Fall 2026
GQS 201: Introduction to Gender, Queer, and Feminist Studies
Prof. Heather White – MoWe 3:30-4:50 p.m.
Sarah Lofstrom – TuTh 9:30-10:50 a.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.
GQS 360: Genealogies and Theories: Gender, Feminist, and Queer Theories
Prof. Heather White – MoWe 2-3:20 p.m.
This course surveys the history/ies and development of feminist, gender and/or queer theories, with an emphasis on theories produced in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The course familiarizes students with key feminist, gender and queer theoretical debates and concepts, requires them to read, think, speak, and write critically about these theories; and encourages them to employ these feminist and queer theories and concepts in critical analyses of contemporary institutions and practices, as well as in their own lives. Topics examined include power, privilege, domination, identity, difference, intersectionality, post/colonialism, trans/nationalism, (standpoint) epistemology, anti/essentialism, discourse, performativity, gender, femininity, masculinity, sexuality, embodiment, and cyborgs.
GQS 335 / ENGL 335: Gender and Genre
Prof. Laura Krughoff – TuTh 2-3:20 p.m.
This course takes as its jumping-off point Virginia Woolf's Orlando: a Biography. This novel's long afterlife in adaption for the stage and the screen indicates that the enduring thematic heart of the text is its fantastical encounter with gender. Woolf's novel is, notably, humorously, and impossibly mis-genred as a biography. The question for this class, then, is as follows: how do genre and form inform, circumscribe, explode, and/or ramify what can be thought and said about gender? What constitutes reality, fidelity, or truthfulness in fiction, film, memoir, or theory? The primary way students will engage with the texts that serve as the backbone of this course is creative. Students will read two novels, inflected by Woolf's Orlando, and then write their own gender-bending fiction, analyze two genre-bending memoirs and write their own creative nonfiction, and apply a work of queer theory that refuses the dichotomy between scholarship and personal writing to other texts.
AFAM 101: Introduction to African American Studies
Prof. Grace Livingston – MoWe 9:30-10:50 a.m.
This course provides an examination of intellectual and creative productions, developments, and events that have come to be recognized as the discipline of African American Studies. The course explores literature, history, popular culture (music, television, magazines, newspapers, movies, film documentaries), and politics as a way to identify the historical and political origins and objectives of Black Studies and the 1960s Black Liberation struggles, the early academic and social concerns of Black Studies advocates, the theoretical and critical approaches to Black Studies as a discipline, and the early objectives of Black Studies in relation to present goals of multiculturalism.
CONN 210: Law, Gender, and Justice in South Asia
Prof. Trishna Senapaty – MoWe 4-5:20 p.m.
In this course students will read selections from three ethnographies across different regions of South Asia to examine the relationship between law, gender and justice. These ethnographies will address 1) specific laws and the mark they leave on intimate and familial-life 2) trace how social movements, and struggles for justice in South Asia and its diasporas bring people together in dialogue with, and in resistance to law 3) how such resistance and activism is gendered 4) the informal negotiations and alternate approaches to conflict resolution adopted in contexts where legal institutions are hostile or inaccessible. These ethnographies will be read alongside key dialogues in south Asian and transnational feminism. The course engages perspectives from anthropology, feminist and legal studies.
CONN 355 / CONN 455: Black Feminist Theory
Prof. Regina Duthely – TuTh 3:30-4:50 p.m.
This course is an examination of Black feminist theory as an intellectual, political, and lived methodology. The course examines how race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability operate as interlocking systems of power and resistance. Students will engage foundational and contemporary texts by scholars and activists, alongside cultural texts, political manifestos, and grassroots organizing practices. Emphasis is placed on Black feminism as both critique and praxis—connecting theory to activism and collective liberation. Through reading, discussion, and projects, students will develop the analytical tools to understand Black feminist theory’s transformative contributions across several disciplines, while also reflecting on its relevance to contemporary struggles for justice. Together we will trace the recent history of Black feminist scholarship, activism, and knowledge production.
GLAM 323: Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece and Rome
Instructor TBA – MoFr Noon-1:20 p.m.
This course examines sex, gender, and sexualities in ancient Greece and Rome. Building upon foundational readings in feminist and queer theory, this course examines critically both historical evidence for and representations of love, gender, sex, and sexuality in a wide range of ancient literary texts, as well as epigraphic, art historical, and archaeological sources. Through this combination of using both Greek and Roman primary sources and modern gender theory, this course aims to make sense of such topics as women's lives, marriage, prostitution, sexual violence, medicine, pederasty, sex manuals, and non-normative or "Other"-bodied (e.g. trans*) individuals.
PG 385: Feminist Approaches to International Relations
Prof. Lisa Ferrari – MoWe 2-3:20 p.m.
In her landmark work on feminism and international politics, Cynthia Enloe encourages scholars to ask, "Where are the women?" when trying to understand international relations. This course introduces students to feminist analysis of international relations by engaging both theoretical and practical questions about women's experiences in the world. From a foundation of ethics, the course builds to address the place of gendered analysis in international relations issue areas such as security, political economy, and migration.