Women’s Studies Courses Fall 2014
Core Courses (Courses meet 08/25/14-12/12/14 unless otherwise indicated) * Course Descriptions Below
WOMST 105A
WOMST 105B
WOMST 105C
WOMST 105D
WOMST 105E
WOMST105F
WOMST105G
WOMST105H
WOMST105I
WOMST105J
WOMST 105K
WOMST105ZA
WOMST 300A
WOMST 300ZA
WOMST 305A
WOMST 321A
WOMST 405A
WOMST 450A
WOMST 510A
WOMST 784ZA
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
(First Year Seminar)
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
(First year seminar)
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
(First year seminar)
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Top/Gender & American Film
Top/QueerAsian Midwest
(meets 10/20/2014 to 12/12/2014)
Fundamentals Women’s Studies
Latina’s Life Stories
Resistance & Mvmts for Social
Change
Stories of a Young Girl
Research Methods in WM Study
Internship/Women’s Studies
10:30-11:20
11:30-12:20
MWF
MWF
LS 001
LS 001
Hubler
Hubler
1:30-2:20
12:30-1:20
8:05-9:20
9:30-10:45
2:30-3:20
MWF
MWF
TU
TU
TU
WA 041
LS 001
LS 001
LS 001
W 120
Tushabe
Brooks
Sabates
Sabates
Janette
11:30-12:45
2:30-3:20
TU
MWF
BH 108
DUR1041
Singer
Tushabe
9:30-10:20
2:30-3:45
Distance
9:30-10:45
5:30-7:55
MWF
TU
TU
MW
CL 204
LS 001
Distance
BH 108
WA 333
Sarmiento
Singer
Sarmiento
Padilla Carroll
Sarmiento
11:30-12:45
5:30-8:20
5:30-8:20
TU
T
M
LS 6A
LS 001
LS 001
Padilla Carroll
Sabates
Tushabe
1:30-2:20
1:05-2:20
APPT
MWF
TU
LS 001
LS 006A
APPT
Hubler
Singer
Janette
(Instructor Consent Required)
Cross-Referenced Courses (Courses meet 8/25/14-12/12/14 unless otherwise indicated)
DAS 355A
DAS 590ZA
ENGL 386A
ENGL 705A
FSHS 350A
FSHS 350B
FSHS 350C
MC 612A
PSYCH 563A
SOCIO 545A
SOCIO 510A
Intro Non-Violence Stdy
Applied Non-Violence
African American Literature
Theory/Practice Cultr Study
Fam Rel& Gender Roles
Fam Rel& Gender Roles
Fam Rel& Gender Roles
Gender Issues and the Media
Gender & Issues in Work Place
The Sociology of Women
Social Welfare
Distance
Distance
11:30-12:45
1:05-2:20
1:05-2:20
5:30-8:20
10:30-11:20
5:30-8:20
9:30-10:45
9:30-10:45
11:30-12:45
TU
TU
TU
M
MWF
W
TU
TU
TU
Distance
Distance
ECS 017
EH 122
JU 109
JU 109
JU 109
K 216
BH 498
W 120
KG 004
Allen
Nietfeld
Leader-Picone
Hedrick
Thompson
Knapp
MacDonald
Wassmuth
Park
Shapkina
Kurtz
Graduate Student Only Classes (courses meet 1/22/14-8/10/14 unless otherwise indicated)
EDLEA 838A
ENGL 830A
Revised 8/27/2014
Qualitative Research in
Education
Queer Native Literature
4:30-6:55
W
BH 107
Bhattacharya
3:55-6:45
T
EH 228
Tatonetti
Women’s Studies Course Descriptions
Fall 2014
WOMST 105 Introduction to Women’s Studies
Section A: MWF 10:30; Section B: MWF 11:30--A. Hubler
An interdisciplinary introduction to academic and community-based thinking about women’s
lives: (1) how gender inequality in society restricts women’s development, limits their contributions to the
dominant culture, and subjects women to systematic violence and (2) strategies with which women can gain
power within existing institutions and develop new models of social relations. Particular attention will be paid
to issues of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.
WOMST 105 Introduction to Women’s Studies
Section C: MWF 1:30; Section I MWF 2:30--Tushabe
This course introduces students to a wide range of issues, which include social, political, and legal
issues pertaining to women’s lives and experiences in society and feminist movements worldwide. The course
is interdisciplinary in its approach. It encourages students to see and think about the world around them in a
matrix of connections and relationships, while examining and understanding the relevance of specific topics
such as abortion, contraception, and sexual violence within a comparative and international framework to
women, men and feminisms. Through assigned course texts and discussions students will learn and engage a
feminist methodology of self-reflection, a narrative of one’s journey, that takes a big picture and the complexity
of the connections and relationships that allow or impede a person to be in society for oneself, others and the
world. We will follow closely the significance and meaning of gender and other categories in American culture
and other societies. Additional resources such as films will be crucial to our discussion and critical thinking
skills, philosophical meanings and implications of social identities.
WOMST 105 Introduction to Women’s Studies
Section D: MWF 12:30--L. Brooks
Women’s Studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores politics, society, media and history
through a women’s or feminist lens. Intersectionality is a feminist theory that examines how different forms of
identity like race, class, gender and sexuality intersect and interact on different levels of society. The field
researches and critiques societal norms and other inequalities based on these identities. Women’s studies
challenges these intersecting oppressions and addresses the systemic problems that create them. The focus is on
questioning the norms of society and the systems and structures that guide them.
WOMST 105 Introduction to Women’s Studies
Section E: TU 8:05; Section F: TU 9:30--G. Sabates
An introduction to the interdisciplinary field of feminist scholarship, which seeks to understand the
creation and perpetuation of gender inequalities by examining historical, theoretical, and cross-cultural
frameworks for the comparative study of women and gender. This course aims to sharpen students' critical
awareness of how gender operates in institutional and cultural contexts and in their own lives. Particular
attention will be paid to the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, age, national origin,
disability, culture, and movements for social change.
WOMST 105 Introduction to Women’s Studies
Section G: TU 2:30--M. Janette
Introduction to Women’s Studies is an interdisciplinary examination of the experiences of women, the
ways in which gender inequality operates in society, and the strategies by which we can develop a more
inclusive society. This course will also examine the history of feminism in the United States and the ways in
which feminists have analyzed women’s position in society and have sought to change it. We will study
Revised 8/27/2014
institutions and issues that currently affect women. Since this course is an “introduction,” we will not be able
to explore any of these topics in great depth, but will broadly cover a variety of issues.
WOMST 105 Introduction to Women’s Studies
Section H: TU 11:30; Section K: TU 11:30 –B. Singer
This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to sex and gender through a feminist lens. We begin with
texts that deconstruct “common sense” approaches to sex and gender, providing a critical frame through which
to read the meanings and materializations of these terms. Readings engage varied constructions of sex and
gender, as well as the imbrication of these terms with sexuality, race, class, ability and other dimensions of
personhood. We will investigate these concepts through the history of sex and gender construction; histories of
science; the invention of the modern nation-state; citizenship and sexuality; transnational and cross-cultural
considerations; and methodologies of resistance and feminist activisms. Students will become critical readers of
literary, medical, activist, popular media and other texts that they encounter in everyday life.
WOMST 105 Introduction to Women’s Studies
Section J: MWF 9:30--T. Sarmiento
Gender, sexuality, and race structure all of our worlds. In this introductory course to the
interdisciplinary field of Women’s Studies, we shall explore gender as a category of social, cultural, and
political analysis as it intersects with other social formations, including sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality,
socioeconomic class, and ability. Primarily focusing on the US context, but in dialogue with the translocal and
the global, we shall survey the herstories of the women’s movement, the parameters and possibilities of
feminist inquiry, and feminism’s contributions to social change. We shall also analyze how power operates
through gender in our contemporary moment, particularly engaging the site of popular culture. Together, these
approaches to the study of gender as a social construct as well as an embodied positionality will not only allow
students to recognize how knowledge production intimately circumscribes peoples lives but will also empower
them to be a part of its undoing.
WOMST 300 Top/Gender and American Film
Section A: TU 11:30--V. Padilla Carroll
This course examines depictions of gender in American film. Because gender does not exist
within a vacuum, race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality will also be examined. This course will focus on how
images in film reinforce and normalize power and power relations as well as perpetuate stereotypes.
WOMST 300 Top/Queer/Asian Midwest
Section ZA: MW 5:30 --T. Sarmiento
Queer people, and Asian/Americans, and queer Asian/Americans, all in the Midwest—oh my! This topics
course in Women’s Studies invites students to re-imagine the Midwest not as a place defined exclusively by
social, cultural, and political normativity in the form of whiteness, middle-class-ness, and heterosexuality but
rather as a space of national and transnational contestation. From the short stories of Bienvenido Santos, to
films such as Gran Torino and Mean Girls, and to the television show Glee, we shall explore how the presence
of what I am calling queer Asians (i.e. queer people, Asian/Americans, and queer Asian/Americans) in the
heartland can unsettle the dominant designation of queer and Asian as out of place in the Midwest as well as
the region’s symbolic status as the US’s national idyll. By studying how gender, sexuality, race, and region
cohere on the terrain of culture, we shall analyze how normativity is not simply social but spatial as well.
WOMST 305 Fundamental of Women’s Studies
Section A: TU 11:30 –V. Padilla Carroll
This course will examine the origins of the Women’s Studies field and introduce core concepts, research
methods and methodologies, and feminist theories. Student will engage in a variety of writings that reflect the
discipline.
Revised 8/27/2014
WOMST 321 Latina’s Life Stories
Section A: T 5:30--G. Sabates
An interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of Latina women's life experiences, examining the
complex process of constructing cultural identities. Students will gain an understanding of how knowing about,
listening to, and telling of life stories intersect with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, location and class.
WOMST 405 Top/Resistance Movement & Social Change
Section A: M 5:30--Tushabe
This course examines the historical conditions of coloniality, globalization, war, militarism, and
occupation as they shape women’s resistance and movements against gender violence and discrimination. We
will explore both the state and interpersonal dimensions of “violence against women”, and, correspondingly,
the ways women’s “resistance and movements for social change” have differing impacts at the personal, local,
community, state, and/or international realms. A key objective of the course is to develop students’ capacity to
read multiple levels of women’s political resistance across cultures, as well as develop their knowledge of
diverse movements for social change in which women figure prominently as instigators, participants,
visionaries, and/or leaders.
WOMST 510 Research Methods in Women’s Studies
Section A: TU 1:30;--B. Singer
This course is designed as an introduction to feminist research methodologies, preparing students to
critically analyze research studies, develop research skills, and initiate future projects. Throughout the class we
will address the relationship between the knowledge being produced, the author producing it, and the methods
used. We will discuss the larger questions of feminist methods, as well as address specific concerns such as
what counts as evidence in different disciplines and what constitutes different research methodologies. Some of
the methodologies we will interrogate include: oral history, ethnography, auto-ethnography, demographics and
statistics, and participatory action research. By focusing on a number of methods used across a range of
disciplines, this course will prepare students for a reflexive and dynamic encounter with their own research. In
addition to an oral presentation on one of the readings, other assignments include an interview, a group
presentation that critically analyzes a policy report that uses quantitative data and a final proposal for a research
project. Throughout the semester we will connect our discussion of research methodologies to the larger issues
of women and gender studies as an institutional setting, addressing the intersecting goals of teaching, research,
writing and activism.
WOMST 784 Internship in Women’s Studies
Section A & ZA: By Appointment--M. Janette
(Obtain permission from Department Director 3 Leasure Hall) An opportunity to gain valuable
experience in community, volunteer, activist, or political organizations at the local, state, national, or
international levels.
Revised 8/27/2014