Spring 2010 Undergraduate Courses

WGS 101, Sec. 001 CORE
Introduction to Women’s & Gender Studies   
TTh 12:30-1:50
MacPherson
Gender as a critical inquiry relating to race, class, and sexuality.
*Sec. 002 MW 12:45-2:05 (Dependent on enrollment)

WGS 192/ ETS 192, Sec. 002  Sexuality
Gender & Literary Texts
MW 12:45-2:05
Ghosh
In this course we shall analyze the literary and cultural representation of gender. Through our examination of instances picked from literature, non-fiction, and film, we shall see how gender identities are constructed, affirmed, and/or interrogated. As we move across historical periods and cultures, the attempt will be to examine how constructions of gender are inflected by ethnic, racial, sexual and historical concerns. Texts will likely include but are not limited to fiction (Shakespeare's Macbeth, Austen's Pride and Prejudice,) and film (Bridget Jones' Diary, Fight Club). Since this course is writing intensive, our emphasis will be on discussion based on close reading of the text and on written assignments. There will be some mandatory film screenings, mostly during the second half of the semester, to be held on Thursday evenings.

WGS 200/ HNR 260, Sec. 001  
History of Women's Suffrage Movement
W 7:00-10:00
Wagner
In the area where the women’s rights movement had its origin, we’ll trace the history of its development.  The foreground focus will be on Matilda Joslyn Gage, a woman equally important as her more recognized counterparts, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.  She will be the lens through which we explore the backdrop, the standard historical analysis of 19th century U.S. feminism.  

WGS 201/ ANT 201, Sec. 001    CORE
Tranational Feminist Studies
Lecture M 3:45-5:05
Bhattacharya
The histories, effects and sources of the material conditions of women in non-Euroamerican context. Articulation of a feminist agenda in relation to global economic, social and political structures.
Discussion, Sec. 002 W 3:45-5:05 TA
Discussion, Sec. 003 W 3:45-5:05 TA
Discussion, Sec. 004 W 5:15-6:35 TA
Discussion, Sec. 005 W 5:15-6:35 TA

WGS 230/ SOC 230 
Intergroup DialoguE:
Tuesdays 3:30-6:30 or Wednesdays 3:45-6:45  

Sec. 001 Intergroup Dialogue on Gender    Sexuality
Sec. 002 Intergroup Dialogue on Race/Ethnicity   Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Sec. 003 Intergroup Dialogue on Sexual Orientation   Sexuality
Sec. 004 Intergroup Dialogue on Race/Ethnicity    Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Sec. 005 Intergroup Dialogue on Race/Ethnicity    Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity

Apply online at http://intergroupdialogue.syr.edu. Guided intergroup communication skills. Cycle of socialization; social identities and social structures that create and maintain inequality; power dynamics of racism, sexism and other systems of oppression. Students explore conflict and enact collaboration to deepen understanding.

WGS 248/ SOC 248  Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Ethnic Inequality & intergroup Relations  
Sec. 001 MW 2:15-3:35
Sec. 002 MW 12:45-2:05 Lutz
Identification of individuals and groups by self and others as members of ethnic categories. Consequences of ethnic identifications for individual, group, and societal interaction. Emphasizing ethnic inequalities, group interactions, social movements and change, racism, prejudice, and discrimination.

WGS 281/ SOC 281   Class
Sociology of Families
Sec. 001 TTh 9:30-10:50
Sec. 002 TTh 11:00-12:20
Families and their connections to other social and economic institutions. Diversity of family forms and experiences. Formation and dissolution of relationships. Trends and changes.

WGS 297/ PHI 297, Sec. 001   Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Philosophy of Feminisms
TTh 11:00-12:20
Richardson
Philosophical analysis of feminist theory from Simone de Beauvoir to present.  Feminist theories about human nature, gender, relations between gender, race and class, and causes of and remedy for women’s subordinate status.

WGS 300
Selected TopicS:

Fashion & Feminism: The Politics of Dress, Sec. 001    Core Elective
MW 12:45-2:05
Miraglia
Fashion often serves as a means of conveying identity and status to others, but what do your threads really say?  This course will address the politics of dress by examining fashion as a process that draws on and  (re)creates raced, classed, nationalized, and gendered identities in global contexts. 

Gendered Geography of Global & Developing Worlds, Sec. 002  Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
TTh 11:00-12:20
Sultana
This course takes a critical and analytical approach to understanding gendered dimensions of the contradictory and varied processes of development and globalization, in the context of both theoretical debates and the realities of different social contexts, within the Global South. By engaging with the key debates in both feminist theories and feminist geography, as well as those in relevant development and globalization literatures, the course will pay close attention to the ways that gender comes to matter in development and globalization processes across sites and scales. Specific debates covered will include gendered processes of the following: economic change and globalization, poverty, alternative development paradigms, and environmental change.

WGS 301, Sec. 001    CORE
Feminist Theory
TTh 2:00-3:20
Gross
Advanced critical inquiry into frameworks of meaning that organize contemporary issues on the politics of gender emphasizing history of feminism, global perspectives, psychology of women and feminist philosophy.

WGS 305/ SOC 305     Sexuality
Sociology of Sex & Gender

Sec. 001 MW 2:15-3:35
Sec. 002 TTh 5:00-6:20 Ma
Sec. 003 TTh 12:30-1:50
Social forces shaping women’s and men’s lives in contemporary societies. Changing gender expectations. Intersections of gender with race and ethnicity, class, and age. Social movements for women’s and men’s liberation.

WGS 317/ SOC 319, Sec. 001  
Qualitative Methods
TTh 3:30-4:50
Dodd
Field research methods including participant observation, unstructured interviewing, life histories, and case studies. Preparation and analysis of field notes and interview data.

WGS 328/ SWK 328   Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Human Diversity in Social Context
Sec. 001 TTh 12:30-1:50 Stone Fish
Sec. 002 MW 12:45-2:05
Sec. 003 T 5:00-7:45
Diversity, including race, gender, sexual orientation and selected topics. Examines individual, group, and institutional identity formation. Theories of biopsychosocial development, reference group affiliation, social stratification, oppression, and institutional discrimination. Implications for social work practice.

WGS 341/ REL 341/HST 387, Sec. 001  Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Women, Abolition and Religion
WF 12:45-2:05
Robinson
The role that religion may have played in women’s understanding of themselves as abolitionists and social reformers.  A selected group of women will be studied, with considerable attention given to Frances Harper.

WGS 349/ HST 349, Sec. 001
Women in America: Civil War –Present
TTh 12:30-1:50
Thompson
Focusing  on  the past 150 years, this course is intended to provide an overview of women’s experiences in America from the Civil War to the present.  While it is not a course on the history of feminism, it will be taught from a feminist perspective.  What does that mean?  Stated simply, in this class, women will be considered as subjects—as actors who themselves “make history”, and not simply as passive objects of the actions of others.  Moreover, it assumes the full personhood of women, the reality of discrimination against women, and the intrinsic significance of women’s experience.  Beyond that, it is not expected that students in the course will share the professor’s point of view on all matters (indeed, with any luck, the class will contain a healthy diversity of backgrounds and perspectives).

WGS 355/ SOC 355, Sec. 001   Sexuality/Class/ Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Sociology of Health & Illness
TTh 2:00-3:20
Harrington Meyer
Conceptions of health and illness in society. The nature and organization of health professions and health delivery systems.  Social aspects of health related behavior.

WGS 360/ ETS 360    Sexuality
Reading Gender & Sexualities

Sec. 001 Documenting Sexualities MW 5:15-6:35, Film M 7:00-9:50
Hallas  
Documentary representation has been central to the emergence and development of modern sexual identities.  For instance, 19th century science turned to both photographic portraiture and written case studies in order to name and define homosexuality as a specific sexual identity.  But forms of documentation have not only been used to discipline and pathologize sexual acts and identities.  Subcultures, social movements and individual artists have also embraced the desire to document — but in the service of cultural expression, sexual liberation and collective memory. This course explores how different genres (such as case studies, ethnographies, oral histories, historical narratives, testimonies, portraits and [auto]biographies) in various media (film, video, photography, graphic art and literature) have become fundamental tools in the historical struggle over sexual rights. We shall also investigate the cultural and political role of museums, libraries, archives and publishing houses in documenting sexualities. Attendance at weekly film screenings required. This course also counts toward the LGBT Studies minor.

Sec. 002 British Masculinities TTh 12:30-1:50
Goode
This course examines the role of various British literary texts in reflecting and shaping masculinity and masculine identities at different moments during the past three centuries.  By no means does the course purport to offer an exhaustive history of masculinity and masculine identities over this lengthy period of time.  Instead, it will unfold as a series of case-studies of significant masculine identities that were objects of particular veneration, anxiety, frustration, or critique at different points during the historical periods covered by the course.  These case-studies will include: the eighteenth-century gentleman, rake, and man of feeling; the Victorian professional, colonialist, factory hand, and dandy; and an array of marginal twentieth-century masculine types, ranging from the shell-shocked soldier and the woman industrial-worker to the pornography addict and the punk.  Writers covered will likely include: Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, Henry Mackenzie, Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hughes, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, H. Rider Haggard, Oscar Wilde, Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, Graham Greene, Derek Walcott, Julian Barnes, and Johnny Rotten. 

WGS 362/ CFE 362  Sexuality
Youth, Schooling & Popular Culture
TTh 11:00-12:20
Boahene
Positioned where school, media, and youth cultures intersect. How schools and media represent “good” and “bad” youth, and how youth negotiate schools and popular cultures. Includes theories of popular culture and adolescence.

WGS 389/ HST/ QSX 389  Sexuality
LGBT Experience in American History
TTh 2:00-3:20
Branson
The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender experience in American history.

WGS 422/ SOC/ CFS 422  Class
Work & Family in the 21st Century
TTh 9:30-10:50
Usdansky
Examines the social, demographic, and economic forces that are reshaping the boundaries between family and work.

WGS 432/ SOC/ DSP 432, Sec. 002  Class
Gender & Disabilty
MW 3:45-5:05
Harris
This course will investigate the intersection of gender and disability and how it impacts such issues as representation/self-representation, art and poetry, illness, education, sexuality, reproduction and motherhood, and caring work.

WGS 410    CORE
Advanced Studies in Feminist Thought
W 9:30-12:15
Mohanty
Topics in women’s and gender studies. May be repeated once for credit when topics vary.

WGS 444 (CFE 444)  Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Schooling & Diversity
W 3:45-6:30
Applebaum
Construction of diversity (race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, class, disability, sexual orientation) in schools. Emergence of inequalities based on difference in pedagogy and curriculum. Student resistance in relation to cultural diversity. Teaching for empowerment.

WGS 462/ HTW 462  Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity (can petition)
Culture, Reproduction Health & Medicine
T 4:30-7:15
VanHollen
Cultural anthropological approaches to cross-cultural variations in reproductive practices (pregnancy, childbirth, infertility, etc.) Impact of globalization, biomedicalization, international development on reproduction and reproductive health. Medical anthropology and gender studies.

WGS 465/ REL/ SAS 465  Sexuality
Gender in Islam
MW 3:45-5:05
Kassam
Roles, representations, and realities of women in Muslim societies in historical and cultural context. Gender in scriptural, legal, and theological texts. Politics of gender and religious identity in contemporary Islam.

WGS 472/ WGS 672/ ANT 472/672  Class/ Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Language, Culture and Society
M 5:15-7:55
Wadley
Cross-cultural survey of the role of language in culture and society, including cognition and language useage along the dimensions of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and social status.  Prereq: anthropology or linguistics majors with senior standing.

WGS 513/ AAS 513   Race, Nationality, and/or Ethnicity
Toni Morrison: Black Book Seminar
T 9:30-12:15
Mayes
A multi-dimensional study of Morrison’s bookwork: fiction, non-fiction, and scholarship. Involves conceptual frameworks and ideas that link this project with broader understandings and interpretations of Blacks in the world. A wide range of questions (i.e., aesthetics, feminisms, knowing-politics, language, race) derives from Morrison’s literary witnessing of Black community life.  
Prereq: Juniors, seniors, and graduate students.

 

 

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