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Courses - Spring 2010
For a list of all approved courses for Spring 2010, please see the SWAG Course Offering Directory.
SWAG 2200: Multiculturalism and Women's Rights: A Global Perspective - NEW COURSE
Rina Williams
T 3:30-6:30 pm
What happens when cultural practices seem to deny women basic individual rights? Do women have to choose between their culture
and their rights? What is the role of the state in such dilemmas? Is deliberative democracy a solution? This course examines
the theoretical literature on these issues as well as specific cases in several countries, including polygamy, veiling, FGM,
and tribal and religious laws in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 2224: Black Femininities and Masculinities in US Media
Lisa Shutt
M 7:00-9:30 pm
This course will address the role the media has played in creating images and understandings of "Blackness" in the United States,
particularly where it converges with popular ideologies about gender. We will explore how different media, including feature
films, popular television, documentaries, popular fiction, television, and print news media create categories of race and gender
in different ways for (different) Americans - each media encapsulating its own markers of legitimacy and expertise - each
negotiating its own ideas of authorship and audience. We will concentrate on the particular ways various media produce, display,
and disseminate information; in particular, we will be analyzing cultural texts, the cultural environment in which they have
been produced, and the audience reception of those texts. Finally, we will ask what responsibilities those who create and
circulate information have - and whether or not the consuming/viewing public shares in any sort of responsibility. This class
will enable students to cultivate theoretical tools and critical perspectives to analyze and question the influence of the
popular media that saturate our lives.
SWAG 2559: Gender and History - NEW COURSE
Staff
MWF 10:00-10:50 am
SWAG/SOC 2559: Gender Death and Dying - NEW COURSE
Claire Raymond
MW 1:00-1:50 pm (Lecture); F 9:00-9:50 am (Discussion)
This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring ways that gender and sexuality impact death and dying. Aries'
The Hour of Our Death and Seremetakis' The Last Word will be brought into conversation with Malson and Ussher's work on anorexia
and Crimp's and Owen's theorizing representations of AIDS. We will explore photography's role in "capturing" the image of death,
from 19th c. spirit photographs to 20th c. documentaries.
SWAG 2848: Technology and Reproduction: A Global Perspective - NEW COURSE
Holly Singh
TR 9:30-10:45 am
This course will focus on issues in technology and reproduction from historical and cross-cultural perspectives. We will
examine critical perspectives on science, power, gender, and inequality as they influence cultural constructions of reproductive
processes such as pregnancy, childbirth, infertility, and debates about the enhancement and limitation of human fertility.
Emphasis will be ethnographic examples from North America and South Asia.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG/EDHS 2892: Issues Facing Adolescent Girls II
Edith "Winx" Lawrence
Requires instructor permission to register
M 5:00-6:00 pm
This one-credit course is a continuation of the fall class and provides an opportunity for students to continue to develop
their leadership skills through involvement in YWLP and academic service learning. In addition to the weekly one-hour class
time (Big Sister meeting) students are required to continue as active participants in their two-hour-a-week mentoring group
and four-hour-a-month one-on-one time with their mentee. For those not able to mentor, they can meet the class requirements
by being involved in the YWLP research team. Research activities can include: collecting research data from participants,
data entry and analyses, and assisting in grant writing or conference presentations. Grading is Pass/Fail.
SWAG 3140: Border Crossings: Women, Islam and Literature in the Middle East and North Africa
Farzaneh Milani
MW 3:30-4:45 pm
This course will focus on a bloodless, non-violent revolution that is shaking the foundation of the Islamic Middle East and
North Africa--women's literature. Hidden behind real or imaginary walls, veils, and silences, the Middle Eastern and North
African women have suffered yet another distortion of their identity, mainly the critical neglect surrounding their literature.
For centuries, however, and especially in the last few decades, women have made their voices heard through their writings.
They have seized every opportunity to break away from the silence that has veiled them at home or abroad. This course, in a
small way, is an attempt to remedy this oversight. It examines the rhetoric and poetics of sex segregation, voice, visibility,
and mobility in a spectrum of genres that includes folklore, novel, short story, poetry, biography, autobiography, and essay.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 3300: Gendering Partition Cultures - NEW COURSE
Smadar Lavie
TR 2:00-3:15 pm
Sixty years ago, India was partitioned to create West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later called Bangladesh); the state of Israel
was carved out of Palestine; and the Republic of Ireland Act was passed. Partition has been resorted to as a colonial
international-intervention method intended to regulate or eliminate national-ethnic-religious conflicts in the (post)colony.
Such conflicts arise when discordant heterogeneous lived realities clash with contradictory monolithic claims for
national-religious self-determination, and therefore sovereignty. Through cultural analysis of gender dynamics of the everyday
and its mimetic representations, the course explores how partitions impose anti-pluralist forms of abstract citizenship.
Territoriality and spatial arrangements will be examined through the problematics of familial and communal subject formation,
traumatic memories, ethnic resistance and assimilation, and border-crossing. Also considered will be the intersection of all
these with categories of embodiment and reification such as gender, sex, race, and religion. How such gender-focused lived
experience articulates the post-partition communal instabilities in these three locales will be analyzed from a transnational
comparative framework.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 3400: American Ghost - NEW COURSE
Claire Raymond
MWF 11:00-11:50 am
This course considers the figure of the ghost in twentieth-century and contemporary American women's literature and visual art by
Carrie Mae Weems, Toni Morrison, Francesca Woodman, Carol Maso, Louise Erdrich, and others. Through woman writers' and artists'
figurations of ghosts, we will explore unresolved sites of mourning structured into ideologies of race, ethnicity, and gender
in the U.S.
SWAG 3559: Transnational Feminisms - NEW COURSE
Smadar Lavie
TR 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
What does feminism look like when it crosses national borders? What is the difference between feminism as conceived
in "the West" and gender justice movements in various parts of the world? How do colonial histories, inequalities,
complex identities, and culturally diverse ways of "doing" gender shape gender politics? This course also examines
the gendered character of diasporas, contact zones, and institutions such as NGOs that traverse borders.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 3810: Feminist Theory
Karlin Luedtke
TR 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
Feminist theory is a heterogeneous field with many theoretical frameworks and methodologies, emerging from various academic
and political traditions. In this course, we will cover a range of available theories on gender, including liberalism, Marxism,
psychoanalysis, and postmodernism. We will explicate the central tenets of each theory and explore how it applies to
contemporary issues under debate, particularly those relating to the body, sexuality, and gender difference. In addition,
we will analyze the importance and implications of race, class, and national differences among women. While this class
provides an overview of historical foundations and contemporary trends in Western feminism, we also examine a variety of
cross-cultural critiques of these theories. Required for all SWAG majors and minors.
SWAG 3820: Feminist Methodologies
Kath Weston
W 2:30-5:00 pm
Interdisciplinary introduction to qualitative research design from a feminist perspective. Topics include memory, objectivity,
confidentiality, ethics, power differentials, feminist epistemology, the status of evidence, and the limits of statistics.
Appropriate for students interested in learning interview techniques, narrative analysis, fieldwork, archival work, and how to
frame research questions.
SWAG 3993: Independent Study
Requires instructor ID to register
SWAG 4050: SWAG Senior Seminar: Human Rights and Gender
Denise Walsh
TR 12:30-1:45 pm
This course begins by exploring the modern roots of the culture versus women's rights debate, tracing its historical evolution
through the international women's movement. We then examine a number of culture-rights controversies in different societies,
assess potential solutions to the debate, and conclude with a discussion of how the contemporary transnational women's movement
is grappling with the problem.
Required for all SWAG majors and minors. Meets the second witing requirement.
SWAG 4100: Readings in Sexuality Studies
Geeta Patel
R 5:00-7:30 pm
This course explores key topics that have shaped the field of sexuality studies, with a focus on those that fall under the rubric of "queer studies." Such topics have included the history of sexuality, scientific racism and critical race theory, cyborgs, biopower, nationalism, colonialism, sexuality and the law, the relationship of sexuality to race and class, and bodily aesthetics. Students engage a series of rotating interdisciplinary readings that draw upon fiction, poetry, theory, ethnographies, law, philosophy, criticism, film and media studies, music, science and/or economic history.
SWAG 4999: Studies in Women and Gender Senior Thesis II
Restricted to SWAG Majors Only/Instructor's Permission Required
Additional Spring 2010 primary and adjunct courses that count towards the Major and Minor, including those which are designated as satisfying the Global Perspectives Requirement will be posted soon.
Courses - Fall 2009
SWAG 1440: Gender and Race in Popular Music
Wendy Hsu
TR 3:30-4:45
This course explores the relationship between popular music, gender, and race.
To help us unravel these relationships, we consider different theoretical frameworks,
including feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory,
to determine how (well) they explain aspects of race and gender in popular music. We will
read critical interpretations of Eminem, Lauryn Hill, Cibo Matto, Bollywood films, and many others;
and historical and ethnographic narratives about Riot Grrrrl, Native American rock, Chinese pop, gay
men in disco, Indian American hip hop, British Asian dance music, Latino house, and others, while
analyzing related musical and social materials.
SWAG 2100: Introduction to Gender Studies
Karlin Luedtke
M 12:00-12:50
An introduction to gender studies, including the fields of women’s studies, feminist studies,
LGBT studies, & masculinity studies. Students will examine historical movements, theoretical issues,
& contemporary debates, especially as they pertain to issues of inequality & to the intersection of
gender with race, class, sexuality, & nationalism. Topics will vary according to the interdisciplinary
expertise & research focus of the instructor.
Prerequisite for SWAG majors and minors.
SWAG 2300/ASL 2030: Women and Gender in the Deaf World
Sandra Wood
TR 9:30-10:45
Examines the roles of deaf women inside and outside of the signing Deaf community. Using an interdisciplinary approach,
considers such topics as language and cultural barriers, violence against women, sexuality, race, class, education, and work.
Investigates disparities between deaf and hearing women and the choices available to d/Deaf women, individually and collectively,
in contemporary culture. No prior knowledge of Deaf culture or ASL is required for this course.
SWAG 2559-100: Women’s Lives in Myth and Reality
Ann Lane
T 3:30-4:20
What would happen if one women told the truth about her life? "The world would split open," said
the poet Muriel Rukeyser. In this course we will try to understand why this is so. We will explore
women's past and present circumstances and envision future possibilities and alternatives. We will
analyze issues of gender in relation to class and race, and work toward a framework for understanding
the world and our place in it.
SWAG/EDHS 2891: Issues Facing Adolescent Girls
Edith “Winx” Lawrence and Melissa Levy
M 4:00-6:45
This course provides an opportunity for students to develop their leadership skills through
involvement in academic service learning. Students will explore the psychological, social, and cultural
issues affecting adolescent girls and apply this understanding through service with the Young Women
Leaders Program (YWLP), a mentoring program that pairs middle school girls with college women for a year.
As we delve into theory and research on adolescent development, effective mentoring practices, and leadership development, students will test their theoretical knowledge and its application by serving as
a Big Sister to an area middle school girl. The class pays special attention to the ways that racial,
economic, and ethnic differences affect girls’ voice and self-concept during this developmental phase.
Requires instructor permission to register.
SWAG 3020: Gender in Muslim Lives
Smadar Lavie
MWF 10:00-10:50
In this course, we will focus on expressions of gender by Muslims in a variety of cultural contexts,
primarily in the Middle East and South Asia. How do men and women joined by a common religious tradition,
Islam, experience life and gender in diverse ways through interpretations of religious law and practice,
cultural and historical particularities, and access to wealth and social status? We will examine a number
of sex and gender related issues, such as family and public life, women’s seclusion and men’s honor, and
health and healing.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 3200: Women, Gender, and Sports: A History of American Female Athletes
Bonnie Hagerman
MWF 9:00-9:50
This course traces the history of American female athletes from the late 1800s through the early
21st century. By gaining an historical understanding of the contributions of female athletes, we will
explore the social, political, economic, and cultural constraints that have been placed on sportswomen,
and their attempts to transcend such limitations. We will use gender as a means of understanding the
evolution of the female athlete, and will also trace the manner by which issues of class and race inform
sportswomen’s journeys over time, particularly with regard to issues of femininity and homophobia.
SWAG 3350: Gender Politics in Comparative Perspective
Denise Walsh
TR 11:00-12:15
This course examines how different countries “do” gender, exploring the political, social and economic
construction of sexual difference. Our focus will be on how power is gendered and its effects on women
and men in the developing world. We begin with a theoretical discussion of patriarchy, gender and feminist
methods. Continuing to draw upon these theoretical debates, the course then investigates a series of
issues, including gender and state formation in the Middle East, women’s political participation in India
and South Africa, feminist and women’s movements in Latin America and Uganda, and globalization in South
East Asia.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 3559: Queer Theory - NEW COURSE
Claire Raymond
MWF 11:00-11:50
This course introduces students to some of the key and some of the controversial theoretical texts that
make up the emerging field of queer theory. We will consider the beginnings of queer theory and also look
at more recent work in fields such as queer gothic and phenomenology. The approach of the course will be
interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on literary and aesthetic criticisms that may shift according the
instructor's areas of expertise. The goal of the course is to develop critical practice by working through
a variety of perspectives, not only across academic disciplines but also across cultures. Insofar as queer
theory reads for the often unseen, or submerged, reality embedded in cultural texts, contexts, and
literatures, we will engage conscious critical practice in the class: active reading and informed
discussion.
SWAG 3650: East Asian Women: Self Portrayals in Social Context
Ellen Fuller
TR 12:30-1:45
This seminar is a sociological examination of representations of East Asian women in both written
(biography, autobiography, and novel) and visual (documentary and film) media. We will explore the
changing cultural and social assumptions about women and men in China, Japan and Korea over the course
of the 20th century, with emphasis on the post-World War II environment. Recurring themes include the
impact of the West on historical developments in each country and the various relationships among the
three East Asian countries. Requirements include active participation in discussion and written analysis
of several works.
Meets the second writing requirement and SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 3810: Feminist Theory
Rina Williams
TR 11:00-12:15
This course provides an overview of the historical bases and contemporary developments in feminist
theorizing and analyze a range of theories on gender, including liberal, Marxist, radical, difference,
and postmodernist feminist theories. We will explore how feminist theories apply to contemporary debates
on the body, sexuality, colonialism, globalization and transnationalism. Throughout the course we will
incorporate analysis of race, class, and national differences as well as cross-cultural perspectives.
Required for all SWAG majors and minors. Restricted to SWAG majors and mionrs only.
SWAG 3993: Independent Study
Requires instructor permission to register.
SWAG/MDST 4200: Sex and Gender go to the Movies
Andrea Press
M 2:00-4:30
Over the past several generations, the mass media have become central to our understanding of the meaning
of the categories of "woman" and "man" in American life. In fact, many argue that the mass media have
become central to the reproduction of the "sex-gender system" within which we all live, and under whose
influence we form our identities as men and women in this culture. In this course, we will examine the
ways in which popular Hollywood film helps to define cultural ideas about gender differences both in the
U.S. and globally. We will also look at the ways in which feminists have responded to these definitions,
by criticizing existing media images and by creating some alternatives of their own. The course will begin
by examining the notion that film might influence our development as gendered individuals, looking at those
who have argued both for and against this notion. We will then consider briefly the different forms of
feminist theory which exist, and how they have been applied to the study of the mass media.
This introduction will be followed by an examination of the development of images of women and men in film,
and an examination of how these images might function for different segments of the female audience.
We will look briefly at the history of popular Hollywood film, the history of its portrayal of women,
scholarly criticisms of these portrayals, scholarly discussions of the appeal of specifically "female"
genres such as melodramas or "the woman's film" to the female audience, and of "masculine" films
and feminist attempts to create alternatives to mainstream images in various media.
Throughout the course we will consider the issue of the representation of minorities in the
dominant media, and examine some newly created alternative representations.
Requires instructor permission to register.
SWAG 4320/PLCP 5840: Gender Politics in Africa
Denise Walsh
TR 2:00-3:15
Comprehensive introduction to gender politics in Africa, including gender transformations under imperial
rule, gender and national struggles, gender and culture claims, women’s movements and the gendering of the
post-colonial state.
Prerequisite: Some background in comparative politics or at least one social science course in SWAG.
Including: gender and the state; feminist perspectives on war and peace, security, international political
economy and the politics of development; and women and human rights. No prior knowledge of feminist theory
or international relations is assumed or required.
Meets the second writing requirement and SWAG global perspectives requirement.
SWAG 4559: Gender and Risk - NEW COURSE
Geeta Patel
W 2:30-5:00
Most ordinary notions of risk focus on the economic. This course will bring economic notions of risk to
thinking about risk in relation to gender, race, class, nation and globalization. Students will be
introduced to notions of risk that have traveled with finance and insurance globally. Students will study
technologies of risk. They will also interrogate concepts associated with risk or mediated through risk
and insurance such as risk pooling, risky behavior, morality, moral hazard, surveillance, red lining,
statistical history, at-risk constituencies, medical risk, the numerology of risk, govern mentality and risk,
risqué performance. Material that students will encounter in class will range from financial analyses and
ethnographic materials to fiction and film.
Meets the SWAG global perspectives requirement
SWAG 4998: Studies in Women and Gender Senior Thesis
Restricted to SWAG majors only. Requires instructor permission to register.
All approved primary and adjunct courses.
Past course listings
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