Courses

• CAS WS 335: Sociology of Race, Class & Gender
  Examines race, class, gender, and sexuality as intersecting axes of stratification, identity, and experience. Draws heavily from feminist theories in both sociology and history in order to analyze how these intersections can be applied to understanding social problems and structures. Also offered as CAS AA 335 and CAS SO 335.
• 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 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 375: Growing Up Kor
  This course description is currently under construction.
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  • Aesthetic Exploration
  • Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy
• CAS WS 393: Technoculture and Horizons of Gender and Race
  Explores new media theory, postmodernist thought, social media, and video games to confront gender, race, and sexuality. Through critical reading, writing, and hands-on digital technology use, students consider how race, sexuality, and gender live in virtual worlds. Also offered as CAS EN 393.
• CAS WS 396: Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality
  Analyzes notions of gender and sexuality. Questions include: Are gender and sexual identity natural, or are they social constructions? How are they related to love and desire? Also offered as CAS PH 256 and CAS PO 396.
• CAS WS 403: Seminar: Gender Stratification
  Considers how the social production of gender contributes to various forms of gendered inequalities in employment, the family, dating markets, media representation, etc., with a special emphasis on how race, class, sexuality, and disability mediate the process. Also offered as CAS SO 403.
• CAS WS 420: Queer Theory
  Surveys major texts and arguments in queer theory from Butler's Gender Trouble to contemporary discussions of cisnormativity, homonationalism, affect, pinkwashing, crip theory, and queer-of-color critique. Explores different uses of queer theory in legal debates, literary analysis, and cultural criticism.
• CAS WS 430: Global Maternal & Child Health
  Provides a global perspective on maternal and child health. Major topics include early life influences on later life health, maternity care practices worldwide, and the role of both human evolutionary history and sociopolitical structures in shaping health outcomes for women and children.
• CAS WS 434: Monarchy in Modern Britain
  A seminar probing seminal moments in the history of modern British sovereignty, when the politics of the court intersected with the politics of the people. Particular consideration is given to how monarchy has survived as an institution. Also offered as CAS HI 434.
• 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 451: Fashion as History
  This seminar treats clothing and other products of material culture as historical documents. Explores what clothing can tell us about key developments in the modern period relating to trade and commerce, empire, gender, class, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics, and globalization. Also offered as CAS HI 451.
• CAS WS 452: Contemporary Debates in Sexualities Research
  Engages debates about sexual identities, practices, and communities, conceptualizing sexuality as both a social construct and an institution. Students consider how sexualities operate across social contexts, their effects on systems of inequalities, and their intersections with race, class, and gender. Also offered as CAS SO 452.
• CAS WS 454: Sexuality and Religion in the U.S.
  Religion and sexuality in the U.S., including theoretical and historical approaches to religious and sexual desire, identity, ritual, and regulation. Possible topics include religious and sexual freedom, plural marriage, the Sexual Revolution, reproductive justice, sex and secularism, and LGBTQ rights. Also offered as CAS RN 454.
• CAS WS 516: Gender and Politics
  Analyzes the relationship between gender and politics, law and policy primarily in the United States. Considers inequalities based on gender and sexuality, women's changing political, gender- and sexuality-based political action and social movements. Also offered as CAS PO 516.
• CAS WS 558: Human Sex Differences: Behavior, Biology, and Ecology
  Why are men and women different? Adopts an evolutionary, adaptive approach to investigate sex differences in human behavior, physiology, and cognition from developmental, mechanistic, and phylogenetic perspectives. Topics include sex differences in aggression, mate choice, parenting, affiliation, and cognition. Also offered as CAS AN 558.

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