Courses

Academics

Courses

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Gender Studies Courses by Discipline

Gender Studies

GEND 011 Introduction to Gender Studies
This course explores the social construction of masculinities and femininities throughout history and in the contemporary world. Students learn about the differences between sex and gender, the relationship of gender to power, and the ways in which gender is inscribed in various cultural discourses and practices. A multi-disciplinary analysis is incorporated throughout the course. GEND011 is also a diversity course, and GE1A.

GEND 191 Independent Study
Students work individually with a faculty member in Gender Studies on a topic of their own design. Please see the Gender Studies Director for more information.

Art and Graphic Design

ARTH 114. 20th Century Art and Film (4) Major styles of the 20th century including Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, etc., and their appearance in the visual arts, theater design, and film will be explored. We will also evaluate how Western European artists borrowed imagery from other cultures and their relationship to colonialist concerns. We will also consider representations of the body and how this imagery relates to gender constructions. The effects of urbanization upon the artistic enterprise and the development of abstract and non-objective art will also be considered. This course satisfies a requirement of the Film Studies minor.

ARTH 116. Contemporary World Art 1945 to Present (4) This course will explore major artists, styles and movements in world art from 1945 to the present. Gestural abstraction, Pop, Photo Realism, Happenings, Video, Performance, Conceptual and Political art as well as film are a few of the tends that will be considered. Ever-expanding notions of what constitutes art in this pluralistic era will be examined. This course satisfies a requirement of the Film Studies minor.

Biology

BIOL 186. Hormones and Behavior (4) A lecture/discussion course focusing on the bi-directional interactions between an animal's behaviors and its endocrine system. Topics include: overview of the vertebrate endocrine system, courtship and sex behaviors, parenting behavior, pheromonal communication, aggression and other social behaviors, learning and memory, hunger, stress, and biological rhythms. Prerequisites: BIOL051, 061, 101

English

ENGL 025. Sex, Story, Cinema (4)
In spite of its racy title, this course is about the politics, pleasures, myths, dreams, suffering, and limits of the human body as it falls into gender. From the first, this course will help us think through the differences between sex and gender. We will consider how certain cultures and epochs shape gender in particular ways, and we will study how culture produces archetypal stories about "feminine" and "masculine" experience. Do our bodies determine our narratives, the stories we are permitted to tell? Or do our narratives determine the way we become women and men? We will study this topic by reading texts from several literary genres and by learning how to read films as visual texts. This course counts for the IIA-Language and Literature General Education Requirement, and fulfills the lower division English Department requirement.

ENGL 025. Black Women Writers (4)
"They were there with their tongues cocked and loaded, the only real weapon left to weak folks." So Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston describes the powerful expressive response of African American women to political, social, and economic oppression in the early 20th century American South. Over the past 200 years, Black women writers internationally - artistically "cocked and loaded"- have expressed themselves and responded to their sociopolitical and cultural contexts with fiction, poetry, essays, and film of the highest quality. Students in this class will encounter writers of enormous, diverse talents: from neoclassical poet Phyllis Wheatley, to sensual modernists Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, to postmodern surrealist playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, to postcolonial writers Edwidge Dandicat and Zadie Smith. Through these encounters, we will explore such issues as the relationship between voice and self; the meanings of "race," "ethnicity," and "gender"; the conflicts between and among individual, regional, national, and transnational identities; and the interplay between genre and content. Students in this course will engage with powerful art, hone analytical skills for addressing thorny issues of social discrimination, and become more thoughtful readers and writers.

ENGL 025. Desire/Power/Gender (4)
This course will examine key psychological, aesthetic, philosophical, political, and cultural aspects of the relationships between erotics and desire, love and sadism, transcendence and transgression, power and abjection, dominance and submission. The place of gender, as defined and/or identified, will be explored as a way of contrasting the roles of masculinities, concepts of Woman, and gender performatives and constructions. We will read major works of world literature and world cinema, through various periods and genres, in order to questions how these works capture the complex interpretation of desire, power, and gender.

ENGL 025. Multiethnic American Literature: Ecology & Society (4)
This course introduces students to multiple genres of literature with a focus on socio-ecological webs. We will explore the relationship between nature and culture, between literature and the environment in writings by American authors of different ethnic backgrounds.

ENGL 025. Sports and Scandal (4)
Since the heyday of the Gladiator, sport has been a matter of life and death. In some ways, little has changed since Roman times-boxers, for example, risk their lives for money, whereas high altitude climbers spend huge sums of money to risk their lives. But what exactly drives athletes to enter into mortal combat-with others, with the elements, and always, with their own bodies? In this course, we will explore the many dimensions of sports "culture" and, especially, what makes this particular subculture so prone to scandal. We will begin by investigating the construction of sports rituals, "team" concepts, and fan obsessions in the Texas football saga Friday Night Lights, after which, in our unit on the individual sport of boxing, we will consider to what extent the racial, socioeconomic and gender stereotypes featured in this text are debunked-or reinforced-in the collection of boxing stories that inspired the Oscar-winning film Million Dollar Baby. Short stories from The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner collection will be read alongside the pick-up basketball memoir of Melissa King in She's Got Next, wherein we will explore sports as a form of escapism, as well as a formal type of escapism-made possible by the narrative freedoms opened up by the "sports" genre. Toward the end of the semester, we will turn to extreme sports-and the imperialist mindset that often accompanies them-by reading the memoirs of a female survivor of the 1996 disaster on Mount Everest, while interrogating different film depictions of the same event. Finally, we will problematize our own relationship to sports as voyeurs and consumers as we continue to investigate the representation of athletes on film, forcing us to consider the extent to which we are complicit in the creation of the modern day gladiators we esteem and despise.

ENGL 123. Film, Literature, and the Arts (4)
Investigates the theory, practice and critical methods underlying aesthetic form in the arts, including film, literature, painting and sculpture. Corollary illustrations are drawn from music and architecture. This comparative course attempts to examine the underlying styles and structures among the arts.

ENGL 125. Critical Colloquium (4)
A study of the theory and practice of the major modes of interpreting and criticizing literature, including but not limited to formalist, psychoanalytic, structuralistic, gender and feminist and deconstructionist in representative perspectives offered by designated English Department members and guest lecturers.

ENGL 126. Environment and Literature (4)
This course examines the intertwining of science, technology, nature, and culture as reflected in environmental literature. Its content and approach are interdisciplinary. The required reading includes literary texts and writings from the natural and social sciences, which engage with the debates on the construction and destruction of "nature", sustainability, biodiversity, and bioengineering. The intersections of environmental imperialism.

ENGL 127. Contemporary Critical Issues (4)
Examines major aspects of literary theory from structuralism to post-structuralism. Focuses on the interplay between and among such movements as deconstruction, post-colonialism, the new historicism, phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The course also discusses how contemporary theory has impacted such topics as gender, canon, reader-response and post-modernism.

ENGL 131. Shakespeare (4)
Eight to ten of Shakespeare's plays, studied from a variety of critical perspectives, such as the historical, psychological, philosophical, formalist, cultural and theatrical approaches. Selections from each major genre (comedy, tragedy, history). Specific plays vary from term to term; the reading list may include such works as Twelfth Night, The Tempest, King Lear, Macbeth, Richard II, Henry IV (Parts One and Two) and Henry VIII.

ENGL 135. Major American Authors (4)
Advanced, in-depth analysis of an individual author (or pair of authors) including aesthetic qualities of the work throughout the author's career, historical and cultural contexts shaping the work, literary influences on the author's writing and thought, influence on other writers, and major scholarship about the work. Students will conduct directed research. By semester the focus of the course changes to include authors such as Twain, Dickinson & Whitman, Ellison & Wright, Faulkner & Morrison, Frost & Stevens, Kingston & Tan, Melville, Steinbeck & Dos Passos. May be repeated once for credit with a different focus.

ENGL 141. Topics in British Literature Pre-1800 (4)
Study of a single literary period designed to strengthen students' critical reading and writing skills as well as examine questions of literary themes, cultural and intellectual context, national identity, ethnicity, class, and/or gender. Students will conduct directed research. Topics vary with titles such as The Age of Beowulf, The Medieval Mind, English Renaissance, Women Writers before Austen, and The Age of Unreason: 18th Century Literature. May be repeated once for credit with a different focus.

ENGL 144. Medival Women Readers and Writers (4)

What did women write before 16th century? Who was the readership of their texts? How did male authors represent women in medieval literature? What did their books look like before the advent of print? This course explores the intellectual life of medieval women in relationship to their socio-cultural and historical contexts. We will look at women as readers and producers of literature and try to understand how these roles were reconcilable to women's many other roles, such as mother, wife, businesswoman, etc. In addition, we will examine how women are represented in manuscript illuminations, and how images shape early readers' interpretations and contribute to the process of making meaning. Readings are grouped according to the sociocultural context in which works about (and by) women were produced, though we will see that some texts resist such simplistic classifications.

ENGL 145. Romances of Magic in the West (4)

From the seven Kingdoms of Westeros to the Romances of Magic in Western Europe, this course contemporary incarnations such as The Game of Thrones? Drawing on gender theory and cultural analyses of race, class, religion, and colonialism, we will study medieval romances spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries and consider various types of romance - historical, national, popular, chivalric, family, and travel romances, among others - to show how cultural fantasy resourcefully responds to changing crises, pressures, and demands in society. By engaging with the geographies known to and imagined by medieval English romance, we will map nascent, 15th-century English nationalism against earlier discussions about the medieval origins of romance as the imaginative self-portrait of 12th-century aristocracy.

ENGL 153. American Border-Crossings (4)
The course explores how modern and contemporary American authors have represented and imagined the borders that demarcate identity, alongside the promises and perils involved in crossing those borders. The works assigned all reside in and reflect what Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa depicted as a "borderlands" or "third space" - a space generating our celebrated (and feared) American capacities for self-invention, cultural hybridity, and freedom of movement.

ENGL 161. Topics in American Ethnic Literature (4)
Studies of contributors to American Literature within the context of their shared ethnicity. Topics change. Possible offerings include American Immigrant Literature, African-American Poetry, Black Women Writers, Blues, Jazz and Literature, and Chicano/a Literature. May be repeated once for credit with a different focus.

ENGL 162. Asian American Literature (4)
If "postmodernism" signals "the end of master narratives" and "the end of nature," as critics claim, then postmodernism can be understood in terms of epistemological challenges to the production of knowledge. Such challenges have opened up new possibilities for creativity, narrative, and critical inquiry. This course introduces students to major texts by Asian American writers, whose reinventions of literacy genres revitalize the power of literature, as they seek to engage with the legacies of colonialism and their connections to economic globalization, environmental degradation, and resistance from the Global South.

Health, Exercise & Sport Sciences

HESP 141. Sport, Culture and U.S. Society (4)
This course is designed to explore the relationship between sport, culture and society in both the USA and the broader global world. Students learn to critically examine a wide range of topics that include, but not limited to, sport and gender, sport and race, global sports worlds, drugs and violence in sport, sport and politics and the crime-sport nexus. The intention of this course is to develop the student's sociological imagination and encourage the student to think critically about the role sport plays in the development of societies, ideologies and everyday life.

History

HIST 041. The Problem with Latin America (4)
Since independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century Latin America has been plagued with struggles to achieve political stability, social justice, and economic development. Though an analysis of social movements, this course focuses on salient issues in the history of the independent nations of Latin America from the 1820s to the present and emphasizes the development of diverse societies and cultures. Students examine issues of state building, labor movements, inter-regional conflicts, and interethnic relations. The course uses a variety of sources - films, lectures, readings, and discussions - in an attempt to understand how social movements shaped and were shaped by economic and political forces. Finally, the class studies how colonial legacies, neocolonial ties and globalization have affected Latin America and its people.

HIST 065. Women and War (4)
This course takes an international approach to studying the history of women and war. Our objective will be to better understand how women's experience during war has changed over time and differed for women in a variety of countries. We will begin by studying the mythology of women and war, connecting ancient Greek war goddess Athena with present-day Hollywood depictions of women warriors. Lectures will then focus on the theories positioning women in war history, and will proceed with a survey of women's participation in several modern wars, comparing women's experience in the U.S. with women in other parts of the world. Finally, the course will end with an in-depth discussion of several key themes in the histories of women and war: domestic ideology, prostitution, nursing, soldiering, war work, and protest/peace politics.

HIST 113. Europe Since 1945 (4)
Since the end of World War II, Europe experienced a period of peace and stability unprecedented in its history. This course examines the emergence of Europe out of the rubble, the new postwar order, the division of Europe during the cold war, and the political, economic and social changes in modern Europe. The class looks at the building and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, life behind the Iron Curtain, the break-up of European empires and the end of colonialism. European life and societies changed dramatically with the establishment of the European Union, the students' revolt in the 1960s and the women's movement. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, new hopes and problems have replaced Cold War fears. The class also examines these changes and look at Europe at the beginning of a new millennium.

HIST 119. History Goes to Hollywood (4)
This course examines how films shape our understanding of certain historical events. It provides students with the tools to watch films critically and to place them in the context of a broader historical time period. The films selected cover different time periods from the ancient to the modern world and portray a variety of national and cultural contexts.

HIST 133. Women in United States History (4)
The course examines the history of women in the United States from the colonial era to the present. In addition to examining political reform, it offers insights into the day-to-day lives of diverse American women at various points in the female life cycle. The course is organized chronologically and thematically to promote the study of women in relation to major historical events and to explore women's roles in families, communities, the nation, and the world. It examines cultural models of American womanhood, including maternal, domestic, sexual, and social models, their development and recent changes. The course uses various primary and secondary sources to evaluate both current and historical arguments regarding the status, roles, and experiences of American women.

HIST 135. Women in Time and Place (4)
In the early twenty-first century news reports have covered the first mainstream woman presidential candidate, the Supreme Court's upholding of the Congressional "partial-birth" abortion ban, mothers protesting the war in Iraq and young women fighting there, and how women in the US still make only 77 cents for every dollar men make. This course uses historical analysis to understand several current "women's issues," such as reproductive rights, women's roles in wartime, political participation, sports and body image, and work. The course considers the perspectives and experiences of women from various social and cultural groups and sets US women's experience in an international context.

HIST 151. People's History of Mexico (4)
This course surveys the history of Mexico from its origins in pre-Columbian civilizations to the present day. In the process, students examine major historical themes and developments - the society and culture of the Aztecs and Mayas, the distinctive features of the colonial empire, the eras of Independence and of Revolution, modernization and post-modernity - as experienced by or as expressions of the actions and aspirations of Mexico's people. The course focuses on the historical experiences and struggles of Mexico's diverse ethnic and social groups and foregrounds their roles in the development of a uniquely Mexican nation.

HIST 167. Gender in the History of Science (4)
This course introduces students to the literature on gender in the history of science, technology, and medicine. The course explores five interrelated topics: (1) The historical participation of women and men in scientific work, (2) the scientific and historical construction of sex and sexuality, (3) the influence of ideologies of gender on the methodology of science, medicine, and engineering, (4) the gendering of technologies and artifacts, (5) the relation between ideas of gender, science, and politics. Based on their increased historical understanding, students reflect upon their own gendered experiences and expectations in encountering science as students, laboratory workers, patients, and consumers. This course is open to both science and non-science majors. This course is open to both science and non-science majors. No prerequisites.

Modern Languages & Literature

FREN 051. Seduction à la française: French Literature in English (4)
The course analyzes topics such as the discourse of female desire, the culture of the body, as well as the universe of personal and social relationships. The seduction is ultimately in words and images. Literature and visual culture are our gateways to understanding how the French debate, create, make love and war. We ask ourselves how the famous French republican ideals of "liberty, equality, fraternity" get mobilized when artists persuade us that only through love we make sense of the world.

FREN 128. Images et Voix de Femmes (4)
Images and voices of women from courtly love to the present. An analysis of "la condition feminine" in the French literary and cultural context. In French. Prerequisite: FREN 025 or permission of the instructor. Offered occasionally in English as FREN 051. May be repeated with permission of the instructor.

SPAN 114. Cine hispano/Hispanic Film (4)
A study of the development of Latin American or Peninsular cinema through the analysis of themes, styles, and cinematic techniques. Themes might include Latin American women film directors or the films of Pedro Almodóvar, among others. In Spanish. Films in Spanish with English subtitles. Offered occasionally in English.

Psychology

PSYC 066. Human Sexuality (4)
Study of the biological, psychological and cultural bases of human sexual behavior. Topics will include female and male sexual anatomy and physiology; love and communication; sexual behavior patterns; homosexuality and bisexuality; contraception, pregnancy and childbirth; sexual difficulties and sex therapy; and sexually transmitted diseases. Reviews changes in sexual functioning throughout the life span. Explores the development of male and female gender roles and the effect of gender roles on various aspects of life. Open to freshmen. Does not count toward major.

Religious & Classical Studies

RELI 044. Sex, Sin, and Salvation (4)
This course will explore and analyze sexuality and gender in terms of ethics and religion. The course will focus on historical and contemporary Christian perspectives, with some attention to other religious traditions and philosophical perspectives. Topics will include such issues as sexual ethics, homosexuality, sexuality and spirituality, gender roles and connections between gender and ethical perspectives.

RELI 128. Social Topics in Early Christianity (4)
Students study of one or more social issues prominent during the early stages of Christianity. Topics vary according to the interests of faculty and students.

Sociology

SOCI 041. Social Problems (4) This course is an exploration of the process by which various social conditions become labeled as social problems worthy of policy responses. It examines the various roles played by the media, government actors, activists and everyday citizens in this process, and pays particular attention to the role of power in enabling some social groups to label the behaviors of others a problematic while deflecting attention from their own practices. This course focuses predominantly on the US, but also engages in comparative analysis with other countries.

SOCI 079. Social Psychology (3-4) Who are we? How did we come to be the way we are? How does the way we understand ourselves relate to our understandings of society? This course addresses these questions through the field of sociological social psychology. Sociological social psychology investigates how our understandings of our individual selves and the wider social world are shaped through social interaction. Topics include the nature and scope of social psychology, the structure of social interaction, the development and maintenance of the social self, and the production and influence of culture. The course also explores the ways that hierarchies of race, class, gender and nation shape social identity. Prerequisite, may be taken concurrently: SOCI 051 or permission of instructor.

SOCI 123. Sex and Gender (4) A comparative analysis of the social construction of gender in a wide range of contemporary societies, both Western and Non-Western. The following topics will be addressed: gender as symbolic ordering, gender as culturally constructed identity, domains of power and authority, production and reproduction, colonialism and the underdevelopment of women and the Third World response to Western feminism. Prerequisite: a course in sociology or permission of the instructor.

SOCI 125. Sociology of Health and Illness (4) This course introduces students to the sociology of medicine and the delivery of health care, with an emphasis on the interaction of patients, health care professionals, and social institutions. Topics of examination include health care settings, provider-patient relationships, ethical issues in health care, and trends in medicine and policies. Additionally, the course explores how race, class, and gender affect people's health and illness in addition to how health policies shape the medical system, and how definitions, attitudes, and beliefs affect health and illness.

SOCI 127. Family and Marriage (4) This course explores the social dynamics of human intimacy within families. Family life is examined through a historical, cultural and political lens to place the social institution in a broad societal context. The evolution of the family is studied both historically and comparatively. Special attention is given to the sociological significant of sexuality, changing roles of men and women, intimacy, marriage and divorce, domestic violence, parenthood, childhood and aging, and alternative ways of living together. The course texts examine family life across race and ethnic groups, social class, religion and geographic location. Prerequisite: a course in sociology or permission of instructor.

SOCI 172. Social Inequality (4) This course will examine the historical causes, current structure, and consequences of social inequality. The emphasis will be on contemporary social, economic and political issues in the United States, but there will be some comparisons with other societies. We will focus on both individual group experiences of inequality due to age, class, gender and race, the effects of social inequality on society in general, and possible ways to reduce the level of social inequality in the United States. Prerequisite: SOCI 071 or permission of the instructor.