Women's Gender&Sexuality

Courses

WGSS 123: Prohibition: Alcohol Politics in U.S. History

Credits 3
Between 1920 and 1933, the United States banned drinking or selling alcohol. This class explores the ideas about family, religion, sex, immigration, and race that led to Prohibition. It examines the nightclubs and organized crime networks that sold illegal liquor, and it shows why prohibition failed so quickly.

WGSS 203: Women & Literature

Credits 4
An introduction to the study of literature by and about the lives of women, written in a variety of genres and periods, from a number of cultural traditions. Explores ways in which a study of a writer's ideas and techniques and a text's background (e.g., biography of the author, political climate, religious tradition) can lead to greater appreciation and understanding of a work, a writer, a reader and a time. A variety of critical points of view with particular attention to Feminist and Womanist theories. Prerequisite: An Earlham Seminar or consent of the instructor.

WGSS 212: Literature and Medicine

Credits 4

This course offers students the chance to engage with texts that raise some of the largest existential questions of human life, including the nature of health and disease, the doctor-patient relationship, the social aspects of illness, and the dimensions of a well-lived life. Through the works of authors like Mary Shelley, Lev Tolstoy, Michael Ondaatje, Atul Gawande, Eula Biss, and Anne Boyer, we will explore questions of sickness and health beyond the biomedical paradigm to consider these questions through a humanistic lens. Fulfills the humanities elective requirement for the applied minor in Medical Humanities.

WGSS 216: Introduction to Manga & Graphic Narrative

Credits 4
Students will be introduced to manga and other forms of sequential art (comics/graphic novels/BD), and methodologies of analyzing multimodal media. The class will look at genre, relationships to other media, censorship, and representations of violence and sexuality. Also listed as JPNS 216.

WGSS 241: Japanese Popular Culture

Credits 4
This course uses forms of Japanese popular culture as starting points for discussions of social class, gender and sexuality, globalization, nationalism, emotion, capitalism, and consumer culture. Rather than a survey of popular culture in contemporary Japan, this is a course in which we use popular music, sport, manga, anime, and other cultural forms to rethink the ways in which Japan is shaped from within and from outside.

WGSS 246: European Women's & Gender History

Credits 4

An examination of women's and gender history in the 19th and 20th centuries across a range of European countries with particular focus on politics, gender roles, sexuality, and culture. Allows students to question narrow (national, disciplinary, epistemological) boundaries, think critically about the gendered constructions of European society, and reflect upon the distinctive contributions of women's history.

WGSS 246: History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Europe

Credits 3
An examination of women's and gender history in the 19th and 20th centuries across a range of European countries with particular focus on politics, gender roles, sexuality, and culture. Allows students to question narrow (national, disciplinary, epistemological) boundaries, think critically about the gendered constructions of European society, and reflect upon the distinctive contributions of women's history.

WGSS 253: Citizenship & Minority Issues in East Asia

Credits 3
A survey of citizenship and minority issues in East Asia from the 19th century to the present within the global contexts of refuge and citizenship rights, legacy of colonialism, assimilation and cultural identity, ethnicity, and gender and disabilities. Emphasis on Japan, China, and North and South Korea.

WGSS 290: Cuban History

Credits 3
The historical experience of Cuba is unique in the western hemisphere, and indeed in the world, for only Cuba underwent transformation from being a colony of Spain to being a neocolonial U.S. protectorate, then an independent republic, and finally a socialist country, all within less than a century. This course will neither praise or condemn Cuban socialism or U.S. imperialism, but instead help students appreciate and understand the complexities of the historical dynamics that gave rise to the current contours of the Cuban Revolution.

WGSS 305: Radical Queries

Credits 4

An advanced introductory examination of women's and men’s lives, attending to commonalities and differences of experience in terms of gender, race, class, age, culture, nation, sex, sexuality dis/ability, etc. People live at the intersections of these categories, and so we will examine what scholars talk about as: Intersectionality, The Prism of Difference, and Borderlands. The course focuses on “Socially Lived Theorizing,” “a theoretical framework/methodology that allows us to see the diversity of women’s [and men’s] lives and the structures of power, inequality, and opportunity that shape our experiences” (Kirk and Rey, 55).

WGSS 309: Sociology of Social Media

Credits 4
This course will introduce students to debates about the nature and effects of social media. How do online and offline worlds relate? What are the social consequences of new communications technologies? Students will learn the theories and methods that sociologists use to study online social interaction.

WGSS 310: Contemporary Japanese Literature

Credits 3
This is a companion course to JPNS 343 that will examine a selection of short stories and novels spanning the Shôwa and Heisei periods. The class will address questions of genre, legitimacy, canon, translation, the social role of the writer, and the place of female authors.

WGSS 320: East Asian Migration & Diasporas

Credits 3

Introduces migration in East Asia within the global context of imperialism and colonialism, forced labor, refuge, and gender, from the 19th century to present. Topics include colonial migration, settler migration, forced migration, repatriation movements, and identity formation, domestically and internationally. Emphasis on Japan, China, and North and South Korea.

WGSS 333: Gender & Sexuality in the Muslim Middle East & North Africa

Credits 4
The overarching goal of this course is to unpack the many ways in which Arab Muslims have embodied genders and to explore the range of intimate practices that constitute "sexuality" in the present and past. This course is decidedly interdisciplinary and is structured by categorical inquiry into the meanings and practices of gender and sexuality.

WGSS 343: Modern Japanese Literature

Credits 3
Introduces representative literary texts from modern Japan, mostly from 1900 to present. Develops more advanced skills for literary analysis. Some topics include: I-novel autobiographical fiction, women's writing and modern poetry.

WGSS 347: The Body in Modern & Contemporary Art

Credits 4
This course examines the use of human bodies as subject matter, canvas, artistic material, and creative agent across the modern and contemporary eras. Using theoretical approaches from critical race studies, disability studies, queer theory, and feminist theory, we will consider how concepts of the body influence ideas of artistic agency and museum display. Objects of study will include painting, sculpture, photography, performance, installation, video, and participatory art.

WGSS 351: Workplace Justice: Readings in U.S. Labor History

Credits 3
Economic inequality in the United States has soared to its highest level since the "Gilded Age" of the 1880's. This course explores the social movement that, for two centuries, has aimed to close the gap between rich and poor: the labor movement. The class has two intellectual goals. First, it examines how historical phenomena like industrialization, urbanization, and racialization have shaped the work process. Second, it traces the theories and practices that working people have used to build a movement for economic justice. Although labor unions, strikes, and collective bargaining will be explored in detail, this class approaches the concept of labor broadly. It asks how intellectual life, the arts, sexuality, and global migration have shaped the way people think about work. The class is thus interdisciplinary, drawing on scholarly works in History, Political Theory, Anthropology, and Economics, as well as literature, film, and popular culture. Prerequisite: Earlham Seminar or consent of the instructor.

WGSS 352: Interracial in America

Credits 3
This class examines the history of United States cities as both physical and ideological spaces. Two methods guide the course's approach to urban history. First, readings and discussions engage the ideas of the intellectuals who have guided urban policy over the last two centuries, examining how the work of Daniel Burnham, Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, and many others have influenced transportation systems, housing construction, and neighborhood design. Second, the class explores the mobilization of ordinary people who live in cities, tracing how poor people, immigrants, people of color, single women, LGBT people and other local groups have shaped sanitation systems, public housing projects, freeway construction, and urban redevelopment. The class situations U.S. urban and metropolitan history in context of broader social processes: industrialization, racialization, migration, the free market, the welfare state, middle class ideology, and the nuclear family, among many others.

WGSS 355: Reading in African American Women History

Credits 4
Explores select topics in the history of African American women from the era of antebellum slavery to the present, using such primary sources as slave narratives, autobiographies, documents and historical monographs. Topics include gender relations in the slave community, the gendered nature of slave resistance and rebellion, the politics of economic emancipation, women's activism in the struggle against racial violence and segregation and the role of women in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

WGSS 357: Gender & Sexuality in the Ancient World

Credits 3
This course explores ways the ancient Greeks constructed notions of gender and sexuality. Students examine a wide range of primary evidence (such as drama, poetry, philosophy, science or medical treatises, court documents, art, architecture and daily artifacts) in order to uncover Greek attitudes and practices. By confronting the assumptions of a culture that was in many ways radically different from our own, we address some of the fundamental ways that ideas about gender and sexuality inform and shape societal expectations and institutions, from personal identity and forms of self-expression to the legal, medical and political mechanisms that govern society. Knowledge of a classical language is not required. Prerequisite: Consent of the instructor.

WGSS 358: Gender & Sexuality in Literature

Credits 4
Using key concepts from feninist, womanist and queer theorists, this course looks at how literature can be the site to document the intersections between issues of class, gender and sexuality.

WGSS 365: Women, Gender & Sexuality

Credits 4
Critically examines the discursive construction of a presumed natural link between sex, gender and desire, emphasizing connections between the naturalization of heterosexuality and the formation of nations and empires.

WGSS 367: Subjects of Desire

Credits 3

A survey of U.S. social history from 1607 to the present, focusing on the historical contours of female/male sex roles and the family. Topics include marriage, the family, child rearing, work, education, sexuality and gynecology, and reproduction. Analyzes the effects of war, racism, slavery, immigration, industrialization and consumerism, along with abolitionism, temperance, feminism, civil rights and other social protest movements.

WGSS 368: Human Sexuality

Credits 3
Sexuality is central to our lives. It is involved in many of our most fundamental relationships and engages some of our strongest emotions. This course provides an examination of human sexuality (encompassing sexual behaviors, sexual identity, social norms/attitudes, etc.) and the psychological, physiological and sociocultural influences upon human sexuality.

WGSS 373: Topics in Literary Theory

Credits 4
This course focuses on focuses on specific kinds of literary theory, critical techniques and/or interpretive approaches. It may be take more than one time for credit when the topics are different.

WGSS 382: Feminist Art & Theory

Credits 3
Selected topics determined by the instructor for upper-level study. Recent topics include: Art Since 1967; Matisse, Picasso and Early Modernism, and Renaissance & Baroque seminar.

WGSS 481: Internship

Credits 1 3

An internship or practicum organized by the student in consultation with the adviser. Credits for the experience must be negotiated between the adviser and the on-site supervisor. The experience involves one of the following: (a) teaching or tutoring a second language, (b) a special research project or (c) interpreting / translation. Depending on the experience, students enhance their communicative skills, develop a critical understanding of linguistic and cultural differences, connect to other disciplines through languages, come to a deeper understanding of the role of translation in cross-cultural communication, and/or reflect on career and life goals.

WGSS 487: Senior Demonstrative Project

Credits 2
Part of the Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies Senior Comprehensive. The project requires students to synthesize the theory and practice and to demonstrate a nuanced understanding of an issue or problem relevant to the Earlham community. Students present their demonstrative project to the Earlham community in spring semester of the senior year. Recent projects include an investigation and discussion of abortion narratives in film, slam poetry, organizing a lecture series on minority women's health issues, and creating one-woman art shows.

WGSS 488: Senior Capstone

Credits 4
Focuses on a question or theme selected by the instructor in consultation with the Senior students. Provides an opportunity to integrate the breadth of Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies experiences and to make plans for living out a life that includes the intersection of our personal, intellectual and activist commitments. Recent seminar topics include women and violence, the limits of language, reproductive technologies, abortion, postmodernism and working-class women.