To view GWS courses offered during a specific semester, visit the online University Course Catalogue. Select the semester desired from the drop-down menu, then type "GWS" in the Course Prefix box or select GWS from the drop-down menu. There may also be GWS courses listed under the general "A&S" prefix or as Discovery Seminar Program "DSP" courses. Note that actual course offerings are subject to change, but this guide will provide the most current information available.
FALL 2025 COURSES
GWS 600-001 (SAME AS ST 690): TOPICS IN GWS: MASCULINITIES
INSTRUCTOR: ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
MEETING TIMES: T 3:30-6:00PM
This course will engage with critical studies of masculinities from various disciplines, including history, linguistics, anthropology, and gender studies. Critical masculinity studies first emerged in the mid-1980s as scholars, inspired by studies of women and femininity, began to question the supposedly self-evident nature of masculinity. Rather than perceiving masculinity as a norm or as an absence of gender, these scholars interrogated how masculinities are shaped, contested, and altered. Scholars have investigated how masculinities change over time, how they differ across regions of the globe, and how they are interwoven with other categories of identity including race, class, religion, ethnicity, ability, and sexuality. Our course will examine both hegemonic masculinities (those marked as “normal” or desirable) and marginalized/minoritized masculinities. The class will take a comparative approach, examining masculinities from across the globe and in various historical eras. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate and meets the cross-cultural requirement for the graduate certificate.
Students in this course will:
• Understand masculinities as plural, contested, and contingent.
• Consider masculinities through an intersectional lens.
• Learn how masculinities change across space and time.
• Question how and whether masculinities are tied to the body.
GWS 650-001: FEMINIST THEORY
INSTRUCTOR: CHARLIE ZHANG
MEETING TIMES: R 4:00-6:30PM
This course is an advanced seminar in Gender and Women’s Studies. It is designed as an intellectual exercise of learning to evaluate the methods and theories that feminist scholars from various backgrounds utilize to develop their analysis of social systems of inequalities. Students will develop a solid theoretical foundation for critical inquiry of issues that are key to the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. These issues include (but are not limited to) the critical concepts of gender and women, identities and intersectionality, politics of knowledge production, women’s rights, colonialism, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism, solidarity, decolonization and indigeneity, science and technology, nationalism and transnationalism, globalization and neoliberalism, labor, migration, economic inequalities, as well feelings and affect. We will read a selection of core theoretical essays and monographs, examine the social and historical background of different theoretical developments, understand their political connotations, and evaluate their analytical strengths and weaknesses. This course is required for GWS PhD and GWS graduate certificate students.
GWS 700-001: TOPICAL SEMINAR IN GWS: STUDYING THE RIGHT
INSTRUCTOR: CAROL MASON
MEETING TIMES: M 3:00-5:30PM
Right-wing studies is a bourgeoning transnational endeavor across disciplines inspired by the recent global rise in authoritarian populism. However, analyzing the right has history that graduate students need to know. This class will provide students with: current discussions and definitions of key terms; a historical background to studying the right by focusing on important centers and the archives they’ve created in the United States; and a survey of methodological approaches and the kinds of analyses they produce. Assignments will emphasize understanding arguments and methods rather than producing original research and analysis. Readings are likely to include books by Daniel Martinez Hosang, Joseph Lowndes, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Kathleen Blee, Carlos De La Torre, Pete Simi, Robert Futrell, Matthew Lyon, Chip Berlet, Agnieszka Graff, Luke Mogelson, Larry Rosenthal, Jeff Sharlet, Kathleen Belew, and others. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate and meets the cross-cultural requirement for the graduate certificate.
ADDITIONAL COURSES FOR GWS CREDIT
HIS 650-002: GENDER AND POWER IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
INSTRUCTOR: FRANCIE CHASSEN-LÓPEZ
MEETING TIME: THURS, 5:00-7:30PM
This course will challenge students to think critically, and examine their own assumptions, with respect to the relationship between gender and power within and across cultures in distinct historical periods from the “gender panic” of the 1700s to the present. Given Joan Scott’s premise that gender is “a primary way of signifying relationships of power” and Dorinda Outram’s that “it is impossible to write about the body without also writing about power,” we will place gender and power, and their intersection with factors such as class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and nationality, in the center of our analysis in order to address key topics such as slavery, revolution, masculinity, birth control, colonialism/imperialism, genocide, and queer history as well as the pertinent theoretical and methodological debates. Along with many other texts, we will read Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, Vanessa M. Holden, Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community. Hugh Ryan, When Brooklyn was Queer: A History, Christina Jarvis, The Male Body at War, and Michelle Chase, Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate and meets the cross-cultural requirement for the graduate certificate.
MAS 590: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIO-CULTURAL ISSUES: GENDER
INSTRUCTOR: ERIKA ENGSTROM
MEETING TIMES: TR 11:00-12:15PM
This course covers hegemony, media literacy, and stereotypical and progressive gender portrayals across television and film. Femininity and masculinity will be explored in popular film and texts, with course topics including the woman's film genre of 20th century Hollywood, gender portrayals in Disney princess films, the Bechdel Test, and how films and television shows depict the gender roles. Starting-point texts for examining gender portrayals across media include NBC's Parks and Recreation in additional to other contemporary film and TV texts. Students will analyze a media text of their choosing that illustrates concepts and theories related to gender representation. This course emphasizes a prosocial perspective of media entertainment, and students will learn of positive portrayals of gender that advance feminist and egalitarian ideals. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate.
FALL 2025 COURSES
GWS 600-001 (SAME AS ST 690): TOPICS IN GWS: MASCULINITIES
INSTRUCTOR: ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
MEETING TIMES: T 3:30-6:00PM
This course will engage with critical studies of masculinities from various disciplines, including history, linguistics, anthropology, and gender studies. Critical masculinity studies first emerged in the mid-1980s as scholars, inspired by studies of women and femininity, began to question the supposedly self-evident nature of masculinity. Rather than perceiving masculinity as a norm or as an absence of gender, these scholars interrogated how masculinities are shaped, contested, and altered. Scholars have investigated how masculinities change over time, how they differ across regions of the globe, and how they are interwoven with other categories of identity including race, class, religion, ethnicity, ability, and sexuality. Our course will examine both hegemonic masculinities (those marked as “normal” or desirable) and marginalized/minoritized masculinities. The class will take a comparative approach, examining masculinities from across the globe and in various historical eras. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate and meets the cross-cultural requirement for the graduate certificate.
Students in this course will:
• Understand masculinities as plural, contested, and contingent.
• Consider masculinities through an intersectional lens.
• Learn how masculinities change across space and time.
• Question how and whether masculinities are tied to the body.
GWS 650-001: FEMINIST THEORY
INSTRUCTOR: CHARLIE ZHANG
MEETING TIMES: R 4:00-6:30PM
This course is an advanced seminar in Gender and Women’s Studies. It is designed as an intellectual exercise of learning to evaluate the methods and theories that feminist scholars from various backgrounds utilize to develop their analysis of social systems of inequalities. Students will develop a solid theoretical foundation for critical inquiry of issues that are key to the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. These issues include (but are not limited to) the critical concepts of gender and women, identities and intersectionality, politics of knowledge production, women’s rights, colonialism, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism, solidarity, decolonization and indigeneity, science and technology, nationalism and transnationalism, globalization and neoliberalism, labor, migration, economic inequalities, as well feelings and affect. We will read a selection of core theoretical essays and monographs, examine the social and historical background of different theoretical developments, understand their political connotations, and evaluate their analytical strengths and weaknesses. This course is required for GWS PhD and GWS graduate certificate students.
GWS 700-001: TOPICAL SEMINAR IN GWS: STUDYING THE RIGHT
INSTRUCTOR: CAROL MASON
MEETING TIMES: M 3:00-5:30PM
Right-wing studies is a bourgeoning transnational endeavor across disciplines inspired by the recent global rise in authoritarian populism. However, analyzing the right has history that graduate students need to know. This class will provide students with: current discussions and definitions of key terms; a historical background to studying the right by focusing on important centers and the archives they’ve created in the United States; and a survey of methodological approaches and the kinds of analyses they produce. Assignments will emphasize understanding arguments and methods rather than producing original research and analysis. Readings are likely to include books by Daniel Martinez Hosang, Joseph Lowndes, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Kathleen Blee, Carlos De La Torre, Pete Simi, Robert Futrell, Matthew Lyon, Chip Berlet, Agnieszka Graff, Luke Mogelson, Larry Rosenthal, Jeff Sharlet, Kathleen Belew, and others. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate and meets the cross-cultural requirement for the graduate certificate.
ADDITIONAL COURSES FOR GWS CREDIT
HIS 650-002: GENDER AND POWER IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
INSTRUCTOR: FRANCIE CHASSEN-LÓPEZ
MEETING TIME: THURS, 5:00-7:30PM
This course will challenge students to think critically, and examine their own assumptions, with respect to the relationship between gender and power within and across cultures in distinct historical periods from the “gender panic” of the 1700s to the present. Given Joan Scott’s premise that gender is “a primary way of signifying relationships of power” and Dorinda Outram’s that “it is impossible to write about the body without also writing about power,” we will place gender and power, and their intersection with factors such as class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and nationality, in the center of our analysis in order to address key topics such as slavery, revolution, masculinity, birth control, colonialism/imperialism, genocide, and queer history as well as the pertinent theoretical and methodological debates. Along with many other texts, we will read Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, Vanessa M. Holden, Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community. Hugh Ryan, When Brooklyn was Queer: A History, Christina Jarvis, The Male Body at War, and Michelle Chase, Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate and meets the cross-cultural requirement for the graduate certificate.
MAS 590: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIO-CULTURAL ISSUES: GENDER
INSTRUCTOR: ERIKA ENGSTROM
MEETING TIMES: TR 11:00-12:15PM
This course covers hegemony, media literacy, and stereotypical and progressive gender portrayals across television and film. Femininity and masculinity will be explored in popular film and texts, with course topics including the woman's film genre of 20th century Hollywood, gender portrayals in Disney princess films, the Bechdel Test, and how films and television shows depict the gender roles. Starting-point texts for examining gender portrayals across media include NBC's Parks and Recreation in additional to other contemporary film and TV texts. Students will analyze a media text of their choosing that illustrates concepts and theories related to gender representation. This course emphasizes a prosocial perspective of media entertainment, and students will learn of positive portrayals of gender that advance feminist and egalitarian ideals. This course counts toward requirements for the GWS graduate certificate, PhD, and other degrees as appropriate.