Women's Studies (WMS)

An introduction to the rapidly expanding body of literature related to the gendered aspects of health and sexuality with an emphasis on women.

Offered Fall, Spring

An introduction to the field of Queer Studies by analyzing the role of gender, race, class, ability, and nationalism in the construction of modern lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) identities, and it considers how queerness can operate as a disruption, expansion, or refusal of these identity categories.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Introduces students to Women's Studies. Students learn about gender from a multicultural, multiracial feminist and global perspective. Emphasis is on women's history; gender, culture, and nation; social institutions; sexuality, sexism, and violence; and local and transnational women's movements.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

An introductory study of an issue or a concept in Women's Studies that is of particular interest to both the faculty member and the students. Repeatable course with different topics.

Offered As needed

Examines representation of the witch and witchcraft in literature and culture in different historical periods and cultures.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Examines representations of gender and sexuality in comedy and humor from multicultural perspectives. Topics include feminist humor and comedy as vehicles of social criticism and advocacy, and the relationships of the comedic to ethnicity, race and class.

Offered As needed

Introduces issues that feminist theory poses for the analysis of film and culture. it focuses on women's contributions to, and representations in, film.

Offered As needed

Provides comparatist perspectives on the representation of women's roles and rights as expressed in a variety of writings from different historical periods and cultures. Students will gain an understanding of women's differential treatment in legal systems and social institutions from antiquity to present.

Offered As needed

This cross-cultural, interdisciplinary course introduces students to women's issues as these interface with race and class. Students will recognize, analyze and evaluate the socio-political and economic forces that affect women's lives through a critical examination of race, class and gender.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Prerequisite: WMS 250 is required. A primer to principles of feminist philosophy, history, thought, methodology and current issues pertaining to women.

Offered Fall

Offers a reflection on key art practices and theories which develop an understanding of queerness. Stepping away from 'queer' as an identity marker, the readings and work offered will articulate how queer operates as a verb to subvert or wholly turn away from the conventional understandings of life to cultivate radical alternatives. Each week a theoretical text is paired with a 'case study' to offer an opening conversation on the political implications of queering art.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Focuses on women's labor participation in the family and society. Topics include women in professional and domestic labor markets, the politics of mothering and maternal labor, sex work, family policies, labor rights, wage gaps, and invisible work.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Prerequisites: WMS 250 and WMS 320 required. A primer to feminist research methods. Students will be introduced to a variety of ways in which feminists question and approach the production of knowledge.

Offered Spring

Introduction to contemporary US popular culture, with a focus on the ways popular culture production, consumption and representation reinforce and resist ideologies about gender, race, and sexual orientation.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Leaning away from older models of Global "Sisterhood" which privilege a singular western-focused model of democracy and gender, transnational feminisms are interested in respectign difference to understand local, historical, economic, and (post)-colonial conditions that women draw on to articulate resistance. This course offers differences between global feminism and transnational feminisms by moving through examples and case studies of how transnational feminisms look on the ground and in response to different modes of oppression.

Offered Spring

Study of an issue or a concept in Women's Studies that is of particular interest to both the faculty member and the students. Repeatable course with different topics. Repeatable for credit.

Offered As needed

Prerequisites: WMS 350 required. Advanced study in feminist theory. Course addresses major concepts and assumptions of feminist study in order to better understand how to address societal and power inequalities and to improve women's status globally.

Offered Fall

Brings Women of Color Feminisms to bear on Queer theory to understand that people have (political or intimate) desires and attachments which are not always legible. Familiarizes students with the cultural, political and economic concerns of QoCC and how it interrupts socially dominant categories of sexuality.

Offered Fall, Spring, Summer

Prerequisite: WMS 400 required. A critical analysis and interpretation of major feminist theories and contemporary issues in women's studies.Special attention will be paid to different discourse communities - academic, internet, personal - as they relate to feminism and the women's movement, in order to help students think more deeply about being a reader and writer of feminist scholarship. Students will be exposed to influential and emergent feminist theories in order to produce original research projects, papers, and/or creative works. A grade of C or better in this course fulfills the GWAR requirement for all Biology majors and minors

Offered Spring

Prerequisites: Consent of instructor and program coordinator. Independent study of a particular problem, issue, or readings under the direction of a member of the Women's Studies faculty. Course is not repeatable for credit in the Women's Studies minor.

Offered As needed

An intensive study of an issue or a concept in Women's Studies that is of particular interest to both the faculty member and the students. Repeatable course with different topics. Three hours of seminar per week.

Offered As needed

Practical application of coursework in Women's Studies through supervised work and field experience in politics, law, art, communications, social welfare agencies or other area as approved by the instructor and coordinator of the program. Course is not repeatable for credit in the Women's Studies minor.

Offered Fall, Spring