Gender and Women's Studies

Gender and Women's Studies 112:  Introduction to Women's Studies in the Social Sciences
Same as HDFS 145, SOC 145.  Section U1: for Unit One and WIMSE students through Dec. 10 or by permission of Unit One director.

What is Women's Studies and what does it have to do with you?  Or with the social sciences?  This course introduces key ideas in Women's Studies, encourages students to find links between their own lives and issues raised by feminist scholars, and maps some of the terrain of feminist scholarship in the social sciences.  Discussions, readings, and lectures will explore the interplay of gender with other social categories such as race, sexuality, and class, through materials that come from a variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science and history, as well as feminist theory.

Gender and Women's Studies 114:  Contemporary Issues in Women's Studies

Morey

MW

10-11:20

Explores the most recent debates and research related to contemporary issues that primarily affect women.  Review issues related to sexual and domestic violence, gender socialization, feminization of poverty, women's health, sexual harassment, work and family, politics, and media influences from a multi-discipline and multicultural perspective.

Gender and Women's Studies 199:  Undergraduate Open Seminar

CONF

ARR

Ind. Study

May be repeated, 1 to 5 hours, independent study.  For independent study registration in this course, students should contact the departmental office.  See other sections below.

Gender and Women's Studies 199 D: Undergraduate Open Seminar
Topic: Globalization and Its Discontents:  The Case of Cuba

Goldman

Th

1-2:50

Meets with SPAN 199.

The purpose of this seminar will be to promote a greater understanding of globalization and to critically interrogate a phenomenon that we inevitably witness, participate in and contribute to on a regular basis. The course will examine the changing geopolitical structure and its impact on cross-cultural exchange, world views, international relations, migratory patterns and economics.  Furthermore, we will explore the impact of globalization on contemporary Cuban culture and also examine the critical engagements of Cuban scholars with issues of globalization.

In order to realize these goals, the course materials will include works of literature (i.e. José Martí's Nuetra América, Roberto Fernández Retamar's Caliban and Reinaldo Arenas's Before Night Falls) and film (i.e. Memories of Underdevelopment, Potrait of Teresa, Strawberry and Chocolate and Suite Habana) that express or react to a contemporary restructuring of national and international forces on a global scale.  We will also consider essays, newspaper, articles that attempt to define the phenomenon of globalization and discuss its implications.  We will examine a number of key issues that are closely associated with processes of globalization (i.e.migration, diaspora, the changing role of political borders, transnational politics of gender and sexuality, etc.) and discuss texts that address how these issues are negotiated in a specific context.  In each case, these considerations will be juxtaposed with a careful analysis of their interactions with Cuban culture.  Readings and in-class discussions will regularly focus on how Cuban culture has contributed to, affected and/or been affected by issues of globalization.

Gender and Women's Studies 199 RW:  Undergraduate Open Seminar
Topic:  Fraternity Peer Rape Education and Prevention
Students must be members of fraternities and have permission of the instructor.  To enroll contact Ross Wantland at wantland@uiuc.edu.

Wantland

Tu

6-7:50 p.m.

Can fraternity men stop rape?  This course seeks to answer this question by providing interested fraternity men with skills to become peer rape educators for their own chapters.  In the fall semester, students go through an 8-week course that trains them to become peer rape educators.  In the spring semester, students build on their existing facilitation skills, and develop, implement, and evaluate a series of presentations for their individual chapters.  Students must be members of fraternities and have permission of the instructor.

Gender and Women's Studies 199 U1:  Undergraduate Open Seminar
Topic:  Women and Sexuality
This section of WS 199 is for students in Unit One, WIMSE, Weston Exploration, or by permission of Unit One director, h-schein@uiuc.edu.  Parent Course III. Graded S/U.  1 Credit

McWhorter

Tu  

4-5:50

In this course, we will examine and discuss constructions of sexuality from a number of angles.We will thoughtfully traffic among the terms, homosexual, heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, and will consider the ways that these terms have come to represent and define women's bodies, identities, activities, interests, and desires.

We could consider works by writers as various as Anne Fausto-Sterling, Aristotle, Judith Butler, a number of French Feminist theorists, Sigmund Freud, Annie Sprinkle, David Halperin, Thomas Lacquer, and Carolee Schneemann. On top of this, we will likely watch several movies and documentaries together over the course of the semester, including "But I'm a Cheerleader," "Southern Comfort," and "Kissing Jessica Stein."

Gender and Women's Studies 210:  Introduction to Queer Studies.
Same as Soc 210. Prerequisite: WS 111 or 112 or 201 or consent of instructor.

C L Cole     

Tu 

3-6

Interdisciplinary introduction to the field of queer studies. Traces the history of sexuality and sexual identities, reviews key concepts and debates guiding queer studies, and evaluates how they facilitate understandings of the social and cultural dimensions of sexuality.

Gender and Women's Studies 221:  Gender in Transnational Perspective
Same as SOC 221.  Prerequisite:  SOC 100, WS 112, or consent of instructor.

Prasad

WF

1:30-2:50

This course will examine how gender inequality is structured on an international level.  The objectives of the course are:  To demonstrate how the concept of gender and the processes of gender inequality are transformed when considered in global perspective.  To identify and analyze some of the key aspects of globalization, which are currently altering, gender relations.  To break down myths about women in both "first world" and "third world" societies, through a self-reflective viewpoint which explores our commonalities as well as our differences.  To expand gender analysis to include both masculinities and femininities, and interconnections of race, class, sexuality, and nation on a global scale.

The course is broadly divided in three sections.  First, it will examine commonalities and differences in women's oppression world-wide, and the historical factors, which have shaped them.  Second, it will look at contemporary patterns of globalization which are shifting the dynamics of gender inequality, such as inter-governmental organizations, state governments, formal and informal global economies, entertainment industries, etc.  The last section of the course will then look at women's resistance and international feminist movements.  Overall, emphasis will be placed on the interactive relationship between various countries, and how globalization promotes racial, ethnic, sexual, and national hierarchies among women, both in developing countries as well as highly-industrialized countries.

Gender and Women's Studies 245:  Women in the Labor Market
Same as ECON 245.  Prerequisite:  ECON 102 or equivalent.  Credit is not given for ECON 245 if student has credit for or is enrolled in ECON 346.

Instructor

TuTh

3:30-4:50

The changing role of women in the labor market and the economy; supply and demand for women; nature, extent, and legal remedies for sex discrimination in employment; "earnings gaps" and variable employment costs, men versus women; new role of multi-earner families; and comparative use of women as a professional resource.

Gender and Women's Studies 250: Black Women: Histories and Cultures
Same as Afro 250. Prerequisite: AFRO 100 or WS 111 or 112, or consent of instructor.

Danley

TuTh 

1-2:20

Interdisciplinary study of black women's multiple histories and varied cultures including black women from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Gender and Women's Studies 261: Women in East Asia
Same as EALC 261. Runs concurrently with EALC 450, Section F.

Kelsky

MWF

2

Women's roles are undergoing rapid transformation throughout East Asia. This course examines these changes through the lens of family life, changing marriage practices, women's participation in the workforce, consumerism, sexualities both straight and queer, and emergent feminist movements in transnational perspective.

Gender and Women's Studies 262: Cultural Images of Women
Same as ANTH 262

Gottlieb

TuTh

10-11:20

Why isn't Miss America ever fat?  Is menstruation everywhere viewed as a curse or handicap?  Why do some girls and women prefer to undergo "circumcision"?  Is childbirth seen universally as an illness to be medicated?  Is motherhood by definition a heterosexual experience?  This course will explore these and related questions, investigating how women around the world experience their bodies through the life cycle.  Throughout the semester we will inquire how not only social roles but also images, uses and meanings of the bodies that all women inhabit are shaped in deep, though often invisible, ways by culture.  Through a variety of readings, films, and inquiries on these topics, the course will introduce you to critical approaches to the gendered experience of the body offered by cultural anthropology.

Gender and Women's Studies 273: Women, Men and Gender in American Society Since 1877
Same as HIST 273.

Pleck

MWF

9

The central premise of this course is that gender matters in history and that to understand women's history, one must appreciate the differences among women's historical experiences. The course will introduce students to the history of women's work, sexual definitions, and political lives in industrializing and modern America. Readings in primary sources and those written by women's historians will emphasize changes in women's life experiences in relation to larger historical changes in the U.S., such as economic change, race relations, and social movements. A major goal of the course is to show that women's history is a central part of American social history and a unique subject of historical investigation. Although the title of this course refers to women and men, most of the lecture and reading will concern the history of women.

Gender and Women's Studies 280:  Women Writers
TOPIC: Reading Women's Writing.
Same as ENGL 280 E. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.

Ivy

MWF

1

What is women's writing?  Why study women writers in particular?  Do women writers write for women readers?  How do women read?  This is a course designed to explore many of the assumptions—about gender, identity, community, and representation—that shape our expectations about what women's writing is and what it can do.  One important topic will be the time-honored connection between women and novel-writing; another will be the extent to which other identity categories are often subsumed within discussions of "women's writing."  Much attention will be paid to the contemporary context, in which women's writing is associated with, among other things, book groups, self-help, and memoir.  Our texts vary in age, nationality, genre, style, and popularity, but all participate in ongoing debates about the very category that give this course its name.  Requirements include active participation in class discussion, regular reading responses, two papers, and a final exam.     

Gender and Women's Studies 280:  Women Writers
TOPIC: Early Modern Women Writers in England (Sixteenth - Seventeenth Centuries)
Same as ENGL 280 M. Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.

Gray 

TuTh

9:30-10:45     

This course will serve as an introduction to early modern women's writing from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century.  We will sample a variety of literature written by women, focusing both on close textual analysis and cultural context. The course will begin with a very brief introduction to the position of women in this period, and then move quickly on to detailed readings of primary texts. We will trace the dominant themes, identities, and forms of these works, focusing in particular on how women authors repeat, revise or rebel against the gender norms and societal expectations of their day. Readings will probably include poetry by Elizabeth I and Aemilia Lanyer, drama by Elizabeth Cary and Mary Pix, and early novels by Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood.

Gender and Women's Studies 286:  Women in Popular Film and Television
Same as COMM 256.

Examines the notion that the mass media might influence our development as gendered individuals, looking at those who have argued both for and against this notion.  Considers different forms of feminist theory and their application to the study of the mass media.  The course then examines the development of images of women in film and television, and how these images might function for different segments of the female audience.  The course also looks at the history of these media, the history of their portrayal of women, feminist criticisms of these portrayals, and feminist discussions of the appeal of specifically "female" genres such as melodramas and soap operas to the female audience, as well as feminist attempts to create alternatives to mainstream images in various media.  The representation of women of color in the dominant media will also be scrutinized.

Gender and Women's Studies 290:  Individual Study
Prerequisite:  One course in Women's Studies; consent of instructor.  May be repeated to a maximum of 6 hours.  Students may register in this course more than once in the same term.  For independent study registration in this course, students should contact the department office.  Sections listed below.

CONF.           

ARR

Independent Study

Gender and Women's Studies 290 AM: Dimensions of Chicana Labor
Meets with LLS 296

Martinez

TuTh

10-11:20

In this course students will consider the role of migration, race, class and gender in the formal and informal labor experiences of Chicanas and Mexicanas in the United States. While our focus will be on women of Mexican descent in the United States, we will also explore the unique situation of Mexican women working for U.S.-owned companies along the U.S.-Mexican border, as well as the experiences of other women workers of color in the United States and around the world.

This course examines the historiography of Mexicana/Chicana labor as well as the history of these women. In the past twenty years, the field has been transformed as Chicana labor has been recognized in its great depth and many dimensions. Race, class, gender, migration and transnationalism complicate traditional notions of labor and labor history. We will analyze how this scholarship changes the ways we think about women's work and women's and labor histories.

Gender and Women's Studies 290 LS: Women in Advertising
Meets with ADV291 C and ADV 490 C.

Scott

TuTh

4-5:20

This class will focus on a cluster of social issues surrounding the representation of women in advertisements and the participation of women in the advertising industry. Topics will include body image, eating disorders, fashion, and racial stereotyping, as well as pay equity, professional advancement, and social responsibility for women in advertising. It is the specific purpose of this class to put young women who are interested in the criticism of advertising into a dialogue with other young women who are training for professions in that business. We will also look at the empirical studies that have been done on such topics as media effects on eating disorders, or the representation of women in ads. We will spend some significant time looking at the evolution of ideal female imagery over the course of the past century: the Gibson Girl, the flapper, the supermodel, the housewife, the executive, and so on. We will also look at the historical engagement of female professionals in the advancement of women's rights. We will consider what actions the next generation might take that would lead to a better future in terms of advertising imagery of women, by women, about women, for women

Gender and Women's Studies 298: Contemporary Studies in Women, Gender and Sexualities
Prerequisite: Senior standing and enrollment as a major in Gender and Women's Studies, or consent of instructor.

Frost

Tu

10-12

Considers the relationship between theory and research in Women's Studies. Reviews and examines the key issues of feminist scholarship. Provides students with the methodological knowledge and opportunity to carry out a research project.

Gender and Women's Studies 332:  Women and Language
Same as LING 332, SPCOM 332.  Prerequisite:  a course in Speech Communication or Linguistics, or equivalent.

Mastronardi

TuTh

9:30-10:50

Study of actual and perceived differences and similarities in the use of language by women and by men; emphasizes the social contexts of speech.

Gender and Women's Studies 335: Women's Health
Same as Community Health 309

Searing

MW

3-4:15  

This course examines the culture of women in relationship to their health using a bio/psycho/social model as the foundation for lecture and discussion on select health issues particular to women. The course focuses on the interaction of women with the US health care system, but includes the experience of women in other nations regarding access to health care and US foreign health policy. Students without a health background will be provided with additional reading at the beginning of the semester to explain terminology used during lecture.

Gender and Women's Studies 358:  Social Issues Theatre
Same as THEAT 358.  May be repeated in separate semesters to a maximum of 6 hours or 2 units. Repeat or graduate students will be required to develop additional projects to be approved and assessed by instructor.

Morrissette

MWF

1-2:50

This course combines the training involved in acting, playwriting, and social issues education and theatrical creation. Through this training the course focuses on the skills necessary for the formation of social issues theatre. This is a hands-on studio course that centers around exercises, experiences, and experiments that stimulate the class creation of social issues theatre productions.

Gender and Women's Studies 380:  Gender Roles and International Development
Prerequisite:  One course in Women's Studies or one course in international, social, economic, or political development; or consent of instructor.  For undergraduates, consent of instructor is required.  Meets with HCD 495 G.

Summerfield

W

1-4

This course is multidisciplinary and policy-oriented in scope.  We will focus on analysis of the gendered dimensions of globalization and socio-economic transformation policies, stressing the last few decades.  The impacts on people's lives and the agency roles of women and men as they adopt strategies to improve conditions for themselves and their families are examined.  The course will address conceptual tools for evaluating development policies based on different paradigms.  Because the seminar is policy-oriented, key topics will change each year, influenced by current events, the themes of the WGGP program, and the interests of the students.  This year's themes stress human security and the arts and social change; the enrolled students may identify additional topics.  This course satisfies the core requirement for the graduate level GRID concentrations offered by the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives (WGGP) program in cooperation with departments and units across campus; for more information, check the WGGP web site at http:// www.ips.uiuc.edu/wggp/.

Gender and Women's Studies 396 A: Sexual Harassment in Organizations
Meets with PSYCH 396. Prerequisite: Junior standing and consent of instructor.

Fitzgerald 

TuTh

9-10:15

This is a continuation of a seminar offered on a regular basis. Members of the seminar are expected to be involved in the conduct of sexual harassment research in work organizations. Issues discussed in the seminar include the design of research instruments, administration of surveys and interview in formal organizations, analysis of data using state of the art methods to generate unbiased estimates of linkages among antecedents and consequences of sexual harassment, and interpretation of results. Emphasis will be drawn from victimization research, organizational influences on employees' behaviors, and structural equation modeling applied to data from several organizations simultaneously.

Gender and Women's Studies 396 AV: Latinas in Film, TV and Music
Meets with COMM 291 T and LLS 296.

Valdivia

TuTh

3-4:20

Within the past few years, numerous government as well as media reports have noted the emergence of Latina/os as a growing, vibrant, and undeniable component of US popular culture. Truth is, of course, Latina/os not only have lived in the US for many generations, but, in fact, many predate the Anglo population. Yet we might say, that in terms of popular culture, especially in the mainstream, we are beginning to witness a Latina/o presence, whether it be in front or behind of the camera. Using a framework of analysis that combines Media Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Women's Studies we will study and explore contemporary and recent historical issues, concepts, and people as they are connected to Popular Culture. For the purposes of this class, we will focus on issues of film, television, popular music and dance, as well as advertising, magazines, girl fiction, toys, and food as forms of popular culture. While there are many other huge areas of popular culture such as visual arts and literature, these fall beyond the scope of the class [and they are also studied in other classes]. When we study forms of popular culture we will follow a path that is outlined both by media theory in terms of issues of production, content, and audiences as well as by contemporary cultural studies analysis that is through the concepts of culture, identity and difference, representation, and culture of consumption. From Latina/o Studies, we will draw on a framework that acknowledges the diversity and heterogeneity of the U.S. Latina/o population while remaining ever vigilant to specificity and calls for nation or region specific affiliations. From Women's Studies we, of course, employ the need to pay attention to issues of gender as a major form of difference that we use to make sense of our world. We use multicultural feminism as well as the accumulating amount of work conducted by Chicana and Latina feminists. There is some overlap between all these areas of study as they potentially inform each other. We will explore these areas of intersection.

Gender and Women's Studies 396 LF: Psychology of Women

Fitzgerald

W

3-5

This course is designed to introduce students to the study of the psychology of women. Topics will include recent research and theory on women's social, personality, and cognitive development across the life span; achievement motivation and career development; the integration of work and family; sexuality, partnering, and maternity; sexual victimization; gender and psychological adjustment. The course will be seminar format, so space is limited. Gender and Women's Studies 396 R: Representing Sex, Power and Politics Meets with COMM 291 R. Frost TuTh 1-2:20 Debates about sexuality have shaped the self-conception, the self-representation, and the agendas of contemporary feminist theory and practice. Different conceptions of the relationship between sex and power have generated conflicting representations of the nature of women's oppression and the kinds of feminist politics necessary to fight it. This course examines how different representations of the relationship between sex, power, and subjectivity have shaped feminism. While we will situate our exploration of this issue against the backdrop of the bitter disagreements about the social and political significance of sexuality in the early years of the second wave of feminism in the United States, the bulk of our analysis will be theoretically oriented. We will draw on the theoretical frameworks provided by Freud, Deleuze, Bataille, and Foucault in order to explore how to think about and represent the relationship between power, desire, prohibition, subjectivity and political agency in the context of racial and class differences, in situations of rape and sexual slavery, and in the lives of those who are queer or who are prostitutes.

Gender and Women's Studies 396 SC: Real or Imagined Women?: Subjectivities in Postcolonial Histories

Chandra

Tu

1-4

The production and maintenance of gender is fundamentally connected to the cultural histories of definite locations. This course seeks to build a method by which to understand aspects of female subjectivity, while remaining attentive to the power of history and cultural detail. Evaluating colonial and postcolonial India in this case, we will discuss the production of gender through the articulation of tradition, sexuality, domesticity and community in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each of these terms intersected with the constitution of a somewhat fixed ideal of womanhood, while simultaneously drawing in the participation as well as forcing the marginalisation of large sections of the population. Extricating these themes through a close reading of texts produced by men and women from this period, we will view the manner in which these subjects themselves negotiated the constituent elements of gender. Where did the experience of womanhood start for people in this period, how did they traverse the knowledge of gender difference, and when were they able to envision resistance to these identities? Specifically interrogating the role played by gender binaries, and the subjectivity endowed by the act of writing, our aim will be to research, imagine, and write about alternative ways by which to understand gender in this context. Finally, we will attempt to address the ongoing feminist quest to unite an understanding of cultural detail with the agenda for collective social action.

Gender and Women's Studies 402: Feminist Scholarship in the Social Sciences: Theory and Research
Same as SOC 425. Prerequisite:  Undergraduate statistics; at least one graduate-level course, or permission of instructor.  A graduate-level course in social science research methods is strongly recommended

Kenney

W 

1:30 – 3:30

This course will combine a review of various quantitative and qualitative research methods in the social sciences with readings in feminist critiques of these methods, considering how such critiques have changed over the past 30 years.  We will also read examples of research produced using these methods (quantitative-only and qualitative-only, as well as research that combines methods) and discuss this research, informed by the feminist critiques we have read.  Over the course of the semester, students will produce a proposal for research they intend to pursue in the future.  In this proposal, they will draw on the various perspectives we have discussed in class to develop and justify the methodology to be employed in their own research.

Gender and Women's Studies 451:  Women, Society and Social Welfare Issues
Same as SOC W 451.  Prerequisite:  SOC W 351 or consent of instructor.

Zhan

Th

1-3:50

This course seeks to understand the interactive complexities involving individuals, families, groups, organizations, institutions, and communities that affect women in different cultural and societal contexts.  Topics relevant to social work practice of all specialization areas (school, child welfare, health and mental health) as well as policy will be developed in the course.

Gender and Women's Studies 490 CM: Sexuality, Education, and Varieties of Queerness.
Meets with EPS 490 B3

Mayo

Th

5-7 p.m.

One of the key insights of queer theory is that all sexualities are at some level queer.  Whether through a too enthusiastic embrace of norms or a seeming repudiation of norms, varieties of sexualities verge into queerness.  This class will examine the place of educational projects in helping us to understand a fuller variety of what it means to be queer. We will examine the resurgence of virginity and chastity, non-discrimination policies and speech codes in public schools, queer youth, and the relationship among sexuality, race, class, disability, and gender.  We will consider the term "education" broadly, examining school policies, public health education, and the educational projects of political and social movements.  Readings will mainly concentrate on a U. S. context, though AIDS and sex education information from international sources will also be included.  Students will do one class presentation and a seminar paper.  Readings may include: D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters; Nestle, Howell, and Wilchins, eds., Genderqueer; Irvine, ed., Sexual Cultures; Thompson, Going all the Way; and a reading packet.

Gender and Women's Studies 490 LS: Seminar in Twentieth-Century French Literature.
Topic: Post-Modern Sexualities: from Lust to Lucky Pierre
Meets with FR 478 and C LIT 478.

Schehr

Tu

3-4:50

A critical examination of the articulation of sexualities in literature and film in post-modern western culture. The course will consider the ways in which contemporary writing and cinema represent current understanding of a multiplicity of sexual categories and participate in the subversion of older, stable, bivalent models.

Afro-American Studies 314:  Race and Ethnic Issues in Family Sociology and Education
Same as EPS 314, HDFS 314, and SOC 314.

Barnett

Tu 

1-2:50

Graduate-level sociological examination of how gender, race, ethnicity, cultural diversity and class function in the development of diverse American families, which are important foundations of education.  Primary attention will be given to African American and Hispanic families.  Secondary attention will be given to Asian American, Native American and other racial and ethnic family groups.

Agricultural and Consumer Economics 255:  Economics of Rural Poverty and Development

Allen 

MW

10-11:20

Examines poverty and development issues with particular attention to current anti-poverty policies and programs and alternative policies.  Includes discussion of family size and structure, sex discrimination in education and the labor market, welfare reform and child-support enforcement.

Anthropology 366:  Class, Culture, and Society
Prerequisite ANTH 103 and 230, or graduate standing.

Torres

TuTh 

10-11:20

This course examines anthropological studies of work, class, and gender in a variety of sociohistorical and modern contexts. It addresses debates about the salience of class, particularly when we consider the global and (U.S. national) transformation of labor; the racializatin, ethnicization and feminization of the manufacturing industry; and the importance of consumption. We examine how labor patterns were examined and interpreted by various theorists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such we will examine classical theories of class and how they inform contemporary theories about the gendered, racial and cultural dimensions of class via our critical analysis of ethnographic work.

Anthropology 450 K: Seminar in Anthropology: Global Modernities

Kelsky

Tu  

12-2:50

Examines the notion of "alternative" modernities:  is modernity always imitative of the West, or under globalizating forces does it emerge independently in local cultures?  Does it obliterate local tradition or can it function as a site of creativity and resistance? This course investigates these questions through a focus on topics such as family, reproduction, work, gender, sexualities, illness and the body, popular media, tourism, and violence.

Anthropology 450 L: Gender in Latin America

Lugo

W 

2-4:50 

In this advanced seminar we will critically analyze a selected body of literature that examines the cultural politics of gender inequalities in Latin America. Our major purpose is to decipher the sociopolitical process through which gender, sexuality, class, and ethnic/cultural dynamics are interconnected and constructed in the Latin American context. We will explore the complicated relationships between historically specific ideologies and socio-economic systems of production and domination, and the respective privileged or unprivileged positions of women and men (as colonial subjects and/or citizens) under the colonialist, socialist, and capitalist states of Latin America. We will examine these issues through theoretical concepts provided by Latin Americanists active in such fields as cultural anthropology, history, critical sociology, and other relevant disciplines, with reference to specific ethnographic and historical studies.

Communications 221: American Sci-Fi Films: Homeland Security
See the Timetable for lecture and discussion times.

Gill

MW

1

Science fiction films have proved enduring, marketable products of contemporary culture. Since the silent era, film technology has made visible fantasies of the impossible. Some of these films have anticipated scientific discoveries and technological developments; others have posited the catastrophic danger of experimentation and invention. In their imaginative extrapolation of future worlds, alien beings, scientific discoveries, and technological inventions, certain science fiction films, wittingly or not, pose questions about what it means to be human. Narratives of alien invasion, alteration, and incorporation demonstrate conclusively that neither a functioning human body nor a sentient human mind is enough to substantiate the status of human. In science fiction films, "natural" human emotions and responses such as love, kindness, concern, anxiety, fear, and hatred can be found not only in otherworldly creatures but also in machines. Aliens and cyborgs correspond as well to characterizations of the human that are considered cultural rather than natural, such as that of the rugged individual, the ambitious entrepreneur, and the determined winner, all of whom are informed by the desire for and beliefs in freedom, power, and independence. Space invaders fight for home, family, and a place to live in peace, and are often willing to sacrifice themselves for the success of their mission or for the greater good of their community. It is frequently issues of homeland security that allow science fiction films to deflect these troublingly blurred distinctions between human and alien, natural and unnatural, authentic and copy, terrorism and defense. The overwhelming threat to the world and to life as we know it both displaces and reinscribes gender and racial concerns and biases onto a hostile Other. Class readings and discussions will focus on socio-political issues as well as depictions and deflections of race and gender in science fiction film narratives. By looking at exemplary selections of this genre from 1951 through 2002 and by reading pertinent theoretical essays, the class will examine the narrative premises, the gender and racial constructions, the political basis, and the visual strategies of science fiction films, assessing their historical significance as well as their explorations of a proper human identity that at times question, but in general confirm, traditional American values.

Weekly screeenings of videos; weekly quizzes; mid-term; final exam; two short papers; strict attendance policy.

Community Health 199 B: Campus Acquaintance Rape Education

Wantland 

MW

3-4:30

Why is it difficult to speak out against rape? Is anyone actually in support of rape?  If the majority of perpetrators are men, why is it still seen as a "woman's problem"?  This class explores the realities of sexual assault and its societal foundations.  Students will have an opportunity to discuss and critically analyze the effects of culture, oppression, and socialization on sexual violence.  Students acquire facilitation skills which allow them to work as peer educators with the C.A.R.E. program.  For more information, contact Ross Wantland at 333-3137.

Community Health 206:  Human Sexuality
See the Timetable for lecture and discussion times.

Staff

This discussion-oriented course is offered to students who want to obtain a broader perspective on, and increase their own understanding of, the topics and issues associated with sexuality.  Content areas such as communication in relationships, sexual behavior, conception and contraception, pregnancy and childbirth, sexual orientation, sexual health and coercive sex will be covered.

Community Health 214: Introduction to Aging

Armstrong

MW

10-11:15     

This course provides a comprehensive introduction of the human experience of aging and examines ways in which the personal, social and cultural levels of life interact to shape the experience of aging in later life.  The focus is on aging in the contemporary US but we look at the meaning and circumstances of aging in other times and places to provide comparative perspective.  The course is open to any interested undergraduate student.  It fulfills a requirement for the campus Minor in Gerontology.

Community Health 240 B2: C.A.R.E. Practicum
For information to enroll, contact Ross Wantland at 333-3137.

Wantland 

Ind.      

ARR

Practicum for students who have completed CHLTH 199B. Students will have opportunity to explore specific issues not discussed in 199B. Emphasis is placed on facilitation skill building and sexual violence education and prevention. Students meet twice a month as a group for in-services and trainings. For more information, call 333-3137.

Community Health 304:  Gerontology
Same as HDFS 304.  Open to any interested senior or graduate student.

Armstrong

W

2-4:30

Introduces gerontology as the multidisciplinary study of human aging and examines its theories, research and applications.  Considers the contributions of women as participants in the aging process, as scholars and theory builders, as practitioners in aging-related professions.  Examines aging and later life in the contemporary U.S. and incorporates global and crosscultural perspectives.  Projects based in the student's major field are encouraged.

Comparative & World Literature 205:  Islam and the West through Literature

Booth

TuTh

1-2:20

This course gives attention to global gender issues and is organized around major cultural/historical/religious topics present in literature through Western and Islamic eyes. Beginning with the Crusades and proceeding into the present, this new course will examine stereotypes, fantasies, identifications and political opportunism prompted by the encounter between the West and the Islamic World. 

English 281 X:  Women in the Literary Imagination
Topic:  The Evolution of Marriage, Sexuality and Economics in British Fiction

Baron

MWF

12

In 1796 Jane Austen finished her initial draft of Pride and Prejudice entitled First Impressions. Two hundred years later, author Helen Fielding published Bridget Jones's Diary, a postmodern version of Austens's now classic novel about a young woman who refuses to be forced into marrying the wrong man. But for much of British history, women of all classes were expected to maintain the social hierarchy through marriage and to fulfill their destiny through pregnancy and motherhood no matter how they felt about their husbands or their married lives.  In this course, we'll explore the evolution of women's marital choices, sexual practices and economic rights in the UK over a two hundred year period from Austen to Fielding, viewing the changes that came along the way.

We'll begin by examining the nuances of 18th century marriages, how women regarded courtship and how the advent of the novel and the rise of the mercantile class began to restructure the rules about marriage and property in England. Then we'll see why in spite of their many accomplishments and a powerful female figurehead to lead the nation, Victorian women were barred from owning property, barred from voting, and forced into submissive marriages that could leave them either vulnerable and depressed or curiously satisfied with their constrained lives. Moving into the late 19th century, we'll take a look at how working class women dealt with the changes that technology had on their vocations, marital choices and sexual practices including premarital relations. Next we'll zoom into the pre and post WWI and WWII periods to see how women fared in the UK after war had permanently altered the gender lines. We'll end the semester on a lighter note with Bridget Jones's Diary, focusing on the liberated late 20th century woman as she struggles to find just the right guy, battles bad hair days, unwanted cellulite, poor career choices and non-committal boyfriends. Course requirements include 2 moderate length papers (6-8 pages) and a final (8-10 page) paper.

English 296 &P1: Honors Seminar, I
TOPIC: Middle-Class Women and the Marriage Plot

Goodlad

Tu 

11-12:50

In this course we consider the middle-class marriage plot from its classic form, in Jane Austen's fiction, through various Victorian manifestations (in prose works, novels, and journalistic essays), and in films and fiction of the twentieth century.  Our readings include Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1846), George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893), and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1997).  We will view Where the Boys Are (1960), An Unmarried Woman (1978), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Pretty Woman (1990), and some episodes of Sex and the City (1998-2000).  We will also read several critical works which will help us to think historically about the marriage plot and its shifting figurations of class, gender, and sexuality as we move through a dynamic period of almost 200 years.  In addition to written work, students will contribute oral presentations on literature/film and critical readings.

English 300 E: Writing About Literature
TOPIC: Women's Stories of Immigration in Contemporary American Literature

Mohr

MWF 

1

This course will focus on contemporary works by American women writers whose stories have roots around the world, including Mexico, China, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Our discussions will focus on issues related to racial, national, and gender identities as we compare the different perspectives on "America" that each author presents. We will also explore the role of literature as a bridge between past and present in stories that span generations. Because this course covers a period still in the process of definition, our task includes contributing to a critical framework for comparing these diverse contributions to American literature. Requirements will include contributions to class discussion, response papers, two critical essays, a midterm and final exam.

English 300 Q2: Writing About Literature
TOPIC: Jane Austen

Wood

TuTh

12:30-1:45

Jane Austen stands for many things she should not: prim mistress of the drawing room of English literature, romance novelist, and cash cow for the period film industry. In this course, which will be both reading and writing intensive, we will attempt to rescue Austen from her fans while examining the probing wit and genius for characterization that created the enormous readership for her novels in the first place. We will study Austen's larger novelistic craft—as a fashioner of sentimental crises, and commentator on a society she both lovingly details and despises—while not neglecting the micro-issues of Austen's irresistible style, as a supreme artist of the English sentence, the Mozart of the paragraph. Assessment will include short response papers, a long essay, and a mid-term and final exam.

English 355 D:  Major Authors 
TOPIC: Willa Cather in Context

Mohr 

MWF

11

This course will consider the major works of Willa Cather, including her well-known novels, O Pioneers! and My Antonia, as well as less familiar but equally important works, such as The Song of the Lark and the Pulitzer Prize-winning One of Ours. Although Cather's works are associated with the Great Plains, her fictional settings include urban and provincial locales from the southwestern to northeastern United States With this in mind, we will consider these works in relation to literary trends of regionalism and cosmopolitanism by studying short fiction and articles in contemporary literary magazines, which published her first writing. To support our scholarship, we will read critical work concerning issues related to place, race, and gender. We will explore the significance of different aspects of identity—regional, national, racial, and sexual—to her characterization of settlers and wayfarers of all stripes—immigrants and migrants, farmers and artists, priests and soldiers, in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Requirements include active participation in group discussions, response papers, two critical essays, and a final exam.

English 362 G: Topics in Modern Fiction      
TOPIC: Caribbean Women Writers

Castro

MW

3-4:15

This course focuses on novels and short stories by twentieth-century and contemporary Caribbean women writers.  Hailing from a region whose inhabitants can trace ancestry to Africa, Asia, Europe, and, naturally, the Americas, these writers invite us to reflect on "New World" histories and the societies they have produced.  Reading some works in translation, but focusing mainly on texts in English, we will ponder what commonalities exist among Caribbean nations that have been subject to different European colonial powers. What visions of cultural and racial "mixture" emerge from these works? How are histories of slavery and colonialism intertwined with sexual politics and gender expectations? Recurring themes for discussion will include "discovery," migration, exile, diaspora, the legacy of slavery, growing up under colonialism, and the recovery of lost or repressed histories. Throughout, we will consider how these writers figure the stakes of writing itself.  Requirements include thorough preparation for and active participation in class discussion, two papers, several in-class writing assignments, and a final exam.

English 424 R: Seminar in Seventeenth-Century Literature
TOPIC: Seventeenth Century Women Writers and the Public Sphere

Gray

Tu

1-2:50

Habermas's book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, is best known for its controversial presentation of a bourgeois public sphere that degenerates into twentieth-century "mass society." However, Habermas also charts the earlier mutation of the Renaissance idea of publicness—as a status attribute belonging most properly to King and court—into the eighteenth-century ideal of the public as a sphere of egalitarian discussion and debate. This class will explore this earlier transformation, pushing it back to the period of the English Revolution, and using it as a loose frame for historically-grounded discussions of writing by seventeenth-century women—and some men. Our main aims will be to investigate the changing ideas of literary authority and political community from 1600-1660, and to analyze the connections between sexual politics and public politics in the literature of this period. The kinds of questions we'll ask include: How useful are the terms public and private for the early modern period (or at all)? How central is gender identity (or fluidity) to ideas of publicity/the public? What kinds of normative or non-normative relations between men and women determine women's public presence in seventeenth-century print and manuscript culture? To what extent does public political change depend on or influence women's changing roles? We'll read a bit of Habermas, and a handful of his critics, but spend most of the semester on primary texts, coupling more canonical writers like Milton and James I with women writers as diverse as Aemilia Lanyer, Anna Trapnel, and Katherine Philips.

History 298 D: Invited Traditions: Contested  Modernities

Chandra 

M

1-2:50

Analyzing the role of tradition in the emergence of non – western modernities, this seminar course will study the identification, deployment and performance of caste, gender, language and religion in nineteenth and twentieth century India.  Scholarly and administrative identification of apparently traditional categories certainly buttressed colonial power in British India.  But these categories were rapidly adopted by 'indigenous social groups, creating new forms of cultural and institutional power.  Far from remaining colonial impositions, the elements of caste, gender, language and religion have supported new enactments of tradition and modernity, and have reinforced one another in generating social change.  Our aim will be to understand why these particular identities came to be naturalized through history and to explore the method by which they sustained other, polarized identities.  We will question the importance of the body as providing the site for the elaboration of these politics, and explore the potential for resistance to this history.  Historicizing the power of these apparently timeless categories, this seminar will also question the new permanence claimed by these identities in allegations of the incomplete and failed modernity of India.

History 481: Problems in Russian History: Late Imperial Russia

Steinberg

Tu

3-4:50

Major themes in the history and historiography of Russia from the early 19th century through the revolution of 1917. The course focuses on the exercise and justifications of authority, intellectual and cultural trends, and social life.  Central to the course are questions of historical methodology and theory as well as of the interpretation of the Russian past. The emphasis is on examining new work in the field. Themes to be explored include the imperial autocracy, empire and nation, self and collectivity, political ideology, reform and revolution, rural society, industrialization and urban life, cultural innovation, popular cultures, gender, religion, and social conflict and cohesion.  Questions of gender are especially central to the following thematic weeks: Rethinking the Russian intelligentsia; Peasants after emancipation: tradition and change, community and self; Popular culture, entertainment, and urban modernities; literature, history, culture; Women, Gender, Bodies: New Directions in Cultural and Social History; Sex and the crisis of liberal modernity.

History 487 C: Problems in American History Since 1815    
Topic: Disease and Society.
Meets with Hist  492 E

Reagan

F       

1-2:50

Disease has been an essential component of the processes of categorization, division, and unification of various populations by nations, by the state, and by "the sick" and "the healthy" themselves.  By using the history of disease as an organizing principle for the course, students will not only gain knowledge of the history of medicine, public health, and patients, but will also analyze power, politics, and society.  For instance, we will analyze how health and disease have historically been part of immigration policies and the definitions of "foreign," "citizen," "native," "criminal," or "degenerate."  Discussion will include thinking about disease as socially constructed, culturally understood, and historically changing, as a "metaphor" for society.  We will discuss how the understanding of disease causation has changed and the implications for public policy.  Does biology create diseases or does society or do individuals?  Who is responsible for spreading disease and for caring for the sick?  How is disease defined and when and why are some diseases noticed and others ignored?  How have gender, race, class, religion, and sexuality shaped and defined disease and a society's responses to the sick?  We will discuss how the state has responded to different diseases over time and when the interests of public health and individual civil liberties have come into conflict.  This course will also provide an opportunity to think about the body and how it is seen and understood over time.  How have the body's abilities and disabilities defined, divided, and been sources of power and oppression?  Selections from the new literature in disability studies will be part of our conversation.

Students will be expected to write historiographic or small research papers, selected from a broad range of topics with the guidance of the professor.  Along with in-depth reading in history, readings from other disciplines such as anthropology and communications will be included.  Readings are comparative, although the emphasis will be on the U.S. through the twentieth century.  Articles and books from Europe and the Non-West will be included.

History 489A: Problems in African History
Topic: African History at the Disciplinary. 
Meets with African Studies 422

Allman

Tu 

3-4:50

This course focuses on the most recent and exciting scholarship in the interdisciplinary study of Africa's past. We will read not simply for substance and argument, but for method, positionality, audience and theory. In some senses, we begin at square one. During the first three weeks, we will think critically about the development of African Studies, the invention of African history as a discipline within that area studies paradigm, and their uneasy relationship with (if not contested origins in) colonial ethnography. The remaining weeks are thematically focused and are intended to bring into sharp relief the methods, theories and analysis of interdisciplinary scholars of Africa's past. Course requirements include participation in seminar discussion, two long essays, a book review and short weekly reaction papers.

Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) 110: Introduction to Family Studies
Fulfills the General Education Social Sciences requirement.

This course is an overview of family development, including courtship, marriage, parenting, the aging family, and family crisis; it emphasizes the application of research findings to individual decision making.

HDFS 210: Comparative Family Organization
Same as ANTH 210.  Fulfills the General Education Social Sciences requirement.

This course emphasizes the link between economic organization/change and family organization/change.  We look at family life in both historical and cross-cultural perspective.  It is required for all HDFS undergraduates, and satisfies a social science general education requirement for others.

HDFS 310: Contemporary American Family
Prerequisite: HDFS 210 or consent of instructor; and 6 hours of social science.

Umana-Taylor

Tu Th     

9-10:30

Examination of the variety of forms families assume in the United States; families are compared in the areas of kinship, family organization, patterns of interpersonal relationships, socialization, values, and integration with the larger society.

HDFS 335:  Latina/Latino Families and Children in the United States
Same as LLS 335.  Prerequisite:  HDFS 110 or 210.

Umana-Taylor          

Tu

3:30 – 5:50

This course will introduce students to the existing work on Latino families and children living in the U.S., with a special focus on the diversity that exists within Latino families.  Topics such as immigration, intergenerational relationships, ethnic identity, and education will be examined.

HDFS 370: Family Conflict Management
Prerequisite:  HDFS 210 or 310 or equivalent.

Kramer 

TuTh  

11-12:30

Examines processes of conflict management in family and community disputes; emphasizes communication, collaboration, and mediation as modes of dispute settlement.

HDFS 419: Seminar in Family Research and Theory
Prerequisite:  Graduate standing in HCD or consent of instructor.

Oswald

W

2:30-5:30

This graduate seminar covers multiple contemporary family theories, their historical development, and their use in family research. Frameworks include symbolic interactionism, exchange theories, feminist theories, queer theory, family systems theory, ethnomethodology/family discourse, and family resiliency.

Kinesiology 249:  Sport and Modern Society
Same as SOC 249.  Contact the Department of Kinesiology for more information.
See Timetable for discussion sections.

Staff (Lect.)

MW 

11

This course focuses on concepts of power, ideology and hegemony in sporting practice.  Intersections between gender, race and social class receive considerable attention, as each has a direct relationship to sporting practice.  The complexity and contradictions of these intersections are closely examined.

Labor and Industrial Relations 466:  International Human Resource Management
Prerequisite:  Graduate standing.

Lawler

Th

2-4:50

Deals with human resource management practices in global companies.  Primary emphasis on the selection, training, assessment, and compensation of employees in international (expatriate) assignments.  Relevant material would include cross-national differences in culture as these relate to work, roles of women and also family life, the issues confronting women international assignments, gender-based employment discrimination in international assignments, and marital and family issues related to expatriation and repatriation.

Library & Information Science Librarian 250 RGI: Race, Gender and Information Technology
Prequisite: sophomore, junior or senior standing.

Searing

TuTh

11:30-12:50

This course examines how gender and race affect, and are affected by, information technologies.  Race and gender representations will be studied in different settings as they intersect with information use and technology practices.  The course is framed by two broad, interrelated concepts -- the expression of identity (individual and group)in cyberspace and the "digital divide."  The course readings are drawn from several disciplines and an eclectic array of in-class and out-of-class projects and exercises will be assigned.

Philosophy 107 :  Introduction to Political Philosophy
Topic: Citizenship and Human Rights; War and Political Violence; Feminist Perspectives.

Dickson

MWF 

11

Examination of the philosophical bases of democracy and some alternative political forms.

Rhetoric 133 S:  Principles of Composition
Topic: "Queer  Eye/I": Contemporary Rhetorics of Sexuality
Fulfills the campus Advanced Composition requirement.

Macharia 

TuTh 

2-3:15

In the wake of shows such as Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Boy Meets Boy, it seems we are inundated with gay characters-note the paucity of lesbians. Does this media explosion indicate a new-sound respect for alternative sexual identities? How do we reconcile this sort of hyper-publicity with the Supreme Court's recent decision to decriminalize sodomy and the current bill under consideration in Congress to restrict marriage rights to heterosexual couples? And, because this is a class in rhetoric, what do language and writing have to do with all of this?

Russ 315: Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature in Translation: Fallen Women and Superfluous Men
Same as C LIT 337

Sobol

MWF

3-4:50

The course offers a survey of the great nineteenth-century Russian literary tradition. Works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov will be discussed within their literary, cultural, and historical context. The discussion will focus on the theme of fallen women and superfluous men and will explore how this recurrent gender paradigm is used to address various ethical, aesthetic, philosophical, and sociopolitical concerns, among them the issue of national and imperial identity, the mind-body problem, and human sexuality.

NO KNOWLEDGE OF RUSSIAN IS NECESSARY

SCAN 363: Ibsen in Translation
Same as CLIT 363 and THEAT 363

Wright

Tu

3-4:50

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen is a portal figure in the development of modern drama. His plays, many of which remain in the repertory not only in Scandinavia but throughout the world, address interpersonal, social, and ethical dilemmas that are just as relevant to a contemporary audience as they were in the late nineteenth century. Several of Ibsen's best-known works have female protagonists (Nora in A Doll House, Mrs. Alving in Ghosts, Hedda Gabler in the play of that title, Rebecca West in Rosmersholm) and focus explicitly on what we today call gender issues, in particular the forces, both social and psychological, that hinder women from achieving their full potential. This topic may, in fact, be traced through the entire cycle of prose dramas from Pillars of Society to When We Dead Awaken, all twelve of which will be read and discussed in the course.

Spanish 256 N2/Spanish 290 N2: Women, Gender and Sexuality in 20^th Century Spanish American and Caribbean Literature.

Goldman

TuTh

1:30-2:45

Do gender and sexuality in 20^th century Spanish American and Caribbean literature constitute a mechanism of resistance and change, or do these works simply produce subjects which--although compelling and dramatic in their apparent revolutionary instability--ultimately reinforce the status quo that they appear to challenge?  The purpose of this course is to examine issues of gender in contemporary prose fiction, theater and films. Drawing upon recent theories of gender and sexuality, we will analyze how salient representations of gender contribute to, shape, and contest the articulation of Spanish American cultural identities.   Class will be taught in Spanish and is generally open to undergraduates who have completed Span227 or equivalent (students should contact Amy Swanson in Spanish if they have general questions about eligibility and/or how to register for the course).  For additional information, see http://www.sip.uiuc.edu/degoldma/256.html.

SPAN 442.  Urban Desires: Sex and the City in Caribbean Cultures.

Goldman

Tu

3-5

During their unexpected trajectory through the decidedly non-urban spaces of Australia, Bernadette (Terence Stamp) comments to the other two drag queens making the journey  that although the city is traditionally viewed as a liberating space, perhaps the suburbs are really about keeping us in.  Over the last several decades, increased critical attention has been paid to questions of space, and it has become an important focus within several academic disciplines. We are now attending to the encounters between different cultures and the repercussions that these have on definitions of space and identity.  More specifically, major metropolitan centers throughout the hemisphere are often studied as sites of development (whether productive, excessive or insufficient), hybridity, transgression and transnationalism.

This course seeks to explore visions of the metropole in Caribbean and U.S. Caribbean cultures.  We will analyze the intersections between urban spaces and the formation of local/global subjectivities.  That is, to what extent do real-and-imagined urban spaces constitute a site of containment, possibility, uneven development, hybridity and/or homogenizing hegemony in Caribbean cultural production?  How does desire--understood in terms of sexuality, cosmpolitanism (i.e. desire for the urban), as a mechanism of territorialization and/or the negotiation of power--interact with urban spaces in Caribbean cultures?

The readings will be in both Spanish and English, but the class discussions will be conducted in Spanish.

Speech Communications 296 AP: Gender and Media

Press

MW 

2-3:20

Examines how the mass media influence our development as gendered individual. Considers various critical feminist theories and how they have been applied to the study of mass media, representations of women and men in film and television, and the functions of these representations for different segments of the audience. Special attention is given to the history of mass media portrayals of gender and to feminist criticisms of these portrayals. The appeal of "female" genres such as melodramas and soap operas as well as "male" genres such as crime drama will be explored. We will also consider alternatives to mainstream images in the media. Particular emphasis will be given in this course to images of gender among adolescents.

Theatre 291/491: Women in Theatre from Africa and The African Diaspora
Meets with AFRO 298.Prerequisite: Sophomore standing and above.

Perkins

MW

3-4:50

This course focuses on the history and aesthetics of African, Asian, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinas/Latinos, and Native Americans through the study of plays/productions.  Much of the material covered from Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean is based on primary research from my travels to these places, where my focus is on African/African Diaspora women playwrights.