This course explores the significance of gender and sexuality in the territory of the present-day U.S. during the period from the Civil War to the present.

This course develops fundamental skills for critical thinking, researching, writing, and communicating in WGS. Students will learn methods for finding and analyzing sources, approaches to framing arguments, and skills for effective written and oral communication. Seminars are offered on a variety of topics. This class fulfills the Second Writing Requirement and Enhanced Writing Requirement.

An introduction to gender studies, including the fields of women's studies, feminist studies, LGBT studies, & masculinity studies. Students will examine historical movements, theoretical issues, & contemporary debates, especially as they pertain to issues of inequality & to the intersection of gender with race, class, sexuality, & nationalism. Topics will vary according to the interdisciplinary expertise & research focus of the instructor.

Topics in Women, Gender & Sexuality vary by semester.

This course critically examines key ideas, issues, and debates in contemporary Black feminist thought. With a particular focus on Black feminist understandings of intersectionality and womanism, the course examines how Black feminist thinkers interrogate specific concepts including Black womanhood, sexual mythologies and vulnerabilities, class distinctions, colorism, leadership, crime and punishment, and popular culture.

This course explores how Italian women writers have represented food in their short stories, novels and autobiographies in dialogue with the culture and society from late nineteenth century to the present. These lectures will offer a close reading of the symbolic meaning of food in narrative and the way it intersects with Italian women's socio-cultural history, addressing issues of gender, identity and politics of the body.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new topic in the subject of studies of women and gender.

This course is an interdisciplinary analysis of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) Studies. We will study historical events and political, literary and artistic figures and works; contemporary social and political issues; the meaning and development of sexual and gender identities; and different disciplinary definitions of meaning and knowledge.

Offers a study of race-racialization in relation to gender-sexuality. Consider how the concept of race shapes relationships between gendered selfhood & society, how it informs identity & experiences of the erotic, & how racialized gender & sexuality are created-maintained-monitored. With an interdisciplinary perspective, we will consider how race & power are reproduced & resisted through gender & sexuality, individually-national-international.

Explores major debates, key ideas, and historical developments in women, gender, & sexuality theory. Students will gain familiarity with queer, trans, and feminist theory, including Black, Native, socialist, crip, and other approaches. Will consider the different methods that gender & sexuality scholars have used to explain the social world, and why such explanations are vital to WGS. Course emphasizes reading, discussion,and critical writing.

This course places women, feminism, and activism in a transnational perspective, and offers students the opportunity to examine how issues considered critical to the field of gender studies are impacting women's lives globally in contemporary national contexts. We will look closely at how violence, economic marginality, intersections of race and gender, and varied strategies for development are affecting women in specific geographical locations.

Examines human sexuality from psychological, biological, behavioral, social, and historical perspectives. Topics include sexual research and theoretical perspectives, sexual anatomy and physiology, sexual health, intimacy, communication, patterns of sexual response and pleasure and sexual problems and therapies. Course will also include examination of the development of sexuality and the intersections of other identities, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexuality and the law, sexual assault, and other social issues in sexuality.

The history of white supremacy & the heteropatriarchy includes denying sexual pleasure of marginalized communities. A major benefit of pleasure is empowerment, which threatens power structures & leads to restrictive practices & laws. This course focuses on queer activists & feminists of color who examine pleasure, systemic oppression, & the connection of inner desires & needs -physical, mental, & emotional -as a part of enacting social change.

Majors in Women, Gender and Sexuality (WGS) are encouraged to become Distinguished Majors. Students complete a two-semester written thesis (approximately 40-60 pages in length) in their fourth year under the supervision of a WGS faculty member. The thesis allows students to pursue their own interests in depth and have the intellectual satisfaction of defining and completing a sustained project. Please see your WGS advisor for more information. Prerequisite: WGS Major, 2nd Major

To offer graduate level topics courses.