Description of Core Required Courses

• GNDR–G 600 Concepts of Gender (3 cr.) Introduces histori­cal, theoretical, behavioral, philosophical, scientific, multi- and cross-cultural perspectives on gender and its meanings.  Attention is given to the emergence of the category “gender” itself, and its variable applications to different fields of knowledge, experience, cultural expression, and institutional regulation, including queer, trans, and other theories of sex, sexuality, and desire. 

• GNDR–G 603 Feminist Theories (3 cr.) Explores classic and current feminist theories, asking questions about knowledge, subjectivity, sexuality, and ethics. Debates are situated within and against various intellectual movements, such as Marxism, post-structuralism, theories of race and ethnicity. Sexuality studies and queer theory’s relation to feminist praxis will form a key component of the course. 

• GNDR–G 702 Researching Gender Issues (3 cr.) This course explores re­search methodologies and methods in history that are relevant to gender studies. The impact of gender studies on epistemo­logical and methodological issues in history is examined. The course provides students with an overview of research tools, methods, techniques, approaches, paradigms, and theoretical contributions pertinent to gender-related historical research. 

Description of Additional Gender Studies Courses

• GNDR–G 598 Feminist Theory: Classic Texts and Founding Debates (3 cr.) Explores founding texts of contemporary feminist theory, asking questions about identity, knowledge, sexuality, and eth­ics. Such works have emerged in relation to a variety of theoret­ical discourses, such as Marxism, structuralism, cultural studies, and others. Examines the intellectual history of feminist theory and its resonance with more recent trends. 

• GNDR–G 601 Scientific Practices and Feminist Knowledge (3 cr.) Examines intersections of gender and knowledge focusing on feminist analyses of scientific epistemology and practice, and the implications of feminist theories about the social meaning and gendered construction of scientific research. Particular fo­cus is placed upon race, class, sexuality and cultural difference in medical, psychological, and evolutionary accounts of “human nature.”

• GNDR–G 602 Gender Dimensions of Cultural Production and Criticism (3 cr.) Interrogates the gendered nature of cultural production and criticism. Controversies related to gender dimensions of aesthetics, cultural meanings, or genres receive examination, as well as claims about the constitution of genius or creativity, and the role of identity and race in cultural production. The critical issue of theorizing audience/reader/viewer warrant particular scrutiny. 

• GNDR–G 604 Knowledge, Gender, and Truth (3 cr.) Examines feminist contributions to epistemological questioning of knowledge formations through comparison of case study disciplines and through cross-cultural study. Arguments about knowledge val­ues of “truth,” “objectivity,” “validity,” “reason,” and “represen­tativeness” as gendered categories. Receive scrutiny in relation to fields such as historiography, ethnography, ethics, science, or psychology. 

• GNDR–G 695 Graduate Readings and Research in Gender Studies (1–6 cr.) This course provides for graduate students’ intensive independent study of specific topics. Study is supervised by an appropriate core or affiliated faculty member whose research expertise matches the student’s area of interest. 

• GNDR–G 696 Research Colloquium in Gender Studies (1–3 cr.) Active participation in Gender Studies research colloquia. Introduces students to the problems, interpretations, theories and re­search trends in all areas related to gender and sexuality stud­ies. Topics vary throughout the semester. Facilitates exposure to a variety of approaches to interrogating research questions about gender. May be repeated more than once for credit.

• GNDR–G 700 Sexualized Genders/Gendered Sexualities (3 cr.) Expands our understanding of the relationship between biological sex, gendered identities, and sexual “preferences,” practices and lifeways that push beyond binary models reliant on a simple “nature/culture” distinction. Focus is placed on the dynamic and variable aspects of sex, sexuality, and gender within and across cultures and historical periods. 

• GNDR–G 701 Graduate Topics in Gender Studies (1–4 cr.) Advanced investigation of selected research topics in women’s studies. Topics to be announced. 

• GNDR–G 704 Cultural Politics of Sexuality in the Twentieth Century (3 cr.) Examines the cultural and political implications of sexual­ity’s emergence as a public discourse during the twentieth century. Specifically, it examines certain limit cases in which the ostensibly private matters of sexual behavior and sexual identity have given rise to very public controversies about the cultural and political values of society at large.

• GNDR–G 708 Contested Masculinities (3 cr.) This course examines masculinity at sites of contestation–between disciplines, his­torical moments, nationalities, regions, and bodily ontologies. By tracing the resonances of transnational, transdisciplinary, and transhistorical masculinities, our aim is to critically examine masculinities, particularly in the context of feminist challenges to gender ideologies.

• GNDR–G 710 Gender, Medicine, and the Body (3 cr.) Examines topical themes related to medicine and the body as they interact with gender. 

• GNDR–G 718 Transnational Feminisms and the Politics of Globaliza­tion (3 cr.) Interrogates debates concerning globalization and gender. Focuses on how gender shapes and is shaped by the flow of money, people, and culture that characterize “globaliza­tion.” How is gender influenced by geographic dislocations and re-routings? How are women and men situated as agents and subjects of global change? 

• GNDR–G 899 Ph.D. Dissertation (1–12 cr.) Research and writing of doc­toral dissertation. This course is eligible for a deferred grade.