120 Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
Introduction to the interdisciplinary field of women’s and gender studies with an emphasis on an understanding of the ‘‘common differences’’ that both unite and divide women. Beginning with an examination of how womanhood has been represented in myths, ads, and popular culture, the course explores how gender inequalities have been both explained and critiqued. The cultural meaning given to gender as it intersects with race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality will be studied. This course also exposes some of the critiques made by women’s studies’ scholars of the traditional academic disciplines and the new intellectual terrain currently being mapped.
220 American Healthcare History in Gender, Race, and Class Perspective
Traditional American medical history has emphasized the march of science and the ideas of the ‘‘great doctors’’ in the progressive improvement in American medical care. In this course, we will look beyond just medical care to the social and economic factors that have shaped the development of the priorities, institutions, and personnel in the health-care system in the United States. We will ask how gender, race, and class have affected the kind of care developed, its differential delivery, and the problems and issues addressed.
222 Women in Contemporary American Society
NOT OFFERED 2011-2012. This course examines the transformations and continuities in the lives of women in the United States since World War II. We will look critically at the so-called ‘‘happy days’’ of the 1950s, the cultural and political ‘‘revolutions’’ of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the shifts in consciousness over the last five decades. The rise and changes in feminism and the women’s movement will receive special attention. Emphasis will be placed on the differing communities of women and how they have balanced the so-called ‘‘private,’’ ‘‘public,’’ and ‘‘civic’’ spheres of their lives.
230 Female or Feminist: Women's Movements in U.S. History
NOT OFFERED IN 2011-2012. American women have been often been in the forefront of social change, while the organizational forms to make this possible have shifted. This course examines a variety of American ‘‘women’s movements’’ from female to feminist since the nineteenth century in a global context. The major focus of the course will be the recent past and what is often referred to as ‘‘second wave’’ feminism. Students will gain an historical understanding of how differing groups of women organized across and between class and racial lines, self-consciously as ‘‘female,’’ and self-consciously as ‘‘feminist.’’
324 History, Memory, and Women's Lives
If a woman speaks of her experiences, do we get closer to the ‘‘truth’’ of that experience? How can oral history provide a window into the lives of women in the past and what does it close off? Analysis of methodological and theoretical implications of studying women’s lives through oral histories as a way to end the silences in other historical forms. Special attention to be paid to other genres -- history, fiction, ethnographies -- as a foil to explore the strengths, and limitations, of the oral-history approach.