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Core and Cross-listed Elective Course Offerings

Fall 2006 semester
Women's and Gender Studies

Each semester, the Women's and Gender Studies program offers its own core courses and cross-listed courses from other departments at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Descriptions for all of these courses appear below. At the undergraduate level, WGS 210 and WGS 304 are required for the WGS minor. They may also be taken as electives or be used to fulfill a general education requirement. At the graduate level, WGS 402 and WGS 404 are required for both the master's degree and the graduate certificate. Students in both these programs may take multiple sections of WGS 404, Topics in Feminist Theories, as electives. These courses are also available to any graduate student looking for a stimulating elective. Cross-listed courses count as electives for the WGS minor, master's degree, or graduate certificate.

WGS Core Course Offerings

WGS 210 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
Ellen O’Brien Chicago campus T 6-8:30 PM
This core course introduces undergraduates to feminist thought and gender studies.  We will study analytical models for examining gender and survey some of the specific research and writing that these analytical models have fostered.  We will include in our reflections a look at the development of feminism(s), the sexual politics of women’s rights, and the cultural structures of gender, and we will pay attention to the issues of race, class, and ethnicity that influence these matters.  Topics will include: gender and consumption, femininity and masculinity, socialization and identity, language and representation, revision and recovery, domesticity and family, oppression and resistance, law and violence, bodies and sexualities, theory and activism. Open to freshmen.

WGS 210 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
Carrie Brecke Schaumburg campus W 6:30-9 PM
This undergraduate course will explore contemporary issues around women and gender. Emphasis will be on how feminism has impacted society and its institutions, and the lives of individuals. Particular attention will be made to the intersections of gender, class, race, nationality, and sexuality, and how such intersections work to privilege some groups while oppressing others. We will also look beyond US borders, gaining a perspective on how gender is lived elsewhere, and how US policies affect the lives of humans and ecosystems all over the planet.  Students will be encouraged to enter into the discussion, the activism, and the vision that is contemporary feminism. Open to freshmen.

WGS 304/404 Feminist Theories of Violence                           
Carrie Brecke Chicago campus Th 6-8:30 PM
This course will examine a wide range of feminist thinking on the topic of violence. We will explore issues and sites of violence both in the US and around the world. Central to the course will be an analysis of violence against women, but we will also discuss a variety of related areas, such as war, violence against children, hate crimes, and animal cruelty.  Some of the questions this course will take up are: How is violence defined?  Who is held accountable for violence?  What is the role of sexuality in violence? What are the origins of sexual violence?  How have feminists intervened in issues of violence?  Always, our analysis will seek ways to ameliorate this global epidemic.

WGS 402 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
Ann Brigham Chicago campus T 6-8:30 PM          
An interdisciplinary investigation of the global field of WGS, this introductory graduate seminar examines a number of related questions: what constitutes feminist inquiry and WGS research? What issues are central to second and third wave feminist theories? What are the different research methods, methodologies and narrative forms used? How might the answers to these questions vary in relation to a subject’s social/cultural location, disciplinary affiliation, and historical moment? Students will have the opportunity to develop a final project around a topic, academic and/or community-oriented, of their own interest. This seminar will also introduce students to the WGS program and its professional contexts. Professional development activities will also be discussed.

WGS 404 Feminist Theories of Identity Politics
Jeffrey Edwards Chicago campus Th 2-4:30 PM 
This seminar will explore how activists and scholars--including proponents, sympathetic critics, and outright opponents of identity politics--have theorized and debated the meaning, value, and impact of identity politics.  We will explore the following questions: What exactly is identity politics, and how have its practices evolved over the past 30 years?  How has identity politics contributed to understandings of, and the furthering of, social justice?  What dead ends, dilemmas, and pitfalls has the practice of identity politics fallen prey to and/or worked through in the past, and what are the promises of, and challenges facing, identity politics in the present moment?  We will read primarily the work of political theorists, with texts by Iris Young, Shane Phelan, and Wendy Brown structuring our inquiry. NOTE: This is a graduate student only seminar.