Courses

• CAS WR 100: Writing Seminar
  Topic-based seminar in academic reading and writing. Attention to reading and analyzing primary and secondary sources, argumentation, prose style, revision, and citation. Significant writing and individual conferences.
• CAS WR 150: Writing and Research Seminar
  Topic-based seminar in academic reading, writing, and research. Continuing attention to argumentation, prose style, revision, and citation, with additional emphasis on college-level research. Significant writing and individual conferences.
• CAS WR 202: Children's Literature in the Elementary School
  An introduction to the world of children's literature. Classics and exemplary modern works are studied, with a particular focus on literary techniques, nonfiction text structures, cultural diversity, and gender. Covers children's literature recommended by Massachusetts English Language Arts Framework (2001).
• CAS WR 598: Tutoring in ESL
  Prepares Writing Center tutors to work effectively with ESL and multilingual students. Modules balance theory and practice. Tutors gain knowledge about ESL writing and pedagogical ability to help students become independent writers. No familiarity with linguistics or language teaching required.
• CAS WS 101: Gender and Sexuality I: An Interdisciplinary Introduction
  Introduction to women's, gender, and sexuality studies, integrating approaches from the natural and social sciences and humanities, focused on the origins, diversity, and expression of gendered and sexed individuals. Topics include the evolutionary origin of sexes; evolution, development, and social construction of sex differences; sexual differences, similarities, and diversity in bodies, brains, behavior, and artistic and intellectual expressions. Team-taught. Students who complete both halves of the two-semester sequence WS 101/102 receive divisional studies credit for two courses, from two different divisions: Natural Science (without lab), Social Science, and/or Humanities. Neither WS 101 nor WS 102 alone carries divisional studies credit.
• CAS WS 102: Gender and Sexuality II: An Interdisciplinary Introduction
  Introduction to women's, gender, and sexuality studies, focused on communities and institutions. Integrates approaches from the natural and social sciences and humanities, including evolutionary, historical, and cross-cultural analyses, feminist and queer theory. Topics include human reproductive biology; patriarchy and sexual violence; parenting, kinship structures, and forms of intimacy; sexual selection; the construction of gender identity and sexual orientation; evolutionary medicine; and the relationship of academic research to social activism. Team-taught. Students who complete both halves of the two-semester sequence WS 101/102 receive divisional studies credit for two courses, from two different divisions: Natural Science (without lab), Social Science, and/or Humanities. Neither WS 101 nor WS 102 alone carries divisional studies credit.
• CAS WS 213: Sexism in the Twenty-First Century
  Examines the dynamics of contemporary institutions as they affect women's and men's lives, particularly in the United States-- the economy, politics, mass media and culture, the beautification industry, sex industries, and hook-up culture-- through the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and sexual identity. Carries social science divisional credit in CAS. Cannot be taken for credit in addition to CAS WS 113.
• CAS WS 310: London Women's Social History from Aphra Behn to The Blitz
  Examines the lives of women in London over the past three centuries from a social history perspective. Students work with primary source materials. Also offered as CAS HI 249E.
• CAS WS 326: Arts of Gender
  Examines representations of gender and sexuality in diverse art forms, including drama, dance, film, and literature, and how art reflects historical constructions of gender. Discussions of dramatic and literary texts are supplemented by film screenings, performance events, and readings in feminist and queer theory. Also offered as CAS EN 326.
• CAS WS 340: Women, Race, and Gender in Mass Media
  Develops students' media literacy through hands-on analysis of media and pop culture representations of women, femininity, and race; their relation to women's lived experience; and the place of "feminine" values in contemporary culture.
• CAS WS 344: Images of Women in Popular Fiction
  Formulaic genres--fairy tales, romance fiction, detective novels, horror stories, and science fiction--offer a medium for tracing the development of representations of women. Course analyzes women's roles and functions in these genres, focusing on novels by American authors.
• CAS WS 346: Women and Film
  Study of principally American films, exploring how the medium has shaped and been shaped by cultural perceptions of women. Readings provide background for interpretation of films ranging from screwball comedy to film noir, "women's films," and films by women directors. Also offered as CAS CI 373.
• CAS WS 350: Women and Politics
  Readings, discussion, and field research on issues of women's relationship to the processes of political influence, change, and empowerment. Analysis of public policy related to women and children. Also offered as CAS PO 309.
• CAS WS 352: American Masculinities
  Considers the biological and social organization of masculinities; the ways culture reproduces/articulates masculinities, particularly with regard to race and class; how masculine identities are expressed; male privilege; alternative masculinities; and what is at stake in negotiating contemporary masculinities. Also offered as CAS SO 352.
• CAS WS 356: Women and Comedy in America
  Considers how comedy is marked by gender and allows women to defy the expectations of femininity and transmute aggression into humor; what women find funny; and how women use the power of humor for survival, resistance, subversion, and truth-telling.
• CAS WS 360: Global Feminism: Race and Gender in International Perspectives
  (Meets with CAS IR 358 E.) Exploration of critical issues concerning women, gender, and race throughout the world. Topics include women and the global economy, health care, reproduction, the dynamics of sex industries, violence against women, international women's movements, and political/institutional change.
• CAS WS 450: Internships: Women, Gender, and Social Change
  A seminar which introduces students to the practices/ideas of social change organizations through local internships and weekly discussions related to class, race, sexuality, women and gender.
• CAS WS 492: Directed Study: Women's and Gender Studies
  Individual instruction and supervised study project in women's or gender studies. Application form available in program office.
• CAS XL 100: Introduction to Literature
  This writing course introduces students to techniques of academic writing through analysis of texts from a wide variety of literary traditions, and of adaptations inspired by those texts. May count for both CAS WR 100 and XL major or minor credit.
• CAS XL 222: Introduction to Comparative Literature: Western Literature (in English Translation)
  Introduces basic methods of comparative literary study through close readings of influential texts of the Western tradition from antiquity to present. Topics include genre, translation, appropriation, interpretation, theories of literary production and effect. All works read in English; no prerequisites. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.

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