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Women's Studies has been taught at the Colleges since 1969 and was among the first programs to offer a major in the country. As a field, Women's Studies is recognized as interdisciplinary in its own right and as it relates to and exists within historically defined and newly emerging disciplines. Its emergent goals were to question critically foundational tenets of knowledge. It asks what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts. As such, the field concerns itself with rethinking and redefining core assumptions about women, gender, race, class and sexuality in ways that identify and redress social, historical, economic, political and cultural inequities. The field directs itself to developing critical knowledge and implementing world-building practices of justice and equality in national and transnational contexts. Majors and minors in Women's Studies thus engage in innovative and scholarly history, theory, research and activism across a broad band of academic study toward what is proposed as feminism's broader project of creating new kinds of questions, forms of expression, representation, knowledge and epistemology.
To be credited to the major or minor, a course must be completed with a grade of C or better.
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MAJOR
interdisciplinary, 10 courses
WMST 100, WMST 300, WMST 401, a feminist research and methodology course (WMST 323, WMST 304 or WMST 301 or other as approved by the program), and six additional women's studies elective courses that create an area of concentration and include courses from at least two divisions and at least four departments or programs.
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MINOR
interdisciplinary, 6 courses
WMST 100, a 300-level feminist theory course (WMST 300, ENG 304, POL 375, or SOC 340), and four additional women's studies elective courses from at least two divisions and at least two departments or programs.
ELECTIVES
Humanities
ALST 240 Third World Women’s Texts
AMST 201 American Attitudes Toward Nature/Methodologies of American Studies
AMST 254 American Masculinities
AMST 310 Sexual Minorities in America
ARTH 210 Woman as Image Maker
ARTH 211 Women in 19th Century Art and Culture
ARTH 222 Women in Renaissance
ARTH 229 Women and Art in the Middle Ages
ARTH 256 Art of Russian Revolution
ARTH 306 Telling Tales: Narrative in Asian Art
ARTH 312 Women Make Movies
ARTH 335 The Femme Fatale in Film
ARTH 403 Gender and Painting in China
ARTH 467 Seminar: Artemesia Gentileschi
ASN 212 Women in Contemporary Chinese Culture
ASN 220 Male and Female in East Asian Societies
ASN 304 Courtesan Culture
ASN 342 Chinese Cinema: Gender, Politics and Social Change in Contemporary China
BIDS 286 Gender, Nationality, & Literature in Latin America
BIDS 365 Dramatic Worlds of South Asia
CLAS 230 Gender in Antiquity
DAN 212 Dance History II
DAN 214 Dance History III 1960s to Present
EDU 208 Teaching, Learning, and Popular Culture
EDU 370 Social Foundations of Multiculturalism
ENG 229 Popular Fiction: The Fifties
ENG 238 Flexing Sex
ENG 264 Post-World War II American Poetry
ENG 281 Literature of Sexual Minorities
ENG 304 Feminist Literary Theory
ENG 318 Body, Memory, and Representation
ENG 342 Readings in Multi-Ethnic Women’s Literature
ENG 346 Iconoclastic Women in the Middle Ages
ENG 354 Forms of Memoir
ENG 381 Sexuality and American Literature
FRE 251 Eros and Thanatos
FRE 380 Advanced Francophone Topics: Images de Femmes
FRE 389 Women in the French Renaissance
FRNE 311 Feudal Women in France, Vietnam and Japan
HIST 208 Women in American History
HIST 234 Medieval Europe
HIST 241 The Politics of Gender and the Family in Europe, 1700-1850
HIST 253 Renaissance and Reformation
HIST 279 Body Politics: Women and Health in America
HIST 317 Women’s Rights Movements in the U.S.
HIST 367 Women and the State: Russia
HIST 371 Life‑Cycles: The Family in History
HIST 375 Western Civilization and Its Discontents
MDSC 203 History of Television
MUS 206 Opera As Drama
PHIL 152 Issues: Philosophy and Feminism
PHIL 250 Feminism: Ethics and Knowledge
REL 236 Gender and Islam
REL 237 Christianity and Culture
REL 254 Conceptions of God, Goddess, Absolute
REL 281 Unspoken Worlds
REL 283 Que(e)rying Religious Studies
REL 321 Muslim Women and Literature
REL 345 Tradition Transformers
REL 464 God, Gender and the Unconscious
RUSE 351 Other Voices in 20th‑Century Russian Literature: Women Writers
SPAN 316 Voces de Mujeres
SPAN 346 Latin American Women’s Narratives
SPNE 330 Latina Writing in the U.S.
WMST 204 Politics of Health
WMST 243 Gender, Sex and Science
WMST 304 Medical Historiography
WRRH 221 He Says, She Says: Language and Gender
WRRH 250 Talk and Text: Introduction to Discourse Analysis
WRRH 252 An Anatomy of American Class: Realities, Myths, Rhetorics
WRRH 301 Discourse of Rape
WRRH 304 Hidden Writing: Journals, Diaries, and Notebooks as Creative Discourse
Please note: DAN 900-level courses require prior dance department approval to count as WMST credits
Social Sciences
ANTH 209 Gender in Prehistory
ANTH 220 Sex Roles: A Cross‑Cultural Perspective
ANTH 230 Beyond Monogamy
ANTH 296 African Cultures
ANTH 341 Making Babies: Anthropology of Reproductive Technologies
BIDS 211 Labor: Domestic and Global
BIDS 245 Men and Masculinity
BIDS 280 Women’s Narratives of Wealth and Power
BIDS 307 Contexts for Children
ECON 227 Women and International Development
ECON 310 Economics and Gender
ECON 316 Labor Market Issues
POL 175 Introduction to Feminist Theory
POL 212 The Sixties
POL 219 Sexual Minority Movements and Public Policy
POL 238 Sex and Power
POL 333 Civil Rights
POL 375 Feminist Legal Theory
PPOL 364 Social Policy and Community Activism
SOC 221 Sociology of Minorities
SOC 225 Sociology of the Family
SOC 226 Sociology of Sex and Gender
SOC 233 Women in the Third World
SOC 240 Gender and Development
SOC 340 Feminist Sociological Theory
WMST 204 Politics of Health
WMST 243 Gender, Sex and Science
WMST 304 Medical Historiography
Natural Sciences
WMST 223 Social Psychology
WMST 247 Psychology of Women
WMST 309 Stormy Weather: Ecofeminism
WMST 323 Research in Social Psychology
WMST 357 Self in American Culture
WMST 372 Topics in Social Psychology
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
100 Introduction to Women’s Studies This course introduces the vast, complex, changing field of women's studies. Students will be asked to become conversant with the history of feminism and women's movements (nationally and transnationally), to understand and theorize women and gender as categories of analysis, to think through differences that divide and unite, to reflect and move beyond individual experience and to connect feminism to everyday life. Students will be encouraged to raise their own questions about women, gender, feminism (s), modes of women's organizing, and the production of knowledge. While it is impossible to cover all pertinent topics in one semester, this course introduces various specific issues and histories that, taken together, highlight the complexity of Women's Studies as both scholarly endeavor and activist field. (Offered each semester)
204 The Politics of Health This course introduces students to the historical context of critical studies of health, especially health and the politics of race, gender, and sexuality. Beginning with conceptions of sex and sexuality from the Greeks and Freud, students consider the invention of new systems of classification for race and gender within the medical sciences. The course examines hormone research in the 20th century and its relationship to the American Eugenics Movement, the history of childbirth, and the changing context of reproductive rights in the early 20th century. Students explore how gender affects health treatment, the history of the reproductive rights movement, the origins of birth control and the politics of sterilization and safer sex education, the Women's Health Movement, and AIDS activism since 1980. Prerequisite: WMST 100 or permission of instructor. (Redick)
215 Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud has been reviled by many feminists for his notions of penis envy and his puzzled query "What do women want?" And yet, Freud and such subsequent psychoanalytic theorists as Horney, Klein, Winnicott, and Lacan also have been sources of significant analyses of female subordination, sexuality, and desire. This course examines relations between psychoanalysis and feminism by focusing on ways in which psychoanalytic theory has understood gender, as well as the ways in which feminists have critiqued and/or appropriated such depictions of female experience. (Henking, offered occasionally)
223 Social Psychology With the emergence of the discipline of social psychology in late 19th century came new ways of thinking about the gender, race, and class of individuals, groups, and nations. These new conceptualizations brought with them new ways of seeing the social psychological nature of "Man" and by extension "Woman," and the psychological terms of modernity and postmodernity. Drawing on influential European and North American social psychologists, students in this course ask: Was social psychological nature to be understood in more symbolic interactionist, behaviorist, psychodynamic, cognitive or cybernetic terms? Students learn how ideas on social psychological life carried commitments to uncovering the "social laws of life" (Dewey); or social psychology's efforts to engage with women and men as historicized subjects within social, political, and cultural contexts (Wilkinson, Sampson). This course also can count toward the major in psychology. (Bayer)
243 Gender, Sex and Science This course explores the historical and scientific context for feminist interventions into scientific practice and study. Students are asked to consider a series of questions, including the following: How did feminist science studies develop? Is feminism relevant to the study of science? How does scientific inquiry become gendered through a variety of cultural and historical contexts? What are some specific intersections of race, gender and sexuality in the study of feminism and science? Do students think that feminism has transformed science studies within a specifically feminist context? Using the work of feminist scholars and scientists, students examine the history of genetics, sociobiology, prenatal testing, and the 1990s cultural science wars from a feminist standpoint. Prerequisite: WMST 100 or permission of the instructor. (Redick)
247 Psychology of Women To Freud's question of "What do women want?" psychology has brought description, analysis, categorization and diagnosis in its effort to plumb the depths of woman's purported enigmatic nature. Parallel to psychology's mainstream versions on the psychology of women are feminist writings exploring alternative views of psychological issues and life events of concern to women. This course examines these distinct paths from early case studies of hysteria through to mid-century depictions of the "problem with no name" (Friedan) and to late 20th-century renderings of PMS, bodily dissatisfactions and eating disorders. The course uses history, theory and research in psychology to examine these issues and events as well as to appreciate psychology's changing views, treatment and study of women's lives in all of their diversity. This course also can count toward the major in psychology. (Bayer)
300 Feminist Theory This seminar surveys several strands of feminist theorizing and their histories. By critically engaging the underlying assumptions and stakes of a range of theories, students become more aware of their own assumptions and stakes and sharpen their abilities to productively apply feminist analyses in their own work. Prerequisite: WMST 100 or permission of instructor. (Fall)
301 Feminist Oral History Feminist oral history considers how women communicate and conceptualize their life stories, putting into practice a feminist commitment to recording women's life stories. This seminar operates as a workshop, investigating the theory underlying feminist oral history while putting the methodology to work through a class interviewing project. Through critical reading and practical experience, students research oral history questions and conduct interviews that are recorded using audio and video equipment. Furthermore, they develop the critical tools and analytical judgment needed to analyze the role of gender in oral history interviewing and prepare interviews to be deposited in an archive.
304 Medical Historiography This upper-level seminar introduces students to the history of medicine as a field of study, focusing on research methods. Students explore the history of medicine broadly, beginning with the origins of Western medicine in both Greece and the Renaissance. Students also explore transnational medical practices, and consider how Western medical practices have come to be historically valorized. Students read key texts in medical sociology and gain an understanding of how the history of medicine and physiology came to be a disciplinary subspecialty in the early to mid-20th century. Students perform a research project that makes use of methods in medical history. This could include archival research, oral histories, or interview methods. Prerequisite: WMST 100 or any 200 level WMST course. (Redick)
309 Stormy Weather: Ecofeminism What is our relation with the earth? With animals, plants, water, technology, and air? With each other? With the wider universe? This course delves into the field of ecofeminism, a word first coined in 1974 by Francois d'Eaubonne to signal the joining of two movements – environmentalism and feminism. Early feminists asked: Is the oppression of women linked to the oppression of earth – Mother Nature? How do concepts of nature, gender and sexuality fashion our ways of living jointly, as "companion species?" Beginning with signature 1960s texts such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, this seminar tracks the stormy debates on environmentalism and feminism, including questions of oppression, environmental degradation, weather, and technologies of war as it seeks to chart new ways out of our current environmental conundrum. The seminar thus follows the affairs and entanglements of nature, science, and feminism in theory, research, film, literature, and everyday life. (Bayer)
323 Research in Social Psychology How lives are studied in social context is the question at the heart of social psychological research and feminist epistemology. Brought together, these approaches have reawakened concerns about the place of language, cultural discourses and relations of power in social psychological life. This course asks students to think through the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings to different research paradigms as they learn how to put different research methods into practice. Students design and conduct a research project, for which one component will be discourse analysis of women's and men's forms of language and the subtle ways in which these forms act on perceptions. Prerequisites: WMST 223 or WMST 247 or permission of the instructor. (Bayer)
357 Self in American Culture Twentieth century U.S. life is distinguished by an increasing tendency to see everyday life in psychological terms. How and when did it become so chic to see and conceive of ourselves as essentially psychological? What happens when these forms of self recede and newer ones, such as the consumer self, the narcissistic self, or the saturated self begin to signify the psychology of a decade and who we are as humans? This course draws on a feminist approach to examine the place of social psychology in the cultural history of American individualism and notions of the self. This course also can count toward the major in psychology. (Bayer)
372 Topics in Social Psychology This course focuses on a topic of current interest. Topics are announced in advance and are addressed through history and theory in feminist social psychology. One topic is peace: students examine practices for peace and social justice through movements, writing, art, and film in the larger social and psychological context of humanity and quests for life lived in harmony and equality. Other topics include cyberpsychology, Cold War America and Cold War psychology, the psychology of the Women's movement, and history of psychology. This course also may count toward the major in psychology. (Bayer)
401 Senior Seminar Women's studies seniors produce a culminating project as they apply feminist theories and research methods, integrating their experiences as women's studies majors. Prerequisites: WMST 100 and WMST 300. (Spring, offered annually)
450 Independent Study/Practicum This course provides the opportunity for students to engage in practical involvements in topics/issues in women's studies as well as pursuing independent research under faculty supervision.
