Women's and Gender Studies: WGS

Lower-Division Courses

WGS X01. Introductory Topics in Women's and Gender Studies.

WGS X01.11. United States Women, Sexuality, and Gender to 1865.

WGS X01.12. Gay and Lesbian Literature and Culture.

American writing by gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer authors and/or with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer themes.

WGS X01.13. Mexican American Women, 1910-Present.

Examines the history of Mexican and Mexican American women in the United States from the twentieth century to the present.

WGS X01.14. Performance, Feminism, and Social Change.

Exploration of the ways that engaged performance and feminist practice generate space for social change, including the basic principle that social transformation requires individual awareness, and that awareness necessitates a rigorous examination of race, gender, class, and sexuality.

WGS X01.16. Introduction to Black Women's Studies.

Interdisciplinary examination of the complexities of black womanhood in America through an investigation of history, identity, popular culture, and black feminism/womanism, as well as social and political activism.

WGS X01.17. Black Queer Art Worlds.

Exploration of over two decades of work produced by and about black queer subjects throughout the circum-Atlantic world. Provides an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the black queer diaspora, as well as an examination of the viability of black queer aesthetic practice as a form of theorizing.

WGS X01.19. Diversity in American Families.

Examination of the diversity of American families and current debates on family life from a sociological perspective with an emphasis on how diverse family forms came to exist and what these changes mean for adults and children in contemporary society. Study of recent trends in several aspects of family life, including dating and courtship, cohabitation, marriage, divorce, parenthood, family structure, and work-family balance. Overview of theoretical perspectives on family life with a focus on gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality.

WGS X01.20. Fertility and Reproduction.

Explores the when, why, how, and with whom Americans bear children, and how the United States compares to other developed and developing countries in the world. Subjects include infertility and its treatments, the ethics of surrogacy and international adoption, voluntary childlessness, the rapid rise of nonmarital childbearing in the United States and other countries, the politics of childbirth, the risks of maternal morbidity and mortality in developed and developing countries, and the declining populations and rapid aging of rich countries including Japan, Italy, and Spain where many women have stopped having children.

WGS X01.21. Gender, Race, and Class in American Society.

Use of the sociological perspective to analyze how the structure of American society, individual life, and group life chances are shaped by broader structures of privilege and disadvantage based on gender, race, and class. Examination of these in institutional arenas such as work, the family, education, health, the criminal justice system, sexuality, popular culture, and more.

WGS X01.24. Race, Immigration, and Family.

Introduction to family systems in the United States in a post-WWII framework with a central focus on Asian Americans. Students will investigate how gender, race, and ethnicity intersect and inform our understanding of the institution of the family.

WGS X01.25. The Revolution Will Be Dramatized.

WGS X01.26. Toni Morrison and August Wilson.

WGS X01.27. Women, Gender, Literature, and Culture.

An introduction to literary analysis focusing on women's and gender studies.

WGS X01.28. History of Human Sexuality.

The history of human sexuality is approached from four angles: sexual behaviors; sexual consequences; sexual regulation, and sexual science.

WGS X01.29. Latina Performance: From Celia to Selena.

WGS X01.3. Introduction to Latinx Body Art.

Examine the social, historical, economic, and commercial contexts influencing the production, display, and circulation of Latinx body art.

WGS X01.30. Latina and Latino Media and Popular Culture.

Explore Latina/o media and popular culture from 1950 to the present.

WGS X01.31. Introduction to Gender and Sexuality.

Explore social, emotional, cognitive, and physical aspects of gender and sexuality within the contexts of individual human development, families, and cultures.

WGS X01.32. Rights in Modern America.

WGS X01.33. Female Voices in China.

Introduction (in translation) to the most important texts and other sources by, for, and about women in Chinese intellectual, political, social, and cultural history.

WGS X01.34. Introduction to African American Women's History.

WGS X01.35. Introduction to Yoruba Religions.

Introduction to the cosmological world of the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria, covering history, societal organization, myths, legends, customs, and cultural traditions.

WGS X01.36. Police, Prisons, and Inequality.

Explore the ethical issues related to inequality and the United States criminal legal system. Examine the experiences of the poor, Indigenous people, immigrants, racial minorities, women, sexual minorities, and gender-nonconforming people.

WGS X01.6. Ethnicity and Gender: La Chicana.

WGS X01.7. Women's Reproductive Health for Nonscience Majors.

Overview of contemporary women's reproductive health issues, with emphasis on historical, physiological, psychosocial, and cultural influences that affect the reproductive health of women during adolescence, the childbearing years, and midlife.

WGS X03. Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies.

Explore concepts of gender and sexuality, race, class, religion, and nation; as well as skills in theory, history, and research methods relevant to LGBTQ studies. Survey the making of modern understandings of sexual and LGBTQ identities in the last one hundred years and the implications of this history for broader understandings of gender and sexuality.

WGS X05. Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies.

Introduction to the role of gender identity and representation in key social institutions and processes, including borders, displacements, and diasporas. Analysis of the social narratives of gender, race, and sexuality.

WGS X19S. Topics in Women's and Gender Studies.

This course is used to record credit the student earns while enrolled at another institution in a program administered by the University's Study Abroad Office. Credit is recorded as assigned by the study abroad adviser in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. University credit is awarded for work in an exchange program; it may be counted as coursework taken in residence. Transfer credit is awarded for work in an affiliated studies program.

Upper-Division Courses

WGS X22C. Sociology of Gender.

Inequality between the sexes; men's and women's changing roles in society.

WGS X22D. Population and Society.

The study of populations, including their growth, age structure, and patterns of fertility, mortality, and migration; the social causes and consequences of these phenomena.

WGS X22E. Sociology of Masculinities.

Sociological examination of the most important debates and discussions about men's experiences of masculinity in contemporary patriarchal societies. Exploration of social and individual meanings of masculinity, the dominant paradigms of masculinity that are taken as the norm, and the problems, contradictions, and paradoxes men experience in modern society.

WGS X22F. The Sociology of Race and Work.

Critical examination of work in the United States over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through a gendered, Asian American lens, using a comparative race perspective. Subjects include the sociological examination of concepts such as labor markets, globalization, care work, and gender/racial segregation in the workplace along with the ways race and gender shape how and where individuals are fitted into the workplace, how skills are evaluated, and how labor markets emerge.

WGS X22G. Race and the Digital.

Review of theoretical developments in the sociological study of "race, including an examination of processes of racialization and cultural texts, in order to better understand the ways in which identities are socially produced. Attention will be placed on forms of popular culture, black cultural production, and political action to question how such practices are shaped by migrations within the African diaspora.

WGS X22I. Sociology of Sexualities.

Review of sociological perspectives on sexuality. Examines how social institutions in United States society shape sexual values, beliefs, and practices. Subjects include changing cultural images of sexuality, sexual identities, and social movements.

WGS X22J. Race, Gender, and Surveillance.

Overview of theories in the sociology of social control, with a focus on risk, power, ethics, and surveillance. Examines historical transformations in social control and the distributions of power in the United States and global contexts, with attention to race, gender, and class. Subjects include: the transatlantic slave trade; prisons and punishment; the gaze, voyeurism, and reality television watching; the Internet; travel and state borders; privacy; and biometrics and the body.

WGS X22K. Sex and Violence in Popular Culture.

Overview of the cultural framing of sex and violence through realistic and hyper-realistic representations of sex, love, violence, and war in popular culture. Examination of the ethical implications, including the ways in which these representations rely on and further social inequalities and the sociological concepts, methods, and theoretical approaches to understanding sex and violence in popular culture.

WGS X23. Topics in Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies in the Natural Sciences.

Examination of gendered constructs such as gender and sexual development, male and female differences and similarities, and feminist or alternative scientific epistemologies using approaches from the natural sciences.

WGS X23C. Primate Social Behavior.

Studies primate behavior and why primates do what they do, including basic theoretical principles and the models used to explain primate behavior.

WGS X23D. Sex and Human Nature.

Provides an introduction to the scientific study of sexual behavior, mate choice, and reproduction in humans from the perspective of evolutionary biology; examines a wide range of genetic, ecological, social, physiological, and behavioral aspects of human sexuality.

WGS X24. Topics in Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies in Communication.

Multidisciplinary course examining issues of women, gender, and sexuality in media industries, texts, and audiences.

WGS X24C. Gender and Media Culture.

Critical analysis of media and its interrelation with issues of gender.

WGS X24D. Race, Class, and Gender in American Television.

Surveys history and contemporary debates regarding the construction of race, class, gender and sexual orientation in U.S. television from the late 1940s through the present day and related issues of television aesthetics, production practices, audiences, and advocacy.

WGS X24E. Gender and Fan Culture.

WGS X24F. Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Sports Media.

WGS X24G. Gender and the News.

Historical and contemporary exploration of gender and the news. Examination of the role of marginalized gender groups in producing news and the construction of gender within news texts.

WGS X24J. Stardom and Celebrity Culture.

Survey of the construction and meanings of stardom in film, television, and new media. Subjects include links with the media industries; stardom and race, class, gender, and sexuality; and new permutations of celebrity culture.

WGS X25. Special Topics in Women's and Gender Studies.

Analysis of special topics in women's and gender studies through reading, discussion, and lectures.

WGS X29S. Topics in Women's and Gender Studies.

This course is used to record credit the student earns while enrolled at another institution in a program administered by the University's Study Abroad Office. Credit is recorded as assigned by the study abroad adviser in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. University credit is awarded for work in an exchange program; it may be counted as coursework taken in residence. Transfer credit is awarded for work in an affiliated studies program.

WGS X33D. Introduction to Developmental Psychology.

Physical, social, and cognitive development in humans.

WGS X33R. Social Development in Children.

Development of social behavior (for example, sex typing and aggression) and social relationships.

WGS X35. Topics in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies.

The perspectives, experiences, and cultural contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people, examined from different disciplinary and/or interdisciplinary perspectives according to the topic.

WGS X35.1. Confronting LGBTQ Oppression.

Serves two primary functions: to increase participant's knowledge on the issues facing the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community; and to learn facilitation skills in order to talk about these issues on campus. Enrolled students will become peer educators in a team, and will give workshops across campus around LGBTQ issues during the spring semester.

WGS X35.10. HIV and AIDS Activism and the Healing Arts.

WGS X35.11. Beyonce Feminism and Rihanna Womanism.

WGS X35.12. Transgender Feminisms.

WGS X35.13. Queer Art and Activism.

WGS X35.14. Sexuality in Global Perspective.

Explore the ways in which sexuality intersects with money, intimacy, power, and labor in the context of global economic processes.

WGS X35.15. Queer Migrations.

WGS X35.17. Disability, Race, and Sexuality in Literature and Culture.

WGS X35.18. Twentieth-Century United States Lesbian and Gay History.

Examines classic texts and recent and varied writings on LGBT history, focused on experiences, ideas, and conflicts that have shaped modern LGBT identities.

WGS X35.2. Facilitating Dialogues on LGBTQ Oppression: Peers for Pride in Action.

The second part of the Peers for Pride facilitation program; serves as a way for students in the program to use the information and skills learned in "Confronting LGBTQ Oppression." Students will continue to fine-tune their facilitation skills and continue learning about LGBTQ people on the UT campus and beyond.

WGS X35.20. Sex and Sexuality in the Muslim World.

WGS X35.22. Queer Visual Culture.

WGS X35.23. Performing LGBTQ+.

WGS X35.24. United States Masculinities.

WGS X35.25. Queering Black Religions.

Explore the ways Africana religion practitioners disrupt and reframe dominant western discourses of gender and sexuality. Examine concepts of temporality, spirit manifestation, subjectivity, corporeality, and Africana religious epistemologies.

WGS X35.26. Queer Eastern Europe.

Explore LGBTQI stories and political struggles in Eastern Europe with a focus on the region's queer culture: literature, cinema, and the arts.

WGS X35.28. Race, Gender, Sex, and Religion.

Use an intersectional feminist framework to examine the construction and maintenance of normative categories of race, gender, sex, and sexuality within United States religious discourse.

WGS X35.29. Medical Rhetorics, Race, and Gender.

Examine how health and illness are defined through rhetorics about and within medicine. Focus on race and gender, consider how communication and language shape understandings of health, access to health care, and experiences of illness and disability.

WGS X35.3. African Queer Studies.

Examines the development of African queer studies as the interdisciplinary study of sexuality on the African continent, and its impact on the academic and activist realm. Focus on intersectional feminist and queer theory and how this field offers tools that can be used to rethink issues of oppression and domination in relationship to race, nation, sex, gender, and sexuality on the African continent. Of particular interest will be LGBTQ activism and the ways in which queer Africans engage and shape their sexuality, and create forms of belonging in their countries and their communities.

WGS X35.30. Queer of Color Critique.

WGS X35.32. Queer/Trans Performance.

Explore the ways performance serves as an alternative space of expression and worldmaking, a site of activism and resistance, and a creative outlet for queer and trans people in specific socio-cultural contexts.

WGS X35.6. Gender Issues in Contemporary Latin American Cinema.

Studies Latin American cinema as a device of gender system formation and reinforcement, and as criticism of patriarchal hegemony; discusses questions related to sexuality depicted in Latin American films. Subjects covered include: maternity, prostitution, machismo, children's sexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and gender violence in films from the 1930s to present. Conducted in Spanish.

WGS X35.7. Queer Study in Low Culture.

Examines representations of sexual and gender non-conformity in popular culture since the mid-twentieth century in the United States.

WGS X35.9. Movements for Sexual and Reproductive Justice.

Charts the historical development of various struggles for sexual and reproductive justice in the United States since the nineteenth century.

WGS X35C. Queer Media Studies.

Critical analysis of queer media. Read key queer (media) theory texts and explore dominant strategies used by the media industries, as well as those utilized by LGBTQ+ independents/subcultures, paying close attention to contested discourses of identity, politics, activism and desire. Explore historical shifts in the representation of LGBTQ+ individuals.

WGS X35D. Queer Television.

WGS X35J. Latinx Sexualities.

Examine Latinx sexualities from a historical perspective to comprehend the social, cultural, political, and economic factors, which have shaped these experiences.

WGS X35L. The Black Figure in American Art and Popular Culture.

Examine how popular culture and artistic practices facilitate or challenge social constructions of "Blackness" in the United States.

WGS X35P. Preserving Austin's Queer History.

Explore Austin's queer history since World War II and write on the practice of oral history and LGBTQ oral history in particular. Build the foundation for an ongoing Austin LGBTQ Oral History Project to be housed at the Briscoe Center for American History.

WGS X40. Cross-Cultural Topics in Women's and Gender Studies.

Multidisciplinary course examining experiences and issues of gender in different cultures.

WGS X40.1. Contemporary Latinx Visual and Performance Art.

Explore contemporary visual and performance art by Latinx artists working since the 1970's to the present. Examine artists who began to engage with and in civil rights discourse to intervene through their art-making practices; and to align with contemporary trends in the art world that began to expand in the 1970's, such as performance art, installation art, video art, and, later, digital art.

WGS X40.11. Veiling in the Muslim World.

WGS X40.13. Law and Society in Early Modern Europe.

Research seminar on how historians have explored the significance of law, criminal and civil, in the lives of early modern Europeans. Topics include infanticide, fornication, drunkenness, theft, debt, slander, and family disputes.

WGS X40.20. Violence in Contemporary Mexican Culture.

Studies the representation of violence in contemporary literary and cultural production in Mexico in order to understand social, political, and cultural implications of current violence there. Taught in Spanish.

WGS X40.25. Gender, Sexuality, and the Family in Indian Religions and Cultures.

A comprehensive historical overview of gender issues as they are represented in the textual traditions of South Asia.

WGS X40.27. Islamic Law.

Designed to give students a foundation in the substantive teachings of the shariah, which comprises not only what we normally think of as law, but also ethics and etiquette.

WGS X40.29. Contemporary African American Women's Fiction.

WGS X40.30. Goddesses in World Religions and Cultures.

Historical and cross-cultural overview of the relationship between feminine and religious cultural expressions through comparative examinations and analyses of various goddess figures in world religions.

WGS X40.35. South Asian Migration to the United States.

Examine the South Asian diaspora in the United States.

WGS X40.37. Tolerance in Dutch Culture.

The historical roots of Dutch "tolerance" and how it plays a role in current Dutch culture and attitudes towards religious, gender, and sexual differences, as well as drug use, prostitution, and euthanasia. Exploration of the stereotypes and the actuality of these Dutch attitudes and policies from an international comparative perspective.

WGS X40.4. 21st Century Latinx Literature.

Explore Latinx literature from the past two decades including both literary form and political engagement, with an emphasis on Latina, queer, and nonbinary writers.

WGS X40.40. Historical Imagining of Africa in Films.

WGS X40.44. Gender Politics in the Islamic World.

Study of the Islamic world and major sociological concepts such as gender, social organizations, culture, and politics. Examines how culture is mediated by politics, resulting in diverse interpretations of Islam and in different policies with respect to women's rights.

WGS X40.45. Feminist Interventions in Borderlands History.

Provides an in-depth understanding of the social, economic, and spatial transformations of the United States/Mexico borderlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

WGS X40.46. Africana Women's Art.

Analysis of the diverse modes of presentation, mediums, definitions, and influences of Africana women artists in the diaspora. Designed to use critical theory and art history found in oral and written literatures, music, films, and other formal and informal documents.

WGS X40.48. Diaspora Visions.

An exploration of border crossing by cultures and groups including Yorubas, Jews, Armenians, Tibetans, Hamish, Pakistanis, and Indians and the production of images by immigrants, exiles, and nomads in alien lands.

WGS X40.49. Contemporary African Popular Culture.

WGS X40.51. Medieval Women Mystics.

The life and writings of Saint Birgitta of Sweden, fourteenth-century visionary, religious reformer, and pilgrim, examined and compared with her predecessor Hildegard of Bingen (Germany), her successor Margery Kempe (England), as well as Margery's mentor, Julian of Norwich. Social and historical contexts for all four of these women mystics will be explored in depth.

WGS X40.52. Sex and Power in the African Diaspora.

Exploration of various experiences and theories of sex, intimacy, and desire alongside intellectual and artistic engagements with power hierarchies and spirituality across transnational black communities. Subjects include the concept of "erotic subjectivity" from various theoretical and methodological angles, principally within African diasporic contexts.

WGS X40.53. Women and Social Movements in the Twentieth-Century United States.

Examines women's participation in well-known and lesser-known social movements during the twentieth century.

WGS X40.54. The Qur'an.

Explore the history, language, style, and themes of the Qur'an.

WGS X40.56. Muslim Women in Politics.

WGS X40.58. Queer Ethnographies.

Anthropological analysis of gender and sexuality that critically evaluates formative concepts and theories that have been subject to recent debates within anthropology, gender studies, and queer theory.

WGS X40.60. Women and Resistance in Contemporary Eastern Europe.

WGS X40.62. Gender and Art in the Muslim World.

WGS X40.66. Holocaust Aftereffects.

Explores the historical, political, psychological, theological, and cultural fallout of the Holocaust, as well as literary and cinematic responses in Europe and the United States.

WGS X40.67. Graffiti and Poster Art in the Islamic World.

WGS X40.69. Black Women on Trial.

Using press coverage of historical and contemporary court cases and trials of women ranging from Angela Davis to Marissa Alexander, explores how media shapes public and popular perceptions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and the law.

WGS X40.7. Black Women and the State.

Surveys black women's experiences living with and confronting state oppression around the world. Takes an historical, social, and theoretical look at the roots of this oppression and inequality, and how black women have chosen to respond to it locally and globally.

WGS X40.74. Bad Language: Race, Class, and Gender.

WGS X40.75. Gender and Modern India.

Examine gender and the shifting nature of modernity between precolonial and colonial periods in the Indian subcontinent.

WGS X40.77. Theorizing the Human.

Trace the continuities and transformations in constructions of populations as more or less human, from settler-colonial conquest to the post-Trump era. Examine what logics mark racialized populations as disposable during the colonization of the Americas, and which systematically condition racialized subjects to a state of enduring siege.

WGS X40.78. Reproductive Justice and Race.

Examine the links between reproductive care and social inequality, and explore reproductive outcomes for women in the context of social justice.

WGS X40.81. Iranian and Iranian-American Identity.

WGS X40.82. Race, Capitalism, and the Environment.

WGS X40.83. Black Middle Class.

WGS X40.84. Fashion And Desire.

WGS X40.85. Technologies of United States Empire.

Investigate the various technologies that the United States has used to maintain imperial geographies at "home" and abroad. Focus on imperial entanglements of global capital, liberalism, and technological systems.

WGS X40.86. Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros.

WGS X40.87. Chicana Feminisms.

WGS X40.89. Transnational Latinx Popular Culture.

WGS X40.9. Black Women in America.

Uses primary sources, historical monographs, and essays to provide a chronological and thematic overview of the experiences of black women in America from their African roots to the circumstances they face in the present era.

WGS X40.90. Latinx Short Story.

WGS X40.91. Sexuality and Gender in Latin America.

Explore gender as a broad analytical tool to understand key problems concerning social organization, power relations, and inequality in contemporary Latin America.

WGS X40.92. Italian Television Advertising.

Analysis of Italian television commercials in order to identify changes that have taken place at the level of language, with some attention to socio-cultural dynamics.

WGS X40.94. African-American Women's Political Activism.

Explore Black feminism and African-American women's political participation.

WGS X40.95. Policing Latinidad.

WGS X40.96. Latinx Legend Tripping.

Explore narrative folklore from diverse traditions across the United States based Latinx diaspora. Focus on supernatural legends and the creation of the female "monster".

WGS X40.97. Tejana Cultural Studies.

Investigate the history of Tejanas to reaffirm and reclaim their place and role in the histories of Native Americans, women, Chican@/Chicanxs, Greater Mexico, and the United States. Explore how transborderism and transregionalism complicate this history. Contemplate how Tejanas' stories are fundamental to illuminating the struggles, resistance, and liberation of Chicanas, mestizas, and afromexicanas from precontact to decolonization.

WGS X40F. Latina Feminism and Health.

WGS X40L. Black Queer Literature and Film.

Analyzes written works, films, and videos by and about lesbians, bisexual, transgender, and gay black people, with an emphasis on understanding the historical and theoretical construction of sexual and gender identities and sexual/cultural practices in black communities.

WGS X40N. Native American Women's History.

Investigate the histories of Native American women to reaffirm and reclaim their place and role in the histories of Native Americans, indigenous peoples, women, Chican@/xs, Greater Mexico, and the United States. Contemplate how many understandings that center colonization, settler colonialism, genocide, race, and environmentalism are essential to examining Native American women's history. Explore the stories, struggles, and ideas of community-building, sovereignty, and liberation as integral to their genders and sexualities as Native American, Indian, First Nations, indigenous, and red and brown women.

WGS X40S. Topics in Cross-Cultural Feminisms.

Examine experiences and issues of gender in different cultures.

WGS X40S.1. Gender and Translation in the Arab World.

Examine complex politics and poetics behind the translation and marketing of Arab women's writing in the West.

WGS X40S.2. Black Women and Mass Incarceration.

Examine the history of Black women and mass incarceration in America. Explore how race, class, and gender have historically influenced the production of crime and unfair criminal justice policies. Investigate why mass incarceration matters, what its historical legacy is, and how it impacts Black women today.

WGS X40S.3. Slavery and Its Legacies.

Explore how slavery has evolved in the United States since the end of the Civil War.

WGS X40S.4. Black Digital Feminisms in Brazil.

Explore online expressions of Black feminisms in Brazil, highlighting transnational resonances with other Black cultural movements while examining the socio-political particularities of Brazil's current digital landscape.

WGS X40S.5. The Politics and Art of Iran's Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising.

Analyze the politics and art of Iran's 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising movement. Develop a digital humanities resource on the movement through collaboration.

WGS X40S.6. Central Americans in the United States.

Examine the extensive and diverse histories, cultures, social and political movements of Central Americans in the United States, particularly through a Black, Indigenous, and Ethnic Studies framework.

WGS X40W. Writing Slavery.

Explores the controversial rewriting of slavery in a presentist context by contemporary authors. Addresses challenges that archival limitations and revisionist writings about slavery pose for academic disciplines, literary instruction, and/or pedagogy.

WGS X41. The Roots of Social and Economic Justice.

WGS X45. Topics in Women's and Gender Studies.

WGS X45.21. Male-Female Communication.

Studies of speech patterns related to the concepts of male and female, including sexism in speaking, patterns of male and female speaking, patterns of listening to males and females, speech in courtship and family, speech and sexual discrimination in careers.

WGS X45.26. American Dilemmas.

Examination of critical American social problems, including problems in the economic, political, and health care systems, as well as inequities based on income, gender, and race. Exploration of how these problems are a natural outgrowth of the existing social structure.

WGS X45.27. Southern Cultures.

Investigation of multiple, fluid, and diverse southern cultures through topics such as NASCAR, biscuits and cornbread, mega-churches, beauty pageants, jazz, country music, southern hip hop, migrant farm cultures, matzo ball soup with collards, the Trail of Tears, Gullah, Tara, Graceland, and more. Includes discussion of stereotypes and the individual truths about women, men, and southern in the context of this discussion.

WGS X45.29. Witches, Workers, and Wives.

Explores the role of families and concepts of gender as expressed in key economic, social, political, and cultural patterns in early modern Europe.

WGS X45.3. Women in Sickness and Health.

Explores medical and biological views throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of women and women's health, the social context of those views, the development of medical practices, and the treatment of illness and debility.

WGS X45.31. Gender and Slavery in the United States.

Examines the gendered experience of chattel slavery in the United States. Includes critical analysis of classic and contemporary texts, films, and songs that focus on slave labor, family, community, sexuality, and the economy.

WGS X45.36. Feminist Media Theory.

Survey of basic theories related to the structure and process of film and video communication.

WGS X45.38. History of Sexuality in America.

WGS X45.41. American Food.

Studies diverse American food cultures from a humanities perspective, exploring connections between global, national, and local communities. Uses scholarship in the field of food studies as well as cookbooks, novels, poetry, photographs, songs, documentaries, and oral histories to investigate the past and present of American food communities.

WGS X45.42. Nature and Gender in America.

Study of the connections between nature and gender in American national narratives. Explores how Americans of differing classes, races, genders, sexual orientations, and ages have shaped and experienced changing ideas of America, wilderness, domestication, and society over time and in different regions of the country.

WGS X45.44. Women Radicals and Reformers.

Traces traditions of women's radical activism and reform beginning with the Enlightenment and the American Revolution and continuing to the present, with concentration on the twentieth century.

WGS X45.49. History of American Feminism.

WGS X45.56. Gender And Sexuality in Performance.

Consider what physical performance and dance tell us about gender, sexuality and the body. Previous knowledge of performance or gender studies is not required.

WGS X45D. Punks and Divas in Southeast Europe.

Examine popular music and its role in political struggle and collective identity formation in the Balkans. Analyze music genres in this region in the context of the historical changes it underwent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the fall of Communism and -- in the case of former Yugoslavia -- the formation of seven new nation-states through a series of bloody and brutal wars.

WGS X45E. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Literature and Culture.

WGS X45G. Virginia Woolf.

Examines critical and fictional works of Virginia Woolf and the author's continuing legacy and influence. Explores the value and limitations of high modernism; English literary heritage and tradition; feminism; creative and critical definitions of gender and sexuality; intellectual activism, including Woolf's critiques of patriarchy, war, and fascism; and Woolf and imperialism and colonialism.

WGS X45I. Toni Morrison.

An examination of select novels by the Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist focuses on the positional uniqueness that womanism shares with a predominant feminism, which surfaces in historicized familial relationships.

WGS X45J. Women's Autobiographical Writing.

Examines the autobiographical impulse in women's writing by exploring the concept of the individualistic self versus the sense of self as a part of community and duty, and the way in which that communal self can both partake of humankind and participate in self-actualization.

WGS X45K. American Literary Masculinities.

Explores constructions of masculinity in American literature from a generally, but not exclusively, feminist perspective. Subjects include what masculinity has meant at different times in United States history, and how it has varied in meaning and significance according to broad categories of identity such as social class, race, region, and queerness.

WGS X45M. Gender and Politics in a Comparative Perspective.

Examine the patterns of women's representation over time, and in different regions of the world. Explore why gender equality in political institutions is important, tracing the evolution of feminism over time.

WGS X45N. Women and Sports Media.

WGS X45O. Gender and Speculative Fiction.

Examine how writers have used speculative fiction--including science fiction, utopia, and dystopia--as a tool to explore gender, race, sexuality, humanity, ethics, disability, and the environment.

WGS X45P. American Women Writers.

WGS X45Q. Displacement and Resistance.

Explore technologies of displacement, as well as tactics, digital media work, mapping projects, and activism that communities engage with to resist dispossession. Examine, locally and globally, the displacement and resistance effects of various events including infrastructure projects and gentrification.

WGS X45R. Bradstreet and Wheatley.

Explore the works of Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley.

WGS X45S. Elena Ferrante: Politics and Passion.

WGS X45T. Race, Gender, and Political Economy in United States Literature.

Explore the intersection of race, class, and gender relations, gender expression, and gender norms as constitutive of real and imagined political economies in literature and films by black, indigenous, and Latine authors and producers in the United States.

WGS X45U. Women and Sport.

Examine the role sport and exercise has played in the lives of women since ancient times with an emphasis on events influencing American women in sport, their fight for access to sport, and the International Olympic Games.

WGS X45W. Women in Postwar America.

WGS X46C. Animals and American Culture.

Explores the role of animals in American history, culture, and society.

WGS X46G. American Popular Culture, 1682-Present.

Explores the evolution of American popular culture and its relationship to national consolidation, and at times, disunion, over the last 330 years.

WGS X46J. Gender and Labor in Global Asia.

WGS X46K. Women and the Holocaust.

Introduction to both the history of Jewish and German women during World War II and the Holocaust, and to women's narratives and self-representations of this period. Historical sources, memoirs, films, and interviews will be used as source material.

WGS X46L. Arendt and de Beauvoir.

WGS X46M. Social Dramas of Henrik Ibsen.

A detailed introduction to Ibsen's social dramas (1877-1899), emphasizing their unity as a prolonged commentary on the society of his era and the variety of its human problems. Special emphasis on subjects such as: the family and the home; the public world of reputation, work, and citizenship; the predicaments of men and women in a male-dominated society; and the motives of our interventions into the lives of others.

WGS X50. Feminist Theory.

Feminist theory with selections from women's and gender studies scholars. Recommended feminist theory course for women's and gender studies majors.

WGS X52R. Rhetoric of Ethnic Studies.

Study the histories of ethnic (and gender) studies in both higher education and K-12 institutions, and the rhetoric of attacks on, and defenses of, ethnic and gender studies through an examination of primary and secondary source materials.

WGS X56. Introduction to Feminist Research Methods.

Introduction to feminist research methods across a range of traditional disciplines. Designed to prepare students to analyze research within gender studies and to develop their own research skills.

WGS X58Q. Supervised Research.

Supervised individual research on an issue in women's and gender studies.

WGS X60. Research and Thesis in Women's and Gender Studies.

Individual project or paper to be completed under the direction of a women's and gender studies faculty member.

WGS X79H. Honors Tutorial Course.

Individual reading of selected works for one semester, followed in the second semester by the writing of an honors thesis.

WGS X79L. Internship in Women's and Gender Studies.

Experience working in the community or for a nonprofit agency.

WGS X79S. Senior Seminar.

Intensive study of selected topics in women's and gender studies.

Graduate Courses

WGS X81. The Roots of Social and Economic Justice.

WGS X84N. Internship in Women's and Gender Studies.

Practical working involvement with participating nonprofit and research agencies.

WGS X90. Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies.

Introduction to the interdisciplinary women's and gender studies graduate program.

WGS X90W. Writing Workshop.

Introduction to feminist writing practice.

WGS X91. Feminist Theories.

Selected readings of feminist theories from an interdisciplinary perspective.

WGS X92. Research Methods Seminar in Women's and Gender Studies.

Introduction to select feminist research methods used in various disciplines and how these methods inform interdisciplinary perspectives in the student's own field of study in preparation for a report, thesis, or dissertation.

WGS X93. Seminar: Topics in Women's and Gender Studies.

WGS X93L. Topics in International Women's and Gender Studies.

Explore intersectional and interdisciplinary topics in women's and gender studies. Conducted in languages other than English.

WGS X93S. Topics in Specialized Women's and Gender Studies.

WGS X94. Conference Course in Women's and Gender Studies.

Individual directed readings and conferences on selected problems or topics in women's and gender studies.

WGS X95. Special Projects in Women's and Gender Studies.

Interdisciplinary projects to support the women's and gender studies graduate student coursework.

WGS X98. Thesis.

WGS X98R. Master's Report.

Preparation of a report to fulfill the requirement for the master's degree under the report option.

Professional Courses