WGSS 117-01 30053 |
Women, Health and Reproduction |
Days: M W F
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Time: 09:40 am-10:40 am
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Room: HUM 226
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Instructor: Elizabeth Jansen
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*First day attendance required; cross-listed with BIOL 117-01*
Details
This course will deal with aspects of human anatomy and physiology of special interest to women and/or those who identify as women, especially relating to sexuality and reproduction. Biological topics covered will include menstruation and menopause, sexuality, conception, contraception, infertility, abortion, pregnancy, cancer, and AIDS. Advances in assisted reproductive technologies, hormone therapies, and genetic engineering technologies will be discussed. Three lecture hours each week.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Distribution Requirements:
Natural science and mathematics
Course Materials
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WGSS 200-01 30777 |
Feminist/Queer Theories and Methodologies: All the Scary Terms |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room: MAIN 002
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Instructor: Sonita Sarker
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Details
Well, some of them. Terms like socialism, feminism, (neo)liberalism, radical, queer, globalization, colonialism, trans. People from all walks of life, across a range of experiences and understanding, use them out of fear, pride, love, a little or a lot of knowledge, and curiosity. This course will be our collective exploration of how the terms show up in the past and present; we might even speculate how they will appear in the future. The goal is to empower you to speak about, and use, the terms in all kinds of communities. From Goldman to Federici, from Truth to Yousafzai, from Rich to Daly, from Rivera to Puar, and a host of others, the course will also include music, storytelling, video, and film to make the terms more...or less...scary. Acquaintance with feminist, queer, and trans knowledges and experiences is great but not required. An enthusiasm to know more is a requisite.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Course Materials
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WGSS 218-01 30562 |
Philosophy of Race and Gender |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: HUM 215
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Instructor: Rotem Herrmann
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*Cross-listed with PHIL 218-01*
Details
This class addresses conceptual and ethical questions at the foundation of the study of sexism, racism, heterosexism, and transphobia. Many of us believe, for example, that race and gender are both socially constructed. But what exactly is social construction? Would there be room for races and genders in a perfectly just society, or are races and genders intrinsically oppressive categories that should be eliminated? Nowadays we are taught to distinguish gender from sex. But what is sex? Is sex socially constructed, like gender, or is it a strictly biological phenomenon? Population geneticists have recently argued that, surprisingly, race is biological after all. Are their arguments convincing, or flawed? How can thinking carefully about gender and sex problematize our ordinary understanding of sexual orientation? In our unjust society, when if ever does it make sense to respond to racial injustice with affirmative action? Is sex-selective abortion immoral? If you think it is, can you still be pro-choice? What should we think about affirmative action? We will address these questions, and others, by drawing on recent work at the intersection of philosophy, social science, and biology. Authors to be studied include Elizabeth Anderson, Anthony Appiah, Sally Haslanger, Kate Manne, Debra Satz, Tommie Shelby, Quayshawn Spencer, and Laurence Thomas.
General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 229-01 30416 |
Narrating Black Women's Resistance |
Days: M
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Time: 07:00 pm-10:00 pm
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Room: MAIN 111
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Instructor: Walter Greason
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*Cross-listed with AMST 229-01 and HIST 229-01*
Details
This course examines traditions of 20th century African American women's activism and the ways in which they have changed over time. Too often, the narrative of the "strong black woman" infuses stories of African American women's resistance which, coupled with a culture of dissemblance, makes the inner workings of their lives difficult to imagine. This course, at its heart, seeks to uncover the motivations, both personal and political, behind African American women's activism. It also aims to address the ways in which African American women have responded to the pressing social, economic, and political needs of their diverse communities. The course also asks students to consider narrative, voice and audience in historical writing, paying particular attention to the ways in which black women's history has been written over the course of the twentieth century.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 248-01 30915 |
Struggles for Reproductive Justice: A Global Perspective |
Days: M W F
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Time: 10:50 am-11:50 am
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Room: LIBR 250
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Instructor: Erika Busse-Cárdenas
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*Cross-listed with LATI 248-01 and SOCI 248-01*
Details
Prerequisite(s): This course focuses on reproductive health as a human right following the reproductive justice framework. It will focus on women and how they navigate the system to expand their rights. The course will pay particular attention to women who are marginalized due to their race, class, gender identity, indigeneity, and religion. In doing so, this course studies reproductive health and human rights in relation to the broader structural context in the Americas (e.g. national laws and international conventions). As the topic of women's reproductive rights is vast, we will be focusing on abortion, domestic violence, and motherhood. Students in the class will study these issues from the perspective of women's organizations that have mobilized to expand reproductive rights. This course will be comparative in nature as it will focus on reproductive rights in the U.S. and Latin America from the 1980s onwards. These two regions are intimately connected politically and economically, and in regards to reproductive rights. For example, the gag rule introduced by the Reagan administration in 1984 jeopardized the reproductive health services provided in Latin American countries that received funding from the U.S. government. Yet another way that these two regions have been coupled is through feminist networks that have been working to expand reproductive rights in the Americas.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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WGSS 250-01 30435 |
Race, Gender, and Medicine |
Days: M
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Time: 07:00 pm-10:00 pm
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Room: THEATR 200
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Instructor: Amy Sullivan
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*Cross-listed with HIST 350-01*
Details
This seminar-style class examines the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in the history of medicine and health in the U.S. Our diverse topics for study include eugenics, sexuality, midwifery, cultural/spiritual healing methods, pandemics, race- and gender-based ailments and medical experiments (such as the science and politics of the birth control pill and the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment), gender reassignment surgery, and sex-testing in the Olympics. This wide range of topics will prepare students to explore a research topic of their own choosing for a final paper.
General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 263-01 30449 |
Muslim Women Writers |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: CARN 404
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Instructor: Jenna Rice Rahaim
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*Cross-listed with ENGL 263-01 and INTL 263-01*
Details
Against the swirling backdrop of political discourses about women in the Islamic world, this course will engage with feminist and postcolonial debates through literary works by Muslim women writers. The course will begin with an exploration of key debates about women's agency and freedom, the Islamic headscarf, and Qur'anic hermeneutics. With this in mind, we will turn to the fine details of literature and poetry by Muslim women. How do these authors constitute their worlds? How are gendered subjectivities constructed? And how do the gender politics of literary texts relate to the broader political and historical contexts from which they emerge? Themes will include an introduction to Muslim poetesses and Arabic poetic genres, the rise of the novel in the Arabic speaking world, and Muslim women's literary production outside of the Middle East: from Senegal to South Asia, and beyond.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 294-01 30276 |
Dickinson |
Days: M W F
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Time: 12:00 pm-01:00 pm
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Room: MAIN 010
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Instructor: James Dawes
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*Cross-listed with ENGL 294-01*
Details
Word for word, Emily Dickinson is the most powerful writer in the history of the English language. She is the King of All Media, the feature star in movies, television, radio, lawsuits and criminal investigations, novels, AI language models, cookbooks, museums, a video game, and just about every other possible platform of public fascination. Barring Shakespeare, no other English or American poet has been the focus of such fervid public devotion. What’s behind this cult of Dickinson? In our class you will find out. You will study Dickinson’s poems, which are teasingly fun, hair-raisingly creepy, romantically uplifting, existentially wrenching, philosophically staggering, and aesthetically gorgeous. You will also study Dickinson herself. Transformed into a mythical figure since her death in 1886, she has been used as a symbol to embody a range of bitterly conflicting cultural fantasies. To understand the history of Emily Dickinson is to understand some of the most painful—and liberating—ideological revolutions in modern US history. This course fulfills the19th-c. American literature requirement for the English major.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WC
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 294-03 30788 |
Women in African History |
Days: M W F
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Time: 09:40 am-10:40 am
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Room: OLRI 300
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Instructor: Tara Hollies
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*Cross-listed with HIST 213-01*
Details
This course is designed to teach students how to think like Africanist historians to interpret the stories of the past in meaningful and accurate ways. Since interpretation is central to creating or narrating history, students will learn how the degree of accuracy can be skewed in the construction and reconstruction of narrations of the past. Students will learn about and use ideas and methods that inform both feminist theories and historical thinking. The aim of Women in African History is to use case studies to examine the lived experiences of various women from different parts of Africa who lived from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. This can count towards "Gender," "Colonization and Empire," "Race and Indigeneity," or "Africa & Atlantic World" fields.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 294-04 30936 |
Feminism and Change |
Days: M W F
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Time: 01:10 pm-02:10 pm
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Room: THEATR 101
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Instructor: Amy Sullivan
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*Cross-listed with HIST 294-01*
Details
A history of feminism and feminist thought in the United States between 1848-2022, this course focuses on women’s rights: the ideologies, leaders, and actions that forced change in long-held gender roles and patriarchal governing norms. We will also interrogate the myths, hypocrisies, and the backlash moments that are central to United States history, culture, and politics in the context of women’s rights. Critical to our course is learning about the many divergent ways that ethnicity, race, sexuality, and class came to inform how we understand feminism and its history to the present day. SPECIAL PROJECT SPRING 2024: This class will be working to write biographies of feminists from Minnesota for an exciting digital humanities project, Sharing Stories, centered on the historic 1977 National Women’s Conference.
General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 294-05 30966 |
Reproductive Justice: Theory and Praxis |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: OLRI 270
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Instructor: Della Zurick
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*Cross-listed with POLI 294-03*
Details
In this class, reproductive justice will become a critical framework for both political theory and political action. As a theoretical framework, reproductive justice is a way of thinking about freedom and the rights to maintain bodily autonomy, to have children, to not have children and to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. Insofar as reproductive justice centers the politics of sex, we’ll begin this class thinking about sexual autonomy (including access to contraception, sex education, prevention and treatment for STIs, etc.). From there, we’ll move into U.S. histories of forced sterilization, the fight for access to safe and legal abortion and the risks of childbirth and infant mortality, especially for BIPOC people. These histories will bring us into an exploration of reproductive justice as a framework for political practice and as a social justice movement. It’s about the legal and political action that may limit or expand the scope of justice to include things that would make reproduction meaningfully free (e.g., access to health care and safe housing, a living wage, and decarceration). We’ll study these issues through legal cases, historical readings, political theory, ethics and personal narratives that put focus on reproductive justice in the U.S. This class requires your thoughtful participation both in writing and discussion.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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WGSS 305-01 30778 |
Telling Queer and Trans Stories: Oral History as Method and Practice |
Days: T R
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Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room: MAIN 009
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Instructor: Myrl Beam
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*Cross-listed with HIST 305-01*
Details
Much about mainstream narratives of gender transgression are determined by powerful, cis-dominated institutions, still even to this day: the media, schools, police, the law, doctors and psychiatrists. These are institutions structured by a racialized, heteronormative gender binary, and for whom trans people pose a problem to be managed. Oral history offers the possibility for trans people to tell their own stories, and, in doing so, give more nuanced, complex analysis of identity, activism, and of the intersectional operations of systems of power. Oral history also makes room for the complex interplay of joy, playfulness, grief, anxiety, and connection that makes queer and trans life so valuable. In this project-based and community engaged course, students will have hands on experience working with an archive of queer and trans oral histories in the context of the pandemic and uprisings for racial justice. Working closely with our community partner, the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, we will learn about oral history methodology and interview techniques, and then have the opportunity to conduct oral history interviews, develop audio or video projects using extant oral histories, and contribute to an online archive of queer and trans oral history.
General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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WGSS 325-01 30659 |
Conquering the Flesh: Renunciation of Food/Sex in the Christian Tradition |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: THEATR 206
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Instructor: Susanna Drake
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*Cross-listed with RELI 325-01*
Details
This course explores how bodily practices of fasting and sexual abstinence have shaped Christian identities from the first century, C.E. to today. From Paul of Tarsus' instructions about sexual discipline to the True Love Waits® campaign, from the desert fathers' rigorous bodily regimens to the contemporary Christian diet movement, Christians have often understood the practice of renunciation as a necessary feature of spiritual perfection. In this course we will consider several ascetic movements in Christian history, including the development of ascetic practice in late antiquity, the rise of fasting practices among women in medieval Europe, and the culture of Christian dieting and chastity in the U.S. We will pay special attention to how Christian practices of piety both draw upon and contribute to cultural understandings of gender and the body.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 355-01 30780 |
Abolition Feminism: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Critical Prison Studies |
Days: W
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Time: 07:00 pm-10:00 pm
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Room: MAIN 009
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Instructor: Myrl Beam
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*Cross-listed with AMST 355-01*
Details
This course explores the history and politics of, and theoretical approaches to, gender and sexuality in relation to the racial politics of mass incarceration, or what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls the "carceral geography" of the United States. By engaging recent work in queer and trans studies, feminist studies, and critical prison studies, we will consider how prisons and policing have shaped the making and remaking of race, gender, and sexuality from slavery and conquest to the contemporary period. We will examine how police and prisons have regulated the body, identity, and populations, and the larger social, political, and cultural changes connected to these processes. While we will focus on the carceral system itself, we will also think of policing in a more expansive way by analyzing the racialized regulation of gender and sexuality on the plantation, in the colony, at the border, in the welfare office, and in the hospital, among other spaces, historical periods, and places.
General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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WGSS 368-01 30638 |
Psychology of/and Disability |
Days: T R
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Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room: THEATR 201
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Instructor: Joan Ostrove
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*Cross-listed with PSYC 368-01*
Details
What is "disability" and what does an understanding of disability tell us about human experience more generally? What is a "disability identity" and what implications might claiming that identity have for psychological well-being and social change? How do stereotypes of disabled people and expectations of "normality" affect everyone's lives (not just those with disabilities)? Why don't many Deaf people consider themselves "disabled?" What might we learn from shifting the "problem" of disability from the individual person to the social environment? How do sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression influence how different bodies are viewed, treated, educated, and experienced? This course will explore questions that emerge from thinking about the experience of disability (and its intersection with identities based on gender, race, class, and sexuality). Our work together will be grounded in critical disability and Deaf studies frameworks that are themselves informed by and in conversation with feminist, queer, and critical race theories and perspectives. Through a consideration of the socially, culturally, linguistically, and historically constructed meanings of physical, sensory, and cognitive "impairments," the course will rely on theoretical and empirical readings from psychology and related disciplines, personal essays, film/video, and guest visitors as we explore the social and psychological meanings of disability. Prerequisite(s): PSYC 100; and PSYC 201 or STAT 155
General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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WGSS 394-01 30934 |
Bodies in Stone: Gender, Sexuality and Empire in Roman Sculpture |
Days: R
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Time: 01:20 pm-04:20 pm
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Room: MAIN 002
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Instructor: Beth Severy-Hoven
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*Cross-listed with ART 394-01 and CLAS 394-01*
Details
Art reflects, refracts and helps construct a society’s culture. Thousands of pieces of sculpture survive from the ancient Roman period and can provide valuable information to the historian. Material from Rome includes looted Greek, Etruscan and Egyptian sculpture, copies of antique masterpieces, and new creations combining different styles for varied purposes. After we develop a basic history and understanding of Roman sculpture, this course will examine select pieces each week to explore questions that may be productively brought to bear on this unusual historical source. For example, the popularity and adaptations of masterpieces of Venus, Dionysus and Apollo will be used to explore the way artists shaped differences between male and female and the cultural assumptions about sexuality and the body these works communicate (Knidian Aphrodite, Praxitelean youths, Sleeping Hermaphrodite). In turn, we will investigate how these artistic conventions for gender could be employed to communicate the subjugation of enslaved or conquered people and the authority of the emperor (Antinoos Sculptures, Suicide Gauls, Dying Gaul, Marcus Aurelius reliefs, Portonaccio Sarcophagus). We will also look at self-representation, including how former slaves chose to present themselves in hyper-realistic portraits on their tombs; how this may have impacted Roman portraiture as a whole; and what it meant for some members of the elite to put such hyper-realistic portrait heads onto the bodies of gods and goddesses (Tomb of the Haterii, Tomb of Rabiria, Tivoli General, Flavian Matron as Venus). What can these varied representations of the human form tell us about the complex interplay of legal status, citizenship, gender, nudity, ethnicity, power, vulnerability and identity in the Roman Empire? The course will meet once a week during the day to allow for two field trips to see sculpture in the round. Responses to the weekly readings will be due every week. During the last third of the course, students will direct our classwork as they build toward a final project. No formal prerequisites, but some prior experience with ancient art, art history or Roman history is recommended.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Humanities
Course Materials
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WGSS 394-02 30967 |
Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in American Art |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: ARTCOM 102
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Instructor: Joanna Inglot
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*Cross-listed with AMST 394-02 and ART 375-01*
Details
This course provides an introduction to the diversity of twentieth century visual culture of the United States, within the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which it is created. It will analyze the intersection and the social dynamics of race and ethnicity, along with gender and class, and how these shaped the experience of American artists and their audiences at various historical moments during the last century. Studying the work of Native American, African-American, Asian-American, and Latinx-American artists in response to the mainstream US art and culture, will provide students with broad and complex understanding of concepts of race, ethnicity, class, and gender as reflected in artistic production of this marginalized artists and art groups. Frequency: Offered in the fall every two years.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
U.S. Identities and Differences
Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts
Course Materials
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WGSS 400-01 30782 |
Senior Seminar: Linking Theory and Practice |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
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Room: MAIN 410
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Instructor: Sonita Sarker
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Details
This experience brings you to the intersection of some paths you have taken in WGSS! The goals of the course are to work collectively in reviewing feminist, queer, and trans genealogies that you have been learning about in your WGSS career, to contextualize our places in relation to them, and to test past and present frameworks so we can imagine together how they may be part of our future experiences. Most importantly, this course will be an opportunity to connect theories to your own feminist/queer/trans practices towards positive social change, and look at ways to craft your post-graduation careers and professions.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Course Materials
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