 
**Important Information**
Until further notice, the Senior Seminar in Women's Studies (WS 490S) will only be offered fall semester.
WS 100 Introduction to Women’s Studies
(000) Speanburg, MWF 8:30-9:20, Max: 18
(001) Prince, MWF 10:40-11:30, Max: 18
(002) Turner, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 18
(003)Venell, MWF 3:00-3:50, Max: 18
(005) Bailey, TTH 11:30-12:45, Max: 18
(006) Tisdale, TTH 2:30-3:45, Max: 18
(007) Rubin, TTH 4:00-5:15, Max: 18
WS 100-002 Introduction to Women's Studies: Feminist Mind in Matter
Turner, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 18
Content: How do feminist issues and concepts affect your daily life?
This course will bring feminist issues and concepts into the world through ordinary objects (material culture). Material culture is a broad term, but basically it means the “things” and “stuff” we create on a daily basis. As the material products of a culture, objects embody and reflect the ideologies, values, and attitudes of that culture. We will explore through multifaceted and interdisciplinary sources how ordinary objects embody and/or relate to gender, race, class, and normative values of beauty, sexuality, and other feminist issues.
Texts: Kolmar, Wendy K. and Frances Bartkowski, eds. Feminist Theory: A Reader: McGraw Hill, 2005.
WS 100-005 Feminist Critiques in Biomedicine
Bailey, TTH 11:30-12:45, Max: 18
Content: This course will ask students to question what they "know" about science and the scientific process. We will problematize "scientific objectivity" and probe foundational scientific ideas about race, sex, and gender while simultaneously examining what these basic tenets have meant for marginalized groups in society, particularly when seeking medical care. Students will engage feminist science theories that range from explorations of the linguistic metaphors of the immune system, the medicalization of race, to critiques of the sexual binary. We will use contemporary as well as historical moments to investigate the evolution of "scientific truth" and its impact on the U.S. cultural landscape. Using the unique lens of feminist theory, students will revisit their disciplinary training as a site for critical analysis.
Required text : The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
WS 100-006
Introduction to Women's Studies: Race, Class, Gender
Tisdale, TTH 2:30-3:35, Max: 18
Content: This course will encourage critical thinking about the construction of gender and the intersection of gender with race, class, and sexuality. We will explore the ways in which these constructions and intersections shape women's lives, and will investigate the works of feminist writers in order to interrogate key social institutions and systems of power and oppression. This course will emphasize developing key reading, writing, and critical thinking skills.
Texts:
Kesselman, Amy et. al. Women: Images, and Realities: A Multicultural
Anthology, fourth edition Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye
WS 100-007 Gender in a Transnational World
Rubin, TTH 4:00-5:15, Max: 18
Content: This course offers a survey of key topics and concepts in the interdisciplinary field of women’s studies using a transnational, cross-cultural, comparative lens. Since its inception almost four decades ago, women’s studies has grown into an incredibly rich and wide-ranging field of study. Though it is difficult to define the field in a single sentence—much less in a single semester—this course will suggest that, at its core, women’s studies thinks critically about gender and, in so doing, critically rethinks concepts and issues of identity and difference more broadly. How are such concepts shaped by, and how do they in turn shape, notions of personhood, society, history, politics, and knowledge? We will pose these questions as we study the formation of variations, similarities, linkages, and disparities across national and other kinds of borders.
We will start out by critically examining the category of gender. What does gender mean and how do we know? Looking carefully at how gender categories are constructed and deployed in a variety of historical, cultural, and national contexts, we will then begin to explore the relationship of gender to other categories and systems of power, including science, medicine, race, sexuality, empire, popular culture, economics, and globalization.
Daily class sessions will be focused on learning how to closely read and critically analyze a variety of texts—scholarship from various fields, as well as some materials from popular culture, literature, and film—from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. In addition to providing an overview of women’s studies as a field of inquiry, the goal of this course is to help students develop the basic critical thinking skills necessary for succeeding in undergraduate studies.
WS 100S Introductory Seminar in Women’s Studies (for first year students only)
Browne, MWF 2:00-2:50, Max: 15
Content: This course is an introduction to the theories, topics and questions in the interdisciplinary field of women's studies. While the content of the course varies with each section, questions addressed include: What is feminism? What are the debates among feminists? How is feminism related to women's studies? What is gender? How are gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexuality related? How does gender shape experience? How is social life shaped by gender? What are strategies for challenging and changing gender definitions and relations? Is there anything in common that "unites" women? The course investigates these questions with an interdisciplinary lens, exploring topics such as representations of women in the media, the body, "gender bending," globalization, religion, intersexuality, domestic violence, and social movements.
Texts: In the Time of the Butterflies , Julia Álvarez
WS 190 Violence and Memory in Contemporary Africa (Same as AFS 190)
Scully, TTh 1:00-2:15, Max: 5
Content: This course seeks to engage us with the huge questions that have always faced people, but which seem even more pertinent in the world we live in today. How do we live an ethical life? How is it that people can perpetrate evil against family, friends and neighbors? How can governments and individuals stand aside and do nothing when genocide is occurring in other places in the world? What does it mean to be a good person in the twenty-first century? How might people reconcile with each other after experiencing awful violence?
We will come at these questions through an analysis of the 1980s in South Africa, when the Apartheid government visited terrible violence on black South Africans and anti-apartheid activists. We will also read testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s. We then move to Rwanda where we will try to make sense of the genocide that killed some 800,000 people from April through July of 1994, at the same time as the OJ Simpson Trial and the first democratic elections in South Africa. We will conclude with an attempt to understand the crisis in Darfur, and the world reaction or lack of reaction to it.
WS 231 Sociology of Sex and Gender (Same as SOC 225)
Carry, TTh 2:30-3:45, Max: 15
WS 301 Histories of Feminist Thought (Prerequisite: WS 100)
Hall, TTh 1:00-2:15, Max: 18
Content: We will read and discuss together texts in the distinguished history of American feminist thought. We will address in our reading the complex connections between woman suffrage and abolitionism within this country, both in terms of the history of those struggles and in terms of the development of the political and philosophical ideals which motivated those involved in the struggles. Texts will include:
Texts:
Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Harriet Taylor and J.S. Mill, Essays on Sex Equality
Ida Wells-Barnett, Southern Horrors
Gilman, Herland
Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class
We will also read work by: Maria Stewart, Sarah Grimke, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Julia Cooper.
Requirements: Several essays and a weekly journal. One class presentation.
WS 340 Women in Cross-Cultural Perspectives (ANT 324)
Poole, MWF 12:50-1:40, Max: 10
Content: This course uses the Modern Girl Around the World Project and other materials to examine the politics of gender in cross-cultural settings. The Modern Girl Around the World Project, which is based at the University of Washington in Seattle, is an investigation of the emergence of a new kind of young woman in major cities around the world (from Beijing to Bombay, Tokyo to Berlin, Johannesburg to New York) during the first half of the 20 th century. She is defined as a young woman who did not appear to value the roles of dutiful daughter, mother, or wife and who prioritized romantic love, provocative fashion, and personal freedom and liberation. During the course of the semester, this representation of modern women will be compared with contemporary women in other realms (e.g. at home and in the workplace). Students will also evaluate articles about key concepts and theories in gender studies and critique ethnographies about modern women in the Americas, Africa, and Asia to increase their understanding of gender in cross-cultural settings. In addition, students will consider the constructed nature of gender in various locales and learn to critically assess the interplay between gender, modernity, and other markers of difference (e.g. race/ethnicity, class, nationality and sexuality). Specifically, we will discuss: (1) the roles and positions of women in society, (2) the organization of work and family, (3) women’s participation in political and economic spheres, (4) women’s health and reproduction, and (5) women as refugees, forced migrants, and/or as citizens in war-torn societies.
WS 365 Lesbian/Gay/Queer Studies
Willey, MWF 11:45-12:35, Max: 18
Content: This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary examination of sexual desires, sexual orientations, and the concept of sexuality generally, with a particular focus on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities. The course will look specifically at how these identities interact with other human phenomena such as government, family, popular culture, and especially scientific inquiry and gender. The course will place particular emphasis on the role and power of scientific and medicalizing language in the construction of female and otherwise deviant sexualities. In exploring sexual diversity, we will highlight the complexity and variability of sexualities, both across different historical periods, and in relation to identities of race, class, and ethnicity.
WS 383 Dangerous Women: Feminist Science Fiction (Same as ENG 383)
Jones, TTh 10:00-11:15, Max: 9
Content: Long considered the domain of a white masculine reader- and writer-ship frequently characterized by the employ of time machines and zap guns, the genre of science fiction has been revolutionized over the past thirty to thirty-five years by the influence and increased participation of women in the field, so much so that in 1991 the James Tiptree, Jr. Award was founded. The award recognizes literature by women and men who challenge the conceptions of traditional gender roles and provide provocative speculation about changes in our societies relative to so-called normative gender and sexuality. Through the examination of the literature of various Tiptree Award winning authors, this course will mine the way in which feminist science fiction not only challenges our hidden assumptions and confronts the unconscious prejudices that influence our perceptions, but imagines worlds beyond our current social limitations.
Possible Texts: Margaret Atwood, A Handmaid’s Tale; Octavia Butler, Dawn; Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness, and others.
WS 385 Gender and Consumption in a Global World (Same as IDS 385)
Prasetyaningsih, TTh 2:30-3:45, Max: 12
Content: Advertisements zealously represent how women take pleasure in shopping in order to encourage them to go on shopping sprees. By examining these ads in class, going to shopping malls to investigate the presentations of consumer goods and the arrangement of public spaces, and analyzing materials including novels, films, songs, online materials, and textbooks, students will learn theories of the global economy, histories of consumerism, and constructions of gendered public spaces. Students will also have a better understanding of how the cultural production of consumers and consumer culture functions in the process of globalization.
Texts:
Emma, Casey, and Lydia Martens, eds. Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures
and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007.
Horowitz, Roger, and Arwen Mohun, eds. His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and
Technology . Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1998.
Kinsella, Sophie. Confessions of a Shopaholic. New York: Dell, 2000.
Scanlon, Jennifer. Gender and Consumer Culture Reader: New York: New York
University, 2000.
Zuckermann, Wolfgang. Alice in Underland. Avignon: The Olive Press, 2000.
WS 385 Feminist Postcolonial Theories (Same as ENG 389)
Prasetyaningsih, TTh 4:00-5:15, Max: 12
Content: In this course, students will learn how feminist theorists have complicated the debates within the colonial and post-colonial fields and how feminist postcolonial theorists have problematized the field of feminism. Additionally, this course will help students have a better understanding of “tropes” and key terms used in feminist postcolonial theories. We will therefore read some key texts in the field, fictions, and films that address issues of colonialism and post-colonialism from a feminist perspective.
Texts:
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, 1988.
Lewis, Reina and Sara Mills, eds. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. New
York: Routledge, 2003.
Mangunwijaya, Y. Durga/Umayi. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004.
Short stories, poems, and films: by Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Shani Mootoo, Fatimah Tobing Rony, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Mira Nair.
WS 385 Gender at Work (Same as SOC 389)
Whitelegg, TTh 8:30-9:45, Max: 9
Content: This course examines the relationship between gender and work. Why do women disproportionately carry out certain jobs? What does this say about society in general? How are issues such as femininity and masculinity involved? And does economic and social class make a difference? To explore these questions we will look at various groups of workers, from low-wage cleaners and wait-staff to flight attendants and professional careers. We will employ a variety of methods in the course and students will be encouraged to explore their intellectual imaginations, with credit given to those with particular initiative.
Texts: Barbara Ehrenreich Nickle and Dimed; Arlie Hochschild The Managed Heart; Judith Glazer-Raymo Shattering the Myth, Paul Willis Learning to Labour, Lois Weis Class Reunion, Carla Freeman High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy
Requirements: Students will be assessed in a variety of ways. They will be expected to put together a short project on a relevant matter of their choosing and to present the results to the group. They will also be asked to write a critical review of one of the main readings as well as keep a weekly diary. They will also be graded on class contribution.
WS 385 Mystical Thought and Practice: Women Contemplatives (Same as REL 353)
Farley, TTh 2:30-3:45, Max: 8
Content: Mysticism has been a primary way women's religious and theological writings have entered the Christian tradition, though this literature is often disparaged as merely subjective or private. In fact, the writings of contemplative women represent a particularly rich reworking of central themes within Christianity and also creative ways to live within confining church structures. This class will focus particular attention on the writings of women from the middle ages, attempting to draw out the distinctive understanding of Christianity that emerges from this literature. We will also read some contemporary historians who have provided crucial context for understanding these figures. Because practice is intimately connected to the writings, we will explore the role of practice in the development of theological and spiritual writings. We will investigate some of the practices the writers engaged and practice meditation in class ourselves. We will conclude the class by reading the contemporary novel, The Last Report on the Miracles of Little No Horse as a way of reflecting on the various meanings of "mystical" in our own period.
Texts: Tentative list:
Julian of Norwich, Showings
Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Divine Flow of the Godhead
Marguerite Poiret, The Mirror of Simple Souls
Hadewijch, The Complete Works
The Life of St. Brigit
Carolyn Walker Bynam, Holy Feast, Holy Fast
Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles of Little No Horse
Requirements: Students will write short papers in response to the writings and prepare a final presentation and paper representing their own research into an aspect of the themes that are developed in the class. The class will be conducted as a seminar discussion of the texts we read and the significance of this literature for the understanding of ourselves and broader themes in the study of religion.
WS 385 Spanish Comedia: Race, Gender and Performance (Same as SPAN 430 and CPLT 389)
Carrión, TTh 10:00-11:15, Max: 3
Content: This course explores the representation of race, gender, and performance in theater and society in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, and its reception (both in theory and practice) in twentieth-century Spain and Latin America. The class will consider the Comedia—or professional theater of Spain between the 1550s and the 1680s—as discourse and industry, highlighting its double dimension of being a product of the culture of this society, and of being one of the most culturally productive phenomena in Spain’s Early Modern history. Discussions will revolve around questions of how the following were represented on- and offstage: race, lineage, limpieza de sangre, exclusion, reproduction, gender, costume, movement, voice; and how such representation had (or not) and impact on the professionalization of theater, the running of shows and theaters, the debates about the (un)lawfulness of theatrical theories and practices, and the scrutiny and closing of theaters. In Spanish.
Texts: Boal, Teatro del oprimido, Ejercicios para actores y no-actores; Cervantes, Entremés de El juez de los divorcios; Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, La dama boba; Tirso de Molina, Don Gil de las calzas verdes; Calderón, El médico de su honra, El gran teatro del mundo, La vida es sueño; Caro, El Conde Partinuplés; Zayas, La traición en la amistad. Articles and reviews about stagings of these and other plays in Almagro, the Teatro de la Comedia, the Chamizal Festival, la Teatrela, Intar, and the Hubert de Blanc, among other theaters.
Requirements: Attendance and class participation (40%), a midterm (35%), and one 10-page paper (25%).
WS 385 Reading Alice Walker (Same as AAS 385 and ENG 389)
Warren, TTh 4:00-5:15, Max: 2
Content : In this seminar students will study the novels by Alice Walker. Major emphasis of the course centers on discussion and analysis of the texts. The goal of the seminar is to create a cycle of reading, reflecting, discussing, analyzing, and writing about Walker’s texts, understanding their relationship to the African American literary tradition in general and to African American women’s literature and history in particular.
Texts : The Third Life of Grange Copeland; Meridian; The Color Purple; The Temple of My Familiar; Possessing the Secret of Joy; By the Light of my Father’s Eyes; Now is the Time to Open Your Hear; and In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.
WS 385S Gender and Global Health (Same as SOC 389S)
Yount, Th 2:30-5:00, Max: 3
Content: This course provides an overview of theories, policies, and social interventions related to gender and transnational health, with a focus on the global South. Students are exposed to some of the major theoretical developments in sociology and population studies that have advanced an understanding of the institutional bases of gender inequality, and of the power dynamics within families and households, that influence women's well being in these settings. The theoretical and empirical underpinnings of existing social policies and interventions intended to improve the position of women in LDC's are emphasized, and case studies of the health-related consequences of these policies and interventions are discussed. By the end of the course, students will have developed the ability to evaluate critically and to identify the relationships between theories, policies, and social interventions related to gender and transnational health.
WS 385SWR Japanese Modern Women Writers (Same as JPN 360SWR)
Bullock, TTh 2:30-3:45, Max: 2
Content: The principal aim of this course is to familiarize students with the range and multiplicity of female voices that emerged in Japanese literature from the Meiji period (beginning 1868) to the 1980s. Students will leave this course with an awareness of the changing social and historical forces that shaped the lives of Japanese women, from the earliest stages of modernization to the country’s emergence as a dominant industrial and cultural power. Wherever possible, gender and literary theoretical methodologies will be brought to discussion of the works, giving students a sophisticated grasp of the philosophical implications of the readings, as well as an understanding of the cultural and historical background of the texts under study.
Required Texts: Enchi Fumiko, The Waiting Years; Takahashi Takako, Lonely Woman; Uno Chiyo, Confessions of Love; Yoshimoto Banana, NP; and short fiction selections on e-reserve at Woodruff Library.
Requirements: No prerequisites.
WS 475S Feminist Intersections: Advanced Feminist Theories (Same as ILA385)
Garland-Thomson, W 4:00-6:00, Max: 18
Content: This seminar focuses on several life narratives in which the authorial voice identifies explicitly with multiple subject positions. The vectors of identity in the primary texts are gender, race, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, and class. Authors will range from Helen Keller, a person who self-identifies as a transgendered person with cerebral palsy, a black mother with depression, a young deaf French actress, a young white woman with psychiatric disabilities, an immigrant girl with facial anomalies, to an aging wheelchair user. Close reading and narrative analysis of these primary works will be illuminated by feminist theoretical concepts such as identity, intersectionality, positionality, and subjectivity. Our analyses will reveal how multiple identities intersect, conflict, and are negotiated through narrative and identity formation.
Requirements: Prerequisite is WS 301 or 302 or the equivalent or permission of instructor.
WS 475SWR Gender, Race and Political Representation in the U.S.(Same as POL 490)
Reingold, TTh 10:00-11:15, Max: 5
Content: Why are there so few women (of any race) or people of color (male or female) in public office? How have candidates’ race and gender affected their chances of obtaining public office? What difference does the election of more women and people of color really make? Would it mean that women and people of color are better represented? What does it mean to represent women and/or people of color? This course will address these questions from the perspective of legislative politics in the United States, at both the national and state levels. We will begin with a theoretical or philosophical examination of the meaning and value of political representation. Then we will explore the research on the politics of race, gender, and representation as it relates to: candidate recruitment, elections, legislative behavior, the policymaking process, and civic engagement.
Possible texts: David Canon, Race, Redistricting, and Representation; Kathleen Dolan, Voting for Women; David Lublin, The Paradox of Representation; Beth Reingold, Representing Women: Sex, Gender, and Legislative Behavior in Arizona and California; Katherine Tate, Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives in the U.S. Congress ; Melissa Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation, and numerous articles and essays.
Requirements: This is a writing intensive, advanced seminar for juniors and seniors. Thus, all students are required to conduct a significant amount of independent research, write a good number of papers of varying length and style, and participate in class discussions on a regular basis and in an informed and constructive fashion. Reading the required course materials thoroughly and carefully is key to achieving all these goals.
WS 485R Internship in Women’s Studies (TPL – Theory Practice Learning Course)
Levy,T 4:00-6:00, Max: 12
WS 495RWR Honors Research
Faculty, TBA, Max: 12
(Permission required to register for this course. This course for students who are eligible and selected to participate in the Emory College Honors program)
WS 497R Directed Reading in Women’s Studies
Faculty, TBA, Max: 12
(Permission required to register for this course. Students must first make arrangements with a member of the Women’s Studies faculty and complete the Women’s Studies Independent Study form)
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