Spring 2027
GQS 201: Introduction to Gender, Queer, and Feminist Studies
Prof. Heather White – TuTh 11 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
This course serves as an introduction to Gender, Queer and Feminist Studies. It surveys the history of feminism, and then explores the rise and trajectories of gender studies and queer studies. The course engages with the ways in which gender, sexuality, race, class, ability/disability, and other facets of identity intersect with each other. Students will consider the implications of activism as well as the academic development of these disciplines, and they will engage with the ways that the readings touch upon their own lives.
AFAM/GQS/PG 366: Disorienting Histories: Reproductive Justice in the Post-Roe United States
Prof. Heather White – TuTh 3:30–4:50 p.m.
For fifty years the decision in Roe prevented states from criminalizing or outlawing abortion, though restrictions placed upon a person seeking to terminate a pregnancy varied widely from state to state. Now, in a post-Roe world, abortion bans are proliferating across the country. This course draws upon the expertise of faculty members from across our campus as we seek to understand the deep history of abortion, abortion restrictions, coerced reproduction, and other state interventions in people's sexual and reproductive lives. We will tackle the past, present, and future of reproductive freedom and how it has and will be imbricated in other fights for justice.
GQS 494: Gender Research Seminar
Prof. Laura Krughoff – MoWeFr 11 a.m.–Noon
In this course students examine the differences between traditional scholarship and a feminist approach to knowing. Participants engage in an independent research project of their choosing, sharing process and findings with other members throughout the semester.
AFAM 305: Black Fictions and Feminisms
Prof. Keila Taylor – TuTh 2–3:20 p.m.
This course is an integrative course in the humanities that explores various constructions of black female identity. The course looks at black womanhood as it's represented in the public imaginary, feminist theories, critical race theories, and in literature and literary criticism written by black women writers. One of the questions the course asks is: How have scholars and writers addressed fundamental questions of black female identity? To answer this question, students read and view a wide survey of materials including novels, essays, memoir, and film. Through this investigation, students consider how studies of race, feminism, and gender connect to personal lives.
CLJ 307: Prisons, Gender, and Education
Prof. Tanya Erzen – TuTh 12:30–1:50 p.m.
Fulfills: Experiential Learning
What is the relationship between the university and the prison? How does college in prison raise questions of authority, power and privilege? This is an experiential learning class that combines involvement in a college program at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) and academic classes and readings. Students read texts on the history of prisons, theories of punishment, higher education in prison, and how the intersection of race, gender and sexuality impact the experience of incarceration and education in prison. Students also participate as research partners and study hall co-learners with students at the prison in collaboration with the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS) that works with the university to offer a BA degree to students in prison. Through collaboration with students in prison, students in this class will gain knowledge about the challenges and benefits of the liberal arts in prison.
CONN 215: Queer Politics and Religion
Prof. Heather White – TuTh 12:30–1:50 p.m.
What has been the role of religion in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBQT+) lives and communities? This course begins by considering the dominant picture of religious versus queer opposition, and it investigates the sources and normative perspectives that contribute to this picture. The course proceeds to focus on what this dominant story obscures: the complexity and variety of LGBTQ+ religious and spiritual engagement during the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. This course covers the historical emergence of sexual and gender identity communities in the United States and the attendant formations of established heteronormative and cisnormative teachings as backdrop and critical context for both opposing and supportive religious involvement LGBTQ+ politics. The course examines anti-queer religious responses but focuses predominantly on how to study queer-inclusive religious and spiritual expression. Readings include The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay, Hijab Butch Blues, and She of the Mountains.
CONN 354: Hormones, Sex, Society, & Self
Prof. Melvin Rouse – TuTh 9:30–10:50 a.m.
CONN 354 is an interdisciplinary exploration of sex and gender. This course pulls on scholarship from psychology, neuroscience, queer theory, and feminist theory to interrogate common misunderstandings with regard to how our biological and social selves influence and interact with one another to form identity. Identity is a fundamental concept in psychology. Ways of identifying vary and are informed by both lived experience and aspects of biology. In this course we will discuss the intricacies and nuances of sexual differentiation with the goal of understanding this process from a multi-level view from which we can make solid inferences as to the biological, psychological, and social underpinnings of key aspects of identity formation and variability. Discussions and close-reading activities are the core of this course. This course will attempt to provide a set of language, informed by a systematic analysis of the literature, to bridge the intellectual divides between psychology, neuroscience, gender & queer studies, and reproductive biology.
CONN 382: African Women Writers: Gender, Power, and Identity
Prof. Rokiatou Soumaré – MoWeFr 11–11:50 a.m.
Can fulfill the requirement for Transnational/International/Diasporic/Cross-Cultural Perspectives or the Intersectionality requirement, but not both.
This course explores African women writers and critics, focusing on their cultural positions, theoretical priorities, and representations of women’s experiences. It provides students with both a broad and specific understanding of African women’s achievements, identities, and cultural contributions. The class approaches the material through an interdisciplinary framework that draws on literary studies, history, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, and postcolonial theory. Students engage with texts by authors such as Mariama Bâ, Assia Djebar, Buchi Emecheta, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Chimanda Ngozi Adichie, analyzing how race, gender, class, and colonialism shape AFrican women’s lives as well as the production of knowledge about them. Weekly assignments combine at least two disciplinary perspectives, encouraging students to compare, reflect, and synthesize across methods. Through essays, projects, and reflective writing, students practice integrative learning and cross-disciplinary dialogue. The course fulfills the KNOW requirement and emphasizes how African women writers challenge inequality and colonial legacies while asserting theri intellectual and creative presence.
PG 345: Intersectionality as Theory and Method
Prof. Alisa Kessel – MoWe 2–3:20 p.m.
This course interrogates intersectionality as an approach to the study of politics. In spring 2027, students will study the history of voting rights in the U.S. as a way to explore the intersectionality as a theory and as an approach to studying social phenomena. Together, we'll design and undertake an archival, group-based research project as a way to test the intersectional method.
REL 298: Reproductive Ethics
Prof. Hajung Lee – TuTh 11 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
This course examines various religious, cultural, legal, feminist, and ethical issues surrounding reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. It analyzes tensions related to curtailing or enhancing fertility in the United States. The course surveys how religious beliefs, cultural contexts, and laws have influenced patients' reproductive decisions, clinicians' medical decisions, and the reproductive healthcare system. Moral issues surveyed in this course may include Dobbs v. Jackson, contraception, abortion, prenatal diagnosis, assisted reproduction, surrogacy, genetic engineering in assisted reproduction, reproductive justice, LGBTQ reproductive rights, and activism for inclusive reproductive health services. Students actively participate in discussion, debate, and role-playing based on assigned readings. Readings include religious texts, bioethics literature, feminist literature, film, and legal cases.
SOAN 202: Families in Society
Prof. Jennifer Utrata – TuTh 11 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
This course challenges students to learn to 'see' families sociologically and to think critically and comparatively about the family as an ideological construct and as a complex social institution. Rather than assuming a universal model of the family, course readings examine families in the United States and elsewhere in the world as diverse entities shaped by economic and political factors, gender ideologies, racial and class inequalities, sexual norms, and cultural changes. Family ideals frequently clash with contemporary family realities; social science is a powerful tool for illuminating the implications and meanings of family continuity and change.
SOAN 304: Gender and Sexuality in Japan
Prof. Lindsay Custer – MoFr 2–3:20 p.m.
This course uses a sociological framework to examine gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan. Students are introduced to theoretical frameworks that underpin the study of gender and sexuality and apply those frameworks to the case of Japanese society. Using a culturally relativistic lens, students critically examine the following aspects of Japanese society: the social construction and representation of feminine and masculine gender and sexuality, both normative and otherwise; recent changes in the sexual landscape and the fluidity of both gender and sexual identities across time and space; changing patterns in intimate relationships and the social forces driving these trends; the commodification of gender performances; and feminist perspectives and debates.
SOAN 316: Cultural Politics of Global Development
Prof. Monica DeHart – TuTh 11 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
This course examines how culture, identity, and ethics are implicated in economic development efforts around the globe and here at home. Through a critical examination of major development theories and their assumptions about the nature of the global system and the meaning of difference within it, the course explores whose ideas about development matter, how they manifest in terms of particular policies and politics, and what stakes they pose for different social groups. In particular, the course explores how race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, health, environment, and education, among other things, have structured development differences. In doing so, the course interrogates the role that colonialism, science, capitalism, and activism have played in shaping development norms and challenges to them. The course engages interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches to development through a combination of theoretical and ethnographic texts, as well as experiential learning. This course counts as one of the core courses for the Global Development Studies Designation.