Spring 2021

he Women’s and Gender Studies Program offers students the opportunity to examine gender issues across disciplines and to study the contributions and experiences of women in different historical periods and cultures.

WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES: INTRO TO WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIESThis course is designed as a forum on gender. We will frame our discussions as a series of questions: How does our culture represent femininities and masculinities? How do issues of race, class, sexuality and other identities shape our ideas about gender? Our aim will be to consider and discuss as many diverse points of view about gender and its intersections as possible. Course fee: $25

Denise Witzig WGS 001-01 MWF 9:15-10:20

PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY OF GENDERA critical review of the theory and research on gender from the biological, psychological and sociological perspectives. The course explores the social construction of gender and how it impacts human development and social behavior. Throughout the course, the interaction between gender and the complexities of race, culture and sexual orientation is considered.

José Feito WGS 147-01 MWF 9:15-10:20

PSYCHOLOGY: HUMAN SEXUALITIESA review of the empirical evidence on human sexuality, with a focus on historical and cultural perspectives as well as the physiological and sociological basis for sexual behavior and sexual identity.

José Feito WGS 157-01 MWF 10:30-11:35

WORLD LANGUAGES & CULTURES: BRAINS, BROWS AND BEAUTIES: ICONS IN LATIN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTUREPolitical figure Eva Perón (Evita), actress Carmen Miranda, artist/activist Frida Kahlo and singer Selena Quintanilla are just some of the many women from Latinx and Latin American communities that have reached iconic status, largely thanks to the power of cinema, television screens, and social media. In this course, we will look at the ways mainstream media and popular culture in both the US and Latin America have helped transform key figures into popular cultural icons. Course will be taught in English.

Maria Luisa Ruiz WGS 132-01 MWF 2:45-3:50

KINESIOLOGY: WOMEN IN SPORTToday’s female athletes are breaking records and making headlines, yet behind the news is a history of resistance to women and girls in sport. This course examines the cultural attitudes, customs, laws and biases that shaped sports policies, rules and opportunities for women and men, from segregation to Title IX and Olympic doping scandals. We also investigate the relationship between gender and sport in media images of women as they continue to shape a traditionally male domain.

Claire Williams WGS 106-01 MWF 10:30-11:35

ANTHROPOLOGY: SPECIAL TOPICS: COMING OF AGE IN THE US: THE CULTURE OF SEX & RELATIONSHIPS IN THE UNITED STATESWhat do American cultures teach us about how people are expected to behave in relationships? How do social expectations shape individual behavior around intimacy? In this class, students will explore cultural values around sex and intimacy and study how these values feed into patterns of respect or patterns of violence. We will focus on how these cultural values play out on college campuses. During the course, students work with community partners at Saint Mary’s College to promote positive relational change on our campus.

Anna Corwin WGS 135-01 T/TH 9:45-11:20

COMMUNICATION: TELEVISION & CULTURAL CRITICISM Let’s Watch TV! This course focuses on television shows to discuss the cultural and social impact of the medium as a whole and its relationship with culture. Shows such as Game of Thrones, The Office, Stranger Things, Bob’s Burgers, and Grey’s Anatomy serve as examples of the historical rise of broadcast television, the development of television narration, the evolution of television genres, the changing nature of the entertainment industry, and controversies of television’s effects on audiences. Watching “television” is a must, so grab your remotes!

Samantha Joyce WGS 163-01 MWF 10:30-11:35

ENGLISH: STUDIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATUREThe South Africa Freedom Charter states, “Our struggle is that of memory against forgetting.” For African-Americans, slavery and emancipation made the relationships with memory, progress and American identity similarly complex. We examine this tension in Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston, as we consider literary movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro movement, the Black Arts Movement.

Jeannine King WGS 154-01 MWF 11:45-12:50

ENGLISH: INTRODUCTION TO PERFORMANCE THEORY: LIVENESS, IDENTITY, SPECTACLE, RITUAL How are COVID and Zoomlife changing the way we think about performance? In this course we will explore a selection of 20th and 21st century texts and media that can be understood as performances. We will also map the various ways that scholars define the theoretical study of performance. How do we perform our identities every day through our gestures, styles, professions, genders, nationalities, races, and religions? How is performance a mechanism that has structured relations of power throughout history via public events, politics, ritual, protest, films, written narratives and dramatic productions? Course fee: $10

Emily Klein WGS 170-01 T/TH 3:00-4:35

POLITICS: POSTCOLONIAL THEORYPostcolonialism is defined as the perspective provided by theories that analyze postcoloniality and combat the operation of an imperialist system of economic, political and cultural domination. Using postcolonial theories, this course examines texts from countries with a history of colonialism, focusing on its workings and legacy, and the resistance against it. We consider the construction of nation and national culture, the role of education and language, and hybridity, gender, and the disenfranchised in the formation of identities. Course Fee: $35

Patrizia Longo WGS 114-01 MWF 10:30-11:35

POLITICS: GENDER POLITICSThis course will introduce students to the relationship between gender and politics by examining the American political system in historical and comparative perspectives. Topics will include the history of the women’s movement, policy debates critical to women in American society, feminist strategies for social change and gender issues in global politics.

Patrizia Longo WGS 140-01 MWF 9:15-10:20

WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES: #METOO IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATIONIn 2006, activist Tarana Burke coined the term ‘Me Too’ to validate the accounts of sexual harassment and assault she was hearing from young Black women. Over a decade later, #MeToo has become a cultural phenomenon, channeling a global public response to issues ranging from workplace harassment to campus assault to gender violence in Hollywood and Congress. We see the potency and promise of the #MeToo movement everywhere. But how should we understand this rallying cry and the movement it inspired? This course will address the brief history of the #MeToo movement through its representation in diverse fields of the popular imagination - on TV and social media, in news accounts, fiction and film - translating the personal into the political through ideas seen as both courageous and dangerous. We will examine #MeToo as a story about social justice and cultural myths about gender, asking whether we can fully understand this movement as “revolutionary” when it is still in the making. Course fee: $25

Denise Witzig WGS 107-01 MWF 10:30-11:35

WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES: FEMINIST AND GENDER THEORIESThis research seminar will provide a series of inquiries into the many diverse theoretical frameworks of contemporary feminism. This course is intended primarily for Women’s and Gender Studies majors and minors, but experience in WGS 1, 107 or permission of the instructor will be considered for enrollment. Open to juniors and seniors only. Course fee: $25

Denise Witzig WGS 177-01 MF 1:00-2:40

WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES: SENIOR RESEARCH THESISAs the senior capstone experience, students undertake a substantial research project on a Women’s and Gender Studies topic of their choice. The class is organized as an intensive reading and writing workshop. Prerequisites: Upper division standing: WGS 1, 107, 177. Open to minors upon approval from the instructor. Cross-listed with GRS 196 and ES 196. Course fee: $40

Maria Luisa Ruiz WGS 196-01 M/F 1:00-2:40

SOCIOLOGY: RACE & ETHNICITYIn this class, we will examine various racial and ethnic formations, and the social significance of these classifications. We will explore issues such as racial and ethnic identity development, systemic racism, race and technology, and the intersections between race, ethnicity, and feminism.

Nicole M. Brown WGS 112-01 T/TH 3:00-4:35

ENGLISH: US LATINO/LATINA LITERATUREThis course is a survey of the literature of Latinas and Latinos writing in English in the United States. We will read prose and poetry by Chicana/os, Cuban Americans, Dominican Americans and Puerto

Ricans, paying particular attention to issues of gender as they emerge in the works. We will also examine artistic explorations of memory, exile, language, displacement and family.

Molly Metherd WGS 153-01 MWF 9:15-10:20

ETHNIC STUDIES: CHICANA/O/X EXPERIENCESThis class discusses Chicana/o/x experiences as situated in historical, political, social, and economic maps of meaning. Central is how Chicana/o/x experiences intersect across social positions of race, class, gender and sexuality. Students will develop skills to interrogate and map “identity,” that has been constructed for and by Chicana/o/x ‘s across local and global contexts, socializing discourses and within community and familial institutional settings.

David Quijada WGS 100-01 MWF 9:15-10:20