Course Offerings

Scroll down for current and recent WGS core courses and cross-listed courses.

Fall 2013 Core WGS Courses

WGS 110 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies
Ellen O’Brien, Tuesday/Thursday 12:30 PM-1:45 PM, Chicago Campus
Marjorie Jolles, Monday/Wednesday 11:00 AM-12:15 PM, Chicago Campus
This core course introduces students to feminist thought and gender studies. We will study analytical models for examining gender and survey some of the specific research and writing that these analytical models have fostered.  We will include in our reflections a look at the development of feminism(s), the sexual politics of women's rights, and the cultural structures of gender, and we will pay attention to the issues of race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity that influence these matters.  Topics will include: gender and consumption, femininity and masculinity, socialization and identity, language and representation, revision and recovery, domesticity and family, oppression and resistance, law and violence, bodies and sexualities, theory and activism. Required for WGS minors. Open to freshmen. Can be used to fulfill either the Humanities or Social Sciences general education requirement.

WGS 304/404 The Body: Agency, Pain, Desire
Marjorie Jolles, Wednesday 6:00 PM-8:30 PM, Chicago Campus
This course takes a critical look at the philosophical treatment of the body.  Long considered distinct from the mind and therefore inessential to the self, the body is nonetheless a fundamental marker of identity for all of us. Using a wide array of texts from philosophy, feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, cultural studies, and disability studies, we will inquire into the body as both an inner subject and outer object, as the self’s material home, spatial boundary, and site of engagement with multiple forms of power.  In the process, we will gain a deeper understanding of the varied processes by which bodies become gendered, sexed, raced, classed, beautiful and abject, healthy and sick, enabled and constrained, docile and violent, feeling and felt, capable and incapable, legitimate and illegitimate. Anchoring our study of embodiment to three key phenomena—agency, pain, and desire—we will explore in depth the way subjectivity and reality are shaped by, and give shape to, the body and its practices. 

WGS 306/406 Women, Social Class, and Social Policy
Leslie Bloom, Thursday 2:00 PM-4:30 PM, Chicago Campus

This course focuses on social class and social policies in the lives of women in the United States. We will examine how social policies shape women's social class lives and how social class intersects with other dimensions of identity. We will explore the complex meanings of social class in the US and analyze how social class influences women's daily lives and social class mobility. With special attention to the growing problem of poverty in the US, we will investigate how such a rich nation has such high rates of poverty. We will also discuss how women's organizations and grassroots movements mobilize to influence policy decisions and change women's lives. We will reflect on cross-class relationships among women, activism for better social policies for women, and our own experiences of social class.

WGS 402 Feminist Modes of Inquiry
Marjorie Jolles, Monday 2:00 PM-4:30PM, Chicago Campus
This course focuses on the exploration and practice of a range of feminist modes of inquiry. Part of this work entails the study of a range of research methods. But a large part of our work will be to examine various assumptions about what knowledge is and how knowing is best accomplished. Overarching questions include: How do gender and feminist theories and politics influence the kinds of research questions we ask, the types of tools we use, and the character of the relationships formed between researchers and their subjects, evidence, and writing? What are the various ways to articulate the goals and significance of feminist methodologies? Does feminist research examine different issues or examine issues differently? In various methodologies, what counts as evidence? Knowledge? “Truth”? On what assumptions are all of these based? How is methodology a form of power? In what ways do research frameworks, including our own, serve to empower and promote social change for certain groups of people? What feminist modes of inquiry and methodology do we use, and do we want to explore, in our own work? Required for all WGS master’s and certificate students. Open to graduate students in all disciplines.

     

ENG 366/466 Feminist Theories of Performance
Regina Buccola, Monday 2:00 PM-4:30 PM, Chicago Campus
Starting with early 20th-century American women’s stage drama and then working our way through later British and American plays, performance art pieces and films, we will explore how gender is performed in both the theater and in life. Among the critical perspectives applied to our examination of the play, film, and performance art texts that we read will be: feminist theater theory, feminist literary theory, feminist cultural theory and feminist philosophy.

ENG 313 Crime and Victorian Literature
Ellen O’Brien, Thursday 2:00 PM-4:30 PM, Chicago Campus
With special attention to gender and class issues, we will examine nineteenth-century discourses of crime and aesthetic innovations that arose in response. Literary genres and forms will include: the detective novel, the sensation novel, the dramatic monologue, street ballads, investigative journalism, formal prose, and narrative and lyric poetry. Themes include: crime/punishment, prostitution/fallen women, state execution, criminological theory, criminal psychology, criminal law, the "dangerous classes," and domestic violence. Authors include: Charles Dickens, Augusta Webster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Amy Levy, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Braddon, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde.

ENG 346/446 Medieval and Early Modern Women Writers
S. Bennett, Thursday, 2:00PM-4:29PM, Schaumburg Campus
This course begins with a survey of the classical and medieval origins of the anti-feminist tradition, in order to explore the cultural forces that made it so difficult for women to write. Then we will read examples of the religious, poetic, dramatic, and political writing of British women from the 14th through the 17th centuries. Exhorted to be “chaste, silent and obedient” from both the pulpit and bench, each of the women that we will read was, in some measure, a rebel. We will study these women writers as pioneers in various literary traditions and examine their complex relationship to the emerging currents of feminism.

HIST 383/483 History and Politics of Women in the United States
Sandra Frink, Tuesday/Thursday 12:30 PM-1:45 PM, Chicago Campus
The purpose of this course is to gain an understanding of the experiences of women in the United States from the colonial period to the present.  We will discuss the problem of establishing standards by which we can measure women's position in American society and their achievements in American history.  We will also assess women's contributions to American life, debating both how they influenced developments and change and how historical events shaped their worlds.  Most importantly, we will explore the many different worlds of women by investigating the way class, race, ethnicity, and geography impacted the lives of women. We will consider which ideas and assumptions within American culture have changed and which have stayed the same, whether these cultural ideas have accurately reflected the experiences of women, and, ultimately, what concerns shape women's experiences in the present day.

PSYC 108 Human Sexuality
STAFF, Tuesday/Thursday 12:30 PM-1:45 PM, Chicago Campus
STAFF, Tuesday 6:00 PM-8:30PM, Chicago Campus
STAFF, Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 PM-2:15 PM, Schaumburg Campus
This course explores sexuality from youth to old age, including the development of gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex roles. We will review the physiology and psychology of sexual arousal, adult sexual behavior in its many manifestations, and a brief introduction to sexual dysfunction.

PSYC 345/445 Psychology of Women
Jill Coleman, Tuesday 2:00 PM-4:30 PM, Chicago Campus
This course covers the psychological underpinnings of womanhood from biological, developmental, social, and cultural perspectives.  Applied issues such as sex discrimination, violence against women, and women’s health will also be addressed throughout the course.  

SOC 381/481 Family and Kinship
Pamela Robert, Monday 2:00PM-4:30PM, Chicago Campus
The primary focus of this course is sociological but draws heavily upon anthropological sources to explore evolving notions of family, kinship, and relatedness.  Our exploration begins with a critical analysis of the often-made distinction between what is perceived as “pre-given” (i.e., natural or biological) and what is perceived as “made” (i.e., culturally/socially constituted and experiential) in families and kinship systems.  Next, we turn our attention to various themes -- house, gender, personhood, substance, code, nation state, and assisted reproduction – and how they relate to the structures, meanings, practices, and discourses of relatedness.  Then, from the standpoint of relatedness as social, creative process, we critically analyze the technological revolution in assisted reproduction and patterns of international adoption from Andean Peru, where economic, political, emotional, social, and cultural factors influence the circulation of children in local and global economies.

SOC 321/421 Education and Gender
STAFF, Monday/Wednesday 11:00AM-12:15PM, Chicago Campus
Contact department or instructor for more information.

Recent Core Courses

WGS 303/403: Comparative Feminisms: India, Morocco, and the US
Ellen O'Brien, Thursday 2:00-4:30 PM Chicago campus
This course examines comparative approaches to feminist inquiry and action using three "case study" countries: India, Morocco, and the United States. With careful attention to our theories and methods, we will consider how citizens negotiate intersecting and conflicting codes of gender and sexuality and how the term "feminism" is deployed, defined, and/or rejected in specific national and cultural contexts.  While remaining alert to feminist dialogues across national and regional boundaries, we will also address the differing priorities and objectives that arise in international approaches to WGS. In order to glimpse the local dimensions and particulars of gendered issues, we will pair theoretical readings and commentaries with careful examinations of specific cultural representations and practices.

WGS 304/404: Global Feminist Ethics
Marjorie Jolles, Wednesday 6-8:30 PM Chicago campus
This course will provide an examination of the philosophical field of ethics, with emphasis on feminist concerns and global contexts. We will develop an understanding of classical and contemporary systems of ethics that have dominated ethical debate, and how those systems engage with transnational and feminist theory and practice. Topics will include sexual ethics; the body and bio-ethics; war and peace; compassion and practices of care; the treatment of nature and non-human animals; discourses of human rights in transnational settings; crime, punishment, redemption, and justice; and more. In addition to studying scholarly ethical texts, we will pay considerable attention to how ethical questions circulate in popular and public spheres as well. Because ethics includes the study of both how we treat others and how we treat ourselves, topics covered will address not only the values we adhere to in our actions with others but also the values we espouse in constructions of selves and personal narratives.

WGS 304/404 The Body: Agency, Pain, Desire
Marjorie Jolles
Chicago Campus
This course takes a critical look at the philosophical treatment of the body.  Long considered distinct from the mind and therefore inessential to the self, the body is nonetheless a fundamental marker of identity for all of us. Using a wide array of texts from philosophy, feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, cultural studies, and disability studies, we will inquire into the body as both an inner subject and outer object, as the self’s material home, spatial boundary, and site of engagement with multiple forms of power.  In the process, we will gain a deeper understanding of the varied processes by which bodies become gendered, sexed, raced, classed, beautiful and abject, healthy and sick, enabled and constrained, docile and violent, feeling and felt, capable and incapable, legitimate and illegitimate.  Anchoring our study of embodiment to three key phenomena—agency, pain, and desire—we will explore in depth the way subjectivity and reality are shaped by, and give shape to, the body and its practices.

WGS 304/404 Gender, Violence, Resistance
Cat Jacquet
Chicago Campus
Over thirty years after second wave feminists sought to eradicate rape, gender-based violence continues to be a national and global epidemic. What is gender-based violence? Why does it happen? Why does it continue? What purpose does it serve? This interdisciplinary course will examine the connections between gender and violence, with an emphasis on sexual violence against women.  The course will use a feminist framework and focus on the unique intersections of violence and race, class, and other categories of analysis. Students will explore the construction and perpetration of violence against women, making connections between violence and other factors such as global capitalism, militarism, and dominant cultural constructions of masculinity.  A significant portion of the course will focus on different community responses and resistance to violence, including black feminist and Latina feminist analyses of violence against women.

WGS 306/406-01: War on Women: Rhetorics at Home and Abroad
Carrie Brecke, Monday 2:00-04:30 PM Chicago campus   
Contact instructor for more information. 

 WGS 307/407: Queer Histories: Place, Culture, Politics
Jeff Edwards
Chicago campus
We will explore the production of queer gender and sexual identities, cultures, and politics in the US from the early 20th century to the present. We will pay particular attention to: 1) the relationship of urban space and political economy to these processes; 2) the relationship of class, ethnicity, and race to these processes; 3) the relationship between gender and sexual identities; and 4) the effects of collective action on the part of queers and their allies to gain cultural and political recognition, freedom, and empowerment. Prerequisites: WGS 110, WGS 210 or instructor consent. 

ENG 319/419 Staging Witchcraft Plays
Regina Buccola
Chicago Campus 
Witchcraft Plays begins with one of the best known and most widely influential stage portrayals of witchcraft in theater history, Macbeth, which uses the figure of the witch to explode ideological assumptions about class (patriarchy, class-based social stratification, upward mobility) and gender (social, political and domestic roles).  In this course, we will examine both fantastic portrayals of the witch, including Shakespeare’s Macbeth, John Martson’s Sophonisba, and Thomas Middleton’s The Witch in conjunction with “realistic” portrayals of witchcraft in British and Scottish court depositions as well as the stage representations of those cases in Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton and Heywood and Brome’s The Witches of Lancashire.  We will consider witchcraft’s dual valence in early modern England as both a means of vilifying women and as a means by which women could exercise autonomy and empowerment.

ECON 308/408: Feminist Economics: Theory, History, & Politics
June Lapidus
Chicago Campus
This is a non-traditional study of the economic situation of women in the United States. Most economic analysis assumes the individual chooses to make mutually beneficial change the focus here gives attention to the interrelation between the family, the labor market, and the government in determining women economic fortunes.  Note: Requires instructor consent.

HIST 383/483: History and Politics of Women in the United States
Sandra Frink
Chicago Campus
The purpose of this course is to gain an understanding of the experiences of women in the United States from the colonial period to the present.  We will discuss the problem of establishing standards by which we can measure women's position in American society and their achievements in American history.  We will also assess women's contributions to American life, debating both how they influenced developments and change and how historical events shaped their worlds.  Most importantly, we will explore the many different worlds of women by investigating the way class, race, ethnicity, and geography impacted the lives of women.   We will consider which ideas and assumptions within American culture have changed and which have stayed the same, whether these cultural ideas have accurately reflected the experiences of women, and, ultimately, what concerns shape women's experiences in the present day.

PSYC 387/487: Child Abuse/Family Violence
Students will learn about the critical issue of youth violence, its causes, and ways to reduce its prevalence. The class has a skill-building and applied focus: Students will participate in community exploration and political action to improve the lives of children who experience risk and adversity in Chicago. Students will interview and consult with neighborhood organizations and community members, explore effective policies and programs that reduce youth violence, and advocate for strategies that prevent and minimize youth violence to their elected officials and the broader public. Course requires 25 hours of community service. Prerequisites: three psychology courses required.

SOC 321/421 Education and Gender
Course explores the multiple and complex relationships of gender and education, in both the US and in Third World communities. Topics include; feminist theory and pedagogies; historical perspectives on educating women; controversies and contested theories about gender and education; systems of representation that serve both to emancipate and subordinate women; stratification in schools; and ways to empower ourselves and our students through education

HIST 327/427: Working Men and Working Women
Erik Gellman
Chicago Campus
Class has been the subject of misunderstanding and ill-informed political disagreement. Especially in the self-consciously egalitarian United States, the notion of fundamental class differences may seem antithetical to the aspirations, or even claims, for a class-less American society. Yet differences in occupation, income, wealth, the habits of everyday life, and definitions of the “good life” have remained. This course examines how working-class experiences and ideas have shaped the postbellum United States with particular emphasis on how class identities have become interwoven with shifting ideas about race, sexuality, and gender. Class often measures an individual’s experiences in day-to-day life. Job status, education, housing, clothing, eating and drinking habits, and speech patterns represent some of the markers of “class difference.” Yet class consciousness has also led to political, social and cultural movements that have produced longstanding changes to national and international power structures. Technological innovation, political ideology, the development of a consumer economy, and the evolution of popular culture all have made and remade class identities by uniting people and dividing them. By making class visible, this course seeks to deepen our understanding of modern American history, while demystifying some of the characterizations of people who, by choice and necessity, have labored to make America.

HIST 342/442: Global Perspectives on Race, Gender, Social Change
Nicole Anderson-Cobb
Chicago Campus
This course will examine global social movement from a comparative perspective.  Using selected case studies from across the globe, we will examine historic and contemporary social movements, the role of identity in informing political engagement, obstacles and resistance to organizing, strategies of activism, the evolution of leadership and community-based action, and the consequence of community engagement for all involved.  The course is also designed to aid students in assessing social issues in their own communities and developing an action plan for engagement and service in their areas of interest.