WGSS 101
Introduction to Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Fall 2024 (also offered Spring 2025)
Division II W Writing Skills D Difference, Power, and Equity

Class Details

This course is designed to initiate you into the pleasures, pains and perplexities of critical thinking about gender and the situations of women across the globe. We will survey a wide variety of writers and issues–historical and contemporary, theoretical and practical. Above all, the course is intended as an exploration of the tremendous diversity of thought contained under the general rubrics of feminist and gender studies and a vehicle for developing skills in writing and research as well as analytical tools for further work in the field. The goal is not to bring about a specific point of view, but rather to learn to analyze issues critically using the methods and frameworks that feminist theory and queer theory have developed as academic disciplines.
The Class: Format: seminar; Mix of lectures and seminars
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 1323
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: Participation during class and in online forums, weekly reading responses, two short essays with revisions, and a final research paper
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: WGSS majors and potential WGSS majors
Unit Notes: required course for the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies major
Distributions: Divison II Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
WS Notes: This course requires significant attention to the craft of writing. Essential to this craft is the process of editing and rewriting materials with feedback from peers and professors. Students are expected to focus on improving analytical skills, critical thinking, and argumentation through attention to the writing process. They are also expected to give meaningful critical feedback on the writing of their peers.
DPE Notes: This course meets the DPE requirement because it asks students to reflect critically on issues of gender and sexuality around the world in a comparative contextual framework. Students will be asked in seminar space to discuss the operation of difference and power within as well as across different gender, class, racial, and sexual identities while learning in lecture meetings about feminist and queer studies' history, activism, and theory.
Attributes: WGSS Theory Courses

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Updated 10:37 am

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