Skip Navigation
Search
Fall 2024 Graduate Courses
[Core Courses]
WST 601 - Feminist Theories
Angela Jones
Tuesdays: 2:00-4:50pm
This course examines concepts and conversations that have played a key role in constituting
the field of women's, gender, and sexuality studies and queer, feminist, and trans
scholarship more broadly. Far from promising a definitive or comprehensive overview
of feminist theory, each iteration of this course focuses on particular topics, themes,
and/or theoretical frameworks. As such, instructors model for students how to build
reading lists that track conceptual debates within the field or trace the contestations
and contradictions of particular feminist genealogies. Together, instructors and students
situate these concepts and conversations within broader historical, geopolitical,
and intellectual contexts in order to question the purpose of specific theories at
the moment of their emergence and to evaluate their current usefulness for developing
transnational and intersectional understandings of gender and sexuality. At its core,
this course attends to the ways in which the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and
cisheteronormativity have conditioned western feminist thought and seeks to support
students in developing theoretical tools for practicing distinctly anti-racist and
decolonial women's, gender, and sexuality studies.
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]
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.
SOC 591 - Special Seminar: "Sociology of the Body"
Rebekah Burroway
Wednesday: 2:00 - 4:50pm
_______________________________________________________
View Past Graduate Courses:
Spring 2021