Global Arc

The goal of this course is to help you find your unique, creative voice by writing the body. We devote each class to two things: work-shopping your stories or essays in an intimate, collaborate environment; and engaging some of the most exciting published writers of our time.

An exploration of the graphic memoir focusing on the ways specific works combine visual imagery and language to expand the possibilities of autobiographical narrative. Through our analysis of highly acclaimed graphic memoirs from the American, Franco-Belgian, and Japanese traditions, we analyze the visual and verbal constructions of identity with an emphasis on the representation of gender dynamics and cultural conflict.

Things work to construct our social relationships and categories, to shape our social lives and worlds. This course will consider how things have lives of their own specifically in the construction of modes and practices of gender - things like items of dress, but also public washrooms, children's toys, cereal boxes, and even trash. Making use of the emerging discourse of "thing theory," a conversation about material culture including anthropologists, philosophers, cultural theorists, archaeologists, art historians, political scientists, economists, and others, we will work to consider objects in their influence on the social world of gender.

An exploration of two aspects of the gender and science literature: the historical participation of women (and men) in scientific work and the feminist critique of scientific knowledge. The seminar will explore ways in which women have been systematically excluded from science and assess the problems with that thesis. One three-hour seminar.

Feminist media studies are a rich field of inquiry, while feminism is a recurring object of media fascination. Media stories of feminism circulate as authoritative. Feminist arguments often become public spectacles where the media leers at and dismisses feminist speech. These spectacularly public representations reduce the multiplicity of feminist positions and voices.

We will take as our primary text the new translation of Simone deBeauvoir"s landmark volume The Second Sex, one of the most significant origin points of current understandings of gender. In our sustained consideration of The Second Sex, we will explore Beauvoir's ideas about the influence of sex and gender on childhood, the family, sexuality, relationships, aging, work, the social order, and the philosophical imaginary. We will also consider contemporary writing alongside that text, taking Beauvoir as our tour guide as we encounter and interpret contemporary representations of gender.

Reproduction is a basic biological process, as well as a fundamental one for all societies. While the biology of human reproduction is universal across time and place, cultural norms and social institutions powerfully inflect and shape the experience of pregnancy and childbirth in every society. This course investigates the history and sociology of reproduction, focusing on the contemporary United States, but with an eye toward other societies for comparison. How, why, and for whom does birth matter? How do reproductive practices reflect gender, race, and class? The course examines the culture, politics, and economics of reproduction.

Does the body have a history? Considering the body from a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, this course challenges assumptions about what we take to be deeply natural and stable over time and space - our bodily selves. We will pay particular attention to the constitution of the body in relation to historical configurations of sex, gender, and sexuality; race and racialization; (dis)ability, normalcy, and fitness; and discipline and surveillance. Attending to the enduring force of those histories, we will also consider the operations of power on and in the body in the present moment.

What does it mean to be a woman or a man? Or neither? How do gender and sexuality, those seemingly most personal and private of attributes, emerge from networks of power and social relations? This course introduces major concepts in the interdisciplinary field of gender and sexuality studies. We will analyze the ways in which gender, as an object of study and as a lived experience, intersects with class, race, and ability, and will examine the relation between gender, sexuality and power in literary, philosophical, political and medical discourses.

An introduction to the various roles and experiences of women in contemporary American politics, media, and society. The course explores changing definitions of womanhood and women's identity during the late 20th and early 21st century. The class will discuss women who hold positions of leadership and relative privilege, and women who find themselves in the most powerless and difficult circumstances in contemporary America. It also explores cross-cutting issues of class, race, sexuality, gender identity, and faith to help understand the many experiences of women in America. One 90-minute lecture, one 90-minute preceptorial.