WGST 100Y - First-Year Seminar: The Body: From Reproduction to Fashion
This course explores the ways in which the body, as a reflection and construction of the self, is tied to social and political relations. The body is also a surface upon which we inscribe cultural norms. Through this examination of the role that our bodies play in daily life we will delve into the study of gender, sexuality and power. We focus on three major areas: (1) the medicalization of bodies (such as abortion and infertility); (2) the discipline of bodies (cosmetic surgery, fitness); and (3) the use of the body as a vehicle for performance, self-expression, and identity (drag queens, fashion, sports). Throughout the course we will look at how ideas about bodies are transported across national borders and social, sexual, and class hierarchies.
WGST 211 - Modern Families and Social Inequalities: Private Lives and Public Policies
Feminist scholarship demonstrates that family life is embedded in race, class, gender, sexuality and other social structures that shape our understanding and experience of the social world. In 2015 same-sex marriage became U.S. federal law; but at the same time fewer people are marrying, more are living together and there is a growing number of people who live alone. Further, government involvement and social policies are not distributed equally. Issues to be covered include: welfare to work programs (teen moms and baby daddies), work/family crises of those who are "getting by" and those at the top who argue for family "rights", the gap in cultural capital between working class or immigrant children and those in the upper classes, the rise in donor conceived families and surrogates to create same-sex or single-parent families and the ethical meaning of "borrowing body parts" and finally why people are forgoing families and living alone.
WGST 306 - Seminar: Women Leaders at Work
More women leaders are in work settings and public office than any prior point in history. However, the fraction of women who are CEOs, board members of major corporations, heads of state and elected representatives in global assemblies remains shockingly small by comparison to the sheer numbers of women workers, consumers, and family decision makers. This course will examine the way that gender, race, and class shape women's access to positions of leadership and power at work. Questions to be considered include: (1) Why are there so few women leaders in work settings? (2) What can we learn about leadership from women who have achieved it?
Four modules for the course are (1) Strategies developed by women who lead; (2) Efforts to achieve parity through policies, e.g., glass ceilings, affirmative action; (3) Tensions between work, family and carework; and (4) Profiles of Productive Rule Breakers. Students will research women leaders in all sectors and countries.
WGST 311 - Seminar: Families, Gender, the State, and Social Policies
This course examines the politics facing contemporary U.S. families and potential policy directions at the State and Federal Levels. Discussion of the transformation of American families including changing economic and social expectations for parents, inequality between spouses, choices women make about children and employment, daycare and familial care giving, welfare and underemployment, and new American dreams will be explored. Changing policies regarding welfare and teen pregnancy will also be examined as part of government incentives to promote self-sufficient families. Expanding family (i.e. single mothers by choice, lesbian/gay/trans families) through the use of new reproductive technologies is emphasized as examples of legislative reform and the confusion surrounding genetic and social kinship is explored. Comparisons to other contemporary societies will serve as foils for particular analyses. Students will learn several types of research methodologies through course assignments. Student groups will also produce an original social policy case.
WGST 322 - Seminar: Contemporary Reproduction
This course focuses on the politics of human reproduction which is inextricably linked with nation states, as well as cultural norms and expectations. Reproductive issues and debates serve as proxies for more fundamental questions about the intersecting inequalities of citizenship, gender, race, class, disability and sexuality. What does reproductive justice look like? We will discuss how the marketplace, medical technologies and the law are critical to creating social hierarchies that are produced, resisted and transformed. We ask: Why is access critical to control for the use of fertility technologies (both pre-and during pregnancy), gamete purchase, egg freezing? How is each accomplished and by whom? How are new technologies in reproduction coupled with the global marketplace creating a social hierarchy between people (e.g. gamete donors, gestational carriers). Finally, what is the relationship between the commercialization of reproduction and the creation of new intimacies and forms of kinship? The course emphasizes both empirical research situated in the U.S. and research involving transnational flows.