Global Arc

Why does sex work raise some of the most fascinating, controversial and often taboo questions of our time? The course explores the intricate lives and intimate narratives of sex workers from the perspective of sex workers themselves, as they engage in myriad varieties of global sex work: pornography, prostitution, erotic dance, escorting, street work, camming, commercial fetishism, and sex tourism. Themes include: the 'whore stigma,' race, class and queer dynamics; law, labor and money; technologies of desire and spectacle; dirt, marriage and monogamy; carceral modernity; violence, agency and, above all, strategies for social transformation.

This seminar examines how gender and sexuality shape processes of migration. It mainly focuses on the experiences of women. It addresses the constitution of gender and sexuality in the process of migration, analyzes the ways that society disciplines migrants via the control of their gender and sexuality, examines how race factors in these processes, and lastly identifies the ways that migrants utilize gender and sexuality to negotiate the various structural inequalities they confront in the process of migration. This course situates our discussion of gender and sexuality in the state, labor market, and family.

This seminar is an in-depth exploration of Michel Foucault's work as not only theorist of power, but as theorist of knowledge as well. To this end, we will engage in close readings of selections of Foucault's work from his Archeological and his Genealogical Periods, as well as from his lecture series at the Collége de France. In the course of this survey, we will explore Foucault's account of the historical emergence of biopower as a unique form of power over "life, itself," as well as his critical explorations of the "human sciences," such as human biology, the science of sexuality, and psychiatry, along with other social sciences.

Advanced seminar; focus changes from year to year. In general the seminar uses contemporary and classic works of feminist theory to examine ideas about gender that have shaped modern culture. Topics have included feminism and liberalism, literature and ideology, and psychoanalysis and feminism.

Feminist Futures explores the way in which recent women writers have transformed science fiction into speculative fiction - an innovative literary form capable of introducing and exploring new kinds of feminist and multi-cultural perspectives. These books confront the limitations imposed on women and imagine transformative possibilities for thinking about gender roles and relationships, the body, forms of power, and political and social structures.

This course is divided into four units, each unit introducing varieties of feminist engagements with bioethics, key feminist arguments and concerns, as well as contemporary debates both within feminist bioethics and regarding feminist engagement in bioethics. This course will examine the history of bioethics, as feminist critiques of its core principles-most notably autonomy-before moving on to examine debates among feminist bioethicists regarding key issues in the field. These include the importance and value of care; abortion and reproductive rights; the importance of intersectionality to bioethical analyses; and the obesity epidemic.

An exploration of the relationships between the idea of "woman'' and the art of film. Issues addressed will include the role of woman as performer and director, questions of film genre, the identification of the female image as constitutive of the cinematic image, the historical and social dimensions of the female image projected in films of different times and different cultures. Film screenings, one three-hour seminar.

The study of culture involves myriad approaches and methods, and attracts researchers in and outside sociology. This course aims to explore scholarship that draws, in different ways, on combined contributions from gender studies, criminology and deviance, media studies, and the growing field of cultural studies. Its goals are to increase your knowledge of issues in each of these sociological subfields; to explore theories and methods used by scholars in these areas; and to assist students in developing their own research projects. One three-hour seminar.

This course examines theatrical performance as a mode of theorizing about gender, sex, sexuality and embodiment. Through lecture, discussion and performance workshops, this course draws upon contemporary U.S. dramatic literature as it undertakes a multinational, historical survey of theories of performance. The course considers such topics as gender as performance, cross-gender performance, performances of sexual identity, and the explicit body in performance.

This course examines enactments of youthful masculinity in U.S. popular performance with a particular eye toward accounts of variant or queer boyhoods. As we scrutinize the regimentation and valorization of specific boyish behaviors, we will explore the cultural impact of non-normative youthful masculinities (ie. sissies, tomboys, bois, punks, transguys, etcetera) as we also assess the place of queer boyhoods in American life. Course readings will be historical, literary and theoretical, with play scripts, films, memoirs and literature for young readers functioning as primary objects for the course's analytic project.