Women’s & Gender Studies

This course serves as the first transgender focused gender studies course in the Gender Studies Program. The course introduces and discusses the concepts and theories of transness, transgender and otherness using some of the Western literature while incorporating and focusing on the Asian perspectives with Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines as focus. This course covers narratives and history of transness and otherness in 3 Asian contexts: Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines. The course looks into the evolution of gender identities, roles and expressions and sexualities in these societies and weave the intersections in these narratives. It covers current situations of trans, non-binary and "other" people in these societies and how their transness and otherness impede them from being fully integrated in their societies. It considers ways colonization (Hong Kong, Philippines) and non-colonization (Thailand) affect their transness and collectiveness. Finally, the course invites social justice allies to help map action plans to help improve their states in their respective societies. Prerequisite: GEND1001.

This course introduces Performance Studies and Transnational Feminist concepts to examine how women and non-conforming bodies are marked in films and what they reveal about power structures and societal attitudes. It  unpacks how the body performs gender, sexuality, and race by considering the role film plays in producing both authentic lives and stereotypes. It addresses whose bodies are seen and how they are framed. It critically questions what it means to perform and interrogate who the real performers are in the framing of marginalized individuals on screen in the last half a century. By applying the body as a site of knowledge, students explore a broad range of narrative and documentary films from Asia and across the globe to develop a deeper and more layered lens around the power and politics of production. This course provides an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach that embraces multiple viewpoints while recognizing entangled spaces that complicate the narrative. There are robust in-class discussion to develop powerful communication skills while encouraging creative modes of engagement that expand beyond scholarly text. Prerequisite: GEND1001.

This course examines the historical and contemporary oppression of women through a global and comparative lens. It explores the use of witchcraft accusations in European, American, and African contexts as a means of suppressing assertive or powerful women, as well as other gendered practices such as foot binding, sati, and female genital mutilation. The course introduces key concepts of gender, sex, and patriarchy, analyzes the marginalization of women in patriarchal societies, and examines women’s rights in the contemporary world. Attention is given to differing understandings and enforcement of women’s rights at national and global levels, including the roles of international organizations such as the United Nations and the International Labor Organization, and extends the discussion of gender rights to include LGBTQ+ communities.

This course brings together frameworks and methods from multiple disciplines to think about crisis, a hegemonic and deeply polyvalent concept. Using seminal ideas from queer, trans, and cultural theory, students consider how moments of crisis are often rife with contradictions and ambivalences and how the language of crisis has become ubiquitous in the contemporary world. Students also discuss seminar theories that situate crisis as endemic to capitalism, and think about how we might think about crisis as ordinary rather than exceptional. Throughout the course, students work through myriad texts and disciplines to consider the notions of crisis and catastrophe, and use different examples to research how crises often unfold in drastically different ways. Topics may include climate change, migration, epidemics and pandemics, moral panics around trans rights and bodies, and settler colonialism.

This course provides an overview of academic debates centred around evolving gender and sexual politics in contemporary China, which manifests as a unique area for studying the expansion of neoliberal economy, digital technologies as well as its socialist legacies. Bringing together significant theoretical insights and empirical research, teaching of this course will be facilitated through case studies of emerging forms of cultural representation, production, consumption and resistance. Topics will be covered include fandom and the popularity of online literature, influencers and gender performativity, feminist and LGBTQ+ activism and the creation of queer media, in the light of the Chinese context of censorship and governance.

This course offers an in-depth exploration of human sensibilities, tastes, and desires through an interdisciplinary lens, incorporating readings from cultural studies, anthropology, history, literature, journalism, and critical theory. In its earlier iterations, the course focused primarily on the concept of " beauty," not merely as an object but as a site for examining the politics surrounding its definitions and manifestations. In this revised version, the course integrates a critical analysis of new media's role and its profound impact on human conditions and social life. We live in an age saturated with media that function as powerful tools for producing, disseminating, and consuming the information, images, and ideas that shape both the tangible and intangible aspects of culture. The emergence of new media has transformed how we connect with one another, communicate, and interact as members of society. The course begins by delving into a recent viral phenomenon: the intersection of fandom culture and K-democracy, offering a compelling case study on how media reshapes collective identity and social activism. The course is divided into four sections: Section 1 Fandom Culture and K-democracy, Section 2 The Girl and Beauty: Conformity, Recalcitrance, and Negotiation, Section 3 Ethnic Markers and Aesthetic Standards, and Section 4 Back to K-culture and Politics of Beauty.

The course discusses contemporary U.S. American graphic memoirs, exploring how comics serve as a powerful medium for autobiographical storytelling. It examines how artists narrate personal and intimate experiences through the interplay of image and text. Students analyze how image and text work together to visualize trauma, self-representation, memory, and resilience—and learn what makes the comic medium such an affective space for narrating stories of illness, displacement, queerness, race, and coming of age. The exploration focuses on both the form and content of these works, analyzing how issues of gender, class, and race are portrayed within these narratives and how they engage with broader U.S. American cultural, social, and political contexts. Readings include a diverse range of voices and styles, from graphic memoirs like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, to more recent works by George Takei, Cece Bell, Nora Krug, and Kindra Neely. As part of the course, students have the opportunity to create their own short graphic memoirs, using accessible tools such as Making Comics by Lynda Barry, Canva, or StoryboardThat. This activity is planned to invite students to experiment with visual storytelling and reflect on their own experiences—no artistic background or drawing skills required.

This course examines gender in the global context. It focuses on gender relations as a subject of economic thought and analysis and explores the ways in which contemporary gendered patterns of employment, production, distribution and exchange have been shaped historically and institutionally.

This course examines a range of issues, debates and understandings of human sexuality from a primarily social psychological perspective.