Womens and Gender Studies (WGST)

Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies explores the broadly and critically defined “genealogies” of women’s and gender studies, investigating key concepts, theoretical debates, ideologies, and historical significance of the discipline of Women's and Gender Studies. Drawing from multidisciplinary perspectives and materials, we attempt to construct a theoretical framework that will be helpful and challenging to our pursuit of a just world in which both women and men can celebrate themselves and each other.

This course provides an introduction to the vibrant and interdisciplinary field of sexuality studies. Sexuality studies examines the social construction of sexual desires, practices, and identities, and investigates the ways in which sexuality is connected to power and inequality. We will begin the course by exploring some key theories and concepts within the field, and situate them alongside the history of LGBTQ activism in the United States and elsewhere. We will then consider how these concepts can be applied to a variety of contemporary issues such as sexual identity and the state, same-sex marriage, representations of sexuality in popular culture and the media, transnational sexualities and sexual identities and consumerism. Throughout the course, we will examine how sexuality intersects with other social categories such as gender, race, class, nationality, age and ability/disability.

Heard of Title IX (Nine)? Feeling confused, or just want to understand it better? Join this new, project-based, student-created course on sex discrimination in education. We will explore the law’s history and impact, analyze the recent national conversations about sex and gender in education, and take a deep dive into how Title IX impacts our own Georgetown community. The rules about gender and sex are changing, and it will take a new generation of leaders to make Title IX work for everyone. This course is an invitation to those future leaders and a unique opportunity to apply academic rigor to one of the most contentious issues of our time. Working with both a professor and peer mentors, students will conduct independent research, practice navigating the social dynamics underlying these issues, engage with experts in the field, and use their creativity and compassion to help the larger community. No previous knowledge is required and everyone is welcome.

What is autotheory, where did it come from, and how did it find us? Disruptive and transgressive, graphic and intimate, autotheory’s fusion of creative nonfiction with critical theory and philosophy defies generic boundaries and mingles stylistic registers. But whose stories does autotheory tell, in whose voices, and to what ends? How does autotheory situate embodiment in relation to structures and regimes of power? Drawing on investigations of the self through trans and queer of color feminisms, comparative ethnic studies, and anti-colonial theorizing, this course spotlights autotheory's multiple origin stories and hybrid forms while situating it against the contemporary political field. We’ll not only study autotheoretical modes of relation and resistance, but also experiment at the intersections of critical and creative practice. Coursework in literary, critical, feminist, or trans/queer theory strongly recommended.

Across the Black diaspora, Black women organizing for social transformation and against interlocking structures of power within non-Black feminist and Black social movements have historically had to contend with the anti-Black racism, patriarchy, and cis-hetero-sexist politics prevalent in these movement spaces. Black feminist writers, artists, and activists have long reflected on how participating in these ostensibly “broader” social movements has not only required the compartmentalization of their intersecting identities, but has also curtailed more robust and expansive conceptions of liberation. Rooted in a transnational framework, this course will explore the foundations and contours of Black feminist thought and praxis in the Americas. In particular, we will investigate alternative spheres beyond traditional social movement spaces, such as art and literature, through which Black women have been able to articulate and center their specific needs and experiences. Juxtaposing the experiences of Black feminist activists across the Americas, the course will also consider the importance of transnational Black feminist solidarity and employing a hemispheric analysis in the study of Black feminisms.

What does the Real Housewives of New Jersey tell us about gender roles, and how does Vanderpump Rules illuminate the workings of intimate relationships and power? From reality TV to viral social media responses, this class will consider reality TV, scripted series, film, and online discourses, to explore how popular culture moments and reality TV shape and distort our dominant understandings of gender, sexuality, and feminist thought. We will adopt an intersectional approach to examine how power relations, tropes, stereotypes, and spectacle are mobilized to reinforce—or challenge—normative ideas about gender, feminism, relationships, beauty, violence, sex work, and the body.

This course will examine a variety of feminist theories--from eighteenth and nineteenth century writers such as Wollstonecraft and Mill through the radical feminist discourse of Ti-Grace Atkinson and Shulamith Firestone to contemporary writers and activists. The class will focus on central and recurring debates within feminist theory and practice: debates between essentialism and social constructionism; between liberal reformism and radical transformation; between the politics of sameness and the politics of difference. We will also examine how feminist theories have attempted to reckon with the challenges of poststructuralism and the critiques offered by women of color. The intersections of race/ethnicity and class with the category of gender will also offer a central analytic strand throughout the course. Fall.

This course provides an introduction to the body of knowledge that has come to be known as feminist theory. Throughout the course we will consider a wide range of feminist thought, focusing particularly on theory in action – that is, how theory becomes, how it influences and creates, and how it can both dismantle and (re)build. To do so, we will pay close attention to the spaces in and through which theories are articulated, as well as the ways in which theories themselves can construct and transform space. Through a range of feminist writing on such intersecting topics as gender, race, colonialism, capitalism, globalization, and emotion we will learn how theory can give us insight into the mechanisms of belonging, marginalization, and socio-material change. The course will culminate in a rigorously curated final project that interprets feminist theories into feminist practice aimed at affecting positive change in the Georgetown community.

Since the turn of the century until the present, women have always been at the forefront advocating for gender equality in all forms and at all levels through organizing in the United States. In this course, we will explore the theory and practice of grassroots organizing within the context of advancing gender equality. Using an intersectional, interdisciplinary approach, students will learn about various organizations created by women with the goal in developing key efforts to promote positive change for themselves and their communities. We will observe these efforts across various identities of race, class, gender identity/sexuality, spirituality, and other social categories to learn more about women’s leadership roles as community advocates. Additionally, students will strengthen their skills as insightful social thinkers, readers, and writers.

This course will examine intimate partner violence, sexual assault and stalking. We will examine theories about intimate partner violence, frequency and prevalence of rape, and social and cultural contributors to domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault on college campuses. We will also evaluate current systems and policies that exist to support survivors and hold perpetrators accountable. We will then discuss what we can do individually and collectively as a community to end gender violenc

This course explores the juncture of sexual politics, patriarchy, national "development," and the "postcolonial" global structure by looking at representations on, around, and of women's labor, sexuality, and bodies. When and how do these women become "workers"? How do "we" imagine and represent female sexualities and bodies in the contexts of national developments and policy-making procedures? How do these women negotiate their own agency from the positionality of the "subaltern"? We will study literary texts, fact-finding documents, and theoretical investigations on the issues of gender, labor, and sexuality.

Explores inequality and gender issues in the US prison system

This course examines women’s resistance in Russia, probing conceptual questions of considerable relevance today: What is the nature of resistance? How can resistance be distinguished from civil disobedience, dissent, and revolt? Does women's resistance differ from masculinist paradigms of opposition to power? Structured in reverse chronological order, this course first considers Putin-era manifestations of women’s resistance in Russia, including performance art, journalism, and political activism. We then investigate the genealogy of these contemporary protests in underground activism of the late Soviet period, in women’s involvement in WWII, and in the Bolshevik sexual revolution of the 1920s. Next, we turn to figures of resistance in pre-Revolutionary Russia, from female terrorists to medieval saints. Students engage with a broad range of cultural artifacts, including historical texts, literature, zines, journalistic work, visual art, film, in an effort to create historical narratives in light of incomplete or suppressed sources. The final project invites students to grapple with issues raised in this course by curating a museum exhibit. No knowledge of Russian required.

The aim of this course is to explore the ways in which the social and cultural construction of sexual difference shapes the politics of gender and sexuality in the Middle East and North Africa. Using interdisciplinary feminist theories, we will explore key issues and debates including the interaction of religion and sexuality, women’s movements and feminisms, gender-based violence, queerness, masculinity, the sex industry, and finally the crossroads of sexuality and technology. Looking at the ways in which the Arab Spring galvanized what some have called a “gender revolution,” we will examine women’s and gender’s place in the various movements across the Arab World as we explore the varied and shifting gender dynamics in the region. Particular attention will be paid to the historical contexts of various topics.

This course is one of the only undergraduate seminars in the country to focus on the history of sex-role stereotyping in athletics. This course will investigate how our attitudes about male and female sports are reflected in our cultural beliefs; how men and women are trained to think about competition, winning, and performance; and if Title 9 has made any significant impact on equality of opportunity for female athletes. The course will also examine how the American media plays a role in constructing stereotypes about winners, losers, masculinity and femininity. Through readings, films, guest speakers, class discussion, and analysis of current sports issues, we will explore the politics of athletics and gender--at our own university, in the larger society, and cross-culturally.

1750 until the present. A great emphasis will be given to the impact of Colonialism and the European expansion as well as discourses of modernity, rights, and citizenship on ideas of femininity, masculinity and sexuality in the Middle East. It will analyze the role of women in political movements, from anti-colonial to revolutionary, and examine the role of ideologies like nationalism, socialism, feminism, and political Islam, on gender. While grounded in history, this course is interdisciplinary in scope, with readings from history, literature, religious studies, anthropology and viewing assignments from documentaries, films, and animations. Finally, this course seeks to dispel myths and stereotypes about women in the region through a more nuanced understanding of major cultural, social, economic and political trends that shaped their lives and the ways in which they reacted to these changes.

This course explores the affects attached to raced, sexed, and gendered embodiment through a comparative reading of discourse written on the bodies infected/affected in the transnational AIDS epidemic. In focusing on the two populations whose images have come to define popular perceptions of the epidemic—urban Western gay men and disenfranchised African women and children—we examine the shared affects of abjection and narratives of triumph attached to these bodies. Using a transnational feminist lens that pays particular heed to the racing and gendering of these bodies in a global context, we will question the ways in which these narratives of embodiment erase other bodies affected by the disease (such as African American heterosexuals and queer Africans). We will also look at the ways in which people living with HIV/AIDS have crafted a number of transnational links that provide the opportunity for both resistant and complicit performances.

This seminar is a feminist exploration of the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. Throughout the class, we use historical and critical methods to make disability apparent as a category of analysis. Finding disability means finding power and privilege and the task requires us to question what disability is and who constitutes the category. We will examine and critique a range of imagined futures that exclude disability, that construct narrow visions of “the good life,” and promote limited rhetorics of self-improvement. To do this, we will use a variety of productions from various genres—including but not limited to theory texts, accounts of personal experience, visual culture, legal studies, and materials produced by activists involved in direct action strategies.

The media is all around us. It influences how we think, feel, vote, and how we live our lives. This interdisciplinary course will explore representations of gender, race, class, and sexuality through an intersectional and intertextual investigation of television, film, popular music, advertisement, and social media. We will explore how representations as objects, consumers, subjects, creators, challengers, and critics both reflect and produce socio-cultural phenomena and ideas about the proper role of women and men in society. Our goal is to understand how cultural meaning is created, contested, and regulated. This course will aim in illuminating the ways in which we are passive consumers of media and empower individuals to become critical participants.

This course focuses on theoretical, filmic, and dramatic works that highlight the political potential of gender and performance. “A woman’s place is in the home” and its counter, “A Woman’s Place is in the House,” speak to a contentious history in the United States of gendered spaces, roles, and careers. By locating women in particular space, these statements seek to define the role of women in the labor market, their relation to public space, the presence or absence of political power. Rather than abide the limiting binary of a sexist remark of a patriarchal past and a demand for inclusion in an egalitarian future, this course aims to expose students to the aperture betwixt the private space of the home and public nature of the House of Representatives; namely, the stage, screen, and street. Students will explore strategies and methods for thinking about gender’s double existence as a fleeting ephemeral performance before a live audience and as a documented text available for reading and interpreting. The course will consider histories of political organizing, contemporary political theater, and the rich counterpublics of everyday living as a backdrop for students to critically and imaginatively engage with the rapidly changing cultural landscape of 21st century America. Throughout, students will attend to the ways race, sexuality, and ability undergird our understanding of gender, politics, and performance.

This course will explore the intersection of gender and race and other components of social identity from an interdisciplinary perspective. We will address the inter and intra relationship of women of color with feminism, locally and globally. While examining theories and bodies of knowledge, we will analyze how historical and contemporary realities of women of color are influenced by a legacy of structural inequalities. Students will learn the importance of applying knowledge from a variety of theoretical and political standpoints. The approach to this course will pay particular attention to sociological aspects of identity as well as cultural representations that are manifestations of systems of oppression. This course aims to move us from being limited in feminist theory and text as a variation on the theme of “woman” or being a component in referencing gender, race, class, and sexuality, into the realization that it is possible not only to hope for but also to make change.

In this course, we will explore equity in relation to medicine and health: We ask, “whose health”? and “for the good of whom”? when encountering a diagnosis or a treatment in our readings and in the world around us. Grounded in an exploration of US history and practices – with some transnational and geopolitical relations and contagions – this course examines how relations of power and identity politics are deeply enmeshed with the way medicine and medical care has been conceptualized, practiced, and experienced. We read a range of texts and genres, from historical and theoretical to memoir and documentary film. With what we learn together, we will brainstorm how we can make a better system, and we will contribute to equitable public knowledge online with our final projects.

This course provides an overview of the theoretical, historical and political contexts within which the fields of queer theory and sexuality and gender studies operate. It highlights topics such as the emergence of modern sexual identity, LGBT rights, queer community-building and world-making, and transgender politics. Specific attention will be paid to the relationship between feminist and queer thought, and to the gendered, raced and classed dimensions of sexual politics. This class is reading-intensive; students will write regular short papers, engage in both in-class and online discussions, and complete an independent research project. [This course will fulfill the Feminist Theory requirement for the Women’s and Gender Studies major, minor and certificate.] _____

Athletes, aesthetes, wives, widows and worms, in this course we seek to understand how gender norms were constructed and challenged in nineteenth-century art and visual culture. Focusing on representations of different ‘types’ of bodies in art, science, and medicine, we will grapple with the contested nature of the body as it was being debated in discourses as diverse as religious doctrine and Darwinian evolution.

This class looks at discourses of gender and sexual diversity on the African continent from a variety of perspectives. The course centers the narratives and cultural production of those who identify (or dis-identify) as LGBTQ+ in circumstances where such an identity is frequently considered “UnAfrican.” It explores: 1) the sexual and gendered legacies of European colonialism (and its ongoing manifestations); 2) the possibilities and limitations of inherited “queer” terminology from the west (frequently employed by the non-profit industry), and 3) the methods that gender and sexually diverse Africans have employed to made sense and space for themselves across a variety of national and cultural contexts. Our discussions operate with the understanding that “Africa” is, following philosopher V.Y. Mudimbe, as much a rhetorical invention as a geographical location. While the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ Africans are very real, the popular depiction of the continent as socially “backwards” and uniformly homophobic is arguably the latest iteration of a far older script. Drawing on recent scholarship in the field of Queer African Studies, African Cultures and Sexualities seeks out alternative narratives and non-normative presence in contemporary literature, art, film, performance, and in digital space.

This course explores the cinematic contributions of women directors, camerawomen, script writers, and editors from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and their legacies in contemporary cinema. We begin with Soviet cinema of the 1920s, examining the often downplayed role of women editors in the formation of a unique montage culture in both feature and documentary film. We then focus our attention on the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc in the postwar period, which witnessed a growth of women directors and the entry of women into other professions in the film industry. Finally, we examine the legacies of women’s cinematic contributions in contemporary film from Russia and Central and Eastern Europe. Central to this course is the exploration of Marxist feminism as a possible theoretical backdrop against which we can understand women’s cinema in the region, as well as the “western” feminist concepts of écriture feminine and cinécriture. Examining specific works of art, we will ask: is women’s cinematic writing as a gendered vision of reality possible within a Marxist political-theoretical framework, which sees women’s liberation as part of the broader class struggle? Does women’s “writing” in cinema of the region exist in spite of an overarching framework that minimizes gender differences in favor of the universal human? What did women directors, cinematographers, editors, etc., from this geographic region contribute to cinematic techniques and the language of film? Does women's cinema of the socialist period continue to inform the film industry in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe today?

Hip-Hop, a cultural movement that has influenced everything from music, clothes, to the words we speak, has become one of the largest and furthest-reaching movements in modern history. This course seeks to explore and contest the socio-political aspects of hip-hop’s main elements (MCing, DJing, Graffiti, and B boying/B girling) using a feminist lens. This course explores the relationship of hip-hop, gender, race, class, and sexuality through literature, film, music, and new media. This course is designed to examine the formation of hip-hop and its expansion into a discourse of resistance to its mainstream and global commodification

In this course we seek to understand how artists in Britain, France, America, Australia and beyond depicted gender, gendered bodies and gender roles. We traverse the major artistic movements from the French Revolution until the end of World War One—in particular Neoclassicism, Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism—focusing on how gender was constructed and deconstructed in art across different nations. A transnational approach will allow us to draw conclusions about the local manifestations of different artistic styles, and to consider the gender implications of nineteenth-century cosmopolitanism and nationalism.

This course is designed to enhance the students’ understanding of the interrelation of population and the environment/agriculture in different world regions. The seminar will explore the relationship between agricultural expansion and natural habitat reduction, livelihoods systems, as well as the decisive role played by the growing population component in specific hot spots in several regions. The course will review current trends of population growth, main issues to attain sustainable development and its implications for environmental, agricultural and social. We will focus on production patterns with a gender lens to understand the role of men and women in rural societies and that of Indigenous Peoples, who play a central role in preserving biodiversity to achieve food security. A module focused on Population, Health and Environment (PHE) will be presented and discussed with the participation of current project managers and practitioners (USAID, Conservation International, IUCN) who strive to further this field of study in developing countries (Comparative sites in Africa and Asia). We will review the impact of farming and natural resource management (NRM) in selected sub-regions, landscapes and geo-physical systems (e.g: in LAC Region the Andes; the Mesoamerican Corridor; the Caribbean Basin, the Brazilian Amazon, etc.) along with patterns of land use, the role of ecosystem services and sustainable management of the resources in the region. We will underlie the main causes of deforestation, soil erosion and biodiversity loss while reflecting on the implications of climate change and sound alternatives (mitigation and adaptation) to ameliorate its impact. An overview of gender analysis and resource management will be presented in order to understand conservation strategies, both individually and collectively and how males and females contribute differently to conservation and agricultural production efforts.

Sex for Sale: Prostitution in Comparative Perspective What Is This Course About? How can we write a history of prostitution and what are some of the major themes academics have explored when writing about prostitution? This seminar offers a historiographical overview of the topic of prostitution in history since Judith Walkowitz's interpretation of prostitution as labor. We will explore the differences and similarities in the history of prostitution over time, class, and space. We will also look at why and how prostitution is stigmatized in most societies, and address where to find sources to write a history of prostitution. Some of the questions we will explore include: where does the history of prostitution fit into the history of sexuality? How can we write about a stigmatized topic without stigmatizing its protagonists? How should scholars navigate the boundary between consent and violence in historical contexts? Why do some topics such as trafficking and the plight of Muslim women mobilize and carry considerable currency? Our main focus will be on 19th and 20th century United States, Europe, and the Middle East, but we will also explore cases in East Asia and Latin America. This course is not a lecture course. Rather, it is reliant upon discussion and debate. Class meetings will be largely focused on actively using what we have read or learned through varies sources, sharing it with others, thinking on the spot, brainstorming, speculating, and figuring out how it all fits together. Assignments are designed with a digital component. You should be comfortable with some digital tools beyond Microsoft Word or willing to make the effort to familiarize yourself with these tools (Wordpress, Omeka, VoiceThread, Podbean). What Will Students Learn by the End of the Term? By the conclusion of the course, students will be able to answer the following questions: • How would you characterize and evaluate the various strategies that have been used across the world in the 19th and 20th century to address prostitution? • Historically, what have been the consequences of making prostitution illegal for women and girls? • How have race, gender, and class shaped the politics and lived-experience of prostitution? • What does comparing histories of prostitution across the world tell us about the state of the scholarship? By the end of the course students will improve on the following skills: • Thinking skills: The ability to read, analyze, and respond to our course materials • Communication skills: The ability to communicate ideas clearly and efficiently • Information success and Retrieval: The ability to know where to look for and gather information concerning our topic • Ethical reasoning: The ability to recognize multiple perspectives and examine connections between beliefs and actions

GENDER & THE LAW I explores how concepts of sex, gender, masculinity and femininity shape the U.S. legal system, and how our legal system shapes social justice and the choices we make. We also examine other factors that influence how we view and encounter the law, including race, religion, political outlook, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic status, etc. Specific topics in Gender & The Law I may include women in politics, discrimination in the workplace and educational institutions, Title IX, sexual harassment, and reproductive justice. Our academic focus is on legal analysis, public policy writing, and respectful dialogue about emotionally and legally complex topics. There will be many opportunities to practice these skills during the semester. No prior legal knowledge is required. N.B. GENDER & THE LAW II (Family Law) will be offered as a separate course beginning in Spring 2026. With similar goals and evaluative techniques, that course will cover topics such as marriage, reproduction, adoption, divorce and the foster care system.

This seminar will explore the regulation of women’s reproductive lives in the United States through a social justice and constitutional law framework. We will examine the elements of the federal Constitution and the Bill of Rights that have been used by the courts to protect reproductive rights, sexual freedom and parenting rights. In this seminar, we will analyze public policies related to reproduction, contraception, forced sterilization, forced birth, abortion, fetal protectionism (including drug/ alcohol use and other pregnancy regulation), and welfare. Discussion will include issues of social justice, racial justice, health care access, and health care equity; gender, cultural, race and socioeconomic class issues; vulnerable populations such as incarcerated women, immigrants, minors, welfare recipients and persons with intellectual and mental disabilities. We will consider the evolution of relevant federal and state laws from a historical, ethical, social and religious framework. We may consider various international perspectives as well. Please note this seminar will not cover adoption, foster care, or IVF/ assisted reproduction.

This course is designed to introduce students to key issues relating to women and gender in the sphere of international human rights, with attention to gender and conflict, development and aid, Indigenous peoples, sexual orientation and gender identity, labor, detention, and contemporary issues in the U.S. viewed through an international lens. Students will examine varying strains of feminist thought and critique, as well as the ways in which politics, ethnicity, class, culture, and social contexts contribute to current practices and debates pertaining to women and gender. We will read and view a variety of sources, including scholarly, legal, autobiographical, and artistic materials.

This course explores contemporary women’s writing in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, with particular attention to reception of Western feminism and critique of capitalist cultural markets. By reading and discussing short stories, poetry, novels, and essays from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, and the Baltic countries from the time of transition, students engage with the complexity of attitudes and feelings that accompanied the political, economic and social changes in the region: far from an unambiguously positive embrace of democracy and free markets, many writers from the region express deep anxiety about the loss of a culturally distinct past and a shared multi-ethnic and multi-national culture, alongside more positive feelings of relief at the apparent dissolution of East-West borders and boundaries, of limitations on freedom of expression, etc. The syllabus includes four Nobel Prize-winning authors and creative assignments that help students better understand literary form.

Starting from the history of “universal womanhood” and “sisterhood” as conceived by Western feminism, this course will exam the many ways in which the white, Eurocentric, and neoliberal construction of feminism is challenged by colonial histories, global inequalities, complex intersectional systems of oppression and diverse religious and cultural practices. This course will cover key authors, concepts, methods, and politics in the field of transnational and postcolonial feminist studies by exploring the relationships between feminisms in the north and the south, the east and the west, as well as in the indigenous and diasporic communities.

This course explores major events in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, trans, and queer culture and history in the United States and throughout the world to understand how identities, experiences, and movements have been socially constructed and have changed in different times and places, often as a result of race, class, and gender inequities.

This course serves as an introduction to historical and contemporary queer cinema. In our current moment of unprecedented LGBTQ+ visibility it is ever more necessary we understand how queerness became so visible and the differential stakes and vulnerabilities that accompany such visibility. We will explore a number of core questions in weekly seminar meetings, among them: How have filmmakers and activists sought to alter dominant representations of gender and sexual non-conformity in cinema or used filmmaking as a tool for activist interventions? How do audiences extract and project queer meaning in films during moments of political repression? How can we view cinema and pop culture as simultaneously historical records that reflect the conditions of their making as well as creative endeavors that imagine and authorize future queer possibilities? Screenings will be supplimented with key readings in feminist, queer, and media theory, as well as contemporaneous reviews, interpretive communities, and other ephemera.

Often viewed as a genre steeped in misogyny and homophobia, women and LGBTQ+ people have made generous contributions to hip-hop music and culture. This course will draw on texts that analyze misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in hip-hop culture, music, and music videos. We will also look at how both mainstream and queer artists use hip-hop to affirm their gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and racial identity, and create spaces for their artistic expression. The course will examine the musical roots of hip hop in genres such as jazz and the blues and their relation to queerness. While our analyses will center on music and on the United States, we will also consider art, fashion, and dance within Black, and Latinx, interactions with hip-hop.

Anyone entering the thickets of argument relating to violence, gender, and human rights today has to contend with the range and variety of meanings that these concepts have accrued in current usage. While there is broad consensus that there does exist a contemporary crisis around global violence and the suspected gendered aspect of it, how the relationships between globalization and human rights violations, and between violence against women and redefinition of human rights, are to be interpreted, and what is to be done about it is matters of vigorous intellectual and political debate. This class aims to explore the gendered manifestations of violence in public and private spheres within the context of the more general relationship among globalization, development, and human/civil/citizen rights. We will pay attention to banal violence (that is, daily and “banal” violence in everyday life), spectacular violence at moments of crisis, and the type of violence that disrupts the boundary between the two. Special emphases will be given to the issues of racism, sexual exploitation, poverty, labor, health care, homophobia, militarism, and globalization. The readings will include _We Wish to Inform you That Tomorrow We will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda_ by Philip Gourevitch, _A Problem from Hell_ by Samantha Powers, _Violence against Women_ by Stanley French et al., _Are Prisons Obsolete_ by Angela Davis, _The Sterilization of Carrie Buck_ by J. David Smith and K. Ray Nelson, and _Pathologies of Power: Health, Human rights, and the New War on the Poor_ by Paul Farmer. May also be taken as JUPS 260-01

Across the Black diaspora, Black women organizing for social transformation and against interlocking structures of power within non-Black feminist and Black social movements have historically had to contend with the anti-Black racism, patriarchy, and cis-hetero-sexist politics prevalent in these movement spaces. Black feminist writers, artists, and activists have long reflected on how participating in these ostensibly “broader” social movements has not only required the compartmentalization of their intersecting identities, but has also curtailed more robust and expansive conceptions of liberation. Focusing on the Americas, this course will explore the contours, challenges, and violences of the historical expectation for Black women (cis and trans) to sacrifice their unique racialized and gendered interests in the name of “collective care.” In conversation with multi-media Black feminist texts and ethnographic writing on Black women’s social organizing, we will critically interrogate the racialized and gendered concept of care, its political utility, and the uneven distribution of this form of social labor. The course will also investigate alternative spheres beyond traditional social movement spaces, such as art and literature, through which Black women have been able to articulate and center their specific needs and experiences.

his course will trace the construction of gender and sexuality in modern Iran from the 19th century Qajar period to the post-revolutionary Iran culminating in the contemporary protest sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police. While grounded in history, this course is interdisciplinary in scope. In addition to scholarly articles in Iranian studies we will also focus on literature, films, animations, and digital activities by Iranian women.

WOMEN LAWYERS AS LEADERS: How have women lawyers and judges shaped our legal system? What leadership or other skills do they have in common? Seeking answers to those questions, in this seminar we will begin by analyzing the leadership and lives of the six female justices of the United States Supreme Court. We will look at the way their thoughts, policies, and opinions have shaped US constitutional jurisprudence by studying their opinions and putting their work in historical context. In addition, we will examine the evolution of women in US legal practice, and compare the leadership skills of several contemporary female lawyers working to protect our democratic institutions, including Stacey Abrams, Fani Willis, Leticia James and Becca Heller. Finally, through guest lecturers, we will examine various careers in law and unique challenges and opportunities for women lawyers.

This course will examine the social and economic costs and benefits of access to reproductive health in the United States. Specifically, our goal will be to look at current and historical case studies, and state-by-state comparisons, to examine the impact of access to reproductive health on educational prospects, employment, earning power, the gender gap in pay, marriage and motherhood, mental health, and social and racial justice. In order to do so, we will first explore the changing legal model of reproductive access in the United States today, focusing on contraception, comprehensive sex education and abortion. We will also consider the historical, social, racial and religious context of the regulation of reproduction, after which we will turn to the economic, social, racial and practical impacts of the regulations in effect today. This course is primarily focused on the United States.

Women in American Politics examines the role of women in the political process from the Suffrage movement to the first wave of feminism in the 1800s to second wave in the 1960s to the “Year of the Woman 1992 - 2018” and the historic election of Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020. We will preview the next presidential campaign in 2024. Students will study the relationship between gender and electoral politics in the United States and review the historic barriers that have prevented more women from entering the political arena.

The course will include guest lecturers representing leaders of the modern women’s movement, as well as political operatives and strategists from both major political parties. Special emphasis will be placed on students providing a weekly political report on American women in politics as well as women in national and international news.

Prior to the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, American women were excluded from participation as voters and as candidates for political office. The passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution elevated women’s participation in electoral politics.

Accordingly, students will study the role of gender in U.S. electoral politics in the United States, interview women who have been elected or appointed to public office, identify current barriers to the full participation of women in the political system and analyze the power of the women’s vote. In addition, we will look back at the 2020 elections, including the campaigns of Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D- HI) and Marianne Williamson.

This course considers the theoretical influences/critical thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality. It maps a trajectory from feminist and feminist of color critiques to current queer theoretical approaches, assuming the term queer as both a destabilizer of identities as well as a contemporary framework for thinking critically about gender and desire.

The aim of this course is to explore the ways in which women’s health is presented in the Americas and especially in Brazil, the most populated country in Latin America, with an estimated 215 million inhabitants. A brief history of women’s health will include maternal mortality; precariousness of obstetric care; abortion under risky conditions; the particularity of health for black, lesbians, indigenous women; sexually transmitted infection, HIV and AIDS; women with chronic diseases and gynecological cancer. This course will bring awareness to the historical contexts, such as: the Brazilian health system since 1500 until the nineteenth center; the military dictatorships; the new constitution in 1988; the creation of SUS – the Brazilian public health system; the National Broad Health Policy for women and National Broad Health Policy for, lesbians, gays, bisexual and transsexuals. Particular attention will be paid to gender and sexual violence in Brazil, including: the national policy to combat violence against women; legal abortion for pregnancy after rape and conscientious objection to legal abortion. No knowledge of Brazilian language (Portuguese) is required.

Investigating Human Rights Abuses: Feminist Methodologies This course brings students into the world of international human rights investigations, probing how feminist methodologies (or lack thereof) influence which forms of violence are documented, legitimized, and prioritized by the international community. Students will gain practical skills in collaborative research design (in particular with local feminist human rights organizations); evidence gathering; interviewing survivors; working with interpreters; trends analysis; identification of perpetrators and advocacy targets; and risk analysis, security planning, and threat mitigation while conducting research in conflict zones and under surveillance. Students will engage with knowledge production as a political act, analyzing how activists (including disability rights defenders, queer collectives, feminist groups, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized human rights defenders) document violence perpetrated against their communities, and contrast this with investigative reporting done by large international NGOs. We will center critical feminist theory as the foundation for human rights investigations that disrupt rather than reproduce violent systems, and ask what solidarity can look like when it is both radical and practical.

This course will examine issues in global history through an exploration of witchcraft including gender, race, and class. From the fear of women's independence and sexual expression to mistrust of ethnic and religious others, many fictional portrayals of witches have distinctly gendered and racial undertones. At other times, witchcraft is portrayed as an avenue to contest patriarchal institutions. In what ways can the figure of the witch symbolize freedom, creativity, rebellion, and sisterhood? How do select narratives of witchcraft draw inspiration from non-European and non-Christian religious practices?

In this class we will adopt an intersectional approach to understanding forms of violence and the contexts in which they occur. Guiding this course will be the idea of power relations—around gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender presentation, and nationality. We will ask how these social inequalities shape the experience of violence, consider how we respond to victims of this violence, and reflect upon what future responses might look like. We will also explore some of the different forms that violence in intimate settings can take. As we progress through the course, we will consider the impact of sexual violence on campus and beyond, masculinity, sexual consent, and intimate partner violence in relation to race and class, as well as considering the experiences of LGBTQ+ victims/survivors.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 – prohibiting educational institutions receiving federal funds from sex-based discrimination - transformed education in the United States. Have the Title IX regulations been a success? Has the original purpose of the regulations become distorted over time? Or, perhaps, both? This course offers an in-depth analysis of the history, the law, and the social policy behind the changing Title IX regulations, with a particular focus on athletics, admissions, and sexual assault, primarily in the higher education context.

Debt Threats: The Cultural Politics of Capitalism Debt is a topic that makes news headlines regularly: politicians propose plans to eliminate student debt, the national debt rises, and debt is hampering access to medical care. Debt is deepening inequalities, and while it has been a focus for scholars of economics, it is also increasingly a concern for those who study US culture. In this seminar, we marshal recent scholarship from Women's and Gender Studies to understand how debt functions, whom it fails, and what it says about economic inequality and its relationship to race and gender in the contemporary US. We work together to understand the moral charge of debt and we ask how ideas about personal responsibility circulate. The course begins with an introduction to racial capitalism; then, the remaining class meetings are organized around topics including student debt, medical debt, housing debt, reparations for Black Americans, municipal/state/national debt, incarceration, and the relationship of debt and climate disaster.

Community fridges full of fresh produce for the taking; rent parties to support tenants facing eviction; markets where everything is donated and everything is free. Mutual aid projects understand that in times of immediate and ongoing disaster, neighbors help neighbors. In this seminar, we will study the work of organizers and activists participating in a range of mutual aid projects in DC and elsewhere. We will learn about mutual aid's long history, which includes the Black Panther Party's free breakfast program; in addition, we will learn about the philosophies of mutual aid, which includes the argument that mutual aid is distinct from charity and instead operates in the tradition of solidarity. The course is organized around keywords and the relationship of the keyword to mutual aid. For instance, when we study the keyword "debt," we will consider Andrew Ross's judgment that practices in support of alternative economies not only exist, but actually have a much larger impact than is usually acknowledged. Finally, students will have opportunities to plan and build together: How do you want to contribute to existing mutual aid projects? What are the new projects that your communities need?

INTIMATE VIOLENCE ON SCREEN: ANALYZING REALITY TV AND POPULAR CULTURE: What does the Real Housewives of New Jersey tell us about gender roles, and how does Vanderpump Rules illuminate the workings of intimate relationships? From reality TV to viral social media responses, this class explores how popular culture and reality TV shape and distort our understandings of gendered violence. From reality TV to viral social media responses, this class explores how popular culture and reality TV shape and distort our understandings of gendered violence.In this class we will adopt an intersectional approach to analyze depictions of gender and violence on screen in popular culture, from series, films, and discourses on social media discourses. Students will examine how power relations—around gender, race and ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender presentation, and nationality influence public perceptions of violence and victims. As we progress through the course, we will consider the impact of sexual violence on campus and beyond, masculinity, sexual consent, and intimate partner violence in relation to race and class, as well as considering the experiences of LGBTQ+ victims/survivors.

Topic: Queer Activism and LGBTQ Cultures Whether it is ACT UP’s emotionally charged political funerals at the White House or landmark supreme court decisions like Lawrence v. Texas, queer activism and culture has permeated every facet of public life. With our current moment seeing growing cultural and political tension and an uncertain future for queer and trans communities, this seminar explores the way U.S. politics has shaped and been shaped by LGBTQ culture and political organizing. Throughout, the class will consider the historical context and political flashpoints that inform and constitute LGBTQ identity from an intersectional perspective. Leveraging our location in the nation's capitol, students will explore the myriad forms queer politics can take including fine art, political protest, legislative and judicial processes, and civil society activism. Students will take up a blend of cultural and political theory attentive to race, disability, gender, and sexuality to critically examine public policy, political theater, and the breaking news of the day affecting queer and trans people. The class offers students a range of primary source material to consider and investigate from canonical early 20th century American literature and activist-produced pamphlets of the 1990s to contemporary documentary films, commercial advertisements, and music videos. The class offers students the opportunity to apply their critical thinking skills and practice both academic and public facing writing. There will be multiple options for the final project which will be tailored to students’ academic and career interests. While the course is open to students of all levels, it especially serves and is designed for first year students.

Debt Threats: The Cultural Politics of Capitalism

Debt is a topic that makes news headlines regularly: politicians propose plans to eliminate student debt, the national debt rises, and debt is hampering access to medical care. Debt is deepening inequalities, and while it has been a focus for scholars of economics, it is also increasingly a concern for those who study US culture. In this seminar, we marshal scholarship from Women's and Gender Studies and from on-the-ground activists to understand how debt functions, whom it fails, and what it says about economic inequality and its relationship to race and gender in the contemporary US. We will work together to understand the moral charge of debt and we will investigate how ideas about "financial responsibility" circulate. The course begins with an introduction to racial capitalism; then, the remaining class meetings are organized around topics including student debt, medical debt, housing debt, reparations for Black Americans, municipal/state/national debt, incarceration, and climate debt. For instance, when we study student debt, we will learn that Black women borrow at disproportionate rates in order to access the same education as their peers; and when we study climate debt, we will learn that those most responsible for producing climate change are also most shielded from its harms. Debt, we will learn, is an issue of racial justice, gender justice, and economic justice.

The course addresses the policies of mainstreaming gender equality promoted by the European Union from an intersectional perspective, exploring how gender intersects with race, class, politics, international relations, and communication. A major topic will be the media strategies adopted by the European Union to promote Gender Mainstreaming across the member states.

Course Description: Family Law (Gender & the Law II) explores how the United States regulates certain intimate relationships, defines legal family relationships, and assigns formal legal consequences and obligations within the context of that definition. Specific topics will include marriage, marriage alternatives, procreation, divorce, child custody and the foster care system. We will also examine the other factors that influence the law in this area, including socio-economic status, race, sexual orientation and gender identity. We will practice legal analysis, public policy writing, and respectful dialogue about emotionally and legally complex topics. No prior legal knowledge or coursework required; Gender & The Law I is not a prerequisite.

Disability can sometimes resist and refuse capitalism and its definitions of work, independence, productivity, and progress. The principles of Disability Justice remind us that "our worth is not dependent on what and how much we can produce" and many people have struggled against capitalism to instead invest in mutualist and community-oriented economies where disabled people support and learn from one another. But capitalism also produces disability: the jobs people do are often disabling, and our feminist and anti-racist analysis confirms that people are not equally likely to be working in dangerous jobs. At the same time, disabled people are often locked out of the workforce and when hired, must fight for fair pay and good conditions. During our seminar, we will study texts by Marta Russell, who argues that disability--what it is and who constitutes the category--is defined by capitalism. Likewise, we will study scholarship, art, and activism emerging from feminist movements that remind us that care work is often feminized and privatized in the form of the family, which benefits capital. We will study racial capitalism, the Wages for Housework Campaign, movements for Universal Basic Income, the concept of "essential work," the proliferation of unpaid internships, and the directive to "do what you love." Following Kathi Weeks and other feminist theorists, we will interrogate the position of work as it sits at both the center of our lives and the top of our hierarchy of values.

Feminist theorists including bell hooks have argued that education is "the practice of freedom." At its best, education isexperienced as liberatory and freeing. It supports community, creativity, and joy. Students and teachers workcollaboratively to co-create knowledge, analyze critically, and transform the world. In this seminar, we will studyfeminist philosophies of teaching and learning that have opposed forms of education that are alienating and exclusive.After all, education has been a form of debt production, it has sometimes centered job credentials at the expense ofcritical study, and many people have been made to feel like "school" is not for them. Our class will prioritize primarysources in order to analyze examples of unique education projects such as those that support working-class people toauthor poetry. How are people who care about public libraries and mutual aid work imagining "school" anew? Studentswill have opportunities to self-direct their learning and to investigate feminist perspectives on the many contentioustopics currently animating higher education. Together, we will ask big questions: What counts as "education," who is deserving of access, and what are its core purposes?

This study-abroad course—co-taught in Cape Town and cross-listed with the Justice and Peace Studies and Education, Inquiry, and Justice—provides a unique, hands-on opportunity for Georgetown students to explore South Africa’s complex socio-economic and political contexts. The course will particularly focus on gender activism around sexual assault, sexual diversity, and women’s empowerment. Using an intersectional and social justice-centered framework, Social Transformation in South Africa combines faculty-led seminars, and guest lectures with extensive service with local community organizations. Counts towards 40 hours of Community Based Learning credit.

This course gives an introduction into the field of feminist science and technology studies. Students will learn the history of the tradition and how to incorporate Indigenous, feminist, trans, queer, speculative, and deconstructive methodologies to transform and produce new ways of scientific thinking, writing, and learning. We will explore and investigate hierarchies and networks of knowledge, from asking who has the power to create facts to how facts circulate to what gets left behind. Students will learn how to spot and question the way that gendered colonial constructs of knowledge legitimacy have shaped current realities of ethics, truth, and power, and how to incorporate alternative modes of knowledge creation through asking different questions, speculative fiction, and teasing out dimensions of connectivity between objects and worldmaking.

What is autotheory, where did it come from, and how did it find us? What communities have given rise to autotheory’s methods and what are its preoccupations and politics? This course introduces autotheory’s roots in trans and queer of color feminisms, comparative ethnic studies, and decolonial critique. We’ll not only study autotheoretical registers of relation and resistance, but also experiment at the intersections of critical and creative practice.

Across, beyond, over, through: the prefix “trans-” is on the move. Harboring a hefty history, “trans-” signals movement between languages and identities, genders and genres, cultures and nations. But is the “trans-” in “translation” the “trans-” in “transition”? And is the “trans-” in “transgender” the “trans-” in “transnational”? How have these terms traversed time and place? And how do these terms, which negotiate conceptual borders, travel across geopolitical ones? In this course, we’ll map multiple modes of "trans-," as they flicker between persons and places, words and worlds. Our intention will be to consider the tensions inlaid in literary and theoretical representations of transcreation, broadly conceived. Crucial to our consideration will be a comparative understanding of the poetics and politics of meaning-making. As we interpret the words we read, so too will we investigate the words we write. We’ll study the many critical and creative choices, both simple and sophisticated, that go into translating interpretations of a text to a reader. We will encounter multilingual works by authors and theorists such as Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Walter Benjamin, Camila Sosa Villada, Jorge Luis Borges, Roque Salas Rivera, Emily Apter, and torrin a. greathouse, among others.

Across the Black diaspora, Black women organizing for social transformation and against interlocking structures of power within non-Black feminist and Black social movements have had to contend with racism, patriarchy, and cisheterosexist politics within these movement spaces. Black feminist writers, artists, and activists have reflected on how participating in white feminist movements and Black social movements has often required the compartmentalization of their intersecting identities. This course will explore the contours and challenges of the historical expectation for Black women to sacrifice their unique racialized and gendered interests for the ostensibly “broader” causes of feminist and Black liberation and collective care. Students will read key texts in Black feminist theory and ethnographic studies on Black women’s social organizing to identify the advances and roadblocks they have experienced within feminist and Black social movements. The course will also investigate alternative spheres beyond traditional social movement spaces, such as art and literature, through which Black women have been able to articulate and center their specific needs and experiences.

This course, in partnership with WGST-150, is a student-created, project-based exploration of sex discrimination in education and a unique opportunity for students to apply academic rigor to one of the most contentious issues of our time. Students enrolled in WGST 300 are responsible for developing, implementing, evaluating, and revising the WGST 150 course curriculum. They also serve as peer mentors for students enrolled in WGST- 150. Course enrollment is by permission only; students who have successfully completed WGST-150 are invited to apply by emailing Sara Collina (shc44 @georgetown.edu).

The course will present an overview of gender and development policies worldwide, including the introduction to gender analysis as the central aspect to understanding patterns of land use and conservation strategies, both individual and collective and how male and female farmers contribute differently to conservation and agricultural production efforts. Students will be presented with real case studies from all regions (Latin America, Asia and Africa) documenting gender gaps in relation to access to land, agricultural and natural resources (water, soil), extension services, farm labor, forest, livestock, credit/microcredit, etc. Current international trends and research streams on gender and agriculture and natural resource management (NRM) will be discussed and analyzed with the aim to influence policy to reach lasting change. The course is an interactive experience and students are expected to actively contribute to the class through their involvement in field studies, analysis of particular case studies and innovative presentations skills (videos, posters, maps, etc.) An independent module on participatory action research (PAR) theory and methodologies will be part of the course, in order to provide students with some qualitative research skills and tools to conduct first hand research on a variety of topics that include gender, livelihoods strategies, and resources allocation in relation to development challenges in various world regions. Learning Objectives: Understand Gender perspectives and its implications in Agriculture/Environment fields Understand global, regional and household trends of sustainable development Understand frameworks of sustainable livelihoods and gender Understand gender responsive participatory research theory and practice Students will be familiar with the literature and interventions carried out by government, international agencies and bilateral/multilateral bodies that advocate for equity and the recognition of important fields of social stratification (ethnicity, race, class, age, etc.). At the completion of the course, students should be prepared to understand basic elements of gender analysis and its implications for project/program design. Students should be able to conduct qualitative gender analysis and independently develop frameworks for fieldwork and academic research.

This course examines women’s resistance in Russia, probing conceptual questions of considerable relevance today: What is the nature of resistance? How can resistance be distinguished from civil disobedience, dissent, and revolt? Does women's resistance differ from masculinist paradigms of opposition to power? Structured in reverse chronological order, this course first considers Putin-era manifestations of women’s resistance in Russia, including performance art, journalism, and political activism. We then investigate the genealogy of these contemporary protests in underground activism of the late Soviet period, in women’s involvement in WWII, and in the Bolshevik sexual revolution of the 1920s. Next, we turn to figures of resistance in pre-Revolutionary Russia, from female terrorists to medieval saints. Students engage with a broad range of cultural artifacts, including historical texts, literature, zines, journalistic work, visual art, film, in an effort to create historical narratives in light of incomplete or suppressed sources. The final project invites students to grapple with issues raised in this course by curating a museum exhibit. No knowledge of Russian required.

This course explores the cinematic contributions of women directors, camerawomen, script writers, and editors from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and their legacies in contemporary cinema. We begin with Soviet cinema of the 1920s, examining the often downplayed role of women editors in the formation of a unique montage culture in both feature and documentary film. We then focus our attention on the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc in the postwar period, which witnessed a growth of women directors and the entry of women into other professions in the film industry. Finally, we examine the legacies of women’s cinematic contributions in contemporary film from Russia and Central and Eastern Europe. Central to this course is the exploration of Marxist feminism as a possible theoretical backdrop against which we can understand women’s cinema in the region, as well as the “western” feminist concepts of écriture feminine and cinécriture. Examining specific works of art, we will ask: is women’s cinematic writing as a gendered vision of reality possible within a Marxist political-theoretical framework, which sees women’s liberation as part of the broader class struggle? Does women’s “writing” in cinema of the region exist in spite of an overarching framework that minimizes gender differences in favor of the universal human? What did women directors, cinematographers, editors, etc., from this geographic region contribute to cinematic techniques and the language of film? Does women's cinema of the socialist period continue to inform the film industry in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe today?

This course explores contemporary women’s writing in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, with particular attention to reception of Western feminism and critique of capitalist cultural markets. By reading and discussing short stories, poetry, novels, and essays from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Romania, the former Yugoslavia, and the Baltic countries from the time of transition, students engage with the complexity of attitudes and feelings that accompanied the political, economic and social changes in the region: far from an unambiguously positive embrace of democracy and free markets, many writers from the region express deep anxiety about the loss of a culturally distinct past and a shared multi-ethnic and multi-national culture, alongside more positive feelings of relief at the apparent dissolution of East-West borders and boundaries, of limitations on freedom of expression, etc. The syllabus includes four Nobel Prize-winning authors and creative assignments that help students better understand literary form.

This course will examine how Black women represent, curate, discuss, and theorize their lived experiences in the United States. Using both historical and contemporary representations, we will engage Black feminist/womanist cultural criticism, intersectionality, and other theories and modes of inquiries that specifically wrestle with depictions of Black women in popular cultural mediums. This course will also explore the meaning of “Black woman” and dissect the social-cultural-historical-political construction of Black womanhood using popular culture as a primary site of inquiry. How do Black women depict themselves and how do non-Black women depict Black womanhood? What can we learn about racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other forms of marginalization from engaging popular culture? How do develop a critical lens for engaging popular culture without devaluing importance of pleasure?

Since the inception of transatlantic racial slavery and European settler colonialism in the Americas, women of African descent have drawn on their embodied experiences and cultural and artistic traditions to resist gendered anti-Black oppression in a number of ways. From the patchwork quilts of enslaved African women in the nineteenth century to the political and artistic movements of Black women artists and cultural producers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Black women throughout the Americas have used art and culture to not only survive and combat gendered racism but also to imagine alternative social arrangements and ways of being in the world. This third year seminar will explore the themes, methods, and questions that have animated Black women’s visual art in the Americas. Additionally, the course will ask the following questions: What are the contours of and continuities between Black women’s visual art in the Americas? What insights might a hemispheric lens yield in the study of Black women’s art? Lastly, what is the relationship between Black women’s art and their social and political struggles throughout the hemisphere?

Since its revelation, the Qurʾan has provided spiritual insight, ethical and legal guidance, sacred narratives, and theological principles. In this course, students will be introduced to how women, sex, sexuality, and gender are depicted in the Qurʾan. We will also explore how classical Muslim scholars, contemporary Muslims, and Muslim feminists have approached and interpreted contested issues in the Qurʾan, including veiling, marriage, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Students will read a variety of primary and secondary sources, including the Qur’an and its commentaries, hadith reports, law, literature, and modern Muslim feminist critiques, to learn about some of the historical debates surrounding women and gender that persist today. Throughout this course, we will question how the Qurʾan has been interpreted and appropriated by various claimants to religious authority. We will also assess the subjective values and assumptions of interpreters, including our own, which shape interpretations of the Qurʾan and the formation of the Islamic tradition. This course is designed to offer students an understanding of how the social, political, economic, and intellectual milieu of the classical period contributed to Muslims’ conceptions of gender in the Islamic tradition. In addition, it promotes a more nuanced understanding of how Muslim feminists engage the Qurʾan as a form of resistance against misogynistic Muslim views, colonialism, orientalism, and Islamophobia, all of which marginalize Muslim women.

This advanced undergraduate seminar will consider the afterlives of colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean and the role of art and culture in coloniality’s enduring presence in the region. Through careful study of nineteenth and twentieth century nationalist visual and literary cultural production in the form of painting, film, poetry, and the novel, the course will elucidate how gendered anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity has been central to the colonial imagination and attendant nation-building processes in Latin America and the Caribbean. In an act of counter-mapping, the course will also attend to anti-colonial Black and Indigenous cultures and politics from the colonial period to the present.

Open only to seniors pursuing a major in Women's and Gender Studies, this course will create a synthesis of their studies in the field and deepen their skills in Women's and Gender Studies research. The curriculum will be built upon some of the most current research in the field, stressing an analysis of the theory/practice axis. This course is offered for 4 credits for majors.Spring