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Fall 2024 Graduate Courses
[Core Courses]
WST 601 - Feminist Theories
Angela Jones
Tuesdays: 2:00-4:50pm
In this graduate seminar, students will study feminist concepts and theories that
have spanned centuries and continents, using them to analyze cultural, political,
and economic life. Beginning with Roxanne Gay’s Bad Feminist and Sara Ahmed’s theorizing of feminist killjoys, we start our intellectual journey
by discussing conceptualizations of feminism and feminist praxis. From there, firmly grounded in an intersectional understanding of power, we explore
themes including African Feminisms, Anti-carceral Feminisms, Black Feminisms, Chicana
Feminisms, Feminist Disability Studies and Crip Theories, Indigenous Feminisms, Lesbian
and Queer Feminisms, Marxist and Socialist Feminisms, Post-colonial Feminisms, Trans
feminisms, and Transnational feminisms.
WST 610 - Advanced Topics in Women's Studies - "Trans Studies"
Joanna Wuest
Wednesdays: 3:30-6:20pm
This special topics seminar is designed to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of trans studies. We will begin with classic texts from the field’s origins, paying close attention to epistemological discussions among its pioneers and their interlocutors in feminist and queer theory and politics. Upon accounting for trans studies’ basic postulates and debates, we will engage with timely questions about the field’s contested future and its relevance to matters of health, state surveillance, civil rights, race, labor, childhood, biology, and authoritarianism. Throughout, we will consider both how these domains have structured the various meanings of “trans” as well as how those domains and their logics have been transformed by encounters with those who transgress normative social and medical boundaries. In doing so, we will query whether trans studies is or ought to be a method, a particular subject of study, a “post-discipline,” or a thing worthy of the name “field” at all. Accordingly, we will conclude our seminar by posing the question—as have scholars in the field’s main journals as of late—“whither trans studies?”
This special topics seminar is designed to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of trans studies. We will begin with classic texts from the field’s origins, paying close attention to epistemological discussions among its pioneers and their interlocutors in feminist and queer theory and politics. Upon accounting for trans studies’ basic postulates and debates, we will engage with timely questions about the field’s contested future and its relevance to matters of health, state surveillance, civil rights, race, labor, childhood, biology, and authoritarianism. Throughout, we will consider both how these domains have structured the various meanings of “trans” as well as how those domains and their logics have been transformed by encounters with those who transgress normative social and medical boundaries. In doing so, we will query whether trans studies is or ought to be a method, a particular subject of study, a “post-discipline,” or a thing worthy of the name “field” at all. Accordingly, we will conclude our seminar by posing the question—as have scholars in the field’s main journals as of late—“whither trans studies?”
WST 680 - Interdisciplinary Research Design
Nancy Hiemstra
Thursdays: 2:00-4:50pm
This interdisciplinary seminar guides students engaged in feminist, liberatory, and
social justice oriented projects through the process of research design. We will explore
interdisciplinary ideas and debates voiced by scholars and activists about the relationship
between theory and research practice, and the conduct of research and research outcomes.
Students will be introduced to an array of research methods available across the Arts,
Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences, think critically about their use, and gain
some hands-on experience with methods. The seminar is designed as a workshop to apply
knowledge of methods and methodologies to students' own research, and over the semester,
students will develop either a research proposal for funding agencies and/or their
dissertation proposal (prospectus). Course topics will include formulating and refining
research questions; developing appropriate theoretical frameworks; articulating scholarly
value; and thinking critically about the methods used in feminist interdisciplinary
research. Students are expected to work collaboratively, presenting their individual
works-in-progress to the class for constructive critique.
[WGSS-Related Electives]
EGL 587 - Topics in Race, Ethnic, or Diaspora Studies - "Toni Morrion's Beloved"
Ileana Jimenez
Thursdays: 5:00 - 7:50pm
The focus of this seminar is Morrison’s major novel Beloved. This text challenges readers to examine Morrison’s complex use of language, memory,
and imagination through the lens of race, gender, sexuality and the history of enslavement.
As part of our study, we will examine a constellation of additional texts such as
slave narratives, spirituals, selections by Faulkner and Joyce, and some of Morrison’s
essays on writing and memory. We will also read selections from Saidiya Hartman and
Christina Sharpe as well as watch the documentary about Morrison that was released
just before her death, The Pieces I Am (2019). Contemporary artistic and cultural explorations of enslavement will also
be included, such as Alvin Ailey’s dance piece, “Revelations,” and Kara Walker’s silhouettes
as well as her Domino sugar factory installation (2014). At the end of the course,
we will read Morrison’s Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech from 1993 and
consider it in light of today’s political landscape. Throughout the term, we will
keep in mind what Angela Davis and Farah Jasmine Griffin wrote of Morrison, that “her
political vision — using language to combat the devastating effects of white supremacy,
sexism and all dehumanizing ideologies — remains a profound and underexplored aspect
of her identity and impact,” and use their words to re-see, re-think, re-member, and
re-memory her not only through Beloved but also through her vision for a just world through writing and literature.
HIS 535 - Theme Seminar: "Body Politics"
Nancy Tomes
Tuesdays: 6:30-9:20pm
This course will explore the diverse ways that medical knowledge about the human body
has been deployed in the exercise of “biopower,” to use Foucault’s term. We will use
his concept of biopower as starting point to explore the historical construction of
categories such as natural/unnatural, normal/abnormal, able/disabled, and healthy/diseased.
We will explore how those changing categories have aligned with the exercise of political
and cultural power over gendered bodies and minds. Our goal is to understand the changing
dynamics of medical authority in the past: how it was constituted, accepted, resisted,
and subverted. Besides Foucault, we will sample the work of other theorists, including
Judith Butler’s new book, Who’s Afraid of Gender? We will read in common five or six
works of history, such as Melissa Stein, Measuring Manhood: Race and the Science of
Masculinity, 1830-1934, Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner, Unspeakable: the Story of Junius
Wilson, Susan Reverby, Examining Tuskegee: the Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy,
and Richard McKay, Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic. (I will revisit
this list of common readings once I see who’s in the seminar.) In addition to the
common readings, seminar members will be given the chance to explore and share readings
relevant to their specific interests. Although my own specialization is in U.S. medicine
from 1800 onward, I am eager and willing to work with people interested in other localities
and time periods. The main writing requirement consists of writing a review essay
(7-10 pages) and an annotated bibliography on a topic of the participant’s choice.
Enrollment in History MA or PhD Program or Permission of Instructor.
HIS 554 - Theme Seminar: "Decolonizing Imperial Histories: Arguments, Methodologies,
Research"
Kathleen Wilson
Tuesdays: 3:30-6:20pm
Is it possible to separate History from the imperial matrices and racial capitalism
that have for so long produced it? Can we discover ways to decolonize our categories
(such as, but not limited to, gender, race and class, identity, and alterity, north
and south, center and periphery and other time/space grids of geopolitics) and our
modes of knowledge while continuing to write history ‘as we know it’? Should we try
to adopt a ‘view from the south,’ which has come to connote the perspective of dispossessed
actors across cultures of the current world order? This theme seminar will examine
strategies for using decolonial and anti-colonial methodologies, archives and temporal
strategies that promote more complex and attentive understandings of our entangled
pasts and doing something with history other than tag the majority of the world as
‘behind’. We will also be considering the ethics and praxis of anti-colonial practices
and ideas in settler colonial nations and the types of critical and historical activism
that can be seen to encourage more ‘pluriversal’ narratives and projected futures.
POL 562 - Passionate Politics: Mobilization, Interest Groups, and Social Movements
Stephanie DeMora
Tuesdays: 2:00 - 4:50pm
This course discusses political mobilization: the factors that motivate political
involvement and the consequences that high levels of public engagement have on elections
and the development of public policy. The course begins with several high profile
examples of citizen engagement that have had noticeable impact on American politics.
This first section also includes a discussion of the various ways in which Americans
can be mobilized from involvement in election campaigns to the distribution of political
information via social networks. The course then shifts focus to cover the psychology
of political mobilization in detail, including the importance of group memberships
and identities, emotions, and values. An entire unit of the course is devoted to
psychology of group membership in which the mobilizing power of identities and the
role of politically motivating emotions are discussed at length. Finally the last
section of the course is devoted to specific examples of political mobilization in
the U.S. including the environment/green movement, issue groups such as the right-to-life
movement, racial politics, and highly polarized partisan politics. Overall, the course
is designed to illuminate the psychology of political mobilization and apply these
principles to contemporary American politics.
POL 633 - Social Influence and Group Processes in Political Decision Making
Leonie Huddy
Mondays 2:00-4:50pm
Review of contemporary theories of social influence processes and group decision
making, with emphasis on applications to decision making in politics. Special focus
on small-group methods and research applications.
SOC 591 - Special Seminar: "Sociology of the Body"
Rebekah Burroway
Wednesdays: 2:00 - 4:50pm
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View Past Graduate Courses:
Spring 2021