GQS 201A: Intro to Gender, Queer, and Feminist Studies
Professor Greta Austin - T/Th 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 201B: Intro to Gender, Queer, and Feminist Studies
Professor Heather White - T/TH 11-12:20 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.
GQS 220: What is Queer? The Politics and Practices of Self Fashioning
Professor Heather White - M/W 2-3:20 p.m.
This course explores "queer" as an open question rather than a stable set of identities, asking: what kinds of bodies, desires, histories, and politics does queer describe? Students consider the complexity of queer identities and investigate the social and historical processes of identity construction. The class asks, with insights from queer theory: What governs the formation of legible social identities? What dynamics of erasure and illegibility accompany these formations? This course takes up these questions with attention to "queer self-fashioning," asking: How have "queer" identities and communities defined themselves--and been defined--in and through clothing and style? While clothing and fashion might seem to typify personal and a-political work, our inquiry explores the politics of self-fashioning: How is the fashioned body governed by laws, policies, and social norms? How has style played an important role in collective movements of dissent and social change? Students also explore these questions through a guided, hands-on project: each student will sew a wearable garment as a process of tactile meditation on the material, time, labor, and creativity involved in queer self-fashioning.
GQS 291: Gender Studies Publication (Wetlands)
Professor Laura Krughoff - W 6-6:50 p.m.
Gender Studies Publication is an activity credit for participation in a campus publication of literary and artistic materials related to questions of gender and sexuality.
GQS 320: Queerly Scientific: Exploring the Influence of Identity on Scientific Knowledge Production
Professors Laura Krughoff and Megan Gessel - T/Th 9:30-10:20 a.m.
This course is organized around a set of interlocking questions: Who tells the story of scientific knowledge? Through what lens? Who does the work of producing scientific knowledge? To what end? While "the sciences" are often figured as disciplines and practices that both value and produce objectivity and facts -- categories imagined to exist independent of the identities of the people making scientific inquiry or serving as the object of that inquiry -- this course seeks to situate scientific knowledge within the matrix of gender, race, and sexuality that is inextricable from the human experience. We ask: How would a more diverse scientific community change the lives of those working in the sciences? And how would it change science?
GQS 494: Gender Research Seminar
Professor Laura Krughoff - M/W/F 2-2:50 p.m.
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. Completion of the class includes participation in the Lewis & Clark Undergraduate Gender Studies Conference in March of each year.
Cross listed Courses
AFAM 101A: Introduction to African American Studies
Professor LaToya Brackett - T/TH 2-3:30 p.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.
AFAM 101B: Introduction to African American Studies
Professor Grace Livingston - M/W 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.
CLJ/REL 307: Prisons, Gender and Education
Professor Tanya Erzen - T/TH 9:30-10:50 a.m.
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), a signature initiative of the University of Puget Sound. Through collaboration with FEPPS students, students in this class will gain knowledge about the challenges and benefits of the liberal arts in prison.
CLJ 370: Prisons Archives and Public Memories
Professor Tanya Erzen - T/TH 12:30-1:50 p.m.
This course uses the archival documents in the Washington State Archives to understand and document the histories of the incarceration of women, girls, trans and gender-non-binary people in WA state. Students work collaboratively with students in the FEPPS program in the prison to co-create an online history of incarceration for women and girls on StoryMapJS. Students gain an interdisciplinary and participatory approach to archival research, scholarly editing, and the praxis of recovery and public memory. The course exposes students to practical research methodologies and theoretical debates about archives; the history of incarceration; and how the archives connect to contemporary policy and issues for women in prison such as shackling, parenting, solitary confinement, education and other issues. Students think through the archival material with those most impacted by these issues by meeting with FEPPS students in the prison and alum of the program. The class will pay close attention to intersectionality, examining the fact that women of color and poor women are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated. Women's imprisonment exacerbates women's economic marginality, and women in prison struggle to receive meaningful job training and education. The course usually includes at least one visit to the archives to see the documents in person.
CONN 354: Hormones, Sex, Society, & Self
Professor Melvin Rouse - T/Th 9:30-10:50 a.m.
Ways of identifying vary and are informed by both lived experience and aspects of biology. Our language around identity, gender identity in particular, has grown and evolved over time. Yet there remains a critical gap in understanding the contribution of biology and the biological sexes to this deeply personal psychosocial construct. There is, however, a growing body of literature that demonstrates that the sex of the brain itself (i.e. sex-typical patterns of neural organization), genetic sex (i.e. chromosomal sex), and phenotypic sex (i.e. how ones body develops and presents) can be disassociated from one another. That disassociation speaks to a biological reality that is not adequately (or often accurately) codified by the dominant social construct of gender. This course examines the intricacies and nuances of sexual differentiation with the goal of understanding this process from a multi-level view from which solid inferences can be made as to the biological underpinnings of certain aspects of gender and sexual identity formation variability.
PSYC 250: Human Sexuality
Professor Melvin Rouse - M/F 12-1:20 p.m.
Beginning with a brief study of the anatomy and physiology of the sexual and reproductive systems, the course progresses to the consideration of cultural heritages, including cross-cultural and sub-cultural variations. Consideration is given to the evolution of attitudes and behaviors across the life span, including the psychological foundations of the dysfunctions.
SOAN 304: Gender and Sexuality in Japan
Professor Lindsay Custer - M/F 12-1:20 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
Professor Monica DeHart - T/Th 11 am-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.
SOAN 318: Gender, Work, and Globalization
Professor Jennifer Utrata - T/Th 2-3:20 p.m.
The world is becoming increasingly interconnected, with the movement of people, capital, and cultures across borders transforming lives all over the globe. Yet globalization also shapes, and is shaped by, gender, class, race/ethnicity, age, sexuality, and other axes of difference and inequality. This course examines how gender relations are embedded in practices of globalizing capitalism. Not only does globalization shape the lives of men and women in distinct ways, but the social and economic changes accompanying globalization affect power relations involved in masculine domination. The course examines key developments at the nexus of globalization and gender: the feminization of poverty, feminization of migration, and feminization of workforces which are consistent features of transnational production processes. Besides analyzing the gendered consequences of globalization, including how globalization shapes the lived experiences of women worldwide, it also foregrounds how gendered subjects constitute processes of globalization. Special attention is given to how gender shapes our ideas of what counts as "work," both paid and unpaid, globally, as well as how gender permeates institutions, especially workplaces, but also the government and international organizations.