2024-25 Course Descriptions
FALL 2024 | WINTER 2025 | SPRING 2025 | SUMMER 2025
Fall 2024
Winter 2025
GNDR_ST 101-8: Millennial Gender
For good reason, we often discuss or internally experience our genders and sexualities within the terms, frames, and knowledges available to us now. When we admit that genders and sexualities are not just “inborn” or unchanging over time, many of the histories we excavate stretch back for centuries. Resisting both impulses, this course uses popular cinema in the US and around the world to assess just how much changes in our notions of gender identity and sexual desire even over short spans of time—25 years, to be exact, which is lengthy for those not yet born in 1999-2000 but just yesterday for those of us who were engaged in these conversations and self-discoveries as a new millennium started.
Students will learn that all kinds of films, from studio blockbusters to tiny independents, took unusually overt interest in changing categories and expansive experiences of gender and sexuality around the Y2K moment: the era of All About My Mother, Fight Club, Ghost Dog, Boys Don’t Cry, But I’m a Cheerleader, Election, and many other enduring touchstones. We will also investigate how evolving fields like feminism and queer theory plus burgeoning scholarship in trans studies and masculinity studies were generating vocabularies, challenging assumptions, and entering into spirited debates in the same moment. Through a combination of discussions and writing assignments, some collective and some self-determined, students will gain valuable skills (how to close-read a movie, how to engage a scholarly article) and also engage in a quarter-long, inquisitive, respectful, and hopefully surprising conversation about the recent past, fluid present, and possible futures of gender and sexuality, on and off screen.
GNDR_ST 230: Traditions in Feminist Thought
This course is a rigorous introduction to feminisms’ multiple intellectual and political traditions and genealogies within and outside the US and the Western world, at different historical junctures. The course emphasizes the rich debates that have been staged within feminisms as feminists have labored to imagine other worlds in a variety of media and contexts. Our task will be to understand how these varied feminist traditions have interrogated the same sites – marriage and family, sexuality, reproduction, the nation and the state, work, liberation, and feminism itself – in radically different ways, depending on the context and society. Why are these themes or problems the key areas that feminist theorists have focused on across time and cultural divides? How have feminists around the world imagined these spaces as both sites of oppression and potential venues for freedom and emancipation? How can you encounter, think with, and live with feminist expressions and engagements outside the classroom?
GNDR_ST 231: Fashion Matters
This course will focus on the anthropological, cultural, historical, and social development of F/fashion, clothing, textiles, and their consumption in East Asia, past and present. Using a variety of sources, from fiction to art, from bodily modification to textile production, from legal codes to advertisements, we will study both actual garments created and worn throughout history, as well as the ways in which they inform identity markers such as class, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. Among the topics we will analyze in this sense will be hairstyles, foot-binding, plastic surgery, and, in a deeper sense, bodily practices that inform most fashion-related discourses in East Asia. We will also think through the issue of fashion design, production, and consumption as an often-contested site of modernity, especially in relationship to the issue of globalization and world-market. Thus, we will also include a discussion of international fashion designers, along with analysis of phenomena such as sweatshops.
GNDR_ST 232-0-20: Masculinities & Society
Gender studies have traditionally focused on women. Yet critical work on men and masculinities show us how people of all genders are constrained by gender expectations and assumptions. Furthermore, studies of masculinities shed light on practical questions like, why do men die earlier than women? And, why are men more likely to commit mass shootings? In recent years, the public spotlight has cast light on savory and unsavory aspects of masculinity; think about the rise of the term “toxic masculinity,” the #MeToo movement, advertisements aimed at men, and blogs commenting on the behavior of men on the reality show The Bachelorette.
In this course, we will go beyond banal statements like “men are trash” to critically ask, what role does masculinity play in social life? How is masculinity produced, and are there different ways to be masculine? This course provides students with an intensive introduction to the foundational theory and research in the field of masculinities studies. We will use an intersectional lens to study the ways in which the concept and lived experience of masculinity are shaped by economic, social, cultural, and political forces. As we study the institutions that socialize people into gender, we will examine how the gendered social order influences the way people of all genders perform masculinity as well as the ways men perceive themselves, people of other genders, and social situations. Verbally and in writing, students will develop an argument about the way contemporary masculinity is constructed and performed.
GNDR_ST 232-0-21: Sex, Gender, Sexuality
What is sex? What is gender? What is sexuality? How are they related? Are they social constructs or biological realities? Can we have one without the others? In this upper division undergraduate seminar, we will explore the interconnected nexus of sex, gender, and sexuality. The course will expose students to a range of theoretical approaches to sex, gender, and sexuality from sociology as well as other disciplines. The course will also provide students with practice applying these theories to real-life cases. Additionally, students will develop the skills to perform qualitative coding—a key method of analysis of sociological data. By the end of the course, students will have explored a research question of their choice related to sex, gender, and/or sexuality by qualitatively coding data in NVivo.
GNDR_ST 234: Language and Gender
An exploration of the role that gender plays in the language of and about men and women, focusing on gendered speech as part of social practice in local communities. Topics include identity categories and labels, gender-based slurs and ‘reclaimed epithets’ (e.g. "bitch", "slut". "brat"), gender vs. sex vs. sexuality, the contested notion of ‘political correctness’, sexist/misogynist language, and linguistic prescriptivism.
GNDR_ST 321: Capitalism and Desire: Mapping Sexualities in 19th Century Paris
“By transforming love into romance, capitalist society allows us to continue desiring.” By structuring satisfaction as ever incomplete, capitalism propels us to seek “the new, the better, and the more,” writes film scholar Todd McGowan. Testing this contention on the “psychic costs of free markets,” this class will take students to mid-nineteenth century Paris, when the modern iconic city of romance, with its elegant bridges, wide boulevards, endless fashion displays, and vibrant café life, was created in the capitalist transformation of its physical space and social relationships. Based on readings from feminist and queer theory, urban geography, sociology, art history, literature, and social history, we will use these various perspectives to study our main laboratory: the massive urban renewal projects under Baron Haussmann during the Second Empire of Napoleon III that demolished the twisted winding streets of old Paris to build a modern capital city of commerce and leisure.
Using three of Emile Zola’s novels on the “Haussmannization” of Paris, we will examine how changes in the physical structure altered the old connections between illicit sexualities and nonconforming gender practices. We will investigate how the new department stores, apartment buildings, the café-concerts, open-air promenades, and parks promoted bourgeois gender norms and sexual identities. In turn, we will ask how, with its new opportunities and deep losses, the moral economy of capitalism (its logic of production, profit taking, and social transactions) encouraged new subjectivities that ultimately reshaped both public and intimate spaces, as well as notions of pleasure and criminality. Most importantly, we will ask: what happened to love? The class combines lectures, in-class discussions, with short weekly assignments. With the guidance of the instructor, students will design and write a research paper (7 to 10 pages) reflecting on these topics.
GNDR_ST 321/350: Making Sense of the "Second Wave" of Feminism in/for the Present
As we grapple with the urgencies of the present, what are the politics (and promise) of telling more complex and nuanced stories of activism and social change? In recent years, the "second wave" of feminism (1968-1980) has increasingly been conflated with "white, middle-class feminism" and critiqued as an exclusionary form of feminist politics in contrast to the more intersectional feminist politics of the "third" and "fourth" waves of feminism. Numerous historians of the period have challenged us to reconsider this claim, which elides "feminism's deeply questioning, queer, coalitional and anti-imperialist past" and risks missing "some ways that feminist, lesbian, and queer of color and trans activists grappled hard to develop critical insights and knowledges that move us today" (Enke 2018). In this course, we will begin by exploring which projects, groups, and concerns have come to define the "second wave" (and subsequent “waves”) of feminism in the United States in our collective memory. We then turn to recent histories of the "second wave,” coupled with oral histories from movement participants, that challenge us to reconsider what counts as "feminist politics" during this period. For example, histories that focus on the formation of broad-based coalitions across and between liberation movements around issues of economic justice, reproductive rights, and the right to "self-defense" against both interpersonal and state violence during this period, challenge us to expand our conception of feminist activism. In the process, they require us to incorporate the "critical insights and knowledges" of labor and welfare rights activists, sex workers and gay liberationists, Black, Chicana, Puerto Rican and Indigenous liberation movement members as central to the feminist politics of the period. Guided student research into ongoing/current feminist projects (e.g. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, Chicago Abortion Fund, Survived&Punished, Critical Resistance, Sylvia Rivera Law Project) aid us in identifying the legacies of this historical period in feminist activism in 2025.
GNDR_ST 331: Sociology of Gender
This class will investigate how gender shapes politics and policy, and how these in turn shape gender, in the United States and other countries, situated in global context. Gender is conceptualized as a set of relations, identities and cultural schema, always constituted with other dimensions of power, difference and inequality (e.g., race, class, sexuality, religion, citizenship status). We will analyze the gendered character of citizenship, political participation and representation, social rights and economic rights. We aim to understand gendered politics and policy from both "top down" and "bottom up" perspectives. What do states do, via institutions of political participation and representation, citizenship rights and policies, to shape gender relations? How do gender relations influence the nature of policy and citizenship? How has feminism emerged as a radical challenge to the androcentrism and restricted character of the democratic public sphere? And how has anti-feminism come to be a significant dimension of politics? We expand on conventional conceptions of political participation and citizenship rights to include the grassroots democratic activism that gave birth to modern women's movements. We explore how women's political efforts have given rise to the creation of alternative visions of democracy, social provision and economic participation, as well as reshaping formal politics and policies. And, finally, we will take advantage of the fact that we are in the middle of an election to examine some of the gendered aspects of the political landscape in the contemporary United States.
GNDR_ST 332: Heath Activism
How do conceptions of "health" relate to ideological assumptions about gender, race, class, and sexuality? In this course, we will explore this question through a close examination of a range of activist movements that have attempted to challenge contemporaneous conceptions of health and models of disease. Case studies will include the 19th century birth control and eugenics movements, 1970s-era women's health movement(s) and Black Panther Party "survival (pending revolution) programs", ACT UP and AIDS activism, reproductive rights/justice movement activism, breast cancer and environmental activism, mental health activism in the era of psychopharmacology, and recent/ongoing "mutual aid" projects. In each case, we will consider how activists frame the problem, the tactics they use to mobilize a diverse group of social actors around the problem, and their success in creating a social movement that challenges contemporary medical models and the ideological assumptions that inform them. The course also introduces students to recent interdisciplinary scholarship on social movements.
GNDR_ST 361: Abolitionist Feminisms at the Border
Abolitionist politics demand sustained and nuanced critiques of world systems and an end to the ways they enact violence. To this end, to engage in abolitionist feminism is to consider assumptions around criminal punishment and carcerality, with an explicit attention to Black, Latinx, Indigenous, queer, and trans perspectives. From this vantage, this course will examine borders, both national and intimate, as one of the most violent and carceral spaces of our time. We ask, for example: What does it mean to abolish borders? What is the difference between this and open borders? Is the abolishment of ICE and other forms of border policing sufficient? Similarly, how has the social sphere adopted border logics? What do Indigenous “land back” initiatives look like under abolition? How might we “rehearse life” under current oppressive regimes as we work toward abolitionist futures?
GNDR_ST 372: Masculinities in 16th C. Opera
This course considers ways in which changing understanding of manhood, manliness, masculinity and male sexuality were reflected in music created, performed, and consumed in a variety of spaces and for a range of purposes among contrasting Western European cultures and sub-cultures during the 1500s.
GNDR_ST 380: Black Feminisms in a Francophone Context. From the Second World War to Global Anti-Blackness
What is the meaning of “Black Feminism” out of its US experience and initial theorization in the United States? How did women of African descent in Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland), the Caribbean (Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique), the Indian Ocean (La Réunion, Mayotte, and the Comoros) and Africa (Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo), whose cultures and political experiences were – at least partly – impacted by French and Belgium colonial legacy, forge their critiques of patriarchy, colonialism, and imperialism, racism? How did they also develop their own imagination of social justice, autonomy, and emancipation? Based on a wide range of materials and references driven by the social sciences, literature, and cinema, this course aims to introduce undergraduate students to a non-US-centered and transnational perspective on Black feminisms. The historical period will span from the early 20th century to the contemporary era. According to specific topics addressed in the class, comparative insights with the English-speaking Caribbean and Africa and women’s experiences in the Global South will also be included in the conversation and materials.
GNDR_ST 381: Queer Theory
This course will introduce you to Queer Theory and theories of sexuality, emphasizing the practice of reading theory from a variety of textual sources as well as conceiving of sexualities in local and transnational contexts. We will query the development of queer theory, beginning with work by Michel Foucault and foundational queer theorists by Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Michael Warner, and Lauren Berlant. We will from standard canonical essays by a variety of queer theorists to essays questioning the politics of a Queer Theory canon and how that might politically occlude relevant voices such as trans and BIPOC contributions. Analysis focuses on textual critiques and cultural studies methodology, including several fictional texts and films. Seminar discussions require attendance and active participation. We will query how queer theory formulates racial, class, and national identities in relation to sexuality, and how it might offer politics beyond those based on identity. Most readings are done on a shared platform (Hypothesis) so students annotate, comment, and reply to each other on all assignments including class readings, midterm essay, and seminar paper.
GNDR_ST 397: Feminist Theory
Trans and Non-Binary Feminisms: A Deep Dive
Recent years have seen a resurgence of transantagonism in feminist spaces. Although popular figures like J.K. Rowling and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have taken stances against trans people, and the increasing popularity of “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism” and “Gender Critical Feminism,” “trans” and “feminism” are in fact historically co-constitutive. In this course, we will trace that history to answer the questions: should feminism intervene in trans rights? And, should trans and non-binary people be considered the proper subject of feminism? We will explore text, documentary, and film that provide insights into trans feminism’s roots in lesbian and gay liberation movements of the 1970s and in woman of color feminisms; we will also consider the early feminist debates of Trans Studies as an emergent academic discipline in the 1990s and 2000s. In the second half of the course, we will expand trans and feminism beyond the US context to consider decolonial trans* feminisms globally, with special emphasis on trans* discourses in Latin America. Students will leave this course with a better understanding of the complexity and importance of trans feminisms as a world-building framework, as well as their legacies and futures; students will also have ample opportunities to explore their own trans feminist praxis.
GNDR_ST 401: Graduate Colloquium
The Gender and Sexuality Studies Graduate Colloquium is an interactive, participatory forum for graduate students in the GSS cluster and certificate programs. Activities include the circulation and discussion of work-in-progress and a workshop for pre-professional activities, meetings with faculty in the program, presentations by recent fellowship recipients, and review of important publications by visiting scholars.
GNDR_ST 490-0-20: Queer Theory
The central concerns of this graduate seminar are to familiarize students with critical issues, methods, and practices of Queer Theory. Our readings include foundational/early texts naming and/or refusing the topic/discipline itself as well as the way in which the practices of “reading queerly” occur in not only what we recognize as theory, but also fiction and film. We will examine and discuss critiques of the Queer Theory canons and work together to create a more relevant, inclusive lineage that considers BIPOC voices, trans theory, critical race theory, diasporic, and transnational texts that supplement the too often white, US-centric field of inquiry. Students will be expected to read carefully and critically, interrogate and analyze the complex intersections of sexualities through cultural and sociopolitical analysis that incorporate gender, race, economic and access disparities and other dimensions reflecting contemporary queer concerns broadly conceived. Close reading will be the primary methodology practiced through class readings and writing, and by the quarter’s conclusion, students will create reading lists or possible syllabi they might consider teaching in the future. In addition to this discipline-specific reading list, students will be expected to actively participate in class discussions including leading, singly or in groups, a section of a course meeting. Writing requirements consist of one short close-reading paper and a quarter-long project culminating in a 12–15-page seminar paper on a topic of their choice that demonstrates the production of queer theory from a first-person perspective.
GNDR_ST 490-0-22: Knowledge & Politics
This course will explore how scholars represent states reproducing, maintaining, or destroying a particular body politic. In doing so we will engage theories of "biopolitics" and "biopower," broadly conceived. The objective is to understand the uses and disadvantages of Michel Foucault's critiques of discourses of sovereignty for analyzing current political conflicts situated in practices of the nation, race, class, and the family, as well as the subject positions associated with these, e.g., citizens, immigrants, Whites, Asians, rich, poor the 1%, dependents, women, men, LGBT, queer, and many more. The course will attend to the intellectual and political history informing Foucault's critiques of, and elaborations on, the discourse of sovereignty, including legal discourses. During class meetings we will discuss Foucault's historical periodizations of changing discourses of power/knowledge relations associated with biopolitics and evaluate the metanarrative that informs his heuristics. Lectures will discuss the readings in the context of Foucault's own intellectual history. The class will read extensively from works by Foucault as well as texts by Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Bruno Perreau, Jacques Rancière, Ann Stoler, and others. Students are encouraged to reflect on how the readings are in conversation with their own research interests and highlight these in class
GNDR_ST 490-0-23: Masculinities in 16th C. Opera
This course considers ways in which changing understanding of manhood, manliness, masculinity and male sexuality were reflected in music created, performed, and consumed in a variety of spaces and for a range of purposes among contrasting Western European cultures and sub-cultures during the 1500s.
Spring 2025
GNDR_ST 101-8-1: Coalition Politics from Chicago and Beyond
TBD
GNDR_ST 221: Beyond Porn: Sexuality, Health and Pleasure
TBD
GNDR_ST 231: Contemporary Women Authors of South Korea and Feminist Criticism
TBD
GNDR_ST 2XX: Sociology of Gender
TBD
GNDR_ST 321: Gender, Race and the Holocaust
TBD
GNDR_ST 332: Gender, Health and Medicine
TBD
GNDR_ST 332/350: Sex, Gender, Sexuality, Race and Technoscience
TBD
GNDR_ST 350: Who is Afraid of Black Sexuality?
TBD
GNDR_ST 382: Gender, Race and the Politics of Beauty
TBD
GNDR_ST 397: Latinx Feminisms
TBD
GNDR_ST 490-0-20: Reading Gender Otherwise: Indigenous Movements and Literature in Latin America
TBD
GNDR_ST 490-0-22: Afrofeminists. Black Women Challenging Colorblindness in Europe
TBD
SUMMER 2025
GNDR_ST 390: TBD
TBD