Women's Studies Courses for Summer 2008

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101 Introduction to Women's Studies in the Humanities U 5 GEC's -TWO :
Instructor: R. Roy (MTWR 1:30 - 3:18) [First Term Only]
WS 101 is intended to introduce you to feminist analysis as a way of looking at the world and a way of "making knowledge." Drawing on research and literature from the humanities, we will learn how to analyze forces that shape women's lives. We will take apart "common sense" notions of sex and gender, and look at how ideas of womanhood are constructed through race and class. This course, which fulfills the University's Social Diversity and the Arts and Humanities GEC requirements, pays particular attention to differences among women along lines of race, class, and sexuality.

110 Women, Culture, and Society U 5 GEC's -TWO :
Instructor: R. Schrock (M/T/W/R 11:30 - 1:18) [First Term Only]
Women's Studies 110 is an introduction to the study of women and gender and can be used to fulfill two GEC requirements - Social Diversity and Social Science. The course explores the social and cultural diversity found among women through an examination of the ways in which gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and physical ability intersect to influence the status of women. We will consider how individuals learn gender, how culture shapes the way we think about gender, and how law, public policy, and economics affect gender and the struggle for equality.

215 Reading Women Writers U 5
Instructor: D. (Li) Isbister (M/T/W/R 3:30 - 3:18) [First Term Only]
This course fulfills GEC requirements in Arts and Humanities. This course is designed to introduce writings by different women writers on various ways the body is constructed in literary works. Instead of examining the body as a biological entity, we will position the body at the heart of debates about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. We will use feminist analyses and cultural studies theories to examine ways the body helps construct gendered identities and subject positions and to discuss dominant metaphors and narratives of the (female) body in various social, cultural, racial, medical, and historical contexts. Much of the learning in this course will be conducted through critical discussions, written assignments, and projects. A literature background is not required.

230 Gender, Sexuality & Race in Popular Culture U 5
Instructor: M. Beaudette (M/T/W/R 11:30 - 1:18) [First Term Only]
This course explores how popular culture generates and articulates our understandings of gender and sexuality and their intersections with race and class. We will study a variety of theories and methods used in contemporary gender/sexual scholarship on popular culture, and we will examine a number of popular media texts - films, songs, music videos, cybertexts, and television shows.

317 Women and Film U 5 GEC
Instructor: S. Smith (T/R 1:30 - 4:00
This course is a critical survey of the representation of women in Hollywood cinema with examples drawn from different historical periods (from the 1930's to the present). The goals of the course are to understand how the film medium has functioned, historically and aesthetically, in its representations of women and to understand how and why women have created alternative visions of women in film.

326 Women and Addiction: A Feminist Perspective U 5
Instructor: V. Genetin (M/W 9:30 - 11:18)
This course offers a multicultural feminist perspective on "women and addiction." Using an interdisciplinary approach, students will explore addiction within the contexts of social construction, popular culture, mental health, and public policy. Discussion topics explore the socially constructed meanings of addiction, gender, power, and privilege. Particular attention will be given to the various ways these social constructions can create cultural beliefs about addictions. These cultural beliefs can negatively impact recovery processes due to the stigma associated with labels such as "crack mother." Students will engage in an interactive approach to learning about women and addiction. Through lectures, readings, popular culture analyses, group work and activities, students will gain a wider perspective on gender, multiculturalism, addiction, and recovery.

367.01 U.S. Women Writers: Text and Context U 5 GEC's -TWO : (Fulfills second level writing requirement and social diversity for B.A.)
Instructor: S. Brennan (M/W 1:30 - 3:18)
Instructor: S. Cochran (T/R 9:30 - 11:18)
This course will enhance students' critical and analytical reading and writing skills through an interdisciplinary study of women's literary representations of critical issues in United States social history. The emphasis will be on women writers' strategies for articulating female experience and on the role of literature as a reflection of and a catalyst for political and social change. The intersections of gender, race, class ethnicity, age and sexual identity will be the primary categories of analysis. Specific topics that may be covered include, but are not limited to: resistance to and deconstruction of racialized and gendered categories/social roles, the cult of true womanhood, slavery and the abolitionist movement, Western expansionism, the experiences of Native Americans, immigration and the notion of the "melting pot," etc.

726 Gender and Public Policy G 5 (Graduate Course)
Instructor: W. Smooth (T/R 1:30 - 4:00) [First Term Only]
This course will apply feminist analysis-a lens that foregrounds gender and its intersection with race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and nationality-to the specific contexts of women in an increasingly globalized world. We will attempt to understand the lives and experiences of women in cultural and national contexts other than our own as well as to examine the bases on which women have built global feminist alliances.