender? Is knowledge gendered? Is value gendered? What is a (gendered) self? What would liberation be? In exploring these issues, we will examine the ways feminist theorists have rethought basic concepts in core areas of philosophy such as ethics, social and political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of law, and philosophy of mind. Open to all classes. (Formerly Philosophy 22, Feminism and Philosophy). Dist: TMV; WCult: CI.
 

Professor Aldea
12 Hour

Professor McCabe
10A Hour