Women's Studies Courses

(Also HIS 104) Community Orientation & Citizenship This course surveys some of the major themes relevant to a gendered understanding of politics, society, and culture. The course introduces gender as a central category of analysis, among others, for critical inquiry, and it examines the experiences of women and men to offer a conceptualization of what gender means for individuals both as citizens and as community members.

(Also SOC 213) This course examines the effects of gender, race and class on women's employment opportunities and labor force participation rates. Topics may include: access to education and training, women in the military, professional women, women and poverty, pros titution and sex work, occupational health and safety, sexual harassment on the job, maternity leave, factory work, immigrant women, unemployment, unionization, and the changing structure of work and occupations throughout the world.

Selected poetry, drama, fiction, autobiography, and essays by African-American authors, with emphasis on literary excellence. Authors range from Phillis Wheatley to Frederich Douglas, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Alice Walker, and Ishmael Reed. Lecture, discussion.

(Also ENG 223) This course focuses on literature in English written by women. We study themes and techniques common to the literature by women. From the late Middle Ages until the present, we examine texts that challenge beliefs of female inferiority, promote a women's perspective on gender and allow for discussion of self esteem, motherhood, privacy, and women's power.                     

(Also AFS/ENG 226) Varied works of literature that illustrate how different races, ethnic groups, genders, and classes view themselves and each will be studied.  Included are works of Philip Roth, Mary Gordon, Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker.

Selected topics with women’s studies focus.

Please contact your instructor for specific topic.

(Also SOC 234)  Problem Solving & Critical Thinking Skills This course examines inequalities in power, privilege, and opportunities, which characterize the structure of most societies. It explores the role of ideology in legitimizing and sustaining unequal treatment due to differences in class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Topics include legal systems and the relation between educational attainment and social mobility.

(Also AFS/LAC/SOC 241) This course examines race, ethnicity, racism, prejudice, discrimination, majority-minority relations, and other intergroup relations from a sociological perspective, paying close attention to the experiences of the major racial/ethnic groups in the United States-American Indians, European Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.

(Also SOC 249) From the perspective of the family as the most basic social institution in human society and as a focus of social change, this course discusses the major trends in the past forty years that have called attention to the diversity of American family life. Themes include the family life cycle, couple interaction, subcultural variations, and work-family interaction.

(Also SOC 251)  Problem Solving & Critical Thinking Skills Globalization may be conceptualized as the constellation of transformations and c rises with local and global consequences. Global crises are social, economic and political. Driven by networks of power, capital and technology, global processes are changing the structure and meaning of the nation-state, institutions, communities, family, culture and the self worldwide.

This course explores the ways in which tradition, myth, social stereotypes and social forces shape American women’s lives. We will study the influence of gender from several disciplinary perspectives to help illuminate large subject areas, such as work, love, creativity, pornography, the family, communication, personal identity and selfworth. Any study of women recognizes that gender roles affect both women and men; thus, discussion includes issues related to male and female social development. Readings balance women’s common realities, such as biological functions and sex role training, with individual realities influenced by class, race, age and sexual orientation. Central to this course are choices and constraints contemporary women and men face as we make our way into the twenty-first century.

(Also ENG 258) Spooky crumbling castles and things that go bump in the night are not all there is to gothic literature. This course examines the ways in which this literary genre delves into the human psyche to explore all the dark impulses that arise from the human soul. The course also looks at ways in which gender and sexuality figure into both the writing of this literature and the attitudes that it expresses. Students learn to examine fiction through a literary critical lens.

(Also REL 280)This course investigates the intersections of religion, gender, and sexuality. It looks into the role that societal norms and cultural values play in how social and religious institutions view sex, sexuality, and gender in relation to religious convictions and practices. It emphasizes that both religion and sexuality are shaped by social privileges, historical particularities and experiences.  

(Also HIS 300) This course will examine the treatment of people monetarily improverished by public and private institutions from the colonial period to the modern ear. Changing theories, practices, and attitudes about the poor and about poverty are the focus of study. Of central concern to this course is the response of poor peoples to these policies and the ways in which they resisted and organized. Each student will write a major (20 page) research paper for the course. This course will alternate between a United States history course and a Latin America Caribbean history course.

(Also CAT 302) A hands-on quilting bee and a global look at women, past and present, as artists and workers in fabric.

(Also SOC 314) Using historical documents, social statistics, works of literature, anthropology, and social and psychoanalytic theory, this course examines the process of marginalization, compares conceptions of sanity and insanity among different cultures and sub-cultures, and analyzes the consequences of institutionalization, stigmatization, and marginalization.

Special topics with a women’s studies focus. 

Please contact your instructor for specific topic.

(Also PSY 335) An analysis of present research finding and theory pertaining to gender-related issues. Social and intellectual development, gender differences and gender role socialization will be examined. This course will provide students with a basis for understanding the role of gender in research and clinical applications.

(Also SOC 336) This course will analyze the social, cultural "non-western" conceptions of masculinity, femininity, male and female, heterosexuality and homosexuality, bisexuality, transvestitism, transsexuality and transgenderism.

(Also SOC 414) This course examines the nature of social protest and resistance to oppression and asocial injustice, the ways in which individuals have organized to challenge the limitations and boundaries imposed upon them in order to create the conditions necessary for a dignified life, and the consequences of social protest. Topics include: revolutionary, human rights, civil rights, black power, labor, and women's movements around the world.

(Also SOC 415) This course involves a comprehensive examination of the particular situation of women when confronting the criminal justice system. Topics include: the history of women’s imprisonment, responses to female crime, theories of female criminality, crime statistics pertaining to women, and the criminal justice system’s response to women when they encounter it as victims.

(Also SOC 4 17) A requirement for the WMS minor, this course focuses on contemporary feminist theories regarding culture, identity, class, "race'/ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Relationships between social theory and praxis, and research methodology and the creation of knowledge are explored.

(Also PSY 425) A study of cultural differences in psychological functioning. In a world of increasing cultural contact, globalization, immigration, and ethnic tensions, it is increasingly important to learn about cultural differences and intercultural communication. Are there any psychological universals? How can intercultural relations be improved? These are some of the questions cross-cultural psychology seeks to address.