Winter 2012

Common opinion holds that the 1950's in the United States were a decade of severe sexual repression and political conformity. Yet the decade's popular culture exhibits a startling range of images and ideologies that not only resist social norms but also posit a vibrant array of alternative, subversive ideas about sex, gender, race, and power. Using feminist, film, and cultural theory, this course will focus on popular culture of the 50's including TV, rock and roll, political propaganda, and pulp novels.

Professor Bronski
10A 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.

Professor Fluri
10A Hour

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 Beasley
11 Hour

Learn how women and men have volunteered and worked for social justice throughout history—and how they contribute today. Gender, Activism, and the Common Good is a community-based learning course that encourages you to break outside of the Dartmouth "bubble" to learn and contribute. The course will feature speakers from the community and in-class interviews students conduct with them; community-based learning projects assisting agencies in telling their stories; and work in Dartmouth's archives to explore and write about the College's pivotal shift to coeducation. By the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of gender, race, and class vis-a-vis volunteerism and activism; and to synthesize evidence from their reading and their work in the community to form and clarify their own views. Dist: SOC; WCult: CI.

Professor Damon-Moore
3A Hour

This course is a multi-cultural multi-media history of American women from the Civil War to the present. We will discuss race and class tensions in the woman suffrage movement; women, labor and radicalism from the 1910s through the 1940s; civil rights, welfare rights, the rebirth of feminism in the 1960s and 70s, and backlash politics from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Professor Orleck
10A Hour

This course is a critical examination of the historical and contemporary status of black women in the United States, as presented in fiction, primary accounts, and social science literature. We will explore the nature, extent, and consequences of the multiple discriminations of race, sex, and class, as the context in which these women shaped their social roles and identities within the black community and the larger society. We will consider the themes of family, motherhood, and sexuality; educational, economic and political participation; aesthetics and religious traditions; and self and social images. Open to juniors and seniors. Dist: SOC; WCult: CI.

Professor King
2 hour

This course will explore the nature, extent, and consequences of gender inequality in society. Changing gender roles will be examined in relation to class and race, the socialization process, the experience of women in the family, and the experience of women as paid and unpaid workers under both capitalism and socialism. Finally, we shall analyze work and family conflict, looking at gender inequality, consequences for families and employers, policy, and implications for social structural change. Open to second-year students and above. Prerequisite: WGST 10, SOCY 1 (any one of these courses). Dist: SOC; WCult: W.

Professor Smith
10A hour

This interdisciplinary course explores the constructions of gender identities in different African socio-cultural contexts. The emphasis is on contemporary Africa, although we will discuss some of the historical framework of these identities. We will read historical accounts of gender in some pre-colonial African societies, investigate the impact of colonialism, and examine gender in some anti-colonial movements. We will also analyze gender in urban and rural contexts, and address such questions as homosexuality and gay rights. Dist: INT; WCult: CI. 

Professor Coly
2A 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.

Professor Travis
12 Hour

Beginning with her precursors in the Old and New World, this course approaches Guadalupe as a tool with which to pry open questions central to Mexican and Chicano/a identity. For some, she is a mother-figure with characteristics once attributed to pre-Columbian goddesses; for others, she is a feminist champion of political revolution. This course concentrates on the most compelling contexts in which Guadalupe has been called on to negotiate religious, racial, sexual, and national identity. Open to all classes. Dist: TMV; WCult: CI.

Professor Pérez
10A Hour

Focus on the contemporary literary production of women of African ancestry in Brazil: poetry, short story and novel. Engage issues such as slavery and race relations, the construction of family, class divisions and spatial marginality, industrialization, and gender and sexuality politics. Discuss Afro-Brazilian music, film, and other artististic manifestations as well as contemporary Brazilian culture. Open to all classes. DIST: LIT.

Professor Salgueiro, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
3B Hour: Tues/Thurs 4–5:50 PM

What we call "love poetry" has generally been a way of expressing much more than the emotional and erotic fascination of one person with another. Often it seems to bypass the love-object altogether, and more eagerly examines power relations or poetic achievement. Beginning with early examples, and moving on to contemporary and modern poems, our course will place love poems by men and women in the context of an ongoing poetic tradition, recent feminist criticism and theory, and talk about love and sex in recent popular culture. This last will include: excerpts from recent books about dating and seduction, film , contemporary song lyrics, dating websites, and Blitzmail. Dist: LIT; WCult: W.

Professor Zeiger
11 Hour

Images of subjugated veiled women and seductive harem dancers are arguably the pivotal figures of Western Orientalism. Stereotypes of Arab and Muslim women continue to proliferate today's media, U.S. film industry, and even the visual and performing arts. Studying the genealogy of such images becomes ever more crucial, especially as the Middle Eastern woman and representations of her body take center stage in contemporary debate and conflict between religions, cultures, and values. Therefore, this course will focus on unpacking the histories, cultures, politics, and ideologies performed through and around the Orient, the Oriental woman and her dancing body. Through mapping the larger political economy of Oriental dance, its appropriation and circulation from the east to the west and the reverse, we will pay particular attention on the histories of race, sexuality, identity, class, nation, and gender formations that the dance tells. We will also focus on the ways in which Islam and Arab Eastern cultures have fostered their own responses and stereotypes towards female performers with a take on their rationalizations of morality, gender roles and sexuality. Topics such as self-exoticism and self-Orientalism in relation to identity and nation building politics will be discussed. Lastly, we will be asking whether and how dance, arts, and the humanities can shape, alter, and deconstruct such perceptions. Through examining and analyzing a number of theoretical texts, travelers' accounts, and cultural productions—such as photography, theater, concert dance, and cinema—this course will explore how and why archetypal representations of the Orient have been created and continue to shape western understandings of the Middle East and its women. Dist: INT; WCult: NW

Professor Yessayan
12 hour

This course will survey the AIDS epidemic in the United States from 1981 to the present. We will examine the history and social impact of the epidemic by exploring its immediate and long lasting effects on issues such as health care, anti-discrimination law, immigration, education strategies, government drug policies, welfare services, as well as LGBT culture. We will also be examining its effects on popular thinking on sex, gender, and sexual culture through mainstream and independent film and media. Open to all students. Dist: SOC; WCult: CI. 

Professor Bronski
2A Hour

This course will examine the changing character of gender ideologies and gender relations in India under colonial rule. Topics include British views on the position of women in India; the development of social reform movements during the nineteenth century; colonialism and the law; "subaltern" women and economic change; the construction of masculinity; early nationalism and patriarchy; Gandhi's views on women; women and the Indian nationalist movement; sexuality and the birth control movement; and Hindu-Muslim violence and gender. Dist: SOC; WCult: NW.

Professor Haynes

University of Hyderabad Staff

University of Hyderabad Staff