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. Note that actual course offerings are subject to change, but this guide will provide the most current information available.
SPRING 2025 UNDERGRADUATE COURSES:
GWS 200-001: SEX & POWER
INSTRUCTOR & TA: FRANCES HENDERSON & ESHITA HAQUE
MEETING TIMES: MWF 10:00-10:50am
This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary fields of both Gender Studies and Women's Studies which explore the ways that sex and gender manifest themselves in social, cultural, and political arenas. It draws upon scholarship in women’s studies, feminist studies, masculinities studies, and queer studies which themselves draw upon a variety of intellectual perspectives, including historical, psychological, rhetorical, sociological, literary, and biological. Students will use gender-based theory to look at the ways in which gender identification and representation influences individuals and societies. The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and debates in Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) scholarship, both historical and contemporary. This course meets USP and/or UK core requirement (Intellectual Inquiry, Social Science) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 200-002: SEX & POWER
INSTRUCTOR: NORAH CHOW
MEETING TIMES: TR 12:30-1:45pm
This course introduces Gender and Women’s Studies from a social science perspective using cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches. Analyzes relations of power marked by gender and how these relate to other social distinctions and processes. Interactive learning format. This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirement (Intellectual Inquiry, Social Science) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 201: GENDER & POPULAR CULTURE
SECTIONS:
001: TR 12:30-1:45pm: LEE MANDELO
003: MWF 11:00-11:50am: NELSON MENG
005: MWF 12:00-12:50pm: ITUNUOLUWA WILLIAMS
202: Online asynchronous, Part of Term: March 10-May 9, SHRUTHI PARTHASARATHY
This course examines the role of popular culture in the construction of gendered identities in contemporary society. We examine a wide range of popular cultural forms -- including music, computer games, movies, and television -- to illustrate how femininity and masculinity are produced, represented, and consumed. This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirement (Intellectual Inquiry, Humanities) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 201-002: GENDER AND POPULAR CULTURE: SEX SCANDALS
INSTRUCTOR: ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
MEETING TIMES: TR 2:00-3:15PM
Sex scandals have proven to be an enduring part of political discourse from the ancient times to the present. The first Roman Emperor, Augustus, exiled his daughter Julia after her philandering discredited his moral reforms; during the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette was accused of sleeping with men, women, and even her own son; and more recently, an unverified report from Buzzfeed involving Donald Trump and certain Moscow mattresses raised eyebrows and ire. Although sex scandals are often dismissed as lurid distractions from “real” political issues, in this course we will take them seriously as elements of political discourse. Through a close study of a number of political sex scandals, both past and present, students will consider the following questions: How and why are issues of sexual morality tied to political legitimacy? Why is sex a useful discourse for expressing political discontent? How do issues of race, class, religion, and region influence the shape of sex scandals? This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirement (Intellectual Inquiry, Humanities) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
Students in this course will:
- Consider how and why sexual (mis)behavior functions as a metaphor for political legitimacy.
- Gain an understanding of how sexuality intersects with other forms of identity, including race, class, gender, religion, ability, nation, etc.
- Learn how to read academic texts strategically, looking for argument, evidence, and approach.
- Develop skills in academic research.
GWS 201-201: GENDER & POPULAR CULTURE
INSTRUCTOR: FRANCES HENDERSON
MEETING TIMES: ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
This course examines the role of popular culture in the construction of gendered identities in contemporary society. We examine a wide range of popular cultural forms – including music, computer games, movies, and television – to illustrate how femininity and masculinity are produced, represented, and consumed. This course serves as an introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) from a humanities perspective. We will explore the ways identities are constructed through various types of media and popular culture. Representations of gender are central to our study but are always already influenced by other social categories, such as race, sexuality, and class. As a class, in addition to scholarly work, we will investigate how different kinds of texts, such as music videos, movies, television, advertisements, social media, and fictional work, shape our understanding and experience regarding what it means to be a “man” or a “woman.” Throughout this exploration, we will also consider how representation affects us as individuals and as communities in ways to reproduce and perpetuate the social hierarchy of gender, race, sexuality, and class. In GWS 201, we will explore a variety of texts through different lenses that recognize the social systems that privilege some and disadvantage others based on claimed and perceived identities. This course will give you an opportunity to develop your communication and research skills, but most of all, it will challenge you as a critical thinker. This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirement (Intellectual Inquiry, Humanities) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 250: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
INSTRUCTOR: LUKAS BULLOCK
MEETING TIMES: TR 12:30-1:45pm
This course takes you through some ways in which people have organized themselves around local, national, and international issues pertaining to gender. We engage key theories that explain the origins, strategies, and success of different forms of social movements across the world. We also critically analyze case studies from different parts of the world to understand how social movements work on the ground and in specific cultural environments with unique historical trajectories, attending to ways in which social movements are shaped by, and do or do not result in changes to social structures of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. This course meets UK Core requirement (Global Dynamics) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 300-001: TOPICS IN GWS: SCREENING APPALACHIA
INSTRUCTOR: CAROL MASON
MEETING TIMES: TR 12:30-1:45PM
This course is an interdisciplinary approach to examining how Appalachia is portrayed in the media. Specifically, we will examine how the gendered politics of representation render Appalachian men and women in particularly heroic or derogatory ways and portray Appalachia as a region and a landscape in particularly gendered terms. To do so, we’ll be looking at how filmic representations of Appalachia function as collective memory or fantasy of the place and its people. Understanding these dynamics are important to understanding how diversity, community, and culture in the United States are created, recognized, and sometimes misrepresented. Overriding questions shaping this course are:
• How has Appalachia served to define America?
• How have films about Appalachia aided in the defining and redefining of America?
• How does paying attention to gender, race, class, and sexuality undo the damage of negative images of Appalachia due to filmic representation – both narrative films and documentary films?
In considering these questions, it is important to realize that “America” is a cultural formation and not simply the abbreviated name of the United States of America. We will examine how issues of class, sexuality, and race – especially the often unspoken norm of whiteness – intersect in the cultural construction of the U.S.A. as America, mountains as altars or dumps, Appalachians as genetically pure or polluted, and Americans as understood in relation to citizens demonized or lampooned as Appalachian hillbillies.
GWS 300-002: GENDERED DESIRE IN ROMCOMS
INSTRUCTOR: JEORG SAUER
MEETING TIMES: HYBRID MW 2:00-2:50 & TBD
PART OF TERM: MARCH 10-MAY 9
Romcoms as a genre use both romance and comedy as film elements to portray relationship tropes. Over the course of the semester, we will examine and analyze the history of the popular genre, how films portray relationships in different decades, and more specifically what romcoms have to say about gender and desire. This course will situate the critical reception of romcoms as associated with "chick flicks" or a "date movie" and why they are considered unrealistic constructs of love. Some of the questions we will consider during the class are: What can the viewer understand about women's/men's desire?; How do these films construct relationship boundaries?; What conditions are acceptable as the foundation of a relationship?; Are the desires of the women/men met?; How do the answers change when the race and/or sexuality of the main characters are changed? During the semester, students will be expected to view films outside of class (provided through Canvas), review them, analyze sequences while using an appropriate film vocabulary, and write some compositions/scenarios. This course meets in-person but accommodations for Zoom will be provided to all students who need them.
GWS 301-001: CROSSROADS IN GWS: QUEER LITERATURE
INSTRUCTOR: CAROL MASON
MEETING TIMES: TR 9:30-10:45AM
This course aims to educate you about the diversity of US citizens. Our iteration of this course focuses on providing you with opportunities to consider how works of queer literature answer the questions of what it means to be American. We use the term “queer” in this class as a word derived from a social movement aimed at promoting equal rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people – also known as the GLBTQ community. Regardless of your own relationship to this community, this class allows you to explore your own sense of what being “American” means. The idea of border-crossing and migration among geographic, sexual, national, racial, and gendered boundaries reverberates throughout the readings. The readings were chosen because most are Lambda Literary Award winners, meaning that they are highly regarded works of literary merit. This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirement (Community, Culture, and U.S. Citizenship) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 302-001: GENDER ACROSS THE WORLD: MASCULINITIES
INSTRUCTOR: CHARLIE ZHANG
MEETING TIMES: HYBRID, MW 2:00-2:50 & TBD
This course is designed to provide a thorough and wide-ranging introduction to the field of masculinities studies. We will engage the fundamental concepts underpinning critical inquiry of masculinities, address various theoretical issues through disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, and analyze variant forms of masculinities from historical, philosophical, socioeconomic, transnational, cultural, and sociological perspectives. Students will examine the articulations and contestations of diverse masculinities as manifested through gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, kinship, politics, popular culture, economics, national identity, post/colonialism, and violence. Readings reflect multiple methods of scholarly analysis to understand, define, and trouble masculinities, and compel students to consider what is at stake in making sense of masculinities. You will also have opportunities to apply this knowledge to a variety of sociocultural sites in the transnational context. This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirement (Global Dynamics) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 309-201 (SAME AS CPH 309): HEALTH, HISTORY, AND HUMAN DIVERSITY
INSTRUCTOR: REBECCA LENTJES
MEETING TIMES: ONLINE, ASYNCHRONOUS
Health care reform is often in the news, and everyone has an opinion on why the system is broken, how to fix it, who should have access to good medical care, under what circumstances, and what constitutes "good care." This online, multi-format course will consider what it has meant to be a good patient or a good doctor at various points in U.S. history, who was included or excluded in each group, how medicine became professionalized, and how people have organized around health issues. Students will engage with primary sources, watch related films, interact with the professor during virtual "office hours," and participate in online moderated discussions. This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirement (Intellectual Inquiry, Humanities and/or Community, Culture, and Citizenship in the U.S.) and counts toward requirements for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 350-001: INTRODUCTION TO FEMINIST THEORIZING
INSTRUCTOR: FRANCES HENDERSON
MEETING TIMES: MWF 1:00-1:50PM
"What does it mean to think “theoretically” about feminism? What distinguishes theory from practice and activism? This interdisciplinary course aims to provide students with an overview of core conceptual and philosophical approaches used to understand gendered power and notions of politics, equality, and identity. Over the course of the semester, we will explore various feminist theoretical frameworks, and we will work to come to understand what these feminist theoretical tools mean as well as utilize these theoretical tools to analyze our contemporary social world. Throughout the course, students will be able to meditate on their own relationship to feminism and feminist theory, as well as “try out” different feminist theoretical approaches in order to more fully understand the world around us and our place in it. This course is one of the core courses required for the undergraduate GWS majors and minors.
GWS 400-001: DOING FEMINIST RESEARCH I: METHODS
INSTRUCTOR: CHARLIE ZHANG
MEETING TIMES: MW 3:00-4:15PM
This course provides an interdisciplinary perspective for undergraduate students to examine a variety of epistemological concerns and methodological issues in feminist scholarship. It is designed to expand the students’ knowledge of feminist epistemologies and methodologies in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. We will read about, discuss, and practice a variety of research methods, particularly qualitative methods, and develop critical thinking about the central debates in the field of gender and women’s studies. Through multiple research exercises, students will gain basic skills, practice commonly used methods, and experiment with different ways of approaching topics to develop their own research interests and plans for the future. This course is required for undergraduate GWS majors, and counts toward requirements for GWS minors.
GWS 410-001: INTRO TO QUEER THEORY
INSTRUCTOR: ANASTASIA TODD
MEETING TIMES: MWF 11:00-11:50AM
This course introduces students to queer theory, a subfield that emerged relatively recently in the 1990s. We will traverse the core texts and key debates in the field, thinking through the term “queer” and its relationship to identity, culture, political activism, and knowledge production. Throughout the semester, we will think through how queer theory offers tools to re-think identity, gender, ability, race, and sexuality. We will apply queer theory to political debates, popular culture, and digital phenomena. Among many things, we will ask ourselves: What’s wrong with rights? How can queer theory help us build solidarities across difference? What is the queer art of failure? What does queer theory have to do with Chappell Roan discourse on TikTok? This course counts toward requirements for undergraduate GWS majors and minors and the sexuality studies certificate.
GWS 506-001: HISTORY OF SEXUALITY
INSTRUCTOR: ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
MEETING TIME: TR 11:00-12:15PM
In his foundational text The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, the theorist Michel Foucault referred to sexuality as “an especially dense transfer point for relations of power.” Sexuality is a language through which a huge variety of identities—racial, religious, gendered, national, ethnic—are mediated. In this class, we will learn how sexuality was constructed in Europe and the US from the ancient world to the present day. In the process, we will explore a number of questions about both the nature of sexuality and its role in the operation of power and resistance. How did biological sex come to be understood in binary terms in the West? How has same-sex love been understood in various times and locations? How did sexuality influence the development of the idea of “race”? Can sexuality act as a site of resistance? If so, under what conditions, and for whom?
Students in this course will:
- Gain an understanding of how sexuality intersects with other forms of identity, including race, class, gender, religion, ability, nation, etc.
- Understand how ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality have changed over time and across geographic space.
- Learn how to read academic texts strategically, looking for argument, evidence, and approach.
- Hone skills in academic writing, with a focus on argumentation, organization, and analysis.
- Develop proficiency in analyzing primary sources, unpacking the deeper meanings at play.
ADDITIONAL COURSES FOR GWS CREDIT
PHI 537: PHILOSOPHY OF LAW: FEMINISM
INSTRUCTOR: NATALIE NENADIC
MEETING TIMES: TR, 11:00-12:15
This course focuses on feminism’s experience-driven multidisciplinary and philosophical work (a hermeneutical-phenomenological approach) in making visible the widespread sexual objectification, abuse, and violence that target mainly women and girls and are a central means of maintaining their social inequality. Through new concepts, feminism reframed these experiences in ways that recognized their multifaceted harms (e.g., physical, psychological, emotional, trauma) rather than covering them up as the prevailing understanding does. These new concepts have, in turn, guided efforts to change law so that it might be used to stop these abuses, offer remedies to survivors, and thereby provide justice that is more universally accountable to all citizens. We trace two main trajectories that yielded creative legal developments: reconceptualizing sexual harassment and pornography as sex discrimination. We also consider their intersections with today’s technology. We examine sexual harassment’s relation to the social media #MeToo Movement and pornography in the age of the internet and AI (artificial intelligence).
PSY 563-001: DIVERSITY AMONG CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FAMILIES
INSTRUCTOR: RACHEL FARR
MEETING TIMES: TR 9:30-10:45AM
The notion of the "traditional American family" has transformed as families in the United States (U.S.) have become increasingly more diverse. This discussion-based course for senior psychology majors (others, including graduate students, may enroll with instructor's permission) is intended as an overview and analysis of a contemporary family systems in the U.S., such as single-parent families, multiracial families, adoptive and foster family systems, families who have children via assisted reproductive technologies (ART), and those with members who hold minoritized sexual, gender, and racial/ethnic identities. Taught from developmental psychological, family science, feminist, and intersectional perspectives, students will gain understanding in theory and research methods for studying children and families. Course material will be considered within the context of social issues, questions, and public controversies. The course will address factors that contribute to positive family functioning and healthy outcomes for children and parents. Implications for future research, clinical practice, public policy, and law surrounding parenting and families (e.g., custody and placement decisions) will be covered.
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