coreCoursesFall2008

Core and Cross-listed Elective Course Offerings

Fall 2008 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

Marjorie Jolles Chicago campus T/Th 11 AM-12:15 PM

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of women and gender that feminist movements, along with other critical social and academic movements, have produced over the past three decades. Through the use of texts and media from a range of genres and disciplines, we will explore topics at the heart of Women’s and Gender Studies, including the social construction of identity; domesticity; work; sexuality; globalization; popular culture; family relations; citizenship and activism; the social production of knowledge; and more. Emphasis will be on the United States, but considerable attention will also be given to the broader, global context in which we live. Assignments will emphasize oral and written communication, collaboration, critical thinking, careful reading, and sound argumentation. Open to freshmen.

WGS 402 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
Ann Brigham Chicago campus Th 2-4:30 PM

The interdisciplinary field of Women’s and Gender Studies continues to expand and build upon a rich and varied history. In this graduate seminar, we will explore the range of issues and interests that have defined WGS research and feminist theory in the last several decades. Although we will not be able to study every issue, we will examine foundational theories, points of debate, and core methodologies. We will also consider how the interests of WGS practitioners vary in relation to their social/cultural locations and historical moments. Because the goal of this course is to provide students with an introduction to the women’s and gender studies as an academic field and a community-based enterprise, we all also spend time on professional development and the skills and practices essential to academic success. Students will have the opportunity to develop a final project around a topic, academic and/or community-oriented, of their own interest. Open to graduate students in all disciplines.

WGS 304/404 Comparative Feminisms: India, Morocco, and the U.S.
Ellen O’Brien Chicago campus T 12:30-3 PM

This course examines comparative approaches to feminist inquiry and action using three “case study” countries: India, Morocco, and the United States. With careful attention to our theories and methods, we will consider how citizens negotiate intersecting and conflicting codes of gender and sexuality and how the term “feminism” is deployed, defined, and/or rejected in specific national and cultural contexts. While remaining alert to feminist dialogues across national and regional boundaries, we will also address the differing priorities and objectives that arise in international approaches to women’s and gender studies. In order to glimpse the local dimensions and particulars of gendered issues, we will pair theoretical readings and commentaries with careful examinations of specific cultural representations and practices. Open to graduate students in all disciplines.

WGS 404 Feminism and Western Philosophy
Marjorie Jolles Chicago campus Th 6-8:30 PM

This graduate seminar will provide a close examination of selected canonical texts in Western philosophy and their subsequent feminist responses and revisions. We will explore how influential Western thinkers from the 17th century to the present (including René Descartes, John Locke, Karl Marx, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and others) have provided important—if often contested—philosophical foundations for feminist inquiry. We will also consider how the feminist negotiations and re-conceptualizations of these schools of thought have themselves produced canonical feminist theory, informing contemporary feminist discourse on agency and identity; power and ethics; reason and knowledge; the body and sexuality; and history and social change. In the process of understanding how feminists have made new knowledges in response to dominant philosophical movements, we will also investigate the practices and politics of feminist theorizing itself. This is a graduate student-only seminar. Open to graduate students in all disciplines.

ECON 212 Race, Gender, and Social Policy - HONORS
June Lapidus Chicago campus W 2-4:30 PM
An interdisciplinary course on race and class inequalities in urban settings and the role of public policy in trying to ameliorate these inequalities.

ENG 310/410 Early Modern Women Writers
Gina Buccola Chicago campus T/Th 12:30-1:45 PM
In this course, we will read the poetry, drama, and political polemics of seventeenth-century British women writers. Exhorted to be “chaste, silent and obedient” from both the pulpit and bench, each of the women that we will read was, in some measure, a rebel. Our authors also form an impressive constellation of firsts: the first professional woman writer (Aphra Behn), the author of the first “estate poem” in English (Aemilia Lanyer), and the author of the first sonnet sequence, prose romance, and tragi-comic play in the English language (Mary Wroth). We will study these and other women writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as pioneers in the literary tradition as well as proto-feminists.

ENG 341/441 Gender and the Artist
Priscilla Perkins Schaumburg campus Th 2-4:30 PM
Course participants explore gender construction and sexual identities in canonical and popular narratives about visual artists, musicians, and writers in the U.S. Central questions include: how do gender ideologies about cultural production (or art) and biological reproduction inform each other? How do the life trajectories of fictional artists shape their creators' choices about narrative form? How do stories about artists illuminate specific historical moments in U.S. life? Texts may Louisa Mae Alcott’s Little Women, Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark, Jack London’s Martin Eden, Jessie Fauset's There is Confusion Joyce Carol Oates's Expensive People, and Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues.

ENG 342/442 Imagining Terror
Ellen O’Brien Chicago campus M 6-8:30 PM
This course examines twentieth and twenty-first-century literary representations of terrorism and state terror in the works of Anglophone writers from around the world. Including a range of authors from Africa, South Asia, North America, Ireland and the UK and incorporating texts from the early 1950s through the present, we will study how the conventions of literary genres—from lyric poems to political thrillers to postmodernist plays—are used to imagine the historical conditions and cultural discourses surrounding political terror. We will also closely examine how authors use representations of gender and sexuality to generate strategies of analysis and critique, to interrogate the sexualized and gendered constructs of colonization and resistance, and to consider the links between individual subjectivities and violent histories. A tentative list of authors includes: Seamus Heaney, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Anne Devlin, Michael Ondaatje, Nuruddin Farah, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Mohsin Hamid, and Doris Lessing.

HIST 383/483 History & Politics of Women in the U.S.
Sandra Frink Schaumburg campus M/W 3:30-4:45 PM
Women in the US from colonial times to the present. Emphasis on the women's rights movement and feminism, work, family, health, and education. Issues of class, race, ethnicity.

PSYC 108 Human Sexuality
Christa Marshall Chicago campus M/W 9:30-10:45 AM
Kathryn Black Chicago campus Tu/Th 2-3:15 PM
Sexuality from youth to old age, including the development of gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex roles. Review of the physiology and psychology of sexual arousal, adult sexual behavior in its many manifestations, and a brief introduction to sexual dysfunction.

PSYC 345/445 Psychology of Women
Susan Torres-Harding Schaumburg campus T 2-4:30 PM
Psychological development of women viewed from social, cultural, and biological perspectives. Providing the fundamentals for study in the field of psychology of women, this course will address issues including, but not limited to, gender, abilities, work, ethnicity, women’s health, sexuality, victimization, and mental health.

PSYC 486 Eating Disorders
Karen Leamen Schaumburg campus Th 6:30-9 PM
No description available, please contact instructor for more information.

SOC 215 The Family
Rebecca West Chicago campus Tu/Th 8-9:15 AM
Colleen Kennedy Schaumburg campus M/W 11 AM-12:15 PM
This course covers the development of the modern American family; variations in family patterns in various cultures; role relationships within the family; family influences in personality development; mate selection; parent-child relations; family disorganization and reorganization.

SOC 340/440 Gender and Society
Kate Webster Chicago campus M/W 11-12:15 PM
This course draws on sociological and feminist theory to explore the ways in which gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation intersect to influence the status of women and men. The focus will be on how individuals learn about gender and how social and institutional structures along with culture shape the way we think about gender.

SOC 382/482 Gender-Based Violence
Kate Webster Chicago campus M 6-8:30 PM
This course will examine some of the theoretical and sociological root causes of gender-based violence nationally and internationally. Topics will include feminist perspectives of the gendered nature of violence and how they play out in US social institutions such as education, the economy, and the health care system. Topics will also address gender-based violence in “Third World” contexts including cultural traditions and war. This course will also focus on the social constructions of masculinity and how far from being solely a “women’s issue”, it will examine how violence that targets women and girls threatens the healthy development of all human beings.