WMST 20101 INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN’S STUDIES: TRADITIONS, TRAJECTORIES, TROUBLES 3 Credit Hours
The course introduces students to Women's Studies - what it studies, how it came into being, what happened next. In focus are its traditions, its consequential contexts of struggle and protest, its pioneers, the multiple fields from which they came to this fresh-born academic hub. The course examines worldwide spread of WMST programs, their variant, evolving interests and work, the hounding, keenly felt disruptions and conflicts. We sample key scholarship with staying power; we peruse pieces across an interdisciplinary range; we visit early ideas now fallen out of favor, relegated to archives and/or bins. We also, importantly, consider how rifts and various troubles led to crucial metamorphoses as well as new fields.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30001 ARENAS FOR FEMINIST THOUGHT: TOUCHY SUBJECTS, UNSETTLED MATTERS AND FEMINIST RESPONSE-ABILITY 3 Credit Hours
A multi-layered inquiry into the substantial discursive project initially undertaken by feminists to break the hold of dominant theory and begin to articulate theory from new standpoints expressed in new language. This course opens an arena within which to study real engagements of thinkers, theorists, their thoughts, theories, arguments, critical appraisals, etc. as they have emerged, developed and contended. The course coheres in a sense of feminist thinkers as profoundly responsive to their contexts, situated in times, places and atmospheres powerfully infused with settled and unsettled meanings.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30002 FEMINIST RESEARCH METHODS 3 Credit Hours
Explores different qualitative and quantitative methodologies through applied research on WMST-related topics as well as on topics informed by feminist standpoints and thought/theory. Provides sturdy foundation for undergraduate students whose aims include undergraduate research, graduate school, and/or actual fieldwork.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30091 KEY CONVERSATIONS THROUGH WOMEN'S STUDIES (DIVD) 3 Credit Hours
(Repeatable for credit) A critical investigation of the position and category of women from a cross-cultural, historical and interdisciplinary perspective, with special emphasis on major themes and issues in women's studies. Issues including race, ethnicity and sexuality may also be addressed.
Prerequisite: Junior standing.
Schedule Type: Seminar
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Attributes: Diversity Domestic
WMST 30095 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES 1-4 Credit Hours
(Repeatable for credit) Study of selected topics in women's studies organized around historical and theoretical issues and movements. This includes contemporary feminist theory, suffragist movement and third wave feminism.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 1-4 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30100 HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES 3 Credit Hours
(Cross-listed with HIST 31075) An exploration of the political, economic, social, intellectual and cultural forces that have shaped women's lives, women's thought, perceptions of womanhood and feminism, from 1607 to the present in what is now the United States.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30196 WOMEN STUDIES INDIVIDUAL INVESTIGATION 1-3 Credit Hours
(Repeatable for credit) The design and completion of a scholarly research project related to women's studies, and the presentation of findings at the end of the term. Arrangements must be made in the semester prior to registration.
Prerequisite: Special approval by instructor.
Schedule Type: Individual Investigation
Contact Hours: 3-9 other
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30201 WITCHES: THE MONSTROUS FEMININE 3 Credit Hours
This course counterbalances student inquiry with lectures and materials at once grounded in women's and gender/sexuality studies and reliant on a range of interdisciplinary sources. The course centers two key touchstones: witch and monstrous feminine. Course trajectories traverse history, culture, religion, politics and academic and popular renderings to locate keys: hunts, trials, dynamics of allegation, guilt and innocence. The course aims to 'correct' traditions of objectification and typecasting by interrogating real subjectivities and the dimensionality of feminine, monstrous and witch.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30202 FEMINIST HUMOR: DISARMING LAUGHTER, DISRUPTIVE DISCOURSE 3 Credit Hours
This course utilizes four key terms to set its directions of inquiry: humor, laughter, discourse and feminist. The most fundamental pursuits are inductive in nature, grounding studies in actual discursive practice, the realities of women's politically-charged and personally-resonant humor, laughter and feminisms as they converge in contexts both private and public, mediated and live/face-to-face. Scholarship on feminist humor provides our final framing.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30301 REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN AND FEMINISM IN POPULAR CULTURE 3 Credit Hours
The basic challenge of this course is that it requires the study of two things simultaneously: 'women' and 'women as represented' in popular culture. From the classic object of woman sexed and gendered, feminist study has evolved to also consider woman the subject, the autonomous person with agency within her environment. The course covers much ground: dominant narratives; the often-overlapping contexts of media, politics, morality and religion; the signs inherent in language and imagery; and the power asymmetry and embattled definitions of “woman.” Throughout the course, we employ varied approaches that resist any one right answer, easy dogmatic conclusion or evaluation of the narratives.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 30302 GLOBAL FEMINISMS: A WORLD AND CENTURY OF WOMEN'S ACTIVISM 3 Credit Hours
This course explores real and diverse circumstances where feminisms have emerged. Over the semester, we examine feminist movements and their respective contexts; feminists’ distinct directions of thought and action; individuals, groups and organizations that have participated in defining feminism; and finally, the connectivity that makes transnational feminist work possible. The course is grounded in sites of 'agonizing and organizing,' as well as in those feminist narratives that search for cohesion even where there is tension. Finally, throughout the course, we embrace and explore complexities of unresolved issues: none more basic than the still controversial claim that women's rights are human rights.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 32323 RAPE CULTURE: RETHINKING DANGER, POWER, SEX AND FEMINIST FRAMINGS 3 Credit Hours
Nothing is simple, incontrovertible or 'cool' in 'rape culture.' The subject, act and discourse surrounding rape is embedded in culture and confounded by culture: by opinions, standpoints, simplistic arguments and personal and political interests. Feminist framings of 'rape culture' invite different inquiry: into mythology, ideology, theory and alternative interpretations of bodies in a given context. Famed feminist Andrea Dworkin interrogates rape culture's center: powers practically guaranteed, moreover "exercised… [and] protected… by religion … by universities … [even] by [poets and artists], the unacknowledged legislators of the world." This course utilizes multiple approaches to study and interrogate 'rape culture,' each of which illuminates this inherently dark subject in new light.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
WMST 40992 PRACTICUM IN WOMEN'S STUDIES (ELR) 3 Credit Hours
(Repeatable for credit) An assignment at a private, public or nonprofit organization that centers on women's issues such as education health and policy making. Arrangements must be made in the semester prior to registration.
Prerequisite: Special approval.
Schedule Type: Practical Experience
Contact Hours: 9 other
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Attributes: Experiential Learning Requirement
WMST 41199 CAPSTONE IN WOMEN'S STUDIES (ELR) 3 Credit Hours
The capstone project is a guided undertaking that serves as culmination of students’ experiences. The emphasis is 'putting it all together,' integrating the Women’s Studies minor into 'the bigger picture': major(s), other concentrations, research, envisioned graduate study and/or vocation. WMST Capstone can be taken junior or senior year, contrived/structured by students in consultation with faculty advisor(s), ideally advisors from major and minor. Net outcome may be paper--senior thesis for students who desire such--presentation, curated portfolio of prior academic work.
Prerequisite: Junior Standing.
Schedule Type: Project or Capstone
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Attributes: Experiential Learning Requirement
WMST 44321 PIVOTAL PRAXIS: EXPERIMENTS IN ACTIONABLE FEMINISM 3 Credit Hours
This course engages students at the pumping heart of the whole feminist story: its actual work. For feminists on the ground, pivotal praxis is feminism: getting the vote, demanding equality, wrangling through contentious issues, women’s marches and campaigns. In a word: practice. Experiments in practical, actional feminism. Our study probes ideas that hit streets as well as ideas born of “done things.” Under scrutiny are scenes: socio-political, cultural spaces wherein women enact change, determine outcomes recognized as feminist. These include but are not limited to the realpolitik of suffrage vs. anti-suffrage, consciousness-raising, the famed national women’s convention in Houston, internet activism, transversal coalition-building across boundaries/borders. The course provides opportunity for students’ own experiments and exercises in feminist praxis.
Prerequisite: None.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Contact Hours: 3 lecture
Grade Mode: Standard Letter