Course Descriptions

CMMN A453 American Women Journalists 3 crs.
This course is an interdisciplinary study of the lives and writings of prominent American women who, through their talent and their commitment, have had a significant impact on both American culture and American journalism.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

CMMN A455 Media and Gender
This course examines the impact of media’s gender images on individuals, society, and culture. Participants will learn to be more critical consumers of media messages, specifically in terms of gender representations, to think and to write critically about their responses to and use of media products, and to develop different perspectives to interpret pop culture and media messages.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.

CRJU C410 Women and Crime

ENGL V275 Black Women Novelists, Prof. Jeanfreau
Common Curriculum: Humanities/Arts Modern
The course focuses on black women as creative literary artists and evaluates the contributions of these women to the literary culture of their respective countries and to the world in general. It seeks to establish the common links and the divergent views of these writers on problems facing black people wherever they live.
Prerequisite: ENGL T122.

ENGL A410 Writing Gender 3 crs.
The course examines the impact of contemporary feminist thought on rhetorical theory and introduces students to writing practices resulting from that impact. Readings from Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigary, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Bell Hooks, Rosi Braidotti, Nancy Mairs, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jeanette Winterson, and others provide a foundation for nonfiction writing assignments that combine personal experience with critical theory and encourage experimentation with voice and form.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or A205; junior standing.

ENGL A461 Contemporary Women's Literature 3 crs.
The course will introduce the major works by women writers which heavily influenced the development of the modernist and postmodernist movements in literature. The course will also explore the relationship of gender identity to the development of various literary techniques.
Prerequisites: ENGL T122 or A205; junior standing.

ENGL A466 Southern Women Writers 3 crs.

ENGL A479 Kate Chopin: The Awakening and its contexts
Though almost lost from the American literary canon in the fifty years following her death in 1904, Kate Chopin is now one of the most highly regarded (and most often read) authors of the late nineteenth century. While her 1899 novel, The Awakening, is well-known, her other fiction, including another novel and nearly one hundred short stories, are not so familiar. Moreover, Chopin inhabited historical and literary contexts that a century later are simillarly unfamiliar to many readers. This course will thus explore those contexts, both Chopin's own impressive oeuvre--short stories, poems, novels, essays--as well as some of the writers and texts and events that helped to shape her fiction: American writers like Mary Wilkins Freeman, Stephen Crane, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah Jewett, Williams Dean Howells as well as European writers like Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekov. We will also try to gain a better appreciation of some of the contemporary events, literary movements and issues that influenced her perspectives--from regionalism and naturalism to Darwin and Degas, from the Haymarket Riots to the Comstock Laws, from Reconstruction and the White League to the St. Louis World's Fair. We won't, of course, manage to cover all of these fascinating texts and events, but we will sample as much as we can as engage in a close reading of Chopin's fiction and that of the writers who directly influenced her--or whose own work responded to her vision.

HIST X290 Women in American History 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Behavioral/Social Sciences Modern
An exploration of the diverse historical experience of women in America from the colonial period to the present, the course will focus on changes in women’s work, legal and political status, education, religious experience, family life, and gender roles.

HIST A260 Modern European Women’s History 3 crs.
This course will examine the history of European women from the 18th century to the present. It will analyze the diversities of women’s experiences based on nationality, class, and religion and will focus on women’s work, political and legal rights, sexuality, and on the impact of wars, revolutions, and movements such as nazism and communism.

HIST A352 Women in African History 3 crs.
This course looks at women in African history from ancient times to the present, focusing on how religious practices, colonialism, and social class have impacted their lives. We will examine the construction of gender, social systems, reproduction, women’s exercise of power, and the attempt to control of the bodies of women and girls.

HIST W240 Between Eve and Mary: Women in Medieval Europe 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Behavioral/Social Sciences Pre-modern
This class explores changes in women’s rights and roles in medieval society. Special emphasis is placed on the gap between prescription and reality, women’s contributions to medieval society, ideas and attitudes about women, and developments at the end of the medieval period to create a society tolerant of witchcraft persecutions.

HIST W255 Medieval Sex and Gender 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Behavioral/Social Sciences Pre-modern
Sex and gender are linked together throughout history as cultural constructs that evolve from a power relationship. In studying these aspects of a society, we are much better informed about its social mores, hierarchical relationships, even political strategies. Because many ideas about sex and gender developed in the Middle Ages, a study of these aspects will help students better appreciate modern values.

PHIL H295 Interpreting Sex; Constructing Gender
This course invites students to reexamine traditional notions about sex and gender. We will begin with a general survey of the problem of embodiment in Western philosophy, and then consider the works of Anne Fausto-Sterling,Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and other prominent theorists who question the conventional view that sex differences are biologically-based and are therefore natural. We will then explore related theories that challenge both the assumptions of sexual dimorphism and the acceptance of heteronormativity that such assumptions support. The second part of the course will begin with Simone de Beauvoir's famous claim that "one is not born a woman", which gave way to a vast body of scholarship on the social construction of gender. We will examine many theories on this subject, including those taken from Butler (performative acts), Michel Foucault (disciplined bodies), Sandra Lee Bartky (alienated bodies), and Susan Bordo (the male body). Finally, we will consider Monique Wittig's attempt to resist what she calls "the mark of gender" when she claims that lesbians are not women because they do not participate in the gender/class system of male/female.

PHIL V241 Philosophical Perspective on Woman 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Humanities/Arts Modern
This course covers the philosophical development of three feminist theories–liberal, Marxist, and radical feminism. Various philosophical frameworks that have served as the basis of feminist critiques, such as positivism, liberalism, Marxism, functionalism, existentialism, and Freudism are discussed. Students will address critically a number of women’s issues, including women’s self-concept, their biology, their place in the public sphere, and their representation in language and culture.
Prerequisite: PHIL T122.

PHIL U254 Postmodernism and Feminism 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Humanities/Arts Pre-modern
Masculinity and femininity are no longer accepted as fixed positions within ontologies mapped out by man’s objectifying look. Postmodernist deconstruction of traditional engendered representations discloses the exchangeability of genders and thus works toward a liberation of the "engendered subject" in the multitudinous affinities between beings.
Prerequisites: PHIL T122, ENGL T122.

PSYC A327 Studies in Psychology of Women 3 crs.
This course investigates the life span development of women. The predominant focus concerns the ways in which class, gender, race, and cultural background affect the individual. Also addressed are issues and factors related to societal stereotypes of women.
Prerequisite: PSYC A100.

PSYC H434 Gender Differences in Cognition 3 crs.
An interdisciplinary examination of gender differences focusing on the psychosocial aspects of gender differences (political implications, measurement issues, differences at school/work, gender roles, and differences in verbal, math, spatial abilities) as well as biological influences (differences in brain anatomy/function and hormonal effects).
Prerequisites: junior standing and 3.3 GPA.

RELS U243 Women in the Christian Tradition 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Humanities/Arts Pre-modern
This course is an examination in historical terms of the tension between the significant religious opportunities available to women in the Christian tradition, and the subordination of women in Christian institutions. This historical examination will begin with women in the scriptures, trace women in European Christian history through the Reformation, and then focus on Christian women in America.
Prerequisite: RELS T122 or RELS H233.

RELS U281 Women in World Religions 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Humanities/Arts Pre-modern
This course is the historical and cultural study of the world religions in order to understand the ways that women’s roles in society and religious beliefs are interrelated and affect one another. Women’s roles and experiences in the religions are examined, as well as how the religions have regarded women as evidenced in scriptures, myths, and theologies.
Prerequisite: RELS T122 or RELS H233.

RELS A417 Women, Religion, Culture 3 crs.
This course is an investigation of the mutual impact of religious belief and gender roles. Special topics include the origin of patriarchy, structures of patriarchy, function of shamanism in women’s lives, women in patriarchal religions, violence perpetuated against women in patriarchal cultures/religions, and women creating women’s religion.
Prerequisites: RELS T122 or RELS H233; junior standing.

SOCI A240 Sociology of the Family 3 crs.
This course explores the impact of social changes on family structures. Throughout the course, the sociological perspective is employed to focus on the link between larger social forces and their impact on intimate relationships. An emphasis is placed on the interactive relationships which exist between gender, race, social class, age, and sexual orientation and the constraints they impose on individuals and families.

SOCI A250 The Sociology of Gender 3 crs.
This course focuses on the constraints that the social construction of gender imposes on both men and women in our gender-stratified society. The emphasis of this course will be on developing a critical, empirically-based understanding of the structural and historical foundations affecting males and females in society.

SOCI A260 Women in Latin America 3 crs.
This course examines the social-structural context, daily realities, and contributions of Latin American women in the economy, politics, and the arts, with an emphasis on the 20th century. In so doing, the course also aims to convey a more thorough understanding of contemporary Latin American societies.

SOCI A255 Human Sexuality 3 crs.
This course will examine the social, psychological, and biological dimensions that are reflected in the expression of human sexuality. Included topics will be the development of gender roles, reproductive facts, psychological implications, and value structures involved in decision-making about sexual behavior and life style.

SOCI A305 Social/Political Inequality 3 crs.
The unequal distribution of wealth and power, both globally and within the U.S., are examined. This course covers such topics as Third World underdevelopment, the social and political consequences of economic globalization, class conflict, and racial and gender inequality.

SPAN A455 20th-century Currents 3 crs.
This course offers readings and discussion of 20th-century literary trends, including film, from Spain and/or Spanish America. Topics vary, depending on semester, but may include the Generation of 1898 in Spain, modernism, fantastic literature, Indigenista literature of Spanish America, or Spanish-American women writers. Repeatable when subject varies.
Prerequisite: any A300-level course or instructor’s permission.

VISA H295 Images of Masculinity

VISA U236 Images of Women in Arts 3 crs.
Common Curriculum: Humanities/Arts Pre-modern
This course will present the role and image of women in visual arts as portrayed by men and women, from antiquity to the present, in the light of sociopolitical, cultural, and moral conditions and values. The work of women artists will be central.