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.
SUMMER 2021 COURSES
GWS 200-210: SEX & POWER
INSTRUCTOR: SNEHAL SHARMA
ONLINE, ASYNCHRONOUS, MAY 17-JUNE 14
Introduces Gender and Women’s Studies from a social science perspective using cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches and analyzes relations of power marked by gender and how these relate to other social distinctions and processes. This course introduces you to concepts of gender, sexuality, race and class, and their relation to power and social inequalities. It will help learn how these identity categories impact each other and shape our social, religious, economic, educational and political experience. The course will focus especially on the topics of gender-based violence, body image, representation of gender in media, and labor market. This course will use transnational and interdisciplinary perspective. It will provide you tools to critically analyze the social norms, government policies and labor market. This course meets USP and/or UK Core requirements (Intellectual Inquiry, Social Science) and counts toward requirements for undergraduate GWS majors and minors.
GWS 201-210: GENDER & POPULAR CULTURE
INSTRUCTOR: JINGXUE ZHANG
ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS, JUNE 15-JULY 14
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 requirements (Intellectual Inquiry, Humanities) and counts toward requirements for undergraduate GWS majors and minors.
GWS 250-210: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
INSTRUCTOR: ALINA HECHLER
ONLINE, ASYNCHRONOUS, JUNE 30-AUG 11
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 is a required core course for the undergraduate GWS major and minor.
GWS 302-002: GENDER ACROSS THE WORLD: GLOBAL SEX INDUSTRY
INSTRUCTOR: SHAWNA FELKINS
ONLINE, ASYNCHRONOUS, MAY 17-JUNE 29
Interdisciplinary, comparative and transnational examination of issues of gender focused around particular themes and locations. Thematic focus explicating gender which also illuminates questions of history and political economy in specific locations. Introduces students to research and a variety of analytical questions in the field, as well as the interaction between locales/people and structural processes.
What types of “work” are in sex work? Where do we situate OnlyFans in the global economy? How does studying sex work help us to understand gender identity and expression across different societies and cultures? How do technologies of sex work complicate our understanding of borders? This course is an interdisciplinary survey and critical exploration of feminist scholarship on sex work from the 1970s to the present. Students will engage with work from the academy, sex workers, sex-working activists, and popular culture representations of sex work through intersectional and transnational lens. Through this, students will explore the concept of “sexual citizenship” to understand how different identities (i.e. gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) impact experiences in the sex industry and of sex worker rights activism around the world. Topics will include the “Sex Wars,” sex worker rights and activism, decriminalization, pornography, prostitution, online sex work, emotional labor, and illegal economies. This course counts toward requirements for GWS majors and minors and fulfills the UK Core requirements for Global Dynamics.