Courses

AFST B101 Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies

Fall 2025

This interdisciplinary course situates the study of Black lives, known interchangeably as African American Studies, Black Studies, Africana Studies, or African Diaspora Studies, within the context of ongoing struggles against anti-Black racism. We will explore the founding principles and purposes of the field, the evolution of its imperatives, its key debates, and the lives and missions of its progenitors and practitioners. In doing so we will survey, broadly and deeply, the diverse historical, political, social, cultural, religious/spiritual, and economic experiences and expressions of the African Diaspora in the Americas and beyond.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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AFST B202 Black Queer Diaspora

Fall 2025

This interdisciplinary course explores over two decades of work produced by and about Black Queer Diasporic communities throughout the circum-Atlantic world. While providing an introduction to various artists and intellectuals of the Black Queer Diaspora, this course examines the viability of Black Queer Diaspora world-making praxis as a form of theorizing. We will interrogate the transnational and transcultural mobility of specific Black Queer Diasporic forms of peacemaking, erotic knowledge productions, as well as the concept of "aesthetics" more broadly. Our aim is to use the prism of Blackness/Queerness/Diaspora to highlight the dynamic relationship between Black Diaspora Studies and Queer Studies. By the end of this course students will have a strong understanding of how systems of power work to restrict the freedoms of Black Queer and Trans communities, and how Black LGBTQ people have lived, organized, and created in spite of and in response to these oppressions. This interdisciplinary undergraduate upper-level course will utilize academic texts accompanied by poetry, fiction, film, television, and visual art to understand Black Queer and Trans subjectivities.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; History of Art.

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AFST B300 Black Women's Studies

Not offered 2025-26

Black Feminist Studies, which emerged in the 1970s as a corrective to both Black Studies and Women's Studies, probes the silences, erasures, distortions, and complexities surrounding the experiences of peoples of African descent wherever they live. The early scholarship was comparable to the painstaking excavation projects of an archaeologist digging for hidden treasures. A small group of mainly black feminist scholars have been responsible for reconstructing the androcentric African American literary tradition by establishing the importance of black women's literature going back to the nineteenth century. In this interdisciplinary seminar, students closely examine the historical, critical and theoretical perspectives that led to the development of Black Feminist theory/praxis. The course will draw from the 19th century to the present, but will focus on the contemporary Black feminist intellectual tradition that achieved notoriety in the 1970s and initiated a global debate on "western" and global feminisms. Central to our exploration will be the analysis of the intersectional relationship between theory and practice, and of race, to gender, class, and sexuality. We will conclude the course with the exploration of various expressions of contemporary Black feminist thought around the globe as a way of broadening our knowledge of feminist theory.

Writing Intensive

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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ANTH B102 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

This course will explore the basic principles and methods of sociocultural anthropology. Through field research, direct observation, and participation in a group's daily life, sociocultural anthropologists examine the many ways that people organize their social institutions and cultural systems, ranging from the dynamics of life in small-scale societies to the transnational circulation of people, commodities, technologies and ideas. Sociocultural anthropology examines how many of the categories we assume to be "natural," such as kinship, gender, or race, are culturally and socially constructed. It examines how people's perceptions, beliefs, values, and actions are shaped by broader historical, economic, and political contexts. It is also a vital tool for understanding and critiquing imbalances of power in our contemporary world. Through a range of topically and geographically diverse course readings and films, and opportunities to practice ethnographic methodology, students will gain new analytical and methodological tools for understanding cultural difference, social organization, and social change.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ANTH B213 Anthropology of Food

Not offered 2025-26

Food is part of the universal human experience. But everyday experiences of food also reveal much about human difference. What we eat is intimately connected with who we are, where we belong, and how we see the world. In this course, we will use a socio-cultural perspective to explore how food helps us form families, national and religious communities, and other groups. We will also consider how food may become a source of inequality, a political symbol, and a subject of social discord. Examining both practical and ideological meanings of food and taste, this course will address issues of identity, social difference, and cultural experience.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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ANTH B246 The Everyday Life of Language: Field Research in Linguistic Anthropology

Not offered 2025-26

The goal of this course is to develop an awareness of how language operates in various interactional and other (eg. ritual, performance, political) contexts that we commonly experience. The focus will be on gaining hands-on experience in doing linguistic anthropological data collection and analysis, and putting the results of individual student projects together as part of initiating an ongoing, multi-year project. Topics that students explore ethnographically may include: language and gender; language, race and social indexicality; sociolinguistic variation; codeswitching; register and social stance; language and social media. Student research will involve ethnographic observation, audio-recording of spoken discourse, conducting interviews, and learning how to create a transcript to use as the basis for ethnographic analysis. Students will work in parallel on individual projects cohering around a particular topic, and class time will be used to discuss the results and synthesize insights that develop from bringing different ethnographic contexts together. For the praxis component of the course, students will use the experience they have gained to generate ideas for components of a middle school/high school language arts curriculum that incorporates linguistic anthropology concepts and student-driven research on language.

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ANTH B287 Sex, Gender, Biology and Culture

Not offered 2025-26

This 200-level anthropology course is an introductory survey of topics in sex, gender, biology, and culture, approached through an intersectional feminist interdisciplinary biocultural anthropological lens. In this course, we delve into the variations of gender in the US and globally, explore the interplay between gender and sex, and examine concepts of biological sex, intersexuality, and sexuality. Students will also explore contemporary issues and research areas where anthropologists and human biologists investigate the intersection of sex and gender. This includes discussions on hormones, sports, and the brain, as well as examinations of sex and gender among non-human animals. This course offers students a unique amalgamation of biocultural anthropology, cultural anthropology, biology research, gender studies, feminist science studies, and health science. Through this course, students will develop skills to discern and assess scientific information and claims and construct a critical feminist toolkit for analyzing scientific knowledge. They will apply these skills to evaluate a diverse array of sources, ranging from peer-reviewed articles to popular media, websites, podcasts, and documentaries. Moreover, students will utilize queer feminist theories to cultivate this intersectional perspective, honing their abilities in analytical and critical thinking. Upon completion of the course, students will leave with enhanced confidence in articulating nuanced thoughts on the complex intersections of sex, gender, sexuality, science, and society.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ANTH B294 Culture, Power, and Politics

Not offered 2025-26

What do a country's national politics have to do with culture? Likewise, how are politics hidden below the surface of our everyday social lives? This course explores questions like these through anthropological approaches. Drawing on both classic and contemporary ethnographic studies from the U.S. and around the world, we will examine how social and cultural frameworks help us understand politics in new ways. We will investigate how people perceive the meanings and effects of the state; how nationalism and citizenship shape belonging on the one hand, and exclusion on the other; how understandings of gender, race, and difference converge with political action, ideology, and power; and how politics infuse everyday spaces including schools, businesses, homes, and even the dinner table. Prerequisite: ANTH B102, H103 or permission of the instructor.

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ANTH B312 Anthropology of Reproduction

Not offered 2025-26

This course will examine how power in everyday life shapes reproductive behavior and how reproduction is culturally constructed. Through an examination of materials from different cultures, this course will look at how often competing interests within households, communities, states and institutions (at both the local and global levels) influence reproduction in society. We will explore the political economy of reproduction cross-culturally, how power and politics shape gendered reproductive behavior and how it is interpreted and used differently by persons, communities and institutions. Topics covered include but are not limited to the politics of family planning, mothering/parenting, abortion, pregnancy, pregnancy loss, fetal testing and biology and social policy in cross-cultural comparison. Prerequisite: ANTH 8102 (or ANTH H103) recommended

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies.

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ANTH B322 Anthropology of Bodies

Fall 2025

This course examines meanings and interpretations of bodies in anthropology. It explores anthropological theories and methods of studying the human body and social difference via a series of topics including the construction of the body in medicine, identity, race, gender, sexuality and as explored through cross-cultural comparison.  Bodies and their forms are intertwined in debates both in academia and in current affairs and politics. These concerns range from surveillance and movements of bodies, disappearance and erasure of some bodies and fortification of others, to biological and technological modification of individual bodies that arise in moral and political debates and action. Although "the body" is frequently assumed to be "natural," indeed it appears unstable and destabilizing, especially in particular times and in particular places. We will discuss, for instance the body as a focus of the biomedical gaze, as commodity, in creative expression, in relations to non-human primates, across the age spectrum, and in historical political, economic, and colonial and post-colonial regimes, among other topics.

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies; Health Studies.

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ANTH B331 Medical Anthro Seminar: Critical Thinking for Critical Times

Not offered 2025-26

Advanced Medical Anthropology: Critical Thinking for Critical Times explores theoretical and applied frameworks used in medical anthropology to tackle pressing problems in our world today. Coupled with topical subjects and ethnographic examples, this seminar will enable students to delve deeply into sub-specialization areas in the field of medical anthropology, including: global health inequalities, cross-border disease transmission, genomics, science and technology studies, ethnomedicine, cross-cultural psychiatry/psychology, cross-cultural bioethics, and ecological approaches to studying health and behavior, among others. No prior experience in medical anthropology is required. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing and higher.

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ANTH B354 Political Economy, Gender, Ethnicity and Transformation in Vietnam

Not offered 2025-26

Today, Vietnam is in the midst of dramatic social, economic and political changes brought about through a shift from a central economy to a market/capitalist economy since the late 1980s. These changes have resulted in urbanization, a rise in consumption, changes in land use, movement of people, environmental consequences of economic development, and shifts in social and economic relationships and cultural practices as the country has moved from low income to middle income status. This course examines culture and society in Vietnam focusing largely on contemporary Vietnam, but with a view to continuities and historical precedent in past centuries. In this course, we will draw on anthropological studies of Vietnam, as well as literature and historical studies. Relationships between the individual, family, gender, ethnicity, community, land, and state will pervade the topics addressed in the course, as will the importance of political economy, nation, and globalization. In addition to class seminar discussions, students will view documentary and fictional films about Vietnamese culture. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or higher or first years with ANTH 102.

Writing Attentive

Counts Toward: Environmental Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; International Studies; International Studies.

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ANTH B363 Gender and Human Evolution

Not offered 2025-26

In this anthropology course, students will investigate the gender/sex/sexuality in the study of human ancestors and their non-human primate relatives. Students will gain familiarity with foundational texts considered to be classic in the field of biological anthropology. This course will operate with a structure of paired texts: one early work that spoke to naturalized sex differences or gender roles and a feminist science piece intervening in that space or a piece from feminist science studies or women and gender studies in conversation with the first work. This course structure allows students time to really sit with each argument. These texts will prompt students to ask questions such as- what narratives are mobilized to naturalize the evolution gender norms, sex differences, and where do they come from? How has gender has been conceived of in the study of human ancestors and our non-human primate relatives? How are scholars intervening? How effective or ineffective have these interventions been? What ideas of gender/sex/sexuality persist despite interventions, and why might that be? Students will develop skills in explaining their thoughts on those questions in both discussion and writing. This course will also involve works external to biological anthropology written by feminist or women and gender studies scholars providing a critical commentary of that feminist science intervention, with a primary focus on Donna Haraway's Primate Visions. In the end, students will find a work in the study of human variation, human ancestors, or non-human primates, write their own paired piece of commentary. Students will be supported in the develop of their own intervention. This cross-disciplinary course will leave students will skillsets they can apply outside of this course in having hard conversations around gender, sex, and sexuality and to explicate their perspectives with care and intention. Prerequisite: ANTH B101

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ARCH B253 Gender Archaeology in Pre-Islamic Western Asia

Not offered 2025-26

This course explores the intersections of gender and archaeology in Western Asia during the pre-Islamic periods. It examines how diverse social groups use multiple means to construct, perform, and negotiate gender, sex, identities. The course discusses gender's intricate relationship with class, sexuality, and religion through analysis of texts, visual representations, spatial organization, and other material traces of the past. Grounded in the tradition of gender archaeology, this course draws on various discourses and interpretive frameworks to offer new archaeological approaches for understanding and discussing gender dynamics in both past and present societies.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ARCH B254 Cleopatra

Not offered 2025-26

This course examines the life and rule of Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, and the reception of her legacy in the Early Roman Empire and the western world from the Renaissance to modern times. The first part of the course explores extant literary evidence regarding the upbringing, education, and rule of Cleopatra within the contexts of Egyptian and Ptolemaic cultures, her relationships with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, her conflict with Octavian, and her death by suicide in 30 BCE. The second part examines constructions of Cleopatra in Roman literature, her iconography in surviving art, and her contributions to and influence on both Ptolemaic and Roman art. A detailed account is also provided of the afterlife of Cleopatra in the literature, visual arts, scholarship, and film of both Europe and the United States, extending from the papal courts of Renaissance Italy and Shakespearean drama, to Thomas Jefferson's art collection at Monticello and Joseph Mankiewicz's 1963 epic film, Cleopatra.

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CSTS B175 Feminism in Classics

Not offered 2025-26

This course will illustrate the ways in which feminism has had an impact on classics, as well as the ways in which feminists think with classical texts. It will have four thematic divisions: feminism and the classical canon; feminism, women, and rethinking classical history; feminist readings of classical texts; and feminists and the classics - e.g. Cixous' Medusa and Butler's Antigone.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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CSTS B219 Poetic Desires, Queer Longings

Not offered 2025-26

This course places poetry that considers love and desire from Greco-Roman antiquity in conversation with modern poetry and critical theory (queer, feminist, and literary). How are the roles of lover and beloved constructed through gender? How does queer desire and sexuality manifest in different cultural contexts? How have poets sought to express desire through language, and in what ways does language fail to capture that desire? Students in this course will face the difficulties of articulating desire head-on through both traditional literary analysis papers and a creative writing project. Texts will include love poetry by Sappho and Ovid, Trista Mateer's Aphrodite Made Me Do It, Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet, and Audre Lorde's "The Uses of the Erotic."

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CSTS B230 Food and Drink in the Ancient World

Not offered 2025-26

This course explores practices of eating and drinking in the ancient Mediterranean world both from a socio-cultural and environmental perspective. Since we are not only what we eat, but also where, when, why, with whom, and how we eat, we will examine the wider implications of patterns of food production, preparation, consumption, availability, and taboos, considering issues like gender, health, financial situation, geographical variability, and political status. Anthropological, archaeological, literary, and art historical approaches will be used to analyze the evidence and shed light on the role of food and drink in ancient culture and society. In addition, we will discuss how this affects our contemporary customs and practices and how our identity is still shaped by what we eat.

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CSTS B246 Eros in Ancient Greek Culture

Fall 2025

This course explores the ancient Greek's ideas of love, from the interpersonal loves between people of the same or different genders to the cosmogonic Eros that creates and holds together the entire world. The course examines how the idea of eros is expressed in poetry, philosophy, history, and the romances.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Classical Culture and Society; Classics; Gender Sexuality Studies; Greek; Latin.

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EALC B264 Human Rights in China

Fall 2025

This course will examine China's human rights issues from a historical perspective. The topics include diverse perspectives on human rights, historical background, civil rights, religious practice, justice system, education, as well as the problems concerning some social groups such as migrant laborers, women, ethnic minorities and peasants.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: East Asian Languages & Culture; Gender Sexuality Studies; History; International Studies; International Studies.

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EALC B315 Spirits, Saints, Snakes, Swords: Women in East Asian Literature & Film

Spring 2026

This interdisciplinary course focuses on a critical survey of literary and visual texts by and about Chinese women. We will begin by focusing on the cultural norms that defined women's lives beginning in early China, and consider how those tropes are reflected and rejected over time and geographical borders (in Japan, Hong Kong and the United States). No prior knowledge of Chinese culture or language necessary.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; East Asian Languages & Culture; English; Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ECON B324 The Economics of Discrimination and Inequality

Not offered 2025-26

Explores the causes and consequences of discrimination and inequality in economic markets. Topics include economic theories of discrimination and inequality, evidence of contemporary race- and gender-based inequality, detecting discrimination, identifying sources of racial and gender inequality, and identifying sources of overall economic inequality. Additionally, the instructor and students will jointly select supplementary topics of specific interest to the class. Possible topics include: discrimination in historical markets, disparity in legal treatments, issues of family structure, and education gaps. Writing Intensive. Prerequisites: At least one 200-level applied microeconomics elective; ECON 253 or 304; ECON 200.

Writing Intensive

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities.

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ENGL B175 Queer American Poetry

Spring 2026

What does poetry have to say about the history of sexuality? How do queer voices, expansively defined, disrupt poetic norms and forms? How has poetry been congenial to the project of imagining and making queer communities, queer spaces, and even queer worlds? In this course, we survey the work of queer American poets from the late nineteenth century to the present, as we touch on major topics in the history of sexuality, queer studies, and American cultural history. This course provides an overview of American poetry as well as an introduction to queer studies concepts and frameworks; no prior experience with these fields is necessary.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B212 Renaissance Erotic Poetry

Not offered 2025-26

Even when it was concerned with elevated topics like religion, politics, or community, Renaissance poetry was deeply embodied, working through abstract topics in frank and fleshy figures. This class will serve as an introduction to Renaissance lyric, focusing on the erotic dimensions of early modern poetics. Along the way, we'll discuss topics of interest within gender and sexuality studies and queer theory. Authors will include Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, Herbert, Rochester, and Milton.

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ENGL B215 Early Modern Crime Narratives: Vice, Villains, and Law

Spring 2026

This course taps into our continuing collective obsession with criminality, unpacking the complicated web of feelings attached to crime and punishment through early modern literary treatments of villains, scoundrels, predators, pimps, witches, king-killers, poisoners, mobs, and adulterers. By reading literary accounts of vice alongside contemporary and historical theories of criminal justice, we will chart the deep history of criminology and track competing ideas about punishment and the criminal mind. This course pays particular attention the ways that people in this historical moment mapped criminality onto dynamics of gender, race, sexuality, disability, religion, and mental illness according to cultural conventions very different from our own. Authors may include Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger, Middleton, Dekker, Webster, and Behn.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B217 Narratives of Latinidad

Fall 2025

This course explores how Latina/o writers fashion bicultural and transnational identities and narrate the intertwined histories of the U.S. and Latin America. We will focus on topics of shared concern among Latino groups such as struggles for social justice, the damaging effects of machismo and racial hierarchies, the politics of Spanglish, and the affective experience of migration. By analyzing a range of cultural production, including novels, poetry, testimonial narratives, films, activist art, and essays, we will unpack the complexity of Latinidad in the Americas.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Praxis Program; Spanish.

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ENGL B223 The Help: Asian American Literature & Care Work

Fall 2025

This course surveys Asian American literature and cultural productions that feature the work of care: jobs, whether official or unofficial (such as mothering, nursing, and nannying) that are essential, yet so often undercompensated and overlooked. We will examine how Asian American immigration history has led to the burgeoning of industries around care work. We will see how narrative and fiction portray the troubling entanglements between economic structures, race and gender roles, and personal feeling in the labor of care. This course operates under the premise that an attentiveness to how care unfolds is essential to creating a more just world. Collectively, we will not just talk about care as an abstract set of ideas but concretely practice it with one another in the space of our classroom.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Asian American Studies; Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B227 Trans Shakespeare

Not offered 2025-26

Everyone knows that Shakespeare's plays are chock-full of moments of gender trouble. Whether it is the fact of cross-dressing on stages that prohibited women actors or the episodes where already cross-dressed boy actors played men, the early modern stage reveled in the instability of gender and its performance. Less known, however, are the rich debates and theories about sex, gender, and sexuality that were going on at the time and that informed the performance of gender on Shakespeare's stage. Indeed, three years before the publication of Shakespeare's first folio, or collected works, a pamphlet debate between Hic Mulier (the man-woman) and Haec Vir (the womanish man) raged, bringing social anxieties about cross-dressing, sexuality, women, and masculinity to the fore of bookstall debate. This course will delve into Shakespeare's works and put them in context in the landscape of early modern theories of gender and sexuality. Moreover, this course will engage contemporary scholarship, to re-situate our approach to gender and sexuality in Shakespeare within a trans-critical framework, moving away from gender binarism in our approach to questions of gender in early modern literature. Readings include Ben Jonson's Epicene, Shakespeare's As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice, and Henry VI Part I, and a selection of criticism and theory.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B237 Cultural Memory and State-Sanctioned Violence in Latinx Literature

Spring 2026

This course examines how Latinx literature grapples with state-sanctioned violence, cultural memory, and struggles for justice in the Americas. Attending to the histories of dictatorship and civil war in Central and South America, we will focus on a range of genres-including novels, memoir, poetry, film, and murals-to explore how memory and the imagination can contest state-sanctioned violence, how torture and disappearances haunt the present, how hetereopatriarchal and white supremacist discourses are embedded in authoritarian regimes, and how U.S. imperialism has impacted undocumented migration. Throughout the course we will analyze the various creative techniques Latinx cultural producers use to resist violence and imagine justice.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Spanish.

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ENGL B261 Colonizing Girlhoods: L.M.Montgomery and Laura Ingalls Wilde

Fall 2025

This class explores what we can see anew when we juxtapose two iconic figures of North American children's literature: L.M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley and Laura Ingalls Wilder's fictionalized self-portrait, Laura Ingalls. Both characters have risen to mythic proportions in their respective countries, and are powerful signs in an international culture industry. After setting up key eighteenth-century concepts and contexts for what French historian Philippe Ariès calls the "invention of childhood", we will explore the ways in which images of young girls have been deployed as the benign faces of ruthless imperialism, reading through the entirety of each original series. We will track the geographical movement of both heroines, with particular attention to different spatial narratives of nationhood and empire-building, whether manifest destiny in the U.S., or what critic Northrop Frye has termed the "garrison mentality" of Canadian culture. Here we'll be especially attentive to commonalities in how both authors produce class-stratified and racialized notions of girlhood, as well as divergences in how both countries, each still framed to varying degrees as the "infant nation" of Great Britain, yield new and evolving discourses of girlhood.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Education Studies; Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B266 Oscar Wilde and His Circle

Spring 2026

Oscar Wilde embodied contradictions. He was an Irishman who embraced English life, a husband to a woman and a lover to many men, an author who wrote in all genres, a celebrity, a wit, a journalist and editor, a socialist and a decadent, a beloved and loathed exile and martyr. At his height, he was one of the most celebrated writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and he played a huge role in the shaping of the literary and cultural aesthetics of the 1890s. Then, after a brutal and sensational trial for "acts of gross indecency" with men, followed by 2 years in a prison cell, he became a byword for homosexuality and its perils. Everyone knew, or knew about, Oscar. This course will trace his artistic and sexual networks, his friendships, his rivalries, and his afterlives. Topics will include: Wilde, feminism and fashion; Wilde, aestheticism and America; Wilde and incarceration; Wilde and race. Alongside selections from his drama, poetry, essays and fiction, we will read work by the women who formed part of his literary circle (Ouida, Amy Levy, Michael Field), the sexual philosophers who influenced or were influenced by him (Walter Pater, Aleister Crowley, Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter), and learn why Henry James was an enemy, and Lord Alfred Douglas a very bad boyfriend indeed.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B270 American Girl: Childhood in U.S. Literatures, 1690-1935

Not offered 2025-26

This course will focus on the "American Girl" as a particularly contested model for the nascent American. Through examination of religious tracts, slave and captivity narratives, literatures for children and adult literatures about childhood, we will analyze U. S. investments in girlhood as a site for national self-fashioning.

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ENGL B305 Early Modern Trans Studies

Spring 2026

This course will consider the deep histories of transgender embodiment by exploring literary, historical, medical, and religious texts from the Renaissance. Expect to read about alchemical hermaphrodites, gender-swapping angels, Ethiopian eunuchs, female husbands, trans saints, criminal transvestites, and genderqueer monks. We will consider together how these early modern texts speak to the historical, theoretical, and political concerns that animate contemporary trans studies. We will read texts by Crashaw, Donne, Shakespeare, Lyly, and Dekker as well as Susan Stryker, Dean Spade, Mel Chen, Paul Preciado, and Kadji Amin. Prerequisite: Students must have completed at least one 200-level class.

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B331 Queer Theory

Fall 2025

Queer theory emerged in the early 90s as an academic field committed to studying queer experiences of gender, sexuality, and desire. Early queer theorists established the field's opposition not just to heterosexual privilege, homophobia, and the normal but also to so-called proper objects of analysis and critique. In this class, we study the history, present, and future of this field, and we interrogate its power at a moment when some of its basic assertions are being disregarded and teachers in some states risk their jobs if they acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people. Texts will include movement documents, manifestos, poems, artworks, and films in addition to works of theory by writers like Anzaldúa, Berlant, Butler, Ferguson, Halberstam, Love, Muñoz, Puar, Rubin, Sedgwick, Spillers, Warner, and others.

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B333 Lesbian Immortal

Not offered 2025-26

Lesbian literature has repeatedly figured itself in alliance with tropes of immortality and eternity. Using recent queer theory on temporality, and 19th and 20th century primary texts, we will explore topics such as: fame and noteriety; feminism and mythology; epistemes, erotics and sexual seasonality; the death drive and the uncanny; fin de siecle manias for mummies and seances.

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B337 Modernism and the Ordinary

Spring 2026

Modernism is consistently aligned with innovation: making things new and making things strange. Yet modernist writing is preoccupied with habit, repetition, sameness, boredom, and the banal-with "things happening, normally, all the time," as Virginia Woolf once put it. This course explores the modernist fascination with the ordinary, from the objects in a kitchen to the rhythms of a day. Our primary task will be to understand the stakes of paying attention to the ordinary world for queer and women modernist writers, whose work reveals the ordinary as a site of deep ambivalence as well as possibility. Likely authors include: Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marianne Moore, and Jean Rhys.

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B339 Latina/o Culture and the Art of Migration

Not offered 2025-26

Gloria Anzaldúa has famously described the U.S.-Mexico border as an open wound and the border culture that arises from this fraught site as a third country. This course will explore how Chicana/os and Latina/os creatively represent different kinds of migrations across geo-political borders and between cultural traditions to forge transnational identities and communities. We will use cultural production as a lens for understanding how citizenship status, class, gender, race, and language shape the experiences of Latin American migrants and their Latina/o children. We will also analyze alternative metaphors and discourses of resistance that challenge anti-immigrant rhetoric and reimagine the place of undocumented migrants and Latina/os in contemporary U.S. society. Over the course of the semester, we will probe the role that literature, art, film, and music can play in the struggle for migrants' rights and minority civil rights, querying how the imagination and aesthetics can contribute to social justice. We will examine a number of different genres, as well as read and apply key theoretical texts on the borderlands and undocumented migration.

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ENGL B342 The Queer Middle Ages

Not offered 2025-26

This course examines medieval queer history, focusing on literary depictions of non-normative sexual identities and expressions. From monastic vows of celibacy to same-sex erotic love, from constructions of female virginity to trans identity, the Middle Ages conceptualized sexuality in a range of ways and with a range of attached assumptions and anxieties. Readings will include chivalric romance, rules for monks, cross-dressing saints' lives, and legal tracts worried about unmarried women.

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ENGL B343 Sex, Sin, and the Sacred in Medieval Literature

Not offered 2025-26

Rather than being at odds with the church, sex and sexuality was an integral part of medieval concepts of sanctity. Even as the church attempted to regulate sexual behavior, it was also deeply invested in the relationship between the divine and the corporeal, including meditation upon the frankly erotic Song of Songs; the question of Mary's virginity and motherhood; hagiographic accounts of cross-dressing saints; and the feminization of Christ's body. This course will explore three concepts-- sex, sin, and the sacred-- and their interrelationship during the medieval period. We will investigate the complex and often contradictory ways that sex was understood, exploring how medieval people conceptualized the sacred and profane -- and then troubled the very binaries such a system established. Broadly interpreting the term "sex," we will explore issues of sexual and romantic desire; sexual acts and behaviors; medieval versions of gender identity; pre-modern understandings of "biological" sex; love and courtship; and more. Readings will be mostly literary (both canonical and non-canonical) but will also include some excerpts from religious texts and both medieval and early modern medical treatises, including work from Geoffrey Chaucer, Alain de Lille, Christine de Pizan, St. Augustine, Margery Kempe, Thomas Mallory, John Gower, and Marie de France. We will pair these primary source texts with commentary and essays from critics such as Judith Butler, Caroline Walker Bynum, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Robert Mills, and Carolyn Dinshaw. While texts will be presented in their original form where possible, knowledge of Middle English is not a prerequisite for the course. Prerequisite: One 200-level English course or permission of instructor

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B372 Black Ecofeminism(s): Critical Approaches

Not offered 2025-26

How have Black feminist authors and traditions theorized or represented the ecological world and their relationship to it? How does thinking intersectionally about gender(ing) and racialization expand or challenge conventional notions of "nature," conservation, or environmental justice? In what ways does centering racial blackness critically reframe a host of practical and philosophical questions historically brought together under the sign "ecofeminism?" Combining history and theory, the humanities and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary course will use the work of Black feminist writers (broadly defined) across a range of genres to approach and to trouble the major paradigms and problems of contemporary Euro-American ecofeminist thought. The course uses fiction and poetry by Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen as a gateway to a range of critical work by Jennifer Morgan, Sylvia Wynter, Maria Mies, and Val Plumwood as it attempts to define and deconstruct what Chelsea Frazier calls "Black Feminist Ecological Thought."

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Africana Studies; Environmental Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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FREN B105 Directions de la France contemporaine

Spring 2026

Ce cours se donne pour but de vous faire goûter à la culture française actuelle, mais aussi de vous donner une idée claire de la société où elle naît. Nous en aborderons des aspects très variés en nous concentrant sur ces institutions dont le fonctionnement la distingue d'autres pays (école, hôpital, etc.). Les films que nous allons voir nous permettront d'analyser ces particularités françaises. Il s'agit également de vous encourager à vous exprimer aisément en français : les discussions seront privilégiées et nous réviserons régulièrement des points de grammaire afin d'améliorer votre expression tant écrite qu'orale. Au terme de ce cours, vous pourrez vivre en France sans vous sentir sur une planète étrangère. Prerequisite: FREN 005 or 101.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Museum Studies; Visual Studies.

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FREN B221 Femme sujet/Femme objet

Not offered 2025-26

An in-depth examination of how women authors from selected periods conceive of their art, construct authority for themselves, and, where appropriate, distinguish themselves from male colleagues, of whom several who have assumed female voices/perspective will be examined as points of comparison. It introduces students to the techniques and topics of selected women writers (as well as theoretical approaches to them) from the most recent (Djebar and M. Duras) to late Medieval authors. This course is taught in French. Prerequisite: FREN 102 or 105

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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FREN B302 Le printemps de la parole féminine: femmes écrivains des débuts

Not offered 2025-26

This study of selected women authors from Latin CE-Carolingian period through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and 17th century-among them, Perpetua, Hrotswitha, Marie de France, the trobairitz, Christine de Pisan, Louise Labé, Marguerite de Navarre, and Madame de Lafayette-examines the way in which they appropriate and transform the male writing tradition and define themselves as self-conscious artists within or outside it. Particular attention will be paid to identifying recurring concerns and structures in their works, and to assessing their importance to women's writing in general: among them, the poetics of silence, reproduction as a metaphor for artistic creation, and sociopolitical engagement. Prerequisite: two 200-level courses or permission of instructor.

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GERM B217 Representing Diversity in German Cinema

Spring 2026

German society has undergone drastic changes as a result of immigration. Traditional notions of Germanness have been and are still being challenged and subverted. This course uses films and visual media to examine the experiences of various minority groups living in Germany. Students will learn about the history of immigration of different ethnic groups, including Turkish Germans, Afro-Germans, Asian Germans, Arab Germans, German Jews, and ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. We will explore discourses on migration, racism, xenophobia, integration, and citizenship. We will seek to understand not only the historical and contemporary contexts for these films but also their relevance for reshaping German society. Students will be introduced to modern German cinema from the silent era to the present. They will acquire terminology and methods for reading films as fictional and aesthetic representations of history and politics, and analyze identity construction in the worlds of the real and the reel. This course is taught in English

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities.

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GERM B245 Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Taught in German. Course content varies. Previous topics include, Women's Narratives on Modern Migrancy, Exile, and Diasporas; Nation and Identity in Post-War Austria.

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GERM B321 Advanced Topics in German Cultural Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Weimar Cinema (1918-1933)

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Recent topic titles include: Asia and Germany through Film; The Letter, the Spirit, and Beyond: German-Jewish Writers and Jewish Culture in the 18th and 19th Century.

Course does not meet an Approach

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities.

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GREK B201 Plato and Thucydides

Fall 2025

This course is designed to introduce the student to two of the greatest prose authors of ancient Greece, the philosopher, Plato, and the historian, Thucydides. These two writers set the terms in the disciplines of philosophy and history for millennia, and philosophers and historians today continue to grapple with their ideas and influence. The brilliant and controversial statesman Alcibiades provides a link between the two texts in this course (Plato's Symposium and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War), and we examine the ways in which both authors handle the figure of Alcibiades as a point of entry into the comparison of the varying styles and modes of thought of these two great writers. Suggested Prerequisites: At least 2 years of college Greek or the equivalent.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Classical Culture and Society; Classical Languages; Classical Studies; Classics; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin.

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GSST B108 Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies

Fall 2025

This course will introduce students to major approaches, theories, and topics in gender and sexuality studies, as a framework for understanding the past and present-not only how societies conceive differences in bodily sex, gender expression, and sexual behavior, but how those conceptions shape broader social, cultural, political, and economic patterns.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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GSST B390 Gender & Sexuality Studies Research Seminar

Not offered 2025-26

This course is designed as a research seminar for Gender and Sexuality Studies minors and concentrators in their junior or senior year, with a focus on developing and workshopping an independent project, performance, exhibit, or curriculum plan. Students will review various methodologies and theories in gender and sexuality studies and think critically about how practices and experiences of gender and sexuality intersect with racial, ethnic, class, and national identities in the U.S. and the world. We will also consider the politics of scholarship itself and how various disciplines investigate questions of gender and sexuality. For their final projects, students will bring together various modes of research, analysis, and theory from gender and sexuality studies with questions and methods from their major discipline to develop a project geared to their interests and knowledge. This project will enable students to reflect on their interests and goals in the minor/concentration, either in preparation for a senior project or other future work. Suggested preparation: GSST B108 Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies and/or GSST 250Theories and its Uses in LGBTQ+ Studies

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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HIST B102 Introduction to African Civilizations

Fall 2025

The course is designed to introduce students to the history of African and African Diaspora societies, cultures, and political economies. We will discuss the origins, state formation, external contacts, and the structural transformations and continuities of African societies and cultures in the context of the slave trade, colonial rule, capitalist exploitation, urbanization, and westernization, as well as contemporary struggles over authority, autonomy, identity and access to resources. Case studies will be drawn from across the continent.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B156 The Long 1960's

Not offered 2025-26

The 1960s has had a powerful effect on recent US History. But what was it exactly? How long did it last? And what do we really mean when we say "The Sixties?" This term has become so potent and loaded for so many people from all sides of the political spectrum that it's almost impossible to separate fact from fiction; myth from memory. We are all the inheritors of this intense period in American history but our inheritance is neither simple nor entirely clear. Our task this semester is to try to pull apart the meaning as well as the legend and attempt to figure out what "The Sixties" is (and what it isn't) and try to assess its long term impact on American society.

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HIST B216 History of Mental Health and Mental Illness in the U.S.

Not offered 2025-26

This course examines the history of mental illness-its conception and treatment-in the United States, from the eighteenth century to the present. Pairing primary and secondary sources, the course moves chronologically in order to track, and draw connections between, a wide range of movements within American psychological and social welfare history, including the creation and closure of asylums; the pathologization of racial, gender, and sexual difference; social welfare movements; the Americanization of psychoanalysis; social psychiatry; psychopharmacology; and the politics of diagnosis.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; General Studies.

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HIST B219 LGBTQ+ History in the United States

Spring 2026

This course traces the history of LGBTQ+ identities, relationships, and politics in the United States from the late 18th century to the present. We will consider, in particular, the shifting meanings of sexual and gender variance and LGBTQ+ identities; changing forms of romantic and sexual relationships; the emergence and policing of LGBTQ+ communities, as shaped by class and race; the history of LGBTQ+ activism and its intersections with broader movements for social and economic justice; and the relationship between LGBTQ+ people and the state. Students will learn to read and analyze a range of historical scholarship, as well as primary texts in the history of gender and sexuality including memoirs and letters, periodicals, photographs, and political manifestos.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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HIST B226 Topics in 20th Century European History

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Nationalism and Socialism
Section 001 (Fall 2025): Revolution in European History
Section 001 (Spring 2026): History of Fascism: Then & Now

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: The course is a historical investigation of major revolutions in the European context. Beginning with the French Revolution, the course will examine the revolutions of 1848, the Bolshevik and European Revolutions 1917-1921, the Spanish Civil War 1936-39, followed by revolutions behind the Iron Curtain, 1968 and finally the Eastern European revolutions of 1989.   In each revolution we study, we will consider the origins, processes, and consequences of revolutions, along with whom the agents of revolutions were and their motivations for radical action.   Throughout the class we will analyze primary sources, historical interpretations, and cultural artifacts to uncover the stories of those who fought for inclusion and equity against entrenched systems of power.  In addition to making use of wonderfully curated readers on European Revolutions, our readings will include a wide range of sources, from political pamphlets to personal memoirs.  

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B237 Themes in Modern African History

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; International Studies; International Studies; Museum Studies.

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HIST B242 American Politics and Society: 1945 to the Present

Fall 2025

This course examines transformations in American culture, politics, and society from World War II to the present, focusing on flashpoints of government policy, popular culture, and social activism. We will trace this history with a focus on four central themes: (1) U.S. domestic and foreign policy and the fear of annihilation, from the Cold War, the specter of nuclear warfare, and the War in Vietnam to the War on Terror and climate change; (2) the growth and convergence of movements for social justice, including African American, Latinx, Asian American, indigenous, feminist, and LGBTQ+ rights and liberation; (3) the rise of the New Right, neoliberalism, the reshaping of party politics, and their impact on social welfare, healthcare, and the environment; and (4) the politics of popular culture, especially television, music, and digital media. Across these themes, we will consider where government leaders and popular culture have worked to reinforce social norms and sharpen political divides and how social movements have reshaped American politics and society.

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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HIST B243 Topics: Atlantic Cultures

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Maroon Communities - New World

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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HIST B274 topics in Modern US History

Section 001 (Fall 2024): History of Reproductive Health

Not offered 2025-26

This is a topics course in 20th century America social history. Topics vary by half semester

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies; Political Science.

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HIST B284 Movies and America: The Past Lives Forever

Not offered 2025-26

Movies are one of the most important means by which Americans come to know - or think they know-their own history. We look to old movies to tell us about a world we never knew but think we can access through film. And Hollywood often reaches into the past to tell a good story. How can we understand the impact of our love affair with movies on our understanding of what happened in this country? In this course we will examine the complex cultural relationship between film and American historical self-fashioning.

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HIST B292 Women in Britain since 1750

Not offered 2025-26

Focusing on contemporary and historical narratives, this course explores the ongoing production, circulation and refraction of discourses on gender and nation as well as race, empire and modernity since the mid-18th century. Texts will incorporate visual material as well as literary evidence and culture and consider the crystallization of the discipline of history itself.

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HIST B303 Topics in American History

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Readings in Queer and Trans History
Section 001 (Spring 2025): The 1990s
Section 001 (Fall 2025): Histories of Homelessness

Fall 2025

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Recent topics have included medicine, advertising, and history of sexuality. Course may be repeated for credit.

Current topic description: This seminar explores histories of homelessness, transience, and housing instability in the United States, from the late-nineteenth century to the present. We will move chronologically and thematically to consider the role of visual media (illustrations, photography, and film) in documenting homelessness; the response of social welfare workers from the Progressive Era to the present; home, family, and space-making practices outside normative modes of domesticity; social science and public health; runaway and unhoused youth; housing activism; and the intersections of homelessness with race, gender, sexuality, and mental illness. Students will propose, research, and produce a final research paper or project over the course of the semester.

Counts Toward: Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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HIST B325 Topics in Social History

Not offered 2025-26

This a topics course that explores various themes in American social history. Course content varies. Course may be repeated.

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Health Studies; Political Science.

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HIST B337 Topics in African History

Section 001 (Spring 2025): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics
Section 001 (Fall 2025): History of Global Health in Africa
Section 001 (Spring 2026): Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

This is a topics course. Topics vary.

Current topic description: The course will focus on the issues of public health history, social and cultural history of disease as well as the issues of the history of medicine.  We will examine the histories of global initiatives to control disease in Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective (history, and social and biomedical sciences), using case studies from across the continent.  These initiatives involve the relationship between states, NGOs, universities, pharmaceutical companies, food industry, and other nonstate actors. We will explore various themes, such as the indigenous theories of disease and therapies; disease, imperialism and medicine; medical pluralism in contemporary Africa; the emerging diseases, medical education, women in medicine, and differential access to health care.  We will also explore the questions regarding the sources of African history and their quality.

Current topic description: In recent decades, the world has experienced an increasing threat for public health from the emerging infectious diseases that have provoked epidemics and pandemics.  The course will focus on the impact of epidemics and pandemics on cities in Africa.  We will discuss the issues of public health history, social and cultural history of disease as well as the issues of the history of medicine.  We will examine the histories of global initiatives to control disease in Africa from an interdisciplinary perspective (history, and social and biomedical sciences), using case studies from across the continent.  We will explore various themes, such as the anxiety and panic caused by the disease outbreaks; the state, medical, and popular responses; the politics of disease control; the conflicts of interests between the interests of commerce, public health and civil liberties; and the health disparities within cities.  We will focus on the colonial and postcolonial cities in Africa.  We will also explore the questions regarding the sources of African history and their quality.

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Health Studies; Health Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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ITAL B202 Racconti transnazionali a confronto: patriarcato, migrazione e transculturalità

Not offered 2025-26

This course focusses on the development of the short story, and particularly on its changing form through the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Students will analyze Italian novellas through in-class discussions and take-home assignment. They will start by reading some short stories by Boccaccio's Decameron and will then focus closely on 19th century Rosso malpelo and L'amante di Gramigna by Giovanni Verga and on Terno secco by Matilde Serao. Moving towards 20th and 21st centuries, we will examine racism, immigration, and patriarchy in context with the reading of women writers such as Sibilla Aleramo, Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, Elena Ferranate, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anna Maria Ortese, Dacia Maraini, Donatella Di Pietrantonio. Our 21st-century examples will also include Roberto Saviano's Il contrario della morte and Valeria Parrella's Il premio. To stimulate classroom discussion and provide useful insight into the wide variety of Italy's socio-cultural specificities, the texts will be supplemented with selected background information including scholarly criticism, visual media, and media reception. The course is highly interactive and, at times, adopts the mode of a creative writing workshop. Students will thus be asked to comment their and other colleagues' work by discussing points of strength and weakness. This process will facilitate the preparation for and successful drafting of the papers. It will also encourage students to learn how to analyze and self-assess their own essays. The stories will be read in Italian. Prerequisite: ITAL 102 or permission of instructor.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ITAL B209 Love, Magic, and Women Warriors: Renaissance Italian Epic

Not offered 2025-26

This course offers an overview of one of the great literary traditions of Renaissance Italy: that of chivalric poems narrating tales of war, love, and magic. Our readings will center on the two established masterpieces of the tradition, Ludovico Ariosto's romance Orlando furioso (The Madness of Orlando; 1532) and Torquato Tasso's epic Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered; 1581), but we will also look at a series of much lesser-known works by a queer and "irregular" author (Luigi Pulci), who inaugurated this genre in Florence, and by female poets of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Moderata Fonte and Margherita Sarrocchi), who draw on Ariosto's and Tasso's texts for inspiration. Thematically, the course will focus on questions of diversity in political and religious ideologies, differing treatments of love and conceptions of the heroic, and the representation of sexuality and gender, which is exceptionally fluid and interesting in these works. The course is taught in English and is accessible also to students without a background in Renaissance literature and with no knowledge of Italian. Students who are interested to take this course towards a major in Italian will complete their assignments in Italian and will participate in an extra hour in Italian

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ITAL B217 Gendered Violence and Femicide

Spring 2026

How many women are killed in Italy? How many women suffer abuse at the hands of their partner? Data shows one in seven in Italy have suffered gendered abuse. In many regions, victims have nowhere to turn for shelter. This course will examine domestic and sexual assault in intimate relationships from a feminist analysis. Historical, theoretical, and sociological perspectives on gender violence will be critically analyzed through criminology research, literature, and theory. Course context will focus on dominance and control as a co-factor of gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic class, age, sexuality, nationality, and other variables. Therefore, the course will highlight the differential impact of gender violence on women of color, lesbians, older women, adolescent girls, immigrants and marginalized and disenfranchised women. Domestic and sexual violence in contemporary Italy will also be reviewed and analyzed in the context of international contexts. This course will be taught in Italian. Prerequisite: ITAL 102 or permission from instructor

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Praxis Program.

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ITAL B218 Early-Modern Intersections: A New Italian Renaissance

Not offered 2025-26

The period or movement commonly referred to as the Renaissance remains one of the great iconic moments of global history: a time of remarkable innovation within artistic and intellectual culture, and a period still widely regarded as the crucible of modernity. Although lacking a political unity and being constantly colonized by European Empires, Italy was the original heartland of the Renaissance, and home to some of its most powerful and enduring figures, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo in art, Petrarch and Ariosto in literature, Machiavelli in political thought. This course provides an overview of Italian culture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century by adopting a cross-cultural, intersectional, and inter-disciplinary approach. The course places otherness at the center of the picture rather than at its margins, with the main aim to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, courtly culture, the canonization of the language), not only from the point of view of its protagonists but also through the eyes of its non-male, non-white, non-Christian, and non-heterosexual witnesses. The course ultimately challenges traditional accounts of the Italian Renaissance by crossing also disciplinary boundaries, since it examines not only literary, artistic, and intellectual history, but also material culture, cartography, science, technology, and history of food and fashion. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students seeking Italian credits will complete their assignments in the target language.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; History; History of Art.

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ITAL B255 Mafia and Organized Crimes

Fall 2025

This course will be a study of the mafia in its historical, social, economic, cultural, and political dimensions. A wide range of novels, films, testimonies and TV series will offer different representations of the Mafia: its ethics, its relationship with politics, religion and business, its ideas of friendship, family, masculinity and femininity. The Associazione Libera was established in 1995 with the purpose of involving and supporting those who are interested in the fight against mafias and organized crime. Thanks to Italian Law n. 109/96, the Italian government is able now to seize property from Mafiosi and give it to co-operations such as Libera. Specialized sectors of mafia activities explored include prostitution, drugs, finance, and human trafficking. Ecomafia receives special attention, examining the implications of mafia for the environment, agriculture and food markets.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ITAL B315 A Gendered History of the Avant-Garde

Not offered 2025-26

The very concept of 'avant-garde' is steeped in a masculine warlike imagery, and the founding manifesto of Futurism even glorifies 'contempt for the woman'. Yet, feminine, queer, androgynous, and non-binary perspectives on sexual identity played a central role - from Rimbaud to current experimentalism - in the development of what has been called 'the tradition of the new'. In this seminar we will explore such a paradoxical anti-traditional tradition through texts, images, sounds, and videos, adopting a historical prospective from early 20th century movements to the Neo-Avant-Garde. We will unearth the stories and works of great experimentalists who have been neglected because of their gender. We will deal with poems made up entirely of place names, of recorded noises, of typographical symbols. Taking advantage of the college's collection and library, we will try to read texts with no words, surreal stories, performances, objects, and we will make our own avant-garde experiments. Course taught in English, no previous knowledge of Italian required.

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ITAL B324 Diversity, Gender, and Queerness in Modern Italian Poetry

Not offered 2025-26

This course offers an overview of one of the great literary traditions of post-unification Italy: that of modern and contemporary poetry. Our readings will center mostly on some major protagonists of this genre, like the Nobel prize-winning Eugenio Montale, Umberto Saba, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, but we will also look at a series of much lesser-known works by female, queer and transgender poets, like Sandro Penna, Amelia Rosselli, and Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto, who negotiated their own voices within this tradition. While thinking, discussing and writing in Italian, we will examine poetic texts in the original and with a specific focus on the representation of religious and racial "otherness", the language of expression, and gender perspectives. Our authors and texts will be contextualized in their historical and social background, in order to have an in-depth interdisciplinary exploration of Italy's 20th-21st century cultural life and gain insight on Italian Modernity as a whole. Elements of metrics and rhetoric will be used and explained in order to analyze poetry in its own essence.

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ITAL B325 Literature and Film, Literature into Films and Back

Spring 2026

This course is a critical analysis of Modern Italian society through cinematic production and literature, from the Risorgimento to the present. According to Alfred Hitchock's little stories, two goats were eating the reel of a movie taken from a famous novel. "I liked the book better," says one to the other. While at times we too chew on movies taken from books, our main objective will not be to compare books and films, but rather to explore the more complex relation between literature and cinema: how text is put into film, how cultural references operate with respect to issues of style, technique, and perspective. We will discuss how cinema conditions literary imagination, and how literature leaves its imprint on cinema. We will "read" films as "literary images" and "see" novels as "visual stories". Students will become acquainted with literary sources through careful readings; on viewing the corresponding film, students will consider how narrative and descriptive textual elements are transposed into cinematic audio/visual elements. An important concern of this course will be to analyze the particularity of each film/book in relation to a set of themes -gender, death, class, discrimination, history, migration- through close textual analysis. We shall use contemporary Film theory and critical methodology to access these themes.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

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ITAL B335 The Italian Margins: Places and Identities

Not offered 2025-26

Thompson Fullilove's scholarship will be the theoretical foundation of this survey of 20th century topics-from literary representations of mental health to the displacement of marginalized communities, from historical persecution in Europe to contemporary domestic violence in Italy. The main goal of the seminar will be to challenge the rhetoric of 'otherness', 'encounters', 'marginalization', 'anti-canon', and 'exoticism' that is typical of broader readings of Italy's modern traditions, adopting Thompson Fullilove's inter-sectional and trans-historical paradigms to re-imagine Italian Studies, to center the gender gap, and overcome the stigma of mental illness and madness. Rooted in the perspectives of trans-codification, trans-historical tradition, and cultural translation, this course attempts to address such questions both in theory and practice using Freudian literary criticism (The interpretation of Dreams, 1899; The Uncanny, 1919; Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920; The Ego and the Id, 1923; Civilization and its Discontents, 1930). We will start with a seminar, devoted to the analysis and discussion of primary sources and then follow with a scholarly (and creative) workshop. Tailored activities related to social activism (Praxis) will also fulfill the course requirements. Prerequisite: 200 level course or permission of instructor.

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PHIL B221 Ethics

Fall 2025

An introduction to ethics by way of an examination of moral theories and a discussion of important ancient, modern, and contemporary texts which established theories such as virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, relativism, emotivism, care ethics. This course considers questions concerning freedom, responsibility, and obligation. How should we live our lives and interact with others? How should we think about ethics in a global context? Is ethics independent of culture? A variety of practical issues such as reproductive rights, euthanasia, animal rights and the environment will be considered.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; International Studies.

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PHIL B225 Global Ethical Issues

Not offered 2025-26

The need for a critical analysis of what justice is and requires has become urgent in a context of increasing globalization, the emergence of new forms of conflict and war, high rates of poverty within and across borders and the prospect of environmental devastation. This course examines prevailing theories and issues of justice as well as approaches and challenges by non-western, post-colonial, feminist, race, class, and disability theorists.

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PHIL B252 Feminist Theory

Spring 2026

Beliefs that gender discrimination has been eliminated and women have achieved equality have become commonplace. We challenge these assumptions examining the concepts of patriarchy, sexism, and oppression. Exploring concepts central to feminist theory, we attend to the history of feminist theory and contemporary accounts of women's place and status in different societies, varied experiences, and the impact of the phenomenon of globalization. We then explore the relevance of gender to philosophical questions about identity and agency with respect to moral, social and political theory. Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or permission of instructor.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Political Science.

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POLS B221 Gender and Comparative Politics

Fall 2025

This course explores the dynamic intersection of gender and politics within a comparative framework. Through a feminist and intersectional lens, students will engage in major debates in the field of comparative politics, including but not limited to the State, social movements, authoritarianism, populism, democracy, institutions, and backlash. The course maps the trajectory of feminist work across various areas of comparative research, using examples from different world regions and periods to analyze similarities and differences across global cases. This course fulfills a 200-level requirement for both Comparative Politics and American Politics for Political Science majors. Prerequisite: Students must have taken either Intro to International Politics, Intro to Comparative Politics, or Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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POLS B242 Gender and International Organizations

Not offered 2025-26

Employing a multi-disciplinary feminist lens, this class examines women's and LGBTQIA+ rights within the United Nations system, with a primary focus on human rights and peace & security. This course seeks to expose students to the complex issues - social, political, economic, and legal - that characterize women's and LGBTQIA+ rights around the globe. The theoretical foundations are in the area of gender mainstreaming, which is the practice of integrating a gender equality perspective across all governing systems including but not limited to policy development, political representation, institutional regulations, program building, and budgeting. Students will be asked to conduct research on women's and/or LGBTQIA+ rights within a country of their choice. Students will present their findings to the class as well as write a final report. Prerequisite: Introductory Political Science Course or Instructor's permission.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies.

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POLS B277 Creating Queer Studies

Not offered 2025-26

This class tackles the origins and development of queer theory in academia. We begin with an overview of late 1980s feminism before turning to the creation of queer theory. During class discussions, students will evaluate the ways that feminist, queer, and trans politics overlap and diverge. The purpose of the course is to enrich students' understanding of critical knowledge production in academia. Throughout the semester we will ask about the implications of "origin stories" and the ways that such narratives shape future directions of queer scholarship.

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POLS B330 Queer Rights and Politics

Not offered 2025-26

This is an upper-level course designed to introduce students to the study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) politics and activism outside of the US. We will study the formations of LGBTQ identities, state regulation of sexuality and gender, public policy (partnership, healthcare, etc), religious attitudes, political participation by LGBTQ people, and migration and asylum practices. The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the current status of LGBTQ people around the world and help them to hone their independent research and writing skills. Suggested pre-requisite: a 100 or 200 level comparative politics course, political theory course, or gender & sexualities course.

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POLS B351 Women and American Politics

Not offered 2025-26

This course examines the role of women in American politics the second wave of feminism to present. The course will focus on academic literature from political science and include topics such as partisanship, campaigning, and voter behavior. What has been the role of women in American politics? Are there differences at the federal v. state v. local level? What political changes have they achieved and what strategies were most effective? How do other categories of difference, such as race, ability, sexuality, and class, intersect with our gendered expectations? Prerequisite: One course in US Politics or permission of instructor.

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RUSS B265 Queer Russias

Fall 2025

This course presents an alternative vision of Russia's cultural legacy with a focus on queer writing, film, and art from the early nineteenth century to the present day. We consider key moments in this history by examining texts that explore what it has meant to be queer in Russia under different regimes with various levels of tolerance, while centering their power as works of protest art, personal expression, and creative exploration and experimentation. Topics includes: queer masculinities and femininities, reproductive rights, pop and Internet cultures, queer joy, homophobia and protest, trans rights, queerness and disability, marriage, among others. Taught in English. No knowledge of Russian language/culture necessary. Open to all.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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SOCL B102 Society, Culture, and the Individual

Fall 2025, Spring 2026

Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. It involves what C. Wright Mills called the "sociological imagination," a way of seeing the relationship between individuals and the larger forces of society and history. In this course, we will practice using our sociological imaginations to think about the world around us. We will examine how social norms and structures are created and maintained, and we will analyze how these structures shape people's behavior and choices, often without their realizing it. After learning to think sociologically, we will examine the centrality of inequality in society, focusing specifically on the intersecting dimensions of race and ethnicity, gender, and class, and the role of social structures and institutions (such as the family and education) in society. Overall, this course draws our attention toward our own presuppositions-the things we take for granted in our everyday lives-and provides us with a systematic framework within which we can analyze those presuppositions and identify their effects..

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies.

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SOCL B201 The Study of Gender in Society

Fall 2025

The definition of male and female social roles and sociological approaches to the study of gender in the United States, with attention to gender in the economy and work place, the division of labor in families and households, and analysis of class and ethnic differences in gender roles. Of particular interest in this course is the comparative exploration of the experiences of women of color in the United States.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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SOCL B205 Social Inequality

Not offered 2025-26

In this course, we will explore the extent, causes, and consequences of social and economic inequality in the U.S. We will begin by discussing key theories and the intersecting dimensions of inequality along lines of income and wealth, race and ethnicity, and gender. We will then follow a life-course perspective to trace the institutions through which inequality is structured, experienced, and reproduced through the family, neighborhoods, the educational system, labor markets and workplaces, and the criminal justice system.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities.

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SOCL B225 Women in Society

Spring 2026

In 2015, the world's female population was 49.6 percent of the total global population of 7.3 billion. According to the United Nations, in absolute terms, there were 61,591,853 more men than women. Yet, at the global scale, 124 countries have more women than men. A great majority of these countries are located in what scholars have recently been referring to as the Global South - those countries known previously as developing countries. Although women outnumber their male counterparts in many Global South countries, however, these women endure difficulties that have worsened rather than improving. What social structures determine this gender inequality in general and that of women of color in particular? What are the main challenges women in the Global South face? How do these challenges differ based on nationality, class, ethnicity, skin color, gender identity, and other axes of oppression? What strategies have these women developed to cope with the wide variety of challenges they contend with on a daily basis? These are some of the major questions that we will explore together in this class. In this course, the Global South does not refer exclusively to a geographical location, but rather to a set of institutional structures that generate disadvantages for all individuals and particularly for women and other minorities, regardless their geographical location in the world. In other words, a significant segment of the Global North's population lives under the same precarious conditions that are commonly believed as exclusive to the Global South. Simultaneously, there is a Global North embedded in the Global South as well. In this context, we will see that the geographical division between the North and the South becomes futile when we seek to understand the dynamics of the "Western-centric/Christian-centric capitalist/patriarchal modern/colonial world-system" (Grosfoguel, 2012). In the first part of the course, we will establish the theoretical foundations that will guide us throughout the rest of the semester. We will then turn to a wide variety of case studies where we will examine, for instance, the contemporary global division of labor, gendered violence in the form of feminicides, international migration, and global tourism. The course's final thematic section will be devoted to learning from the different feminisms (e.g. community feminism) emerging out of the Global South as well as the research done in that region and its contribution to the development of a broader gender studies scholarship. In particular, we will pay close attention to resistance, solidarity, and social movements led by women. Examples will be drawn from Latin America, the Caribbean, the US, Asia, and Africa.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Child and Family Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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SOCL B235 Mexican-American Communities

Not offered 2025-26

For its unique history, the number of migrants, and the two countries' proximity, Mexican migration to the United States represents an exceptional case in world migration. There is no other example of migration with more than 100 years of history. The copious presence of migrants concentrated in a host country, such as we have in the case of the 11.7 million Mexican migrants residing in the United States, along with another 15 million Mexican descendants, is unparalleled. The 1,933-mile-long border shared by the two countries makes it one of the longest boundary lines in the world and, unfortunately, also one of the most dangerous frontiers in the world today. We will examine the different economic, political, social and cultural forces that have shaped this centenarian migration influx and undertake a macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of analysis. At the macro-level of political economy, we will investigate the economic interdependency that has developed between Mexico and the U.S. over different economic development periods of these countries, particularly, the role the Mexican labor force has played to boosting and sustaining both the Mexican and the American economies. At the meso-level, we will examine different institutions both in Mexico and the U.S. that have determined the ways in which millions of Mexican migrate to this country. Last, but certainly not least, we will explore the impacts that both the macro-and meso-processes have had on the micro-level by considering the imperatives, aspirations, and dreams that have prompted millions of people to leave their homes and communities behind in search of better opportunities. This major life decision of migration brings with it a series of social transformations in family and community networks, this will look into the cultural impacts in both the sending and receiving migrant communities. In sum, we will come to understand how these three levels of analysis work together.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Praxis Program.

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SOCL B262 Public Opinion

Not offered 2025-26

This course will assess public opinion in American politics: what it is, how it is measured, how it is shaped, how it relates to public policy, and how it changes over time. It includes both questions central to political scientists (what is the public, how do they exercise their voice, does the government listen and how do they respond?) and to sociologists (where do ideas come from, how do they gain societal influence, and how do they change over time?). It will pay close attention to the role of electoral politics throughout, both historically and in the current election. It is focused primarily on the United States, but seeks to place the US in global context. If this course is taken to fulfill an elective in the Data Science minor, students will conduct hands-on analyses with real data as a key component to both their Midterm and Final Essays.

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SOCL B276 Making Sense of Race

Not offered 2025-26

What is the meaning of race in contemporary US and global society? How are these meanings (re)produced, resisted, and refused? What meanings might we desire or imagine as alternatives? In this course, we will approach these questions through an array of sources while tracking our own thinking about and experiences of raced-ness. Course material will survey sociological notions of the social construction of race, empirical studies of lived experiences of race, and creative fiction and non-fiction material intended to catalyze thinking about alternative possibilities.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities.

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SOCL B307 Transnational Queer Politics

Fall 2025

As people and ideas traverse national, cultural, and social borders, how are gender and sexuality negotiated and redefined? This course uses queer politics and practices as an entry point to examine transnational processes such as global diffusion, international organizations, colonialism, global capitalism, and neoliberalism. Instead of taking gender and sexual categories like "gay," "lesbian," and "trans" for granted, we will use a feminist and queer sociological approach to interrogate how gender and sexual categories are produced, maintained, and reconfigured in non-western societies. Furthermore, we will consider how to address the limits of global LGBT rights discourse, social movements, and politics through postcolonial and intersectional lenses. Together, we will cultivate critical tools to assess the relationships between gender, sexuality, and globalization and how these processes influence the lived experiences of queer/trans individuals worldwide. Prerequisite: At lease one course in the social sciences.

Counts Toward: Gender & Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies.

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SOCL B350 Movements for Social Justice

Fall 2025

Throughout human history, powerless groups of people have organized social movements to improve their lives and their societies. Powerful groups and institutions have resisted these efforts in order to maintain their own privilege. Some periods of history have been more likely than others to spawn protest movements. What factors seem most likely to lead to social movements? What determines their success/failure? We will examine 20th and 21st-century social movements to answer these questions. Prerequisite: At least one prior social science course or permission of the instructor.

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Peace Justice and Human Rights.

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SPAN B205 Escritoras en la España contemporánea

Spring 2026

The course will focus on fiction written during the 20th and 21st century by women writers in Spain. We will study how the female subject is represented and constructed in these texts along historical events that have changed the country. Taking into account the political and social paradigms that dominate Spanish modern history and culture, we will explore how twentieth and twenty-first-century women writers negotiate the female subject in relation to earlier models of narration, identities (both self and regional), and social relationships. We will also look how these models have been challenged by a new wave of immigration and how it affects the social landscape of Spain. We will bring into the analysis and discussion of literary texts some of the issues addressed by feminist literary theory, such as language, canon formation, gender, and class. Finally, we will pay attention to the recovery of the country's feminist tradition, as well as current topics of social and political conflict that concern women in Spain.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Gender Sexuality Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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SPAN B309 La mujer en la literatura española del Siglo de Oro

Not offered 2025-26

A study of the depiction of women in the fiction, drama, and poetry of 16th- and 17th-century Spain. Topics include the construction of gender; the idealization and codification of women's bodies; the politics of feminine enclosure (convent, home, brothel, palace); and the performance of honor. The first half of the course will deal with representations of women by male authors (Calderón, Cervantes, Lope, Quevedo) and the second will be dedicated to women writers such as Teresa de Ávila, Ana Caro, Juana Inés de la Cruz, and María de Zayas. Prerequisite: at least one SPAN 200-level course. Course fulfills pre-1700 requirement and HC's pre-1898 requirement. Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies. Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies.

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