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How to Write a Why This College Essay

You’re sitting down to finish up a college application. You’ve spent countless hours perfecting your Personal Statement. Finally, it’s as good as any 650-word manifestation of your soul can get—you think. 

Either way, it’s definitely done. Then you click open the Common App and see that there’s a writing supplement. Yikes.

This college is asking you that one simple but dreaded question: “Why do you want to go to our college?”

This experience happens often in the college application process. Most students have been through it in some form. If you find yourself in this situation, you’ve probably done the right things to get to this point. You’ve focused on your most important story first. You’ve (hopefully) given yourself time to do a great job on this final step. 

And the Why Essay is not a step you can afford to gloss over. A Why This College essay might sound generic, but it can play a vital role in convincing a college that you are highly likely to accept an offer of admission if they choose to extend it. 

In fact, that is the point: in each Why This College essay that you write, you are being given a chance to prove your fit with the college . In its simplest form, this is about connecting your principles, beliefs, values, and dreams to the culture and opportunities at the college you’re writing about. On the next level, it’s about expressing both what you intend to contribute to that college’s community and what you hope to gain from it. 

But don’t so many other students share your same interests and motivations? I mean, kids who write the Why NYU essay all want to live in New York City, right?

Yes, and no.

Like the Personal Statement, it’s hard to compose a mind-blowingly, earth-shatteringly different Why This College essay. The reasons for that are obvious: colleges have their own identities and images that they cultivate deliberately. It makes sense that students applying to the same college would have overlapping motivations. Clubs and classes only come into being, after all, if there is a collective interest in them. Certain locations and campuses appeal to people who come from certain contexts. The philosophical naturalist, no matter how brilliant, may well end up at Deep Springs over MIT. 

The point is that a Why This College essay is not about being completely original. But it is about proving you know the college, and yourself, inside and out. And that deep knowledge makes you even more certain that you’d thrive at this particular college.

Why do college admissions officers want to read Why This College essays?

Consider the perspective of college admissions officers trying to compose a compelling, impressive, and versatile class of teenagers. It’s important to recruit excellent students, but it’s also important to draw good people. Plus, each college has its own identity. Admissions departments are keenly aware of their stakeholders: administrators, alumni, faculty, current students, staff, and more. They also stay cognizant of the traditions and values their institution has been built upon. When it comes to admissions decisions, the students these Admissions Officers bring to campus are their legacy.

Thus, there are some clear reasons why an Admissions Committee gives a Why This College essay prompt:

• They want to bring in students who are highly motivated to make the most of their college experience and who will go on to do great things even beyond their college years. 
• They want to accept students who will matriculate, and thus protect their yield.
• They want to create a culture full of people who are authentically engaging and kind-hearted, albeit in their own ways.

In this video, I dive into even more detail on why colleges care about “fit” and how that should guide your research throughout the college admissions process:

So I hope that now, you’re over that initial moment of frustration or panic. You’ve rolled your eyes enough—now you’re ready to roll up your sleeves. 

You’re in the right place. This article will break down how to write a Why This College essay, with tips that help you demonstrate the real connection you feel with the college at hand.

Which colleges assign Why This College essays?

Selective colleges of many varieties give Why This College essays that come in different shapes and sizes. Some, like UMass Amherst or Tufts, provide short and simple prompts with low word counts. Others, like NYU, provide more detail in the essay prompt and more space to work your content into. And still others, such as UPenn, break the Why This College essay into distinct parts that focus on your intellectual and academic interests and community engagement. And there are dozens more that adapt the Why This College essay to some element of their school culture that they feel is essential to their particular school identity.

Here are some sample prompts and word counts that capture the breadth of the Why This College essay spectrum:

• UMass Amherst : Please tell us why you want to attend UMass Amherst? (100 words)
• Brandeis : Why would you like to attend Brandeis? (250 words)
• UPenn : Considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected, how will you explore your academic and intellectual interests at The University of Pennsylvania? (300-450 words) + At Penn, learning and growth happens outside of the classroom, too. How will you explore the community at Penn? Consider how this community will help shape your perspective and identity, and how your identity and perspective will help shape this community. (150-200 words)
• Cornell Engineering : For you, what makes Cornell Engineering special? Why do you want to attend Cornell Engineering? (200 words)
• NYU : We would like to know more about your interest in NYU. What motivated you to apply to NYU? Why have you applied or expressed interest in a particular campus, school, college, program, and or area of study? If you have applied to more than one, please also tell us why you are interested in these additional areas of study or campuses. We want to understand – Why NYU? (400 words)
• Tufts : Which aspects of the Tufts undergraduate experience prompt your application? In short, “Why Tufts?” (100-150 words)
• Lehigh : How did you first learn about Lehigh University and what motivated you to apply? (100-150 words)
• Boston University : What about being a student at Boston University most excites you? (250 words)
• University of Michigan: Describe the unique qualities that attract you to the specific undergraduate College or School (including preferred admission and dual degree programs) to which you are applying at the University of Michigan. How would that curriculum support your interests? (550 words)

What does a college want to see in a Why This College essay?

There are two main things that colleges are looking for in your Why This College essay. The first is what you will gain from your time at their college, and the second is what you will contribute to their college community. Here are the top factors to consider for each.

• Concrete examples of how you want to grow socially, pursue your academic interests, take advantage of new opportunities, create new groups or influence on campus, question your own perspective or opinions, engage in different activities, meet and connect with new people, form bonds with mentors, expand your professional network, learn about certain fields or industries, attain funding for projects, meet collaborators or co-founders, develop specific skills, etc.
• How will you enable your peers to also gain more from their college experience? This could include talents you’ll share, distinct opinions or personal perspectives you can add, big ambitions for new initiatives, specialization in a niche field uncommon at the school, supporting the student body’s mental health, impacting sustainability, bringing in more media attention or funding, working to solve a problem on campus, etc.

It’s important to keep both sides of the equation in mind as you plan out your essay. Most students gravitate towards what they can gain from their college experience. You’re probably excited about the opportunities that the future holds, and you might not have strong convictions about how you will add to a new community.

To get you thinking about the next few years in more detail, we’ve developed this handy 2×2 on how to assess your college fit. The top left quadrant is easiest, because it sticks to what you and the college are good at right now, in the present. The top right and bottom left push you to do increasing speculation about what can change, both for you personally and for the college. The bottom right quadrant presents the final challenge: considering how you and the college will both be better off in the long term because of your attendance.

Questions to consider as you fill out your College Fit Research 2×2:

• If you feel strongly about being in a certain location, why exactly do you think this will be the best setting, region, or place for you to thrive and grow? Likewise for the size of a school, if that is an important factor for you.
• Beyond general fields like “biology” or “literature” — what specific topics are you fascinated by and want to study? These should be more specialized questions or problems in a given field that you want to pursue answers or solutions to. 
• What social activities have you not been able to participate in yet but are excited to pursue in college? Why? (Your reasoning should go deeper than “I couldn’t do this before, so now I want to do it” — think through why you missed this opportunity and how it will help you develop a new skill, trait, relationship, etc.)
• What talent or skill would you like to develop in a new way or setting?
• What kind of people do you really want to meet, and why?
• How would you like to explore your professional interests and link these to your scholarly learning?
• What types of campus traditions or values are you looking for, and why? Do you want a huge sports culture with lots of excitement around attending games? Or a quirky intellectual culture with a high priority on spontaneous debates and showcasing of odd talents?

Filling in the Gain x Gain can be surprisingly tough. You may end up feeling like you’re exaggerating your potential impact or expecting too much. But big dreams are more compelling than little ones. Know yourself well enough to stay realistic, but believe in yourself hard enough to know you’ll keep growing toward whatever goals you set.

Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to jump into researching and writing.

How should you write a Why This College essay?

Now that you’re all set up, you’ll be happy to hear that there is a nice, clean, step-by-step process you can follow in order to write a meaningful Why This College essay. Unlike the Personal Statement, these essays follow more rules and thus are much more tameable beasts. That said, resist the temptation to jump into Why essays before you have a solid concept for your Personal Statement. Given that this core common app college essay will be the single most important piece of your application story, you really need to have it in place—at least to some extent—in order to know your own angle thoroughly enough.

So, with your Personal Statement and Activity List beside you, here’s what to do when preparing for the Why This College essay:

• Watch our video on college research for a primer on the importance of this often overlooked process.
• Gather keywords related to both your academic and intellectual and your social and personal interests.
• Use various combinations of these keywords in search engines like Google and social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.
• Find as many examples and details as possible on professors, classes, curriculum, facilities, traditions, events, clubs, organizations, institutes, study abroad, professional opportunities, internships, research projects, newsworthy events, and more.
• Write down some personal questions about the school that you haven’t been able to find full or satisfying answers to even after all this research.
• Reach out to people you have some connection to who are familiar with the college, ideally through firsthand experience. These could be family friends or relatives, alumni of your school, professors you worked or studied with, or others. Ask them your unanswered questions.
• Fill in your Bring x Gain 2×2
• It’s important to synthesize your 2×2 by clearly stating what you want the reader to understand about you after reading this essay. This will help you stay focused and be a very useful resource to refer back to continually throughout your drafting process.
• Use this sentence to fill in the takeaway you are aiming for: “[Your name] is the student who will contribute _____________ to our college and use our college’s distinctive experience in order to ______________.”
• Using your single sentence, make sure that your research examples are all aligned with your main objective. Do they each support your point? This is a skill you have likely already developed by matching body paragraphs to thesis statements for your academic essays. Use the same principles here. 
• State your purpose clearly. If you have 200 words or fewer, you have no space for a hook or anecdote. If you have more than 200 words, only use a less direct introduction if you are completely sure it adds to the meaning of the essay.
• Present links between your own qualities and interests and the opportunities the school presents which most excite you. Ensure that each detail is personal; avoid generic claims or common college buzzwords.
• Wrap up with a sentence or two on why exactly you are confident that this specific undergraduate college is the best place for you to grow toward your goals, whether they are academic, social, personal, or professional.
• For help with the actual writing process, check out our tips on removing stress from the college application essay writing process . 
• Find a person you trust to give you constructive feedback and have them ask you questions about why you want to go to this college. It’s especially useful if this is someone who is familiar with higher education in general, the college in question, or admissions interviews.
• Speak honestly and naturally, without trying to quote your essay or remember every exact detail of what you wrote. Can you remember some of your examples effortlessly? That’s a great indication that you are truly ready to make your strongest pitch to this college.
• After you speak with them, ask them to take a look at your Why This College essay. Is it just as compelling as you were when you were speaking aloud? More so, or less so? Ask as many follow-up questions as you can in order to get useful feedback that you can implement.
• Make any final changes and wrap it up!

If you set your sights properly and follow this process, you’ll produce a Why This College essay that shows your authenticity and compels a reader to believe that you would thrive at their college.

For expert assistance, turn to our reputable College Admissions Consulting service for personalized support.

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University of Massachusetts Amherst 2020-21 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Regular Decision: 

University of Massachusetts Amherst 2020-21 Application Essay Question Explanations

The Requirements: 2 essays of 100 words each

Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why     

UMass Amherst’s supplement asks one question with two prompts: why here? It’s the most classic question around, and the 100 word limit really lightens the load. The key to this simple supplement is budgeting your information wisely to ensure that each essay you write is not only distinct, but reveals something totally new to admissions. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: a straightforward supplement is an indication that your answers should be impeccable!

Please tell us why you want to attend UMass Amherst? (100 words)

It doesn’t get simpler than this: why here? Although the word limit is tight, the key to any successful Why essay is good old fashioned research. So set aside a little time to pore over the UMass website and figure out exactly what aspects of the school excite you most. You’ll want to keep your explanation top line, but personalize it with specific details about the clubs, departments, and other opportunities you hope to take advantage of. Consider the physical as well as social and scholarly aspects of the school. Maybe you like that it’s close to home. Or maybe you’re all about moving to a remote location very far away from where you currently live. If you’re a language buff, maybe that linguistics department is calling your name with a side of study abroad. But don’t go too crazy on the academics, you’ll have time to go deep on your scholarly interests in the next essay, and as we said, space is tight. What do your particular choices and interests say about you as a person? What do they say about UMass Amherst? How do you and UMass fit together?

Please tell us why you chose the Majors you did? (100 words)

We told you to save the academics for later! Now you can get into it about why you love a certain subject. Most importantly, though, you will want to explain why you want to study it at UMass Amherst in particular. Where do your interests link up with the work of a particular professor or program? Maybe you still covet the rock collection you started in 5th grade and have your eye on UMass Amherst’s geology program. And maaaaybe you’ve been looking for a way to share your passion for mineral formations with the world, which is what makes the earth science teaching track absolutely ideal for you. Drill down to the details that sync up with your passions and interests. And if you’re undecided, that’s okay too! Immerse yourself in the course catalog and rejoice in your many options. Can you describe how you would explore different subject areas? What makes UMass Amherst the perfect place to discover your passion?

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, what do umass amherst essay prompts typically look like.

Hello all! I'm planning on applying to UMass Amherst next year, and I'd like to get a head start on working on the essays. Could anyone share what types of essay prompts they've seen for UMass Amherst? Thanks in advance!

Hello! It's great that you're getting started on your essays for UMass Amherst. The essay prompts can vary from year to year, but I can give you a general idea of what they might look like. Typically, UMass Amherst asks applicants to write about one or more of the following topics:

1. Personal Growth: Describe a moment or an experience that challenged your beliefs and preconceptions, leading you to personal growth and transformation.

2. Involvement and Leadership: Share a time when you took on a leadership role or made a unique contribution to a group or community. Discuss what you learned and how this experience changed you.

3. Academic Passion: Explain your interest in a particular area of study, how you discovered it, and why you want to pursue it at UMass Amherst.

4. Diversity and Inclusivity: Reflect on the importance of diversity and inclusivity, and how you would contribute to fostering a welcoming environment for everyone in the UMass Amherst community.

5. Overcoming Challenges: Write about a challenge or obstacle that you encountered, and how you handled it. Share the impact it had on you, and what you learned from the experience.

Please note that these are just examples and not the official essay prompts for UMass Amherst. To get the most accurate and up-to-date information, make sure to check the university's admissions website or the Common Application during the application season. Best of luck with your application!

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Home — Application Essay — University — University of Massachusetts Amherst

University of Massachusetts Amherst Admission Essays

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A Good Amherst College Essay Example

Amherst College is a prestigious liberal arts school in Western Massachusetts. Perhaps best known for it’s open curriculum , students challenge themselves to study diverse disciplines to become well rounded individuals. It’s a small school with only 1,800 students, leading to a close knit student body. If students are looking for a niche course that may not be offered at Amherst, they can access the Five College Consortium , a system of five colleges including Mount Holyoke, Smith, Hampshire, and UMass Amherst, to take additional courses. 

Given how highly selective Amherst admissions are, you need to have strong essays to stand out from your fellow applicants. In this post, we will be going over a real essay a student submitted to Amherst. We will also share what the essay did well and where it could be improved to give you a better idea of how to approach your Amherst essays.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Read our Amherst College essay breakdown to get a comprehensive overview of this year’s supplemental prompts. 

Amherst College Essay Example

Prompt:   Respond to one of the following quotations in an essay of not more than 300 words. It is not necessary to research, read, or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original, personal responses to these short excerpts. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply an argumentative essay.

“Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat. Rather, achievement can be all the more satisfying because of obstacles surmounted.”    – Attributed to William Hastie, Amherst College Class of 1925, the first African-American to serve as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals

Bright morning, clear skies, chirping birds – a beautiful and peaceful scenery indeed, but a stark contrast to the unrest I felt within. The cassava pellets (garri) were burning, and my heart was racing. In a panic, I threw sand underneath the pan to quench the flames before all the garri got burnt.

Earlier, grandpa had asked if I had any questions concerning the roasting process. I thought I had watched him enough to know the ropes and said no. Now, I had failed him woefully and ruined his business, as he sold the garri. Guilt sliced through my heart like a hot knife through butter, and with pain and shame, I took the little I could salvage back home.

My grandfather looked utterly disgusted and very disappointed. “Mandla, why did you not ask? You put in too much firewood—an avoidable mistake. Mandla, you should have asked. There is no shame in not knowing everything.” 

That is the thing I have learned about knowing some things – you mistake it for knowing everything. I could defend a ball like Maldini and evaluate large sums my classmates couldn’t manage in my head. I could do it all, so I felt that I could roast garri without grandpa’s help. The charred mess and acrid smoke of my mistake showed me that I could fail. And also, that I could rise from it. My next bag of garri was golden and fragrant and as perfect as the lesson. Returning to school, I asked questions in class whenever I had the chance because I wanted to know. 

The insatiable beast that was my curiosity kept me on my toes and developed into a strong affinity for knowledge acquisition. I had transformed as an individual, and I had the unfortunate garri incident to thank immensely.

What the Essay Did Well

Overall, this is a strong essay that shares a specific example of a challenging experience and how it changed this student’s perspective. Particularly well executed, the student selected a unique experience (cooking garri is not something every high schooler does) and is able to relate it to other aspects of their life (asking for help and being curious). 

The third and fourth paragraphs are particularly strong in the way they develop the plot and provide personal reflection. Quoting the student’s grandfather is a concise, and simultaneously more engaging, way to reveal the climax of the story. We can feel their humiliation upon hearing their grandfather get upset. Additionally, his last advice, “ There is no shame in not knowing everything ,” does a great job of summing up the lesson learned and connecting back to the quote from the prompt.

The student then transitions smoothly to expanding beyond the world of cooking garri to demonstrate how they can apply this lesson to soccer and academics. This shows a level of personal awareness that admission officers are looking to see. Being able to think critically about yourself and admit to your shortcomings is a skill many people struggle with, so the fact this paragraph is able to convey this student’s ability to do so is very important.

What Could Be Improved

The biggest drawback of this essay is it gets too lost in flowery language, resulting in some key details not getting the attention they require. We get a third of the way through the essay setting up the situation with the “ Bright morning, clear skies, chirping birds ” and how “ Guilt sliced through my heart like a hot knife through butter”  before we see what this student learned from their experience—the heart of the essay.

When we finally do see them discuss their growth, the student says “ I had transformed as an individual,”  but does not have the space to explain how or why. In order for an essay about overcoming challenges to make a lasting impact, the reader needs to appreciate how you emerged from the experience differently. 

In order to make more space to include these important details, the student could have cut down on the colorful prose, especially if it doesn’t directly relate to the plot of their story. They could still demonstrate their writing skills by opening with a description of the burning garri: “ Yuck! An acrid smell attacked my nostrils and raven-black smoke stung my eyes. It was only when I looked down to the cast iron in the blazing fire that my stomach fell: I burned the garri. ” Replacing unnecessary imagery and metaphors (like the chirping birds and hot knife) with creative language that furthers the plot is a far better use of this student’s limited space.

If they intentionally went through and asked themselves “Does this line contribute to the story or is it just an example of my writing skills?” or “Is this a new piece of information or am I repeating an idea?”, they could save enough space to include elaboration on how this experience transformed them as a personal. 

Where to Get Your Amherst  Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Amherst essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Harvard, MIT, Tufts, UMass Amherst receive failing grades in ADL’s campus antisemitism report

• Published: Apr. 12, 2024, 9:54 a.m.

From left to right, Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President Dr. Sally Kornbluth listen during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) AP

• Juliet Schulman-Hall | [email protected]

Harvard University , Tufts University , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts Amherst received failing grades in ADL’s most recent campus antisemitism report card .

“ADL produced this Report Card during a time of incredible volatility on college campuses. It takes the temperature at a moment in time and provides a roadmap for improving campus climate,” the ADL wrote on its website .

Of the 85 universities or colleges rated, ADL assessed 10 institutions based in Massachusetts.

Those included: Amherst College (B), Boston University (C), Brandeis University (A), Harvard University (F), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (F), Northeastern University (C), Tufts University (F), University of Massachusetts Amherst (F), Wellesley College (D) and Williams College (C).

Brandeis University, which received an A grade, was only one of two institutions that received the grade out of 85 universities and colleges.

The report card included institutions that had the highest percentage of Jewish student populations and 60 of the colleges were selected by Hillel’s Top 60 Jewish colleges guide .

The top 30 national colleges and top 10 liberal arts colleges were also selected based on US News and World Report. Institutions that were almost entirely Jewish with little publicly available data on the student makeup were excluded from the 85 chosen.

Each of the colleges and universities were assessed based on 21 criteria which were broken down into three groups: administrative action and policies, incidents on campus, and Jewish student life on campus .

Additionally, a questionnaire was distributed on the campuses to allow the institutions to self-report; researchers gathered incident rates and high-profile investigations; a short survey by College Pulse sampled 160 Jewish college students to help weigh the ranked categories; and campus stakeholders such as campus Hillel and Chabad directors provided input.

The four Massachusetts institutions with failing grades had varied reasons for the poor assessment but each had a high or medium number of severe antisemitic and anti-Zionist incidents.

Some had hostile anti-Zionist student government activity and student groups, and all had many antisemitic speakers or programs on campus, according to the civil rights group.

Harvard’s and MIT’s presidents made headlines in December after joining a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism with the University of Pennsylvania president.

During the hearing, each president equivocated over a question about whether calls for genocide violated their code of conduct. Each said that those calls would depend on the context.

Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill apologized and later resigned .

Dr. Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received support from the school’s governing body following the hearing and still remains president.

The House Education and Workforce Committee launched an antisemitism investigation into MIT, and subpoenaed Harvard for its failure to produce “priority documents” related to the antisemitism investigation.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst also made its share of news after 56 students and one faculty member were arrested for trespassing at the school during an October pro-Palestine rally.

Another student was arrested in November after punching a Jewish student and spitting on an Israeli flag at a demonstration on campus Friday, the university’s center for Jewish life said.

In one instance at Tufts, accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia spiraled during a student senate meeting.

The meeting was intended to discuss proposed resolutions regarding the Israel-Hamas war.

Three of the four resolutions were passed, including a resolution for the institution to divest from “Israeli apartheid;”, end the sale of Israeli products in dining; and a resolution that the president and administrative acknowledge the “genocide in Gaza” and apologize for previous statements they have made, according to the student group the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts.

During the conversation, Jewish students were reportedly spat on, told to “Go back to Israel,” were told nobody wanted them at the institution, and were called names, Tufts Hillel director Rabbi Naftali Brawer wrote on social media .

More higher ed

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The 85 institutions were in part assessed by a panel of experts varying from former college presidents to nonprofit leaders to Jewish student organization representatives.

Among those on the panel include Sally Mason, the former president of the University of Iowa; Dr. Jeffrey Kopstein, professor of political science and the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Irvine; Dr. William “Brit” Kirwan, Chancellor Emeritus of the University System of Maryland, and Libby Anderson, CEO at Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity.

Each of the institution’s grades may be updated on a rolling basis based on additional information but an overall update, which includes expanding the number of institutions assessed, will be done on an annual basis.

If you are a current student or alum at one of the 85 colleges and universities on the report card, you are able to add your feedback by filling out a form.

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Fall 2024 Course Guide

Wgss courses.

Attention Majors and Minors! For those of you that declared the major or minor before Fall 2020, please contact your advisor.

WGSS 187 – Gender, Sexuality and Culture Monday, Wednesday  11:15-12:05 p.m. B Aultman This course offers an introduction to some of the basic concepts and theoretical perspectives in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Drawing on disciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies, students will engage critically with issues such as gender inequities, sexuality, families, work, media images, queer issues, masculinity, reproductive rights, and history. Throughout the course, students will explore how experiences of gender and sexuality intersect with other social constructs of difference, including race/ethnicity, class, and age. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which interlocking systems of oppression have shaped and influenced the historical, cultural, social, political, and economical contexts of our lives, and the social movements at the local, national and transnational levels which have led to key transformations. (Gen. Ed. I, DU) WGSS 201 – Gender and Difference:   Critical Analyses Tuesday, Thursday  2:30-3:45 p.m. - TBD Tuesday, Thursday   10:00-11:15 a.m.   – Laura Briggs An introduction to the vibrant field of women, gender, and sexuality studies, this course familiarizes students with the basic concepts in the field and draws connections to the world in which we live. An interdisciplinary field grounded in commitment to both intellectual rigor and individual and social transformation, WGSS asks fundamental questions about the conceptual and material conditions of our lives. What are “gender,” “sexuality,” “race,” and “class?” How are gender categories, in particular, constructed differently across social groups, nations, and historical periods? What are the connections between gender and socio-political categories such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, (dis)ability and others? How do power structures such as sexism, racism, heterosexism, and classism and others intersect? How can an understanding of gender and power enable us to act as agents of individual and social change? Emphasizing inquiry in transnational feminisms, critical race feminisms, and sexuality studies, this course examines gender within a broad nexus of identity categories, social positions, and power structures. Areas of focus may include queer and trans studies; feminist literatures and cultures; feminist science studies; reproductive politics; gender, labor and feminist economics, environmental and climate justice; the politics of desire, and others. Readings include a range of queer, feminist and women thinkers from around the world, reflecting diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives in the field. WGSS 205 – Feminist Health Politics Tuesday, Thursday   10:00-11:15 a.m. Kirsten Leng What is health?  What makes health a matter of feminism?  And what might a feminist health politics look like?  These questions lay at the heart of this course.  In Feminist Health Politics, we will examine how health becomes defined, and will question whether health and disease are objectively measured conditions or subjective states.  We will also consider why and how definitions and standards of health have changed over time; why and how standards and adjudications of health vary according to gender, race, sexuality, class, and nationality; and how definitions of health affect the way we value certain bodies and ways of living.   Additionally, we will explore how knowledge about health is created; how environmental conditions, social location, politics, and economic conditions affect health; how various groups have fought for changes to health care practices and delivery; and how experiences of health and illness have been reported and represented. WGSS 220 – Sustainability, Gender, Global Environment M,W,F  11:15-12:05 p.m. Jacquelyn Southern Gender, the environment and sustainability are key terms in debates about economic globalization and social justice. While not new, they are reemerging in the as part of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. This course will introduce students to the perceived and existing links between women, gender, and the global environment as they appear in 21st century discussions about sustainable development. We will explore these debates by focusing on questions such as: - When did the environment and sustainability emerge as key issues on global agendas? - What are their connections to economic globalization? To colonialism and capitalism? - How did women and gender become part of these discussions? - How did governments, multilateral institutions (e.g. the United Nations, the World Bank), and development policies target third world women? Was it to meet their needs and address gender equality? Or was it for more efficient and effective environmental and sustainability outcomes - What were the results and implications of these interventions? - In what guise are these interventions reemerging in the context of the ?green? economy, food security, and population and reproductive rights? - How have women across the world organized to address concerns about the environment and sustainability? - How have feminists engaged with issues of gender, the global environment and sustainability? The primary goal of this class is to familiarize students with these debates in a way that will enable them to participate in 21st century discussions in informed, critical and self-reflexive ways. (Gen. Ed. SB, DG) WGSS 230 – Politics of Reproduction Tuesday, Thursday  2:30-3:45 p.m. Laura Briggs

From the Black Panther Party and Young Lords in the 1970s to SisterSong and Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice in the 1990s to Ferguson and Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement in the present, communities of color and socialist feminists have fought for a comprehensive reproductive freedom platform--birth control and abortion to be sure, but also the right to raise wanted children that are safe, cherished, and educated. The names of these issues have included freedom from sterilization, high quality affordable day care, IVF, immigrant justice, social reproduction and wages for housework, welfare and neoliberalism, foreclosure and affordable housing. WGSS 250 – Intro to Sexuality Studies Monday, Wednesday  2:30-3:45 B Aultman This interdisciplinary course will help students to understand what the terms "sexuality studies" and "trans studies" mean, by providing a foundation in the key concepts, historical and social contexts, topics, and politics that inform the fields of sexuality studies, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies, and queer studies. Course instruction will be carried out through readings, lectures, films, and discussions, as well as individual and group assignments. Over the course of the semester, students will develop and use critical thinking skills to discern how "sexuality" and "gender" become consolidated as distinct categories of analysis in the late nineteenth century, and what it means to speak about sexuality and transgender politics and categories today. Topics include queer theories and politics, trans theories and politics, LGBTQ social movements within and outside of the U.S., relationships with feminist reproductive justice movements, heterosexuality, gender norms, homophobia, and HIV/AIDS and health discourses. The range of materials covered will prioritize developing analyses that examine the interplay between sexuality and class, gender, race, ethnicity, and neoliberalism. (Gen. Ed. SB, DG) WGSS 286 – History of Sexuality and Race in the U.S. Tuesday, Thursday 11:30-12:45 Jordon Crawford Tuesday, Thursday   2:30-3:45   Elise Barnett UWW+ Online – Kirsten Leng

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary feminist study of sexuality. Its primary goal is to provide a forum for students to consider the history of sexuality and race in the U.S. both in terms of theoretical frameworks within women's and gender studies, and in terms of a range of sites where those theoretical approaches become material, are negotiated, or are shifted. The course is a fully interdisciplinary innovation. It will emphasize the links rather than differences between theory and practice and between cultural, material, and historical approaches to the body, gender, and sexuality. Throughout the course we will consider contemporary sexual politics "from the science of sex and sexuality to marriage debates" in light of histories of racial and sexual formations. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU) WGSS 301 – Theorizing Gender, Race and Power Monday, Wednesday  2:30-3:45 TBD Topic for Fall:   Black Feminisms.    Fulfills the theory requirement for WGSS majors .   Ways of analyzing and reflecting on current issues and controversies in feminist thought within an international context sensitive to class, race, and sexual power concerns. Topics may include work and international economic development, violence against women, racism, class and poverty, heterosexism, the social construction of gender, race and sexuality, global feminism, women, nationalism and the state, reproductive issues, pornography and media representations of women.| WGSS 310 – Writing Monday, Wednesday  4:00-5:15 Miliann Kang

Fulfills Junior Year Writing requirement for majors. Modes of writing and argumentation useful for research, creative, and professional work in a variety of fields. Analysis of texts, organization of knowledge, and uses of evidence to articulate ideas to diverse audiences. Includes materials appropriate for popular and scholarly journal writing. Popular culture reviews, responses to public arguments, monographs, first-person narratives and grant proposals, and a section on archival and bibliographic resources in Women's Studies. May include writing for the Internet. Nonmajors admitted if space available. WGSS 360 – Asian American Feminisms Monday, Wednesday  5:30-6:45 p.m. Miliann Kang How have the figures of the tiger mother, the Asian nerd, the rice king /queen, the trafficked woman, the geisha, the war bride, the Chinese bachelor, the hermaphrodite, and the orphan emerged as dominant representations of Asian Americans, and how have Asian American feminists critiqued and pushed back against these problematic tropes?  Is there a body of work that constitutes ?Asian American feminism(s)? and what are its distinctive contributions to the fields of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and Ethnic Studies?  How does this scholarship illuminate historical and contemporary configurations of gender, sexuality, race, class, nation, citizenship, migration, empire, war, neoliberalism, and globalization?  In exploring these questions, this course examines Asian American histories, bodies, identities, diasporic communities, representations, and politics through multi- and interdisciplinary approaches, including social science research, literature, popular representations, film, poetry, and art. WGSS 391A – Rape and Representation Tuesday, Thursday  11:30-12:45 p.m. Laura Ciolkowski

Rebecca Solnit has written, "Liberation is always in part a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, making new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place."  This course approaches the study of rape and other forms of gender-based violence with particular attention to storytelling, narrative, and the politics of representation.  Our focus will be on the representation, politicization and theorization of violence through the interdisciplinary and intersectional lens of social justice feminism, gender and sexuality studies, and critical race theory.  We will explore literary, artistic, legal, and activist efforts to interpret and address violence and, ultimately, to re-imagine and re-build the world otherwise; and we will interrogate the politics of silence and speech and the act of witnessing and testimony in the long history of organizing against sexual violence by a wide variety of actors, including people of color, incarcerated people, gender non-conforming people, enslaved, and undocumented people.  Course materials will include fiction, poetry, and memoir, along with readings in law, trauma theory, carceral studies, reproductive health, rights and justice, and media studies. WGSS 392W/692W – Teaching and Learning in Carceral Spaces – Part 1 Tuesday 2:30-5:00 p.m. Laura Ciolkowski Department Consent only.   This course is centered on teaching and learning in carceral spaces and on the study of mass incarceration, criminalization, and the analysis of gendered racial capitalism in the U.S.  Students will be trained to offer individualized tutoring sessions that support the academic goals of students in the Hampshire County Jail and the Franklin County Jail; they will engage in research in the field of critical prison studies, social justice education, and carceral pedagogy and they will explore broad questions around equity and access to education in prison and jail. Students in this course will develop the knowledge, experience, and practical skills to support justice in education and to work with others to imagine, advocate for, and build a more just society in which all people, regardless of their circumstance, have access to quality higher education. Part I of this course (fall semester) is research-intensive and requires site-specific orientation, specialized training, and the completion of jail clearances. WGSS 393M – What to Expect While You’re Expecting Tuesday, Thursday  1:00-2:15 p.m. Kirsten Leng Pregnancy losses are generally resigned to silence. They are not publicly discussed and do not constitute a standard part of pregnancy education. Moreover, different kinds of pregnancy loss are siloed from each other. Within public discourse and political activism, "induced" pregnancy loss (abortion) is treated separately from "involuntary" loss (miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and stillbirth). Within this course, we will hold all forms of pregnancy loss within a common frame. We will think collectively about how we might reimagine and treat reproductive losses - and indeed, reproduction itself - as existing on a spectrum of experiences, and will approach reproduction as a simultaneously biological, social, cultural, political, economic, and subjective phenomenon. Grounded in an approach informed by reproductive justice, and specifically birth justice, this course will draw upon interdisciplinary scholarship and guest talks by academics, activists, care providers, and support group leaders. Learning objectives include (among others): historicizing experiences and conceptualizations of pregnancy losses; interrogating the relationship between pregnancy and childbearing; identifying how (and why) federal and state laws criminalize pregnancy losses; analyzing how pregnancy loss experiences vary based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and nature of loss; and examining how both the women's health movement and medical science have addressed forms of loss. WGSS 395R – Social Reproduction:   Class, Race, Gender and Labor| Tuesday, Thursday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Svati Shah Fulfills the theory requirement for WGSS majors .    ‘Social reproduction’ is the term given to how societies re/produce certain essential structures for their own survival, through systems like binary gender and the family. This course reviews theories of social reproduction that include ideas from Marxism, feminism, and sociology. This literature is varied, with different perspectives on how the economic and material world relate to ideas like the history of the nuclear family. Marxist theories of social reproduction, for example, examine how the space of the home and the gendering of childcare produces a division of labor that ultimately produces more workers whose labor can be commoditized and exploited for capitalist production. Queer and transgender studies have mounted critiques of social reproduction in recent years that account for racial capitalism in the production of the category of the family as a legal and administrative concept. Taking a geographically and historically comparative approach to theories of social reproduction, the course will expose students to debates on the family from multiple perspectives, while providing a theoretical foundation in feminist, queer and Marxist critique. WGSS 692W/392W – Teaching and Learning in Carceral Spaces – Part 1 Tuesday 2:30-5:00 p.m. Laura Ciolkowski Department Consent only.   This course is centered on teaching and learning in carceral spaces and on the study of mass incarceration, criminalization, and the analysis of gendered racial capitalism in the U.S.  Students will be trained to offer individualized tutoring sessions that support the academic goals of students in the Hampshire County Jail and the Franklin County Jail; they will engage in research in the field of critical prison studies, social justice education, and carceral pedagogy and they will explore broad questions around equity and access to education in prison and jail. Students in this course will develop the knowledge, experience, and practical skills to support justice in education and to work with others to imagine, advocate for, and build a more just society in which all people, regardless of their circumstance, have access to quality higher education. Part I of this course (fall semester) is research-intensive and requires site-specific orientation, specialized training, and the completion of jail clearances. WGSS 701 – Genealogies of Feminist Thought Wednesday  2:30-5:00 p.m. Svati Shah This graduate seminar in feminist theory constitutes a core course for students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. The seminar will be organized around questions that emerge for feminisms from the rubrics of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, transnationalism, human rights, economics and postcolonialism.  Feminist theory is inherently interdisciplinary and we will draw on classic and contemporary writings from the many fields that contribute to the "field" of feminist theory.

UMass Courses Outside of WGSS

·      These are UMass courses outside of WGSS that WGSS counts for credits .    The courses in BLUE throughout this guide are component courses.    Majors and Minors must focus their work on WGSS topics in order for these courses to count .

·      With the exception of WGSS 187, 100 level courses do not count towards the major

·      All of the listed courses in the full guide count towards the minor

·      Courses that have a UWW+ sections are listed here for Fall 2024 in green

If you're taking a class that is not listed here, you can petition for it to count towards WGSS with this Google Form .

AFROAM 590D – The Poetry and Prophecies of Phillis Wheatley Thursday  11:30-2:00 p.m. Britt Rusert This course emerges from a recent renaissance of scholarship and creative work about the enslaved poet and freedom dreamer, Phillis Wheatley (Peters). Above all else, the course will take shape through deep and careful readings of the poet’s body of work. We will also place Wheatley within a rich tradition of black feminist poetics and read a number of poems that have been dedicated to or otherwise inspired by her across the centuries. We will read the best of recent scholarship on Wheatley, with particular attention to work that: deepens our understanding of her relationship not to her enslavers, but to her kin, community, and to other black artists; reads her in the context of West African and diasporic traditions; attends to the politics of power and pleasure in her poems; examines the circulation of her poetry within local, regional, and transatlantic networks of both print and manuscript cultures in the late eighteenth century; and traces the history of her memorialization by writers, readers, and other communities and groups. The course will include some poetry writing in and outside class, but no prior creative writing experience is required or expected. Poets, researchers, curious students, and Wheatley enthusiasts are all encouraged to enroll . ANTHRO 205 – Power and Inequality in the Unites States Monday, Wednesday  11:15 – 12:05 p.m.  Friday discussions Jennifer Sandler The United States is a culture marked by social inequality- racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia are interwoven throughout our everyday lives. This class explores the historical roots of these phenomena, the ways in which they are imprinted on the human body, in our interactions and institutions, and what people are doing to respond to them. (Gen Ed SB, DU) ANTHRO 415 – Women’s Health Across the Life Course Tuesday, Thursday  11:30-12:45 Achsah Dorsey This course explores women’s health from an evolutionary, biocultural, and global health perspective. It focuses on the physiological, ecological, and cultural factors shaping health. We will take a life course perspective to examine childhood development, reproductive processes such as pregnancy, birth, and lactation, as well as menopause and aging. Throughout the class, we will draw on findings and concepts from human biology, evolutionary ecology, public health and medical anthropology to explore the multi-faceted determinants of global women’s health. Topics include: women’s reproductive health choices, reproductive ecology, fertility, social and biological perspectives on puberty, eating disorders and body image, and infant nutrition and growth. ANTHRO 494BI – Global Bodies Tuesday, Thursday  11:30-12:45 p.m. Elizabeth Krause The human body has increasingly become an object of anthropological study. The body is rich as a site of meaning and materiality. Similarly, culture inscribes itself on the body in terms of “normalization” and governance. This course will explore pertinent issues surrounding the body today. Topics such as personhood, natural vs. artificial bodies, identity and subjectivity (nationality, race, class, sex, gender), domination and marginalization, and policy will be discussed. We will focus on the body in three main stages: birth, life, and death, with relevant case studies in each stage (e.g., embryos, reproduction, breastfeeding, organs, immigrant bodies, etc.) The course has a digital ethnography component as a final project option. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Anth majors. ANTHRO 590STA – Critical Race Theory Tuesday, Thursday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Amanda Johnson In this course, we will examine the genealogy of works in "critical race theory," including foundational texts defining "racism" and the contexts of racial inequality. We will consider works challenging commonsense and scientific constructions of race, those recognizing the ernbeddedness of race in state and social institutions, and those mapping the intersections of race with other subjectivities, particularly gender and class. In the course, we will examine the contradictions, tensions, and silences in critical race theory, while honoring its intention to not only develop a vocabulary for understanding race and racism, but also employ scholarship for the cause social justice. ART-HIST 313/613 – Renaissance Art and Mannerism in Italy Monday, Wednesday  2:30-3:45 p.m. Monika Schmitter component The development of the visual arts in the major artistic centers of Italy during the 16th century, including Florence, Rome, Venice, Mantua, Ferrara, Parma, and Bologna. The lives and works of specific artists, such as Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, and Michelangelo. Focus on thematic issues concerning the relationship between art and society, including: the rise in so-cial status of the artist and the conception of artistic genius; the influence of patronage and collecting; art and the creation of political identities; women as subjects, patrons, and practitioners of art; classicism and "anti-classicism" (Mannerism); art and religious reform; government and city planning. ASIAN-ST 312 – Bridging Asia and Asian America Monday, Wednesday, Friday  1:25-2:15 p.m. C.N. Le component This course examines the historical, political, economic, and cultural connections and intersections between Asian and the United States, particularly as they relate to Asian Americans.  Drawing on interdisciplinary methodological and analytical approaches, this course will help students to develop and apply an analytical toolset that combines theory, concepts, methods, and empirical data to better understand real-world and complex issues such as early examples of globalization, trade, and immigration between Asia countries and the U.S.; cultural dispersion and the development of the first Asian American communities; dynamics of gender/race/ethnicity; and current issues centered on environmental sustainability, civil society and human rights, emerging transnational media, economic and political tensions, and anti-globalization movements, to name just a few. (Gen. Ed. I, DG) ART-HIST 391F – Topics in African Art:    Visualizing Black Queer Feminisms Tuesday 1:00-3:45 p.m. TBD Focusing on modern and contemporary visual culture, we will ask: what does it mean to see, imagine, and witness Black queer feminisms? Topics include formerly enslaved drag artist-activist William Dorsey Swann, Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman, Mickalene Thomas's mixed media collages, and a vast range of other Black visual culture. CLASSICS – Women in Antiquity Monday, Wednesday, Friday  11:15-12:05 p.m. Lauren Caldwell Lives, roles, contributions, and status of women in Greek and Roman societies, as reflected in classical literature and the archaeological record.  (Gen.Ed. HS) COMM 248 – The Folklore of New England Monday, Wednesday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Stephen Olbrys Gencarella component This course examines the folklore of New England and adjacent regions. It introduces students to the fundamentals of the study of folklore, including notions of tradition, the vernacular, expressive culture, performance, storytelling, material lore, customs, folk groups, community, and worldview. It surveys folklore genres including legend, myth, folktale, folk songs and ballads, proverbs, folk medicine, superstition, folk arts and crafts, rituals, holidays, festivals, and foodways. It illustrates these ideas and provides a history of the folklore of New England, including the precolonial and colonial periods as well as those of immigrant and recent groups to the region. Throughout the semester, we consider issues of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and related manifestations of social diversity “or lack thereof” in New England. We also analyze the role that folklore plays in creating, maintaining, challenging, and changing social norms and values. As such, this course assumes a critical perspective on folklore and on the concept of New England itself. (Gen. Ed. SB) COMM 288 – Gender, Sex and Representation Online (Univ+) with 3 in-person exams Sut Jhally This course will examine the relationship between commercialized systems of representation and the way that gender and sexuality are thought of and organized in the culture. In particular, we will look at how commercial imagery impacts upon gender identity and the process of gender socialization. Central to this discussion will be the related issues of sexuality and sexual representation (and the key role played by advertising). COMM 290STA – Media & Sexuality Studies Monday, Wednesday  2:30-3:45 p.m. Ayanna Dozier This course provides students with an introduction to the fundamental approaches, theories, and perspectives essential for an understanding media and sexuality in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Throughout the term we will explore many ways in which our symbolic environment shapes, constructs, and resists our comprehension of sexuality in the media. This course will pay close attention to how culture informs and shapes media production and how media, in turns, affects sexuality. COMM 394EI – Performance and the Politics of Race Tuesday, Thursday  11:30-12:45 p.m. Kimberlee Perez component This course looks at the ways race, racial identities, and interracial relations are formed through and by communication practices in present-day U.S. America. Though focusing on U.S. America in the current historical moment, the course takes into account the ways history as well as the transnational flows of people and capital inform and define conversations about race and racial identities. Race will be discussed as intersectional, taking into account the ways race is understood and performed in relation to gender, sexuality, class, and nation. The course will focus on the performance and communications of race, ranging from everyday interactions, personal narratives and storytelling, intra- and inter-racial dialogue, and staged performances. COMM 430 – Stories of Race in the U.S. Monday, Wednesday  2:30-3:45 p.m. Roopali Mukherjee component From film scripts to news reports, across memoirs, policy narratives, and mythologies of the nation, stories of race abound in the United States. This course examines the power of stories, a prevalent and familiar mode of communication, in constructing racialized people and communities and shaping racial histories and cultures in the US. Drawing on insights from critical race, ethnic, postcolonial, feminist, and queer studies, we explore the power of stories of race in defining and controlling racialized populations from the erasure of indigenous people in settler-colonial discourses to the persistence of anti-Black racisms, the reemergence of ultra-Right White supremacist formations, and the racialization of the COVID-19 pandemic. Equally, we consider how Black, indigenous, and people of color engage in storytelling practices themselves, and the power of these counter-stories in disturbing and disrupting the power of dominant stories of race in the US. Incorporating primary texts from a range of genres: autobiography, fiction, sci-fi, news reports, film, TV, digital media, policy reports, court decisions.   The course explores the power of stories of race to harm, imperil, and kill as well as to humanize, nurture, and celebrate.   Open to Senior and Junior Communication majors only.   This course was formerly numbered as 497SR. If you have already taken 497SR, you cannot take this course. COMP-LIT 390Q – Queering World Literature Tuesday, Thursday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Corine Tachtiris In this course, we will read a range of literary representations of what, in the US-Anglophone context, may be called queer or LGBTQIA+ identities. We will pay particular attention to non-Western literatures and cultures and to texts not originally in English. We will study how queer identities have developed separately and in relation to globally dominant US-Anglophone frameworks of queerness, and with a focus on questions of power.   We will examine how the global forces of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism have functioned in the construction of queer identities, often in conjunction with constructions of race and ethnicity. With literary texts as our primary material, we will investigate how authors use aesthetics, style, and genre as means of representing queerness. COMM 495A – Performance Ethnography Monday, Wednesday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Claudio Moreira What is Ethnography? What is Performance (auto) Ethnography? How can we think about Performing Ethnography? Drawing heavily on the works of Dwight Conquergood, Norman Denzin, and D. Soyini Madison, we give a rest to traditional forms of qualitative inquiry as we disrupt the notion of "business as usual" in the academic space. We will examine the interpenetrating relationships among performance, ethnography, and culture. The readings and assignments forefront localized critical pedagogy, critical personal narratives, decolonizing and interpretive inquiry as moral, political discourse. From the everyday space where gender, race, class, and performances intersect, we will examine how the practices of critical inquiry can be used to imagine, write and perform a free democratic society. ECON 343 – Economics of Gender, Race and Work Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15 a.m. Fidan Kurtulus This course focuses on the economics of women, minorities and work in the labor market and the household.  Using economic theory along with empirical investigation, we will study issues such as employment decisions, earnings determination, occupational choice, discrimination, and family formation.  Emphasis will be placed on public policies related to the labor market experiences of women and minorities. ECON – 348   - The Political Economy of Women Monday, Wednesday  4:00-5:15 p.m. TBD A critical review of neoclassical, Marxist, and feminist economic theories pertaining to inequality between men and women in both the family and the firm. ENGLISH 132 – Gender, Sexuality, Literature, and Culture Monday, Wednesday, Friday  11:15-12:05 – Janell Tryon Monday, Wednesday, Friday   12:20-1:10 p.m. – Sarah Ahmad Monday, Wednesday, Friday  10:10-11:00 a.m. – Jeremy Geragotelis UWW+ TBD Introduction to literature through a lens of gender identity and sexuality.  Texts include fiction, plays, poems that deal with and inspire conversations about the public politics and personal experience of gender and sexuality, both in the past and present. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) GERMAN 270 – From the Grimms to Disney Monday, Wednesday  1:25-2:15 p.m. Discussions Friday Sara Jackson component This course focuses on selected fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm (Hansel & Gretel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Iron Hans) and Hans Christian Andersen (Little Sea Maid, The Red Shoes), locating them in the 19th-century German or Danish culture of their origins and then examining how they became transformed into perennial favorites of U.S. popular culture through their adaptations by Disney (feature animation films), Broadway (musicals), or bestselling self-help books (Iron John, Women Who Run With the Wolves).  As a point of comparison, this course will also introduce popular fairy-tale films of the former East Germany (GDR) from the UMass DEFA archives & library, which present the same stories as popular fare in a Cold War communinist cultural context.  Conducted in English.  (Gen. Ed. ALDG). HISTORY 264 – History of Health Care and Medicine in the U.S. Emily Hamilton UWW+ Section component This course explores the history and social meaning of medicine, medical practice, health care, and disease in the United States from 1600 to the present. Using a variety of sources aimed at diverse audiences students will investigate topics such as: the evolution of beliefs about the body; medical and social responses to infectious and chronic disease; the rise of medical science and medical organizations; the development of medical technologies; mental health diagnosis and treatment; changing conceptions of the body; the training, role, and image of medical practitioners and the role of public and government institutions in promoting health practices and disease treatments. We will pay particular attention to the human experience of medicine, with readings on the experience of being ill, the delivery of compassionate care, and the nature of the relationship between practitioners and patients. Course themes will include race, gender, cultural diversity, women and gender, social movements, science, technology, politics, industry, and ethics. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU) HISTORY 268/LEGAL 268 – Women and the Law:   History of Sex and Gender Discrimination Tuesday, Thursday  1:00-2:15 p.m. Jennifer Nye This course examines the legal status of women in the United States, focusing specifically on the 20th and 21st centuries. How has the law used gender, sex, sexuality, and race to legally enforce inequality between women and men (and among women)?  We will examine the legal arguments feminists have used to advocate for legal change and how these arguments have changed over time, paying specific attention to debates about whether to make legal arguments based on formal equality, substantive equality, liberty, or privacy. We will also consider the pros and cons of using the law to advocate for social justice. Specific issues that may be covered include the civil and political participation of women (voting, jury service), employment discrimination, intimate relationships, reproduction, contraception and abortion, violence against women, women as criminal defendants, and women as law students, lawyers, and judges.  Prior law-law related coursework helpful, but not required. HISTORY 378G – Rape Law:   Gender, Race, (In)justice Tuesday, Thursday  10:00-11:15 a.m. Jennifer Nye The history of the legal response to rape has often resulted in injustice for both the victim/survivor and the alleged perpetrator.  This course will examine the evolution of the U.S. legal system's treatment of rape, paying particular attention to the movement against lynching in the post-civil war era, the rise of the feminist anti-rape movement in the 1970s and the student movement against campus sexual assault.  Through an analysis of court cases, legislation, and other texts we will consider the role sexual violence has played in maintaining gendered and racialized power relationships.  We will examine how and why such violence came to be seen as a crime, including who is worthy of the law's "protection" and who is subject to the law's "punishment." We will explore issues such as:  rape as a form of racialized and imperial violence, especially against black and Native American women; the criminal legal treatment of rape and the evolution of the legal concepts of force, resistance, and consent; and the civil responses to rape under the Violence Against Women Act and Title IX.  We'll also look at the international law responses to rape as a weapon of war.  Finally, we'll think about how the legal responses, or non-responses, to rape have differed over time depending on factors such as the race/ethnicity, income level, immigration status, sexual orientation/gender identity, age, and marital status of the victim/survivor and the perpetrator.  Finally, we'll consider how the legal system can or should respond to rape, particularly in this age of mass criminalization and mass incarceration, and whether restorative justice responses might be preferable.  Prior law-related coursework is helpful, but not required. HISTORY 390STE/690STE – Gender and Sexuality in African History Tuesday, Thursday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Elizabeth Jacob This course explores gender and sexuality in African history, from the era of the slave trade to the present. Together, we will examine a range of themes, including politics and power, marriage and motherhood, fashion and the body, and love and intimacies.   LEGAL 258 – Women in the Justice System Thursday  4:00-6:30 p.m. Maria Puppolo This course explores the intersection between women and the criminal justice system. The nature and extent of women as offenders, as victims, and as professionals in the criminal justice system will be explored, as well as theories related to offending and victimization. Also integral to the course is the relationship between victimization and offending and the intricacies of women's intersectionality with the criminal justice system as offenders, law enforcement and probation officers, correctional personnel, lawyers and judges. PORTUG 309 – Brazilian Women Monday, Wednesday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Tal Goldfajn, Luiz Amaral Mixing biography, literary criticism and cultural history this course will explore women's experience through Brazilian history as well as introduce the achievements and contributions of women to the cultural and intellectual history of Brazil.   Moreover we will discuss not only what Brazilian women have achieved but also how fundamental issues in Brazilian history have hinged on specific notions of gender. From Anita Garibaldi to Chiquinha Gonzaga and Nise da Silveira among others, the present course will examine the role of women in Brazilian history and culture, discuss the ways in which women have shaped Brazil's past and present, and analyze some of the ideas and experiences of women in Brazil. PSYCH 391LB – Psychology of the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Experience Tuesday, Thursday  1:00-2:15 p.m. John Bickford Students in this course will explore psychological theory and research pertaining to gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Topics include sexual orientation, sexual identity development, stigma management, heterosexism & homonegativity, gender roles, same-sex relationships, LGB families, LGB diversity, and LGB mental health PUBHLTH 328 – Fundamentals of Women’s Health Thursday  4:00-6:30 p.m. Sara Bernier This course will provide a comprehensive overview of issues related to health in women, addressing areas including but not limited to biology, psychology, geography, economics, health policy, and social issues. PUBHLTH 340 – LGBTQ Health Tuesday, Thursday  1:00-2:15 p.m. Nicole VanKim This course is about the unique health needs and health disparities within the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) communities, and among the individuals who make up each of these communities. We will learn about gender identity and sexual orientation development in kids and young adults, sexual health, global perspectives, strategies for improving the healthcare experience of LGBT people (e.g., patient-centered and compassionate care), barriers to accessing health care, and many other relevant topics. This is an important course for public health students, because it teaches more than just the facts, but also skills for creating a compassionate and inclusive environment for vulnerable populations. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU) PUBHLTH 389 – Health Inequities Tuesday, Thursday   8:30-9:45 a.m. TBD component While the health and wellbeing of the nation has improved overall, racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality disparities in morbidity and mortality persist. To successfully address growing disparities, it is important to understand social determinants of health and translate current knowledge into specific strategies to undo health inequalities. This course will explore social justice as a philosophical underpinning of public health and will consider the etiology of disease rooted in social conditions. It aims to strengthen critical thinking, self-discovery, and knowledge of ways in which socioeconomic, political, and cultural systems structure health outcomes. SOCIOL 106 – Race, Gender, Class & Ethnicity Tuesday, Thursday  11:30-12:45 p.m. - TBD Tuesday, Thursday   2:30-3:45 p.m. – Thomas Corcoran Monday, Wednesday  1:25-2:15 p.m. – TBD Introduction to Sociology.  Analysis of the consequences of membership in racial, gender, class and ethnic groups on social, economic and political life.   (Gen.Ed. SB, DU) SOCIOL 320 Sociology of Eating Disorders Tuesday, Thursday  10:00-11:15 a.m. Megan Relin component This course is designed to look at eating disorders through the lens of Sociology. We will be discussing relevant topics such as social narratives around body image and media (including social media), gender norms, race, feminism, socioeconomic influences related to weight, the history of some of these variables and how they've evolved over time. We will also look at issues related to development and mental health including self-esteem, peer relationships, family systems/environment, mood disorders, trauma, diagnoses, healthcare policy and treatment. Lastly, as its relevant to you as students, we will look at college life and eating disorders as it is often a time when eating disorders develop or peak. SOCIOL 384 – Sociology of Love Monday, Wednesday  2:30-3:45 p.m. Ana Villalobos component The Sociology of Love looks at a subject that we all take for granted, but none of us understand.  Love is both a physiological state and a socially constructed experience.  We will examine the major bio-chemical, psychological, and sociological theories that have attempted to explain the causes and nature of love and attraction.  We will also look at the social construction of love through Western history, as well as in other cultures, and at the complex relationships that exist between love, "courtship", marriage, and sexuality.  We will conclude with a look at contemporary social constructions of love, sex and relationships.   SUSCOMM 225 – Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Equity Monday, Wednesday  2:30-3:45 p.m. Darrel Ramsey-Musolf In capitalist societies, inequity creates winners and losers, profits and losses, and the privileged and the marginalized. Inequity is defined as a "lack of fairness or justice" and refers to a system of privilege that is created and maintained by interlocking societal structures (i.e., family, marriage, education, housing, government, law, economics, employment, etc.). Alternatively, equity is defined as ? `the state, quality or ideal of being just, impartial and fair.' To achieve and sustain equity, equity needs to be thought of as a structural and systemic concept? and requires action. In this seminar, we will question society's values and deepen one's understanding of `self' and agency as we examine how people create and implement equity when such persons are defined by their race, gender, or sexuality. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)

Graduate Level

These courses count towards the Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies.   Graduate Certificate students can petition for courses to count with this Google Form .  

WGSS 701 – Genealogies of Feminist Thought Wednesday  2:30-5:00 p.m. Svati Shah This graduate seminar in feminist theory constitutes a core course for students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. The seminar will be organized around questions that emerge for feminisms from the rubrics of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, transnationalism, human rights, economics and postcolonialism.  Feminist theory is inherently interdisciplinary and we will draw on classic and contemporary writings from the many fields that contribute to the "field" of feminist theory. WGSS 692W/392W – Teaching and Learning in Carceral Spaces – Part 1 Tuesday 2:30-5:00 p.m. Laura Ciolkowski Department Consent only.   This course is centered on teaching and learning in carceral spaces and on the study of mass incarceration, criminalization, and the analysis of gendered racial capitalism in the U.S.  Students will be trained to offer individualized tutoring sessions that support the academic goals of students in the Hampshire County Jail and the Franklin County Jail; they will engage in research in the field of critical prison studies, social justice education, and carceral pedagogy and they will explore broad questions around equity and access to education in prison and jail. Students in this course will develop the knowledge, experience, and practical skills to support justice in education and to work with others to imagine, advocate for, and build a more just society in which all people, regardless of their circumstance, have access to quality higher education. Part I of this course (fall semester) is research-intensive and requires site-specific orientation, specialized training, and the completion of jail clearances.  AFROAM 590D – The Poetry and Prophecies of Phillis Wheatley Thursday  11:30-2:00 p.m. Britt Rusert This course emerges from a recent renaissance of scholarship and creative work about the enslaved poet and freedom dreamer, Phillis Wheatley (Peters). Above all else, the course will take shape through deep and careful readings of the poet?s body of work. We will also place Wheatley within a rich tradition of black feminist poetics and read a number of poems that have been dedicated to or otherwise inspired by her across the centuries. We will read the best of recent scholarship on Wheatley, with particular attention to work that: deepens our understanding of her relationship not to her enslavers, but to her kin, community, and to other black artists; reads her in the context of West African and diasporic traditions; attends to the politics of power and pleasure in her poems; examines the circulation of her poetry within local, regional, and transatlantic networks of both print and manuscript cultures in the late eighteenth century; and traces the history of her memorialization by writers, readers, and other communities and groups. The course will include some poetry writing in and outside class, but no prior creative writing experience is required or expected. Poets, researchers, curious students, and Wheatley enthusiasts are all encouraged to enroll. HISTORY 690STB/390STB – Gender and Sexuality in African History Tuesday, Thursday  4:00-5:15 p.m. Elizabeth Jacob  

This course explores gender and sexuality in African history, from the era of the slave trade to the present. Together, we will examine a range of themes, including politics and power, marriage and motherhood, fashion and the body, and love and intimacies. ENGLISH 891LD Decolonial Reconstellations TBD This interdisciplinary seminar serves as a core course of the Decolonial Global Studies Certificate (DGS). Students from all disciplines are welcome whether or not you are pursuing the Certificate. Focusing on non-eurocentric, non-androcentric analyses of world political economy and culture, we will engage with diverse emancipatory and critical approaches, including decolonial, postcolonial, Indigenous, intersectional, queer, Marxist, speculative, transnational, and inter-imperial. We will particularly tackle the Eurocentric paradigm of "modernity," which has severely distorted historical legacies and narrowed conceptions of past, present, and future. Several readings will address long-historical data, deep time perspectives, and pluriversal epistemologies. The course will also emphasize decolonial and relational practices. Co-taught by a Humanities and a Social Science professor, the seminar aims to model decolonial interdisciplinary methods while widening the horizons within which students conceive their research and their aspirations.  The course will likewise encourage collaborative thinking and invite experimental or creative projects, including some that complement students' projects in teaching, research, activism, art, or other engagements. We anticipate that the interdisciplinary mix of students in the class will enable you to widen your campus community and enhance your understanding of decolonial practice.  

UWW+ (Online) for Summer 2024

Uww winter/spring.

·      The courses in blue throughout this guide are component courses.    Majors and Minors must focus their work on WGSS topics .    

 If you're taking a class that is not listed here, you can petition for it to count towards WGSS with this Google Form .  

WGSS 220 – Sustainability, Gender and the Environment Sarah Ahmad Summer Session #1 and #2

Gender, the environment and sustainability are key terms in debates about economic globalization and social justice. While not new, they are re-emerging as part of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. This course will introduce students to the perceived and existing links between women, gender, and the global environment as they appear in 21st century discussions about sustainable development. We will explore these debates by focusing on questions such as: - When did the environment and sustainability emerge as key issues on global agendas? - What are their connections to economic globalization? To colonialism and capitalism? - How did women and gender become part of these discussions? - How did governments, multilateral institutions (e.g. the United Nations, the World Bank), and development policies target third world women? Was it to meet their needs and address gender equality? Or was it for more efficient and effective environmental and sustainability outcomes? - What were the results and implications of these interventions? - In what guise are these interventions reemerging in the context of the ?green? economy, food security, and population and reproductive rights? - How have women across the world organized to address concerns about the environment and sustainability? - How have feminists engaged with issues of gender, the global environment and sustainability? The primary goal of this class is to familiarize students with these debates in a way that will enable them to participate in 21st century discussions in informed, critical and self-reflexive ways. (Gen. Ed. SB, DG) WGSS 286 – History of Sexuality and Race in the U.S. Laura Briggs Summer Session #1

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary feminist study of sexuality. Its primary goal is to provide a forum for students to consider the history of sexuality and race in the U.S. both in terms of theoretical frameworks within women's and gender studies, and in terms of a range of sites where those theoretical approaches become material, are negotiated, or are shifted. The course is a fully interdisciplinary innovation. It will emphasize the links rather than differences between theory and practice and between cultural, material, and historical approaches to the body, gender, and sexuality. Throughout the course we will consider contemporary sexual politics "from the science of sex and sexuality to marriage debates" in light of histories of racial and sexual formations. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU) WGSS 393M – What to Expect When you’re Expecting:   Confronting Pregnancy Loss Kirsten Leng Summer Session #2 Pregnancy losses are generally resigned to silence. They are not publicly discussed and do not constitute a standard part of pregnancy education. Moreover, different kinds of pregnancy loss are siloed from each other. Within public discourse and political activism, "induced" pregnancy loss (abortion) is treated separately from "involuntary" loss (miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and stillbirth). Within this course, we will hold all forms of pregnancy loss within a common frame. We will think collectively about how we might reimagine and treat reproductive losses - and indeed, reproduction itself - as existing on a spectrum of experiences, and will approach reproduction as a simultaneously biological, social, cultural, political, economic, and subjective phenomenon. Grounded in an approach informed by reproductive justice, and specifically birth justice, this course will draw upon interdisciplinary scholarship and guest talks by academics, activists, care providers, and support group leaders. Learning objectives include (among others): historicizing experiences and conceptualizations of pregnancy losses; interrogating the relationship between pregnancy and childbearing; identifying how (and why) federal and state laws criminalize pregnancy losses; analyzing how pregnancy loss experiences vary based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and nature of loss; and examining how both the women's health movement and medical science have addressed forms of loss. EDUC 590G – LGBT Issues in Education Warren Blumenfeld Summer Session #2 How can we develop language, attitudes, and practices that validate and support all students along the spectrums of gender expressions, identities, and sexualities? How are issues related to gender and sexuality diversity connected to privilege, power, and oppression?  Participating in this online course will allow you to consider how we can think ethically, critically, and in socially just ways about LGBTQ issues in education and how to cultivate affirming and supportive learning environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) students. Drawing on work from the fields of anti-oppression education, critical pedagogy, and queer theory, we will examine how heteronormativity, heterosexism, and genderism/transgender oppression play out in educational contexts and explore ways to promote gender and sexuality equity within schools. We will discuss the complexities of sex, gender, and sexuality, and address contemporary issues facing educators who want to implement LGBTQ curriculum. You will be able to demonstrate your learning by creating an applied project on a topic of your choice. This course is open to any student interested in this topic. No pre-requisites.  HISTORY 265 – US LGBT and Queer History Alison Russell Summer Session #2 This course explores how queer individuals and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities have influenced the social, cultural, economic, and political landscape in United States history. With a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the course covers topics such as the criminalization of same-sex acts, cross-dressing, industrialization and urbanization, feminism, the construction of the homo/heterosexual binary, transsexuality and the "lavender scare" during the Cold War, the homophile, gay liberation, and gay rights movements, HIV/AIDS, and (im)migration. We will often look to examples from the present to better explore change over time and the modes and influences that shape both current and past understandings of gender and sexual difference. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU) HISTORY 389 – US Women’s History Since 1890 Jennifer Nye Summer Session #1 This course explores the relationship of women and gender to the social, cultural, economic, legal and political developments shaping American society from 1890 to the present. It examines change over time in family life and intimate relationships, including marriage, divorce, sexuality and reproduction (sterilization, birth control, abortion, reproductive technologies, adoption); the civil and political participation of women, including voting, jury service, military service, and holding political office; and paid and unpaid labor, including employment discrimination and sexual harassment. The course will pay particular attention to gender and leadership in various social movements such as suffrage, civil rights and racial justice, welfare rights, reproductive rights and justice, and the anti-rape and battered women?s movements. We?ll consider the long arc of feminist activism, as well as conservative resistance and backlash. This course will specifically focus on how class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and immigration status have shaped the historical experiences of women, broadly defined. Sophomore level and above. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU) COMM 288 – Gender, Sex and Representation Sut Jhally Summer Session #1 This course will examine the relationship between commercialized systems of representation and the way that gender and sexuality are thought of and organized in the culture. In particular, we will look at how commercial imagery impacts upon gender identity and the process of gender socialization. Central to this discussion will be the related issues of sexuality and sexual representation (and the key role played by advertising). ENGLISH 132 – Gender, Sexuality, Literature, Culture Shwetha Chandrashekhar Summer Session #2 Introduction to literature through a lens of gender identity and sexuality.  Texts include fiction, plays, poems that deal with and inspire conversations about the public politics and personal experience of gender and sexuality, both in the past and present. (Gen.Ed. AL, DG) FRENCHST 280 – Love and Sex in French Culture Patrick Mensah Summer Session #1 Component Is love a French invention? How do we explore, through literature, the substance behind the stereotypical association of love, romance, and sexual pleasure with French culture? Do sex, passion, and love always unite in the pursuit of emotional fulfillment in human relations, according to this literature? What affiliations does this literature interweave between such relations of love, requited or unrequited, and pleasure, enjoyment, freedom, self-empowerment, on the one hand, and on the other hand, suffering, jealousy, crime, violence, negativity, notions of perversion, morbidity, and even death? How are problems of gender roles and human sexuality?i.e. Hetero-, bi-, homo- and other forms of sexuality--approached in this literature? What connections or conflicts are revealed in this literature between human love relationships and the social norms and conventions within which they occur, as well as the forms of political governance that have been practiced in France over the centuries?   Those are some of the issues that are investigated in this course, which offers a broad historical overview of selective ways in which love, passion, desire and erotic behavior in French culture have been represented and understood in Literature and, more recently, in film, from the middle ages to the twentieth century. Readings are from major French authors drawn from various centuries such as Marie de France, Beroul, Moliere, de Sade, Flaubert, Gide, and Duras. They will be supplemented with screenings of optional films that are based on those texts or are pertinent to them in important ways. (Gen. Ed. AL) HISTORY 264 – History of Health Care in the U.S. Emily Hamilton Summer Session #2 Component This course explores the history and social meaning of medicine, medical practice, health care, and disease in the United States from 1600 to the present. Using a variety of sources aimed at diverse audiences students will investigate topics such as: the evolution of beliefs about the body; medical and social responses to infectious and chronic disease; the rise of medical science and medical organizations; the development of medical technologies; mental health diagnosis and treatment; changing conceptions of the body; the training, role, and image of medical practitioners and the role of public and government institutions in promoting health practices and disease treatments. We will pay particular attention to the human experience of medicine, with readings on the experience of being ill, the delivery of compassionate care, and the nature of the relationship between practitioners and patients. Course themes will include race, gender, cultural diversity, women and gender, social movements, science, technology, politics, industry, and ethics. (Gen. Ed. HS, DU) POLISCI 258 – Gender, Conflict & Security Jenna Norosky Summer Session #2 This course investigates the gendered dimensions of armed conflict, foreign policy, international governance, peace-building, and post-conflict insecurities. Students will engage with academic and policy debates about how gendered power distributions shape international and human security. We will explore the issues raised in these debates by considering historical and contemporary global cases, including the role of masculinity in foreign policy, women's participation in political violence, gender- based civilian targeting, international post-conflict courts and transitional justice.

POLISCI 390STE – Politics of Black Lives Matter Siddhant Issar Summer Session #1 Component This course examines the political and theoretical underpinnings of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Through close engagement with primary documents such as the Movement for Black Lives’s (M4BL) policy platform, we will trace how BLM builds on, reconfigures, and merges various traditions of radical critique to diagnose and dismantle contemporary structures of anti-Black violence. Since its emergence, BLM and the larger M4BL coalition have articulated an intersectional critique of anti-Black violence, pointing to the specific ways white supremacy, patriarchy, and racial capitalism (among other structures) affect Black populations in the United States and globally. By situating BLM’s analyses in the context of Black radical theory and politics, ranging from Black queer and feminist thought to abolition to Black Marxism(s) and anti-capitalism, we will surface the rich historical terrain that BLM draws on and contributes to. The course will begin with a historical, philosophical, and socio-political inquiry into the concepts of ‘race’ and white supremacy. Subsequently, we will ask: How does BLM understand anti-Blackness and white supremacy? In what ways are the histories of Black enslavement and settler colonialism relevant to the present struggle for Black lives? Why are Black bodies disproportionately represented in the U.S. prison population? On what grounds does the M4BL policy platform suggest that ‘patriarchy, exploitative (global) capitalism, militarism, and white supremacy’ are interlinked? What transnational solidarities and linkages has BLM forged? What universal vision of liberation does BLM seek to enact? By asking such questions, we will become familiar with the dynamic ways BLM and the M4BL coalition have theorized historical and ongoing forms of structural violence. We will also become conversant in the modes of resistance, including the formation of solidarities across national borders, that have emerged from BLM’s on-the-ground struggles. PUBHLTH 340   - LGBTQ Health Kelsey Jordan Summer Session #2 This course is about the unique health needs and health disparities within the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) communities, and among the individuals who make up each of these communities. We will learn about gender identity and sexual orientation development in kids and young adults, sexual health, global perspectives, strategies for improving the healthcare experience of LGBT people (e.g., patient-centered and compassionate care), barriers to accessing health care, and many other relevant topics. This is an important course for public health students, because it teaches more than just the facts, but also skills for creating a compassionate and inclusive environment for vulnerable populations. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU) SOCIOL 106 – Race, Gender, Class & Ethnicity Eliana Mercedes Summer Session #2 Introduction to Sociology.  Analysis of the consequences of membership in racial, gender, class and ethnic groups on social, economic and political life.  (Gen.Ed. SB, DU) SOCIOL 287 – Sexuality and Society Skylar Davidson Summer Session #1 The many ways in which social factors shape sexuality. Focus on cultural diversity, including such factors as race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity in organizing sexuality in both individuals and social groups.  Prerequisite:  100-level Sociology course.  (Gen.Ed. SB, DU) SOCIOL 374 – Gender, Crime and Families Sarah Becker Summer Session #1 Families are a major social institution that operate as a cornerstone of human experiences. They also deeply impact broader social structures due to their central position as an arbiter between individuals and an array of other institutions such as communities, schools, and the criminal justice system. In this course, we examine the interrelationship between gender, crime, and families. Doing so provides an opportunity for nuanced engagement with existing social science research on gender and crime and how that relationship impacts and is shaped by family/families. SUSTCOMM 225 – Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Equity Darrel Ramsey-Musolf Summer Session #1 In capitalist societies, inequity creates winners and losers, profits and losses, and the privileged and the marginalized. Inequity is defined as a ‘lack of fairness or justice’ and refers to a system of privilege that is created and maintained by interlocking societal structures (i.e., family, marriage, education, housing, government, law, economics, employment, etc.). Alternatively, equity is defined as ? `the state, quality or ideal of being just, impartial and fair.’ To achieve and sustain equity, equity needs to be thought of as a structural and systemic concept? and requires action. In this seminar, we will question society’s values and deepen one’s understanding of ‘self’ and agency as we examine how people create and implement equity when such persons are defined by their race, gender, or sexuality. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)

Amherst College SWAG Courses

These courses automatically count towards the WGSS major minor.   Any courses in BLUE are considered “component” for WGSS majors/minors.  You must focus your work on WGSS topics in order for the coruse to count.   

SWAG 201/LLAS 202/POSC 201- The Global Politics of Drug Trafficking Monday, Wednesday 12:30-1:50 p.m. Manuela Picq Drug trafficking is now a major aspect of international relations. This course approaches the international political economy of drug trafficking, from its trade routes on global markets to its influence in shaping nation-states. As governments declare “wars on drugs” from Colombia to the Philippines, narco-politics permeate local and national government, define international relations, and inspire pop culture. The course has three main goals:1) to offer an empirical overview of drug trafficking globally, 2) to analyze how it operates, from local recruitment to transnational alliances and mechanisms of money laundering in fiscal paradises, and 3) to understand how it shapes the current international system, from pop culture to sovereignty. We compare the different operating systems of Mexican drug cartels like Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación to the Albanian Mafia and gangs like Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador and Los Choneros in Ecuador. In the process, we discuss their cultural impacts, from the “narco-corrido” music in Mexico to their relation to religion and sexuality. We also shed light on body politics to understand the nexus of drug trafficking with poverty, racialization, and colonial regimes of dispossession. This course navigates the labyrinths and complex pathways of drug trafficking from electoral politics to its investment in extractive industries like mining to understand how narco dynamics have come to de facto rule states and communities worldwide. SWAG 203/ENGL 216/BLST 203- Women Writers of Africa and the African Diaspora Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:50 p.m. Carol Y. Bailey The term “Women Writers” suggests, and perhaps assumes, a particular category. How useful is this term in describing the writers we tend to include under the frame? And further, how useful are the designations "African" and "African Diaspora"? We will begin by critically examining these central questions, and revisit them frequently as we read specific texts and the body of works included in this course. Our readings comprise a range of literary and scholarly works by canonical and more recent female writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and continental America. Framed primarily by Postcolonial Criticism, our explorations will center on how writers treat historical and contemporary issues specifically connected to women’s experiences, as well as other issues, such as globalization, modernity, and sexuality. We will consider the continuities and points of departure between writers, periods, and regions, and explore the significance of the writers’ stylistic choices. Here our emphasis will be on how writers appropriate vernacular and conventional modes of writing. SWAG 316/ENGL 316- Immersive Accompaniment: Reading the Bildungsroman Tuesday, Thursday 8:30-9:50 a.m. Benigno R. Sanchez-Eppler “From whence comes my help?” “From where does your strength come?” The psalmist and Adrienne Rich ask these questions, which we will face while we read coming-of-age narratives that fit in a genre known by its German name, the  Bildungsroman . These novels go beyond the pilgrimage out of adolescence, and into explicit representation of intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual growth experienced in unison with sexual development, awakenings, thrills, mishaps, and marriage. We will pay attention to how we immerse ourselves into the condition of those who grow on the page; not to “identify” with the characters, but to accompany them. From our immersive accompaniment we will re-emerge–intentionally–to write about how we progress, digress, regress, and grow some more. As we read we will explore many terms and theoretical concerns: Erik Erickson on life stages; Donald Winnicott on holding environment and object relation; Jacques Lacan on mirrors and interminability of desire; Silvan Tomkins on affects and nuclear scripts; Shoshana Feldman on re-reading, un-learning, en-gendering, and–again–desire. Readings will likely include: Plato,  Phaedrus ; Susan Choi,  Trust Exercise ;  Lazarillo de Tormes ; Teresa de Avila,  Interior Castle ; John Woolman,  The Journal ; Roland Barthes,  A Lover’s Discourse ; Jeffrey Eugenides,  The Marriage Plot ; Ocean Vuong,  On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous ; Charlotte Brontë,  Jane Eyre ; James Joyce,  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ; Doris Lessing,  The Golden Notebook ; Richard Powers,  The Overstory . SWAG 332/FAMS 338/LLAS 330/SPAN 330- Latin American Cinema Monday, Wednesday 2:00-3:20 p.m. Paul A. Schroeder Rodriguez How have Latin Americans represented themselves on the big screen? In this course we will explore this question through close readings of representative films from each of the following major periods: silent cinema (1890s–1930s), studio cinema (1930s–1950s), Neorealism/Art Cinema (1950s), the New Latin American Cinema (1960s–1980s), and contemporary cinema (1990s to today). Throughout the course we will examine evolving representations of modernity and pay special attention to how these representations are linked to different constructions of gender, race, sexuality, and nationality. We will conclude the course with a collective screening of video essays created by students in the course. The course is conducted in Spanish. SWAG 349/LJST 349- Law and Love Wednesday 2:00-4:45 p.m. Martha M. Umphrey At first glance, law and love seem to tend in opposing directions: where law is constituted in rules and regularity, love emerges in contingent, surprising, and ungovernable ways; where law speaks in the language of reason, love’s language is of sentiment and affect; where law regulates society through threats of violence, love binds with a magical magnetism. In this seminar, placing materials in law and legal theory alongside theoretical and imaginative work on the subject of love, we invert that premise of opposition in order to look for love’s place in law and law’s in love. First we will inquire into the ways in which laws regulate love, asking how is love constituted and arranged by those regulations, and on what grounds it escapes them. In that regard we will explore, among other areas, the problematics of passion in criminal law and laws regulating sexuality, marriage, and family. Second we will ask, how does love in its various guises (as philia, eros, or agape) manifest itself in law and legal theory, and indeed partly constitute law itself? Here we will explore, for example, sovereign exercises of mercy, the role of equity in legal adjudication, and the means that bind legal subjects together in social contract theory. Finally, we will explore an analogy drawn by W. H. Auden, asking how law is like love, and by extension love like law. How does attending to love’s role in law, and law’s in love, shift our imaginings of both? SWAG 357/FAMS 328/LLAS 347/SPAN 347- Almodovar on the Verge Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:50 p.m. Sara J. Brenneis Emerging from the ashes of the Franco dictatorship, director Pedro Almodóvar lit up Spain's movie screens beginning in the 1980s with his unconventional takes on gender, sexuality, religion, and family. Now a globally-recognized and award-winning filmmaker, Almodóvar has matured from his raunchy and risqué beginnings in the Madrid punk scene to become a director sensitive to marginalized people and human rights. In this course, we will consider a panorama of Almodóvar films from the 1980s to the 2020s in the context of Spanish society during a period of political transition, social transformation and collective trauma. Particular emphasis will be placed on how the director has represented gender identity and sexuality in his films. Through streaming films, course readings, short writing assignments and a visual essay project, we will work through Almodóvar’s thematic interests, characteristic film techniques, and ongoing dialogue with Spain’s culture. This course is conducted in Spanish, with some readings in English; prior exposure to film studies is not required.  SWAG 400/POSC 407- Contemporary Debates: Decolonizing Feminist and Gender Studies Tuesday 2:30-5:15 Amrita Basu This seminar will explore the ways anticolonial and post-colonial religious nationalist movements employ gendered appeals and mobilize women and sexual minorities. Are there fundamental, irreconcilable tensions between religion and nationalism, on the one hand, and the freedom of women and lgbtq communities, on the other? How might political movements both challenge and re-inscribe dominant narratives of the nation? What are some alternative feminist and queer imaginaries? We will examine varied modes of agency and activism—through art, poetry, literature, cinema, and electoral politics among others. SWAG 416/BLST 416/ECON 416- Economics of Race and Gender Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:50 p.m. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes Economics is fundamentally about both efficiency  and  equity.  It is about allocation, welfare, and well-being.  How, then, can we use this disciplinary perspective to understand hierarchy, power, inequity, discrimination, and injustice?  What does economics have to offer?  Applied microeconomics is a fundamentally outward-looking and interdisciplinary field that endeavors to answer this question by being both firmly grounded in economics and also deeply connected to sociology, psychology, political science, and law.  In this class, we will employ this augmented economic perspective to try to understand the hierarchies and operation of race and gender in society.  We will read theoretical and empirical work that engages with questions of personal well-being, economic achievement, and social interaction.  Students will have opportunities throughout the semester to do empirical and policy-relevant work.  Each student will build a solid foundation for the completion of an independent term paper project that engages with a specific economic question about racial or gender inequity. SWAG 420/CLAS 420- Queer Antiquities: Global Perspectives Monday, Wednesday 2:00-3:20 p.m. TBA While the gender binary and the concept of homo- and heterosexuality are nineteenth-century European and colonial constructs, the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome abound with representations of gender and sexuality that defy both ancient and modern norms. At a time when queer and trans identities are facing multiple political threats, it feels ever more urgent to remember that queer people have always existed: both within and outside the confines of the so-called “classical” world. In this course, we will focus on ancient Greek, Roman, Indian, Aztec and Yoruba literature, art and myths and their modern reception in the work of artists such as Audre Lorde, Ocean Vuong, Federico Fellini and Gloria Anzaldúa. We will reflect on the lives of people inhabiting different gender identities, but also of different social classes and racial identities, privileging an intersectional approach to ancient queerness. Students will learn how to conduct interdisciplinary work, and reflect on what modern queer authors and theories can bring to the study of antiquity and vice versa. While a basic knowledge of concepts of gender, race, class, sexual orientation and disability as socially constructed categories is expected, as are some critical thinking and writing skills, engagement and curiosity will always be prioritized. We will deepen our analytical and research skills, as well as gain familiarity with crip theory, queer critique of color, Black feminist thought and trans studies. This course will include visits to museums and archives, where students will be asked to individuate the gaps in collecting and curatorial practices. The assignments will revolve around addressing those gaps with a variety of methods: zine-making, original research papers or creative projects in multiple media.  LJST 260- Feminist Legal Theory Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:20 a.m. Nica M. Seigel In the twentieth century, American feminist movements made significant strides in securing suffrage, formal equality under the law, reproductive justice, and the possibility of economic independence through paid labor.  And yet, the entry of (some) women into the public sphere has only intensified the urgency of a series of underlying questions: Is it desirable to demand legal transformations in the name of the identity “woman,” and if so, how should we incorporate considerations of gender and queerness, class, race, ability, and nationality? What is the relation between the formal emancipation of some women and intensified forms of domination of other women, for example, in the sphere of care work? What are the histories, logics, and political economies of these relations?  What is the family, what is its relationship to reproduction, and how should its legal attachments, obligations, and relationships be understood from a feminist perspective? How did individual choice become the privileged legal mechanism for feminist forms of freedom and what is the status of choice today? We will aim to develop our understanding of these distinct but deeply linked questions of feminist thinking and methodology, with an emphasis on American writers and their postcololonial and anti-racist critics, and to appreciate conflicting points of view and longer histories within these debates. Thinkers include Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Aleksandra Kollontai, Rosa Luxemburg, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Betty Friedan, Catherine Mackinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, Adrianne Rich, Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Eve Sedgewick, Sylvia Federici, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Donna Haraway, Hortense Spillers, Patricia J. Williams, Judith Butler, Kim TallBear, José Muñoz, Melinda Cooper, Sophie Lewis, M.E. O’Brian, and Amia Srinivasan, as well as materials from intersectional movements and jurisprudence that demanded legal and more-than-legal transformation, including the Atlanta Washer Women Strike of 1881, the Jane Collective, Wages for Housework, the Combahee River Collective, ACT-UP, INCITE!, sex worker unions, and the #MeToo movement.

Hampshire College WGSS Courses

CSI 246- Transnational Feminisms Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:20 p.m. Jina Fast This course critically engages a range of transnational feminist theories, movements, and praxis to analyze structures of power shaping people's lives in global and local contexts. By focusing on African, Asian, South American, Indigenous, and Middle Eastern feminisms, this course seeks to decenter a body of feminist scholarship that often assumes shared visions of gender equality. Such studies conceptualize gender issues and concerns through a Eurocentric/colonial viewpoint by overlooking differences among people with respect to race, class, sexuality/sexual orientation, and nationality. Course readings explore the ethics of cross-cultural knowledge production, activism, warfare, commodification of women and queer peoples' bodies, sexualities, and local resources. The main goals of the course are to expose students to a broad range of feminist thought and action and locate transnational feminist theories in relation to colonial and post-colonial narratives. It urges students to examine their own positions within global systems that connect the (often uneven) exchange of persons, capital, and ways of knowing. CSI 150- Philosophy of Sexuality Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m. Jina Fast  Employs an intersectional philosophical approach to the study of human sexuality. Specific topics include ethical, epistemological (knowledge), and political questions related to sexual orientation, lust, casual sex, adultery, love, sexual orientation and practice, different types of relationships, and the intersectionality of sexual identity and orientation with other identities such as race, gender, and disability status. As we consider these questions, we will challenge assumptions regarding human sexuality, consider the importance of sexuality and friendship to the good life, and discuss what, if any, is the appropriate role of the state in human sexual behavior. CSI 199- Sonic Politics: Culture, Power, and Popular Music Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m. Professor Loza Component Is music raced? Is it sexed? How do musical sounds and performances become racialized and sexualized? How does music reflect, reproduce, and/or contest gender and racial boundaries? How do individuals use music to express their cultural identity? Such questions hint at the undeniable yet ineffable influence of race and sex on the US musical imagination. This seminar will consider the fraught intersection of race, power, and desire in contemporary popular music (hip hop, electronic dance music, rock, pop, punk, R&B/soul, world music, etc.). Utilizing an interdisciplinary amalgam of Popular Music Studies, Post-Colonial Theory, Critical Race Studies, Ethnic Studies, Literary Criticism, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and (Ethno)Musicology, we will investigate the local creation and global circulation of racially-coded and sexually-loaded sonic signifiers; questions of authenticity and appropriation; music as a form of cultural resistance and colonial domination; and music as a key component in identity formation. This course is reading-, writing-, and theory-intensive. CSI 228- Labor Organizing in the Care Economy: The History and Politics of Care Work Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:50 p.m. Amy Jordan Component This course will explore the critical, often hidden, struggles for autonomy and equitable labor practices among household (domestic) workers, and workers in home health care, hospitals, day care centers and the broader service economy. Care workers have developed some of the most creative and transformative labor organizing strategies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This course will center on struggles for union recognition at pivotal moments of economic transformation such as the Reconstruction era, the Civil Rights Movement, post-1965 immigration, the Great Recession and the Pandemic. The course will also highlight the efforts of scholars and activists to develop oral histories of care workers as part of a critical strategy for including their labors in dominant conceptions of what constitutes the "working class." Students will read social history, ethnography, and worker interviews as well as develop research projects based upon collections located in the Sophia Smith Archives at Smith College. CSI 274- Cuba: Nation, Race, and Revolution Tuesday, Thursday 2:30-3:50 p.m. Michele Hardesty Component This interdisciplinary course critically engages a range of frameworks (geopolitical, historical, sociological, literary, artistic) to study the complex and contested reality of Cuba. The course will begin by critiquing and decentering the stereotypical images of Cuba that circulate in U.S. popular and official culture. Then we will learn about the revolutions that have defined the nation in the context of colonialism and neocolonialism: the impact of the Haitian Revolution on colonial Cuba; the forging of a nation in the late-19th century revolutions for independence from Spain; and the victory of the 1959 Cuban Revolution that defied U.S. neocolonial power. From there, we will examine how intersecting constructions of race, gender, and sexuality have defined Cuba since the 1959 revolution, and what it means to think about Cuba as transnational. This course is reading-intensive and is best suited to students beyond their first semester of study. The class will be conducted in English, with many readings and viewings available in Spanish and English. For students wishing to apply for the Hampshire in Havana spring semester program, this course is a requirement and offers critical foundational knowledge and application support. (Concurrent enrollment in a Spanish language class is strongly recommended for non-fluent speakers considering the Hampshire in Havana program.) IA 250- Black Storytelling and Performance Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:50 a.m. Jonathan Dent This course is an exploration into the ways that Black artists from around the diaspora have used the stage and the art of storytelling as a vehicle for liberation and self-determination. We'll be looking at Black playwrights and storytellers from different time periods and investigating how they each explored themes of race, gender, sexuality, politics, joy, love, and liberation. We'll also spend time imagining what we hope the future of Black storytelling and performance looks like, and what contributions we think that the Black artist has to offer a world in need of healing and collective liberation. We will read work by playwrights included but not limited to: August Wilson, Katori Hall, Lynn Nottage, Tarell Alvin-McCraney, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Robert O'Hara, Suzan Lori-Parks, Amiri Baraka. HACS 258- Movement and Forms Monday, Wednesday 1:00-3:50 p.m. Vick Quezada Component Through performance, sculpture, and theory, this course explores queer subjectivity, colonialism and the constraining structures that shape people's lives. In this course, students will work in multimodal forms to create sculptural objects, or props crafted out of wood, found objects, and assemblage art to incorporate them into self-choreographed movement(s), performances, happenings or political actions throughout the semester. As a method of presentation, students may integrate components of video, sound, site-specific work and installation. We will examine how contemporary artists and activists use their bodies/objects and performances as a tool of subversion, activism, and storytelling. We will look at the important work ranging from ADAPT and the "Capitol Crawl, NYC Ballroom Culture, Marisela Escobedo, ACT UP, Bread and Puppet Theater, artists such as Lorraine O'Grady to trans performance artist Keijaun Thomas. As Diana Taylor coined the term "Acts of Transfer," we can examine the ways in which these artists, groups and students can utilize their bodies to perform an action or series of actions in order to create urgency and attention while transmitting social knowledge, memory, and identity.

Mount Holyoke Gender Studies Courses

These courses automatically count towards the WGSS major minor.   Any courses in BLUE are considered “component” for WGSS majors/minors.  You must focus your work on WGSS topics in order for the course to count.

GNDST 204CP- Trap Doors and Glittering Closets: Queer/Trans of Color Visual Cultures of Resistance Tuesday 1:30-4:20 p.m. Ren-yo Hwang In 2014,  Time  magazine declared the "Transgender Tipping Point" as a popular moment of transgender people's arrival into the mainstream. Using a queer and trans* of color critique, this course will unpack the political discourses and seeming binaries surrounding visibility/invisibility, recognition/misrecognition, legibility/illegibility, belonging/unbelonging and aesthetics/utility. How might we grapple with the contradictions of the trapdoors, pitfalls, dark corners and glittering closets that structure and normalize violence for some while safeguarding violence for others? This course will center the 2017 anthology  Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility . GNDST 204CW- Androgyny and Gender Negotiation in Contemporary Chinese Women’s Theater Monday 1:30-4:20 p.m. Ying Wang Yue Opera, an all-female art that flourished in Shanghai in 1923, resulted from China's social changes and the women's movement. Combining traditional with modern forms and Chinese with Western cultures, Yue Opera today attracts loyal and enthusiastic audiences despite pop arts crazes. We will focus on how audiences, particularly women, are fascinated by gender renegotiations as well as by the all-female cast. The class will read and watch classics of this theater, including  Romance of the Western Bower ,  Peony Pavilion , and  Butterfly Lovers . Students will also learn the basics of traditional Chinese opera. GNDST 204GV- Gendered Violence from Medieval to Contemporary Spain Monday, Wednesday 1:45-3:00 p.m. Nieves Romero-Diaz

This survey course will review the complex interaction of gender and violence as a personal and institutional issue in Spain from Medieval times to the present. What are the ideological and sociocultural constructs that sustain and perpetuate violence against women? What are the forms of resistance women have put into play? Among the texts, we will study short stories by Lucanor (thirteenth century) and María de Zayas (seventeenth century), song by Bebé and movie by Boya&iacuten (twentieth century), contemporary news (twenty-first century), and laws (from the thirteenth century to the present).  GNDST 204NB- Nonbinary Romanticism: Genders, Sexes, and Beings in the Age of Revolution Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:45 a.m. Kate Singer With the onslaught of American, French, Haitian, and South American revolts and revolutions, the Atlantic world, much of Europe, and its colonial/industrial empire were thrown into a period of refiguring the concept of the raced, national, and gendered subject. This course considers what new forms of gender, sex, sexuality, and being were created, practiced, or thought, however momentarily, in this tumultuous age. Specific attention is given to conceptions of nonbinary being (of all varieties). Authors may include E. Darwin, Equiano, Wollstonecraft, Lister, M. Shelley, Byron, Jacobs.   GNDST 204RV- Perspectives on Revolutionary Parenting Monday 1:30-4:20 p.m. Niamh Timmons In this space, we center the radical potentials of mothering/parenting alongside reproductive justice. We'll discuss how mothering/parenting operates in relation to the state, medical structures, borders, and other apparatuses. This course also considers what practices make mothering/parenting and reproductive justice as a space of potential liberation. What and who constitutes a mother/parent? How can the practice of parenting and reproductive justice be a liberatory practice? We'll look at texts such as  Revolutionary Mothering  and the history of community mothering spaces such as STAR House. GNDST 204TA- Transgender Literature Monday, Wednesday 1:45-3:00 p.m. Jude Hayward-Jansen Transgender literature has had a significant impact on how we talk about transness (and gender) and the kinds of trans stories we are able to tell. Although trans identities may find expression in texts as early as  Metamorphoses  (Ovid), this course will look at literature from the 20th and 21st centuries. Considering a wide range of genres -- novels, poetry, short stories, memoir, and young adult literature -- we will think about how writers talk about their bodies, their transitions, and their histories. Drawing upon fields such as history, medicine, and social science, this course will look at trans literature as both a product of these histories and as a powerful tool for critical liberation.

GNDST 206BF- The Historical-Grammar of Black Feminist Though Across the Caribbean and the Americas Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:45 a.m. Maria Abello Hurtado This class aims to raise student awareness of and exposure to different cultural backgrounds and contributions of Black feminist thought, womanism, and afro feminism across the Caribbean and the Americas. We will take a historical journey exploring the roles of cisgender Black women and gender-non-confirmative Black people in the formations of Black feminist thought, highlighting their contributions and struggles in dismantling the Western matrix of domination, but also in the radical building of new societies. Students will learn about the groundbreaking theories and methodologies that helped pave the way for contemporary feminist organizations and social movements. GNDST 221QF- Feminist and Queer Theory Monday, Wednesday 1:45-3:00 p.m. Christian Gundermann We will read a number of key feminist texts that theorize sexual difference, and challenge the oppression of women. We will then address queer theory, an offshoot and expansion of feminist theory, and study how it is both embedded in, and redefines, the feminist paradigms. This redefinition occurs roughly at the same time (1980s/90s) when race emerges as one of feminism's prominent blind spots. The postcolonial critique of feminism is a fourth vector we will examine, as well as anti-racist and postcolonial intersections with queerness. We will also study trans-theory and its challenge to the queer paradigm.  GNDST 221TR- Feminist Transnationalities Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:45 a.m. Sandra Russell This course explores recent histories, contexts, debates, and representations of feminist thought and movement across national, political, and cultural domains. Through engagement with narrative, ethnographic, and artistic sources, we consider how coalitions and solidarities have been built, in resistance to gendered and racialized oppressions, that not only challenge dominant feminist discourses but also reimagine possibilities for antiracist and anticolonial worldmaking. Topics include Black feminist internationalism, Marxist and socialist feminisms, migration and the politics of borders, trans inclusivity, as well as critiques of binaries such as west/east, local/global, and victim/agent. GNDST 241RA- Rethinking Aids Monday, Wednesday 11:30-12:45 p.m. Christian Gundermann Many aspects of COVID-19 have their roots in the 1980s AIDS epidemic -- politically, scientifically, culturally. A careful reexamination of the mainstream narrative of the HIV/AIDS phenomenon and the history from which it emerged is therefore urgent. The course will focus on the unprecedented scientific narratives around HIV and AIDS, as well as their continuation into present-day Africa, on the backdrop of advances in immunology, virology, and genetics. It will also scrutinize the burgeoning political and neoliberal economic constellations later known as pharmocracy, which appropriated and weaponized novel radical forms of activism that had emerged from within gay minority culture. GNDST 333QM- The Queer Early Modern Monday, Wednesday 10:00-11:15 a.m. Caitlin Mahaffy This course combines early modern texts with various related secondary readings that will enable students to better understand the way that sexuality-both normative and nonnormative-was portrayed and interpreted in Renaissance literature. As we progress through the course, we will discuss what defines queer history and histories of sexuality, how the history of sexuality in the past informs the present, and, ultimately, the ways in which we can use early modern literature to better understand ourselves today. Course texts will include Christopher Marlowe's  Edward II , John Lyly's  Galatea , Shakespeare's sonnets, and the poetry of Aemilia Lanyer and Katherine Philips. GNDST 333TX- Abolition and Radical Textiles Wednesday 1:30-4:20 p.m. Ren-yo Hwang, Sarah Stefana Smith  

How do the topics of abolition and textiles come together? Marginalized communities have historically used folkloric, textile arts and material culture to amplify abolitionist causes. From secret quilt codes of the Underground Railroad to an abolitionist community sustained by a silk mill in Florence, Massachusetts how might thinking  with  textiles intervene on patriarchal systems rooted in rigidity, isolation and punishment? From the social devaluation of domesticized and feminized labor of weaving, quilting, sewing to banners, students will theorize and experiment with textiles, leaving with a grounded understanding of how textiles/fibers can and have played an essential role in the history of abolition. GNDST 333WE- Weird Feelings: Unsettling Latin American Short Fiction Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-11:45 a.m. Adriana Pitetta In this course we will read and discuss a group of short stories written by contemporary female, queer and trans Latin American authors. These stories deal with (among other weird feelings and states) the uncanny, the unsettling and the horror of daily life as well as processes of becoming, embodiment and disidentification. This course considers the intersections of identity and imagination, race, gender, and class. Special attention is given to the way in which these writings depict oppression and resilience and how they reinvent the Latin American short story writing tradition. Authors may include Ivan Monalisa, Guadalupe Nettel, Mariana Enriquez, Camila Sosa, and Claudia Salazar.

Smith College SWG Courses

These courses automatically count towards the WGSS major/minor.   Any courses in BLUE are considered “component” for WGSS majors/minors.  You must focus your work on WGSS topics in order for the course to count.

SWG 238 – Women, Money, and Transactional Social Movements Monday 1:40 – 2:55 p.m., Wednesday 1:20 – 2:35 p.m. Ana Del Conde

Flickers of global finance capital across computer screens cannot compare to the travel preparations of women migrating from rural homes to work at computer chip factories. Yet both movements, of capital and people, constitute vital facets of globalization in the current era. This course centers on the political linkages and economic theories that address the politics of women, gender relations and capitalism. Students research social movements that challenge the raced, classed and gendered inequities, and the costs of maintaining order. The course assesses the alternatives proposed by social movements like the landless workers movement (MST) in Brazil, and economic shifts like the workers cooperative movement. Assignments include community-based research on local and global political movements, short papers, class-led discussions & written reflections.

SWG 241 – White Supremacy in the Age of Trump Tuesday, Thursday 2:45 – 4:00 p.m. Loretta Ross

This course analyzes the history, prevalence and current manifestations of the white supremacist movement by examining ideological components, tactics and strategies, and its relationship to mainstream politics. Students research and discuss the relationship between white supremacy and white privilege, and explore how to build a human rights movement to counter the white supremacist movement in the U.S. Students develop analytical writing and research skills while engaging in multiple cultural perspectives. The overall goal is to develop the capacity to understand the range of possible responses to white supremacy, both its legal and extralegal forms.

SWG 270 – Oral History and Lesbian Subjects Tuesday, Thursday 9:25 – 10:40 a.m. Kelly P. Anderson

Grounding the work in the current scholarship in lesbian history, this course explores lesbian, queer and bisexual communities, cultures and activism. While becoming familiar with the existing narratives about lesbian and queer lives, students are introduced to the method of oral history as a key documentation strategy in the production of lesbian history. How do research methods need to be adapted, including oral history, in order to talk about lesbian and queer lives? Texts include secondary literature on 20th-century lesbian cultures and communities, oral history theory and methodology, and primary sources from the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC). Students conduct, transcribe, edit and interpret their own interviews for their final project. The oral histories from this course are archived with the Documenting Lesbian Lives collection in the SSC.

SWG 271 – Reproductive Justice Tuesday, Thursday 10:50 a.m. – 12:05 p.m. Loretta Ross

This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of reproductive health, rights and justice in the United States, examining history, activism, law, policy and public discourses related to reproduction. A central framework for analysis is how gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability and nationality intersect to shape people’s experiences of reproductive oppression and their resistance strategies. Topics include eugenics and the birth control movement; the reproductive rights and justice movements; U.S. population control policies; criminalization of pregnant people; fetal personhood and birth parents’ citizenship; the medicalization of reproduction; reproductive technologies; the influence of disability, incarceration and poverty on pregnancy and parenting; the anti-abortion movement; and reproductive coercion and violence. Prerequisite SWG 150 or equivalent.

SWG 300AH – Abortion History, Law, and Politics Thursday 1:20 – 4:00 p.m. Carrie N. Baker

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned  Roe v. Wade , reversing a half-century-long precedent of constitutional abortion rights. This course explores the history, law and politics of abortion in the U.S. before, during and after  Roe . The course examines ideologies, strategies and tactics of the abortion rights movement as well as the anti-abortion movement, focusing in particular on the gender and racial politics of these movements. Discussions include abortion access, anti-abortion violence, “crisis pregnancy centers,” fetal personhood campaigns, the criminalization of pregnancy, abortion pills, telemedicine abortion and self-managed abortion. 

SWG 300QC – Queer Conversation Friday 1:20 – 4:00 p.m. Amy Howe

What does queer life look like when placed in conversation with religious ideas of conversion, rebirth and transformation? How is the queer subject recognized as (il)legible through practices of confession, ritual and re-creation? This course situates conversations about community, transformation, ritual and critique in the studies of religion and queer theories. The class looks at case studies including faith-based ex-gay movements, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and transnational Afro-Latinx Santería practices. Students write independent analytical and reflective pieces which culminate into a workshopped final research paper or curated artistic piece. 

AFR 249 – Black Women Writers Wednesday 1:20 – 2:35 p.m., Monday 1:40 – 2:55 p.m. Karla Zelaya

How does gender matter in a black context? That is the question this course asks and attempts to answer through an examination of works by such authors as Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Nella Larsen, Zora Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker.

AFR 366RS – Race, Sex, and Tourism Tuesday 9:25 a.m.  – 12:05 p.m. Traci-Ann Wint

Tourism is often lauded as the key to economic development for many countries. However, scholarly work has shown that historical relationships to imperialism and colonialism impact how people and places experience tourism. This course introduces students to debates, methods and conceptual frameworks in the study of race, sex and tourism. Through a review of scholarly texts, tourism paraphernalia, films and travelogues, the course examines the social, political and ethical considerations inherent in multiple forms of tourism including eco-tourism, wellness or health, sun-sand-sea, heritage, dark and voluntourism in locales ranging from the Caribbean and the Americas to Africa and Europe.

AFS 222 – Fanta Faces and Coca-Cola Bodies: Popular Culture, Gender, and Sexuality in Africa Tuesday, Thursday 2:45 – 4:00 p.m. Kuukuwa Andam

This course uses popular culture as a tool to analyze gender and sexuality in Africa.   It discusses relevant issues in gender and sexuality across the continent, using selected African songs and movies, which feature these issues as centralized themes. It also examines the lived experiences of African actors, musicians and artistes, both historical and modern, as a means of discussing social norms on gender and sexuality and their subversion. 

AMS 201 – Introduction to American Studies Wednesday, Friday 1:10 – 2:35 p.m. Christen Mucher, Evangeline Heiliger

This course provides an introduction to American Studies through the interdisciplinary study of American history, life and culture. Students develop critical tools for analyzing cultural texts (including literature, visual arts, music, fashion, advertising, social media, buildings, objects and bodies) in relation to political, social, economic and environmental contexts. The course examines the influence of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and transnationality on conceptions of citizenship, and struggles over what it means to be an “American,” and how this has shaped the distribution of power, resources and wellbeing in the United States.

ENG 241 – The Empire Writes Back: Postcolonial Literature Tuesday, Thursday 1:20 – 2:35 p.m. Ambreen Hai

Introduction to Anglophone fiction, poetry, drama and memoir from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia in the aftermath of the British empire. Concerns include the cultural and political work of literature in response to histories of colonial and racial dominance; writers' ambivalence towards English linguistic, literary and cultural legacies; ways literature can (re)construct national identities and histories and address dominant notions of race, class, gender and sexuality; women writers' distinctiveness and modes of contesting patriarchal and colonial ideologies; and global diasporas, migration, globalization and U.S. imperialism. Readings include Achebe, Adichie, Aidoo, Dangarembga, Walcott, Cliff, Rushdie, Ghosh, Lahiri, Hamid and others.

ENG 333JL – A Major Writer in English- Jhumpa Lahiri Wednesday 1:20 – 4:00 p.m. Ambreen Hai

Indian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri became an overnight star in 1999 with her first short story collection, the Pulitzer Prize-winning  Interpreter of Maladies . She has since published many novels, story collections and essays. Internationally acclaimed for her beautifully crafted, deeply moving fiction about migration, love, loss, belonging, unbelonging, home and family, this trilingual twenty-first century writer has already generated an astonishing body of scholarship. This course focuses on Lahiri’s fiction and non-fiction, her themes and techniques, and includes her recent work in translation. The intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender and class is central to the analysis. Supplementary readings include postcolonial, Asian American and feminist theory, history and literary criticism. 

ENV 327 – Environmental Justice and Decolonial Aspirations in an Urbanizing World Wednesday 7:00 – 9:30 p.m. Efadul Huq Component

This course explores global environmental justice and decolonial planning issues, debates and policies in the context of an urbanizing world marked by race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, caste, class and other lines of difference. The course draws from scholarship in urban studies, anthropology, sociology, geography and other related fields to develop an appreciation of global environmental injustices. With particular attention to decolonial planning approaches, students learn about efforts to redress environmental injustices, whether through formal planning and policies, social movements, community organizing or everyday environmentalism. The course covers environmental issues at multiple scales from around the world and explores the interrelatedness of themes.  Instructor permission required.

ESS 340 – Current Issues in Women’s Health Monday, Wednesday 10:50 a.m. – 12:05 p.m. Barbara Brehm-Curtis

A course focusing on current research papers in women’s health. Recent topics have included reproductive health issues, eating disorders, heart disease, depression, autoimmune disorders and breast cancer.  Instructor permission required.

FMS 248 – Women and American Cinema: Representation, Spectatorship, Authorship Tuesday, Thursday 9:25 – 10:40 a.m. Kiki Loveday

A survey of women in American films from the silent period to the present, examining: 1) how women are represented on film, and how those images relate to actual contemporaneous American society, culture and politics; 2) how theoretical formulations, expectations and realities of female spectatorship relate to genre, the star and studio systems (and other production and distribution modes), dominant and alternative codes of narration and developments in digital and new media modes; and 3) how women as stars, writers, producers and directors shape and respond to, work within and against, dominant considerations of how women look (in every sense).

GOV 269 – Feminist Political Thought Tuesday, Thursday 2:45 – 4:00 p.m. Nathan DuFord

Feminist political thought functions in two ways: first, to critique the masculinist and patriarchal forms of thought in mainstream political philosophy; and second, to generate forms of political thinking that advance the cause of liberation. This course develops these two strains of thinking. Students consider the politics of gender, sex and sexualities, law, formal and informal institutions, the political subject, and the roles that race, class, sexuality and nationality play feminist political thinking.

HST 223AT – Women and Gender in Japanese History- Ancient Times to the 19 th Century Monday, Wednesday 9:25 – 10:40 a.m. Marnie S. Anderson

The dramatic transformation in gender relations is a key feature of Japan’s premodern history. How Japanese women and men have constructed norms of behavior in different historical periods, how gender differences were institutionalized in social structures and practices, and how these norms and institutions changed over time. The gendered experiences of women and men from different classes from approximately the seventh through the 19th centuries. Consonant with current developments in gender history, exploration of variables such as class, religion and political context that have affected women’s and men’s lives. Enrollment limited to 18.

HST 265 – Race, Gender, and U.S. Citizenship, 1776-1865 Monday, Wednesday 9:25 – 10:40 a.m. Elizabeth S. Pryor

Analysis of the historical realities, social movements, cultural expression and political debates that shaped U.S. citizenship from the Declaration of Independence to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. From the hope of liberty and equality to the exclusion of marginalized groups that made whiteness, maleness and native birth synonymous with Americanness. How African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants and women harnessed the Declaration of Independence and its ideology to define themselves as citizens of the United States. Enrollment limited to 40.

JUD 217 – Motherhood in Early Judaism Tuesday, Thursday 10:50 a.m. – 12:05 p.m. Sari Fein

How did early Jewish communities imagine mothers, and what does this reveal about communal ideas of gender, family and identity in early Judaism? This course considers various manifestations of mothers in early Judaism through exploration of such literary sources as the Bible, rabbinic literature and the pseudepigrapha, as well as artifacts from material culture such as Aramaic incantation bowls, synagogue wall paintings and other archeological evidence. No prior knowledge of Judaism is expected (E).

LAS 201QL – Queer Latine Embodiments: Affect, Race, and Aesthetics Monday 1:40 – 2:55 p.m, Wednesday 1:20 – 2:35 p.m. Vicente Carrillo

What modes of resistance do queer and trans bodies of color deploy to navigate an anti-queer/trans world? What lessons do bodies offer? This course focuses on queer and trans representation in cultural production, performance studies approach to queer Latine research and the importance of embodied knowledges. The course addresses topics around affect, desire, queer nightlife, anti-queer/trans moral panics and public space. Students become familiar with scholarship in the growing field of queer Latine studies while developing a stronger critical analytic on how race, class, sexuality and gender inform the reading of bodies.

PSY 265 – Political Psychology Tuesday, Thursday 9:25 – 10:40 a.m. Lauren E. Duncan Component

This colloquium is concerned with the psychological processes underlying political phenomena. The course is divided into three sections: Leaders, Followers and Social Movements. In each of these sections, students examine how psychological factors influence political behavior and how political acts affect individual psychology.  

PSY 374 – Psychology of Political Activism Tuesday 1:20 – 4:00 p.m. Lauren E. Duncan

This seminar focuses on people’s motivations to participate in political activism, especially activism around social issues. Readings include theoretical and empirical work from political psychology paired with personal accounts of activists. Students consider accounts of some large-scale liberal and conservative social movements in the United States, and conduct an in-depth analysis of an activists oral history obtained from the  Voices of Feminism  archive of the Sophia Smith collection.  Instructor permission required.

SPN 230DM – Latin American and Peninsular Culture and Society- Domestica Tuesday, Thursday 9:25 – 10:40 a.m. Michelle Joffroy

This course explores the realities and representation of women’s domestic labor from the thematic perspectives of  precariousness  (a condition and expression of subjectivity under globalization) and  intimacy  (understood as both an experience of affect and a condition of labor). This course uses short fiction, documentary and film from the Spanish-speaking world (the Americas and Spain) and the Portuguese-speaking world where appropriate, to explore the ways in which women’s transnational domestic labor has shaped new cultural subjects and political identities in the public as well as the private sphere. Students work on the theme of women’s domestic labor from the perspective of their choosing (for example, human rights, migration policies, racial and gendered labor regimes, neoliberal reforms and resistance). Enrollment limited to 20. Prerequisite: SPN 220 or equivalent.

SPN 230WW – Latin American and Peninsular Culture and Society- Creative Writing By and With Spanish Women Writers Monday, Wednesday 10:50 a.m. – 12:05 p.m. Reyes Lazaro

This is a hinge course between Beginning-Intermediate and Advanced-Intermediate courses. Its goal is the acquisition of linguistic and cultural literacy, and the development of student's capacities as a writer and reader of Spanish. On occasion, the class might work on some grammar, according to need, but this is not a grammar course. Short stories, biographical pieces, a play, biographies, essays and poems by (mainly) Spanish women writers from the 12th-century to present day, as well as one novel. The class creates essays and a zine inspired by short stories, biographical pieces, a play, biographies, essays and poems by (mainly) Spanish women writers from the 12th-century to present day, as well as one Spanish novel. 

SPN 260DL – Latin American Cultural History- Decolonizing Latin American Literature Tuesday, Thursday 2:45 – 4:00 p.m. Michelle Joffroy

This course offers critical perspectives on colonialism, literatures of conquest and narratives of cultural resistance in the Americas and the Caribbean. Decolonial theories of violence, writing and representation in the colonial context inform the study of literary and cultural production of this period. Readings explore several themes including indigenous knowledge, land and the natural world; orality, literacy and visual cultures; race, rebellion and liberation; slavery, piracy and power; and the coloniality of gender.  Prerequisite:  SPN 220 or equivalent.  

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