1. Foundational Course (Offered Every Spring)
CAS WS 801 - Theories and Methods in WGS
Explores the variety and complexity of theories and methods in the interdisciplinary fields of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Provides a forum for assessing research strategies used by gender and sexuality scholars. Required for the WGS Program Graduate Certificate.
2. Other WGS Graduate Courses:
CAS WS 501 - Justice and Community Engagement (also offered as MET SS 501)
Community engagement as it exists at the intersection of justice – social justice, criminal justice, educational justice, food justice, housing justice, restorative justice, and healing justice – will be central to this course. You will examine these through both historical and contemporary perspectives. Using writing as a tool for advocacy, activism, and change-making, you will engage with seminal texts, critical discussions, and reflective practices to examine topics including racism, gender justice, LGBTQIA rights, and other social justice movements. Voices of those doing the work of change are highlighted and invited as guests. We will investigate justice and public health issues including attention to individual, intergenerational, and systemic trauma. With an intersectional lens, we explore how social justice issues are uniquely shaped by identity characteristics (race, gender, sexuality). Collectively, the class engages diverse approaches to understanding and facilitating justice and resilience. Inclusive and trauma-informed approaches to inquiry and writing provide a foundation for community centered justice work. Designed to foster a deeper understanding of change-making, we hope to equip you with practical skills to become an effective agent of change in your community and beyond.
CAS WS 505 - Topics in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Topics in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Topic for Spring 2025: Intersectional Theories of Affect. This course will examine intersectional theories of affect and emotion with particular focus on cultural constructions of happiness, joy, shame, anger, optimism, disgust, sadness, and compassion. Along the way, we will meet feminist killjoys, discuss queer shame, and consider how affect and emotion play a role in strengthening social bonds, creating collective identities, and motivating action.
CAS WS 506 - The Black Pacific: Feminisms and Futurities (also offered as CAS AA 506)
This course engages theories and debates in emerging studies of the “Black Pacific” by directing conversation between diasporic African American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander literature, art, and cultural productions from the twentieth century to the present.
CAS WS 507 - Diversity of Sex
Examines the integrative and comparative biology of sex and sexes based on readings drawn from recent primary literature, review papers, and book chapters.
CAS WS 512 - Sexual Violence
This course engages the topics of sexual deviance and sexual trauma through multiple lens. These lenses include psychological, sociological, criminal justice, public health, and social justice perspectives. The course explores multiple facets of understanding sexual deviance and sexual trauma including legal and philosophical perspectives, historical activism, understanding and treatment of sexual offending, and survivor responses. The roles of multiple systems including the media, mental health organization and the criminal justice system are taken into account. This course includes ongoing group work that engages critical inquiry, addressing relevant topics in sexual trauma in practical ways. Students utilize knowledge of theory and research methodology to pursue real world responses to issues of sexual violence and trauma.
CAS WS 525 - Judith Butler (also offered as CAS XL 525, CAS PH 525)
Undergraduate prerequisites: two previous XL, WS, or PH courses; or consent of instructor. Graduate prerequisites: graduate standing. – An intensive study of Judith Butler’s philosophical thought and social theory from the 1990s to the present, with an emphasis on the continuities and discontinuities between Butler’s early work on gender performativity and more recent writings on racial justice, war, and violence.
CAS WS 526 - Food, Gender, and Sexuality
In Food, Gender and Sexuality, we will explore ways in which language and behaviors around food both reinforce and challenge gender hierarchies and restrictive norms around sexuality. Using frameworks developed in gender and sexuality studies, we will interrogate our contemporary foodscape through close readings of many media, including food blogs, magazines, TV shows and advertisements. The course will include reading, research, field work, discussion, and cooking to help us understand why and how food has been gendered and how the process differs across place, time, and culture.
CAS WS 530 - Global Intimacies: Sex, Gender, and Contemporary
Explores theoretical and ethnographic approaches to gender, sex, and sexuality as linked to globalizing discourses and transnational mobilities. Readings and discussion emphasize intersections of sex, gender, labor, love, and marriage in a globalized world.
CAS WS 542 - Language, Race, and Gender
Do women talk differently from men? How do race and ethnicity relate to the way people use language? This course examines these interrelated questions from the perspective of modern sociolinguistic theory, analyzing a range of languages and communities throughout the world.
CAS WS 559 - Feminist Killjoys & Cynical Queers: Intersectional Theories of Affect (also offered as CAS EN 558)
Prerequisite: First-Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or 120). – This class examines the affective turn, which has been marked by a shift towards bodily sensation, structures of feeling, and modes of relationality. We pay particular attention to cultural constructions of emotion such as happiness, shame, anger, and fear.
CAS WS 562 - Studies in Asexualities
Writing intensive seminar that explores asexuality studies as well as various kinds of sexual and romantic absences in contemporary literature, literary analysis, and critical theory with particular attention to race and disability.
CAS WS 594 - Advanced Feminist Theory
This seminar explores advanced readings in feminist and queer theory on a focused topic or topics: for example, the politics of love and sex, reproductive politics, feminist theory and climate change, or the politics of gender and violence.
CAS WS 617 - Gender and Crime
Examines social forces shaping gender discrepancies in crime. Using a feminist lens, students explore how cultural ideologies about masculinity and femininity shape criminalization, victimization, and offending. Topics include the gendered contexts of crime and punishment, gender-based violence, and intimate labor.
CAS WS 620 - 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 631 - Genders, Sexualities, and Youth Cultures
Investigates the social construction of gender and sexuality in adolescence. Engaging critical approaches to youth cultures, the course examines the structural conditions that shape gender and sexuality norms, and the ways youth navigate and redefine their social worlds.
CAS WS 635 - Women, Gender, and Islam
Investigates the way Muslim religious discourse, norms, and practices create and sustain gender and hierarchy in religious, social, and familial life. Looks at historical and contemporary challenges posed to these structures.
CAS WS 640 - The Quran
The emergence of the Quran as a major religious text, its structure and literary features, and its principal themes and places within the religious and intellectual life of the Muslim community.
CAS WS 642 - Philosophy and Feminism
An advanced survey course of historical and contemporary philosophical approaches to feminism. Topics include: methodology, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, black feminist thought, decolonial feminism, global feminism, philosophy of gender, and queer and trans philosophy.
CAS WS 645 - Shariah Law
Shariah Law looks behind the stereotypes and headlines–despotic rulers, barbaric punishments, women’s oppression–to understand the origins, history, and structure of Islamic law. Explores its implementation in various times and places, modern transformations, and contemporary debates over legal reform.
CAS WS 650 - 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 658 - The Nonbinary Nineteenth Century (also offered as CAS LF 658)
Undergraduate prerequisite: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g., CASWR 100 or WR 120). – Examines fictional and non fictional works from nineteenth-century France on themes of sexual and gender identity, contextualized through contemporary queer, trans, and feminist theory.
CAS WS 660 - Topics in LGBTQ History
Seminar examines topics in the history of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) people and cultural or political movements. May be repeated for credit if topics vary.
CAS WS 665 - Intersectionalities: Theories, Methods, and Praxis
“Intersectionality,” is one of the prominent contributions made by critical race feminist scholars that now broadly extend across disciplines. This course takes stock of the multiple ways that intersectional scholars and activists conceptualize intersectionality in relation to sociological theory, research problems, design, and praxis.
CAS WS 679 - Fatal Women and Dangerous Bodies (also offered as LF 679)
Examines depictions of the femme fatale and fears of female sexuality in realist, naturalist and decadent French fictions.
CAS WS 700 - Directed Study in WGS
Directed study in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.
CAS WS 812 - Critical Death Studies (also offered as CAS SO 832)
Prerequisite: junior standing and above for undergraduate students. – This course examines how death reveals social inequalities, colonial legacies, and geopolitical forces. It analyzes the conditions shaping mourning and the creative, cultural, and political responses that follow, while drawing on interdisciplinary, academic, and popular materials from diverse geographic contexts.
CAS WS 866 - Transnational Studies: Power, Movement, Lives (also offered as CAS SO 856)
Prerequisite: junior standing and above for undergraduate students. – This course explores transnational sociology, examining how people, ideas, and power move across borders. It traces how nations intersect with race, gender, sexuality, and class, and interrogates colonialism, migration, globalization, and nationalism as intertwined forces shaping contemporary life and belonging.
3. Other Courses Counting Toward Graduate Certificate:
WGS Certificate students are encouraged to seek out courses from their home department, and submit them for credit approval from our Director of Graduate Studies. Courses that focus on WGS subjects are likely to be approved. Some recently approved courses include:
College of Arts & Sciences
CAS AA 667 – Critical Studies: Black Diaspora Theory and Practice
CAS AN 720 – Women in the Muslim World
CAS AN 744 – Modern Japanese Society: Film, School, and Workplace
CAS EN 676 – Gender in Literature and Film
CAS EN 726 – Seventeenth-Century Women Writers
CAS EN 774 – Lecture-Performances, Poetic Essays, and other Generic Monsters
CAS EN 775 – Issues in Gender and Sexuality Studies
CAS EN 776 – Performing Gender in the Twentieth Century
CAS EN 798 – Contemporary Work in Black Visual and Literary Study
CAS HI 813 – Gender in Medieval Christian Mysticism
CAS HI 875 – A History of Women in the United States
CAS LF 860 – Gender and Nineteenth-Century French Literature
CAS LS 850 – Gendered Pseudonyms in Latin America
CAS PH 636 – Gender, Race, and Science
CAS PO 516 – Gender & Politics
CAS PS 572 – The Psychology of Women
CAS PS 790 – Family Theory and Research
CAS RN 637 – Gender and Judaism
CAS SO 803 – Seminar: Gender Stratification
CAS SO 820 – Graduate Study in Women and Social Change in the Developing World
CAS SO 852 – Contemporary Debates in Sexualities Research
School of Law (LAW)
LAW JD 731 – Critical Race Theory
LAW JD 814 – Family Law
JAW JD 829 – Domestic Violence
JAW JD 834 – Employment Discrimination and Employment Law
JAW JD 947 – Sex Crimes
JAW JD 957 – Law and Sexual Minorities
JAW JD 966 – Gender, Law, and Policy Colloquium
JAW JD 990 – Feminist Jurisprudence
School of Public Health (SPH)
SPH EP 775 – Social Epidemiology
SPH GH 735 – Gender, Sexuality, Power, and Inequity in Global Health
SPH GH 753 – Beyond Reproductive Health; International Women’s Health
SPH GH 766 – Sexual and Reproductive Health in Disaster Settings
SPH GH 795 – Global AIDS Epidemic: Social & Economic Determinants, Impact, & Responses
SPH MC 705 – Safer Sex in the City: From Science to Policy
SPH MC 785 – Introduction to Reproductive Health Advocacy
SPH MC 815 – Sexual and Reproductive Health Advocacy: Science, Values, and Politics
SPH MC 840 – Women and Health Policy: Gender, Evidence, and Politics
SPH SB 807 – Health of LGBT Populations
School of Social Work (SSW)
SSW HB 790 – Reproductive Justice and Social Work
To submit a course for approval, please email the Director of Graduate Studies with the course name, instructor, and syllabus.