Women’s & Gender Studies

This course provides an overview of key issues in the triangular intersection of gender, religion, and colonialism. While aiming to bring together the literature Western and non-Western contexts on these debates, the course introduces the students the key texts in feminist theory, feminist religious studies, masculinities and religion, and postcolonial and decolonial feminism from a critical interdisciplinary perspective.

This course explores the evolution of women's work inside and outside of the home; traditional and emerging views relative to women and domestic and/or care work; and current models that include greater State involvement and societal support for domestic and care work as prerequisites for gender equity and more robust democracies in Latin America. Students derive the conceptual tools for their own critical analyses, developing an amplified understanding of the role of care and domestic work in Latin America; the role that women play in the same, and what this classic equation has meant for the region's development trajectories. Likewise, the course introduces existing models and policy alternatives. It is divided into two parts: the first part covers Latin American women's inequality in labor and in society, and the second part considers emerging responses.

This course explores how some of the myriad constructions and representations of sex and gender that emerged during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), were performed in private, in public, and in the spaces where the two spheres intersected. Specifically, the course highlights how individuals and artists reacted to and expanded upon societal expectations concerning gender roles, during a period when Berlin became a global center of cultural innovation, artistic exploration, and scientific discovery. The stage and burgeoning film industry offer important documentation and a departure point to explore how German society grappled with the political implications of the First World War. In addition, both offer opportunities to explore how consumerism influenced the ways in which individuals chose to fashion their identities and the spaces around them.

This course examines the comparative analysis of women's roles in politics and the challenges they encounter in attaining positions of power within the political arena. The seminar is split into two parts. The first part explores various aspects of women's involvement in politics, such as the historical struggle for women's suffrage, the gender gap in voting behavior, ideology, and political involvement, and their variation across countries and time. The second part focuses on various aspects of women's representation in political institutions, including the challenges they face when seeking public office, their portrayal in the media, their impact on political decision-making, and the relationship between their presence and corruption. Additional topics include the entry of women into politics and the degree of this transformation varying across different countries and regions. Questions covered include: what factors underlie these variations? Why have some political systems successfully integrated women into politics while others lag behind? Do men and women approach politics differently in terms of understanding and engagement? Is there a disparity in political involvement and aspirations between genders? Additionally, how has media coverage affected female candidates? Furthermore, once in power, do women govern differently from men? 

The course aims to reflect on the construction of Otherness as a political theoretical problem, through interdisciplinary readings that involve the fields of political philosophy, Latin American studies and feminist theory. We will pay special attention to analyzing the production of different figures of Otherness whose historicity shows a turning point in the rise of nineteenth-century racial and sexual theories about the body and nature.

This is a special studies course involving an internship with a corporate, public, governmental, or private organization, arranged with the Study Center Director or Liaison Officer. Specific internships vary each term and are described on a special study project form for each student. A substantial paper or series of reports is required. Units vary depending on the contact hours and method of assessment. The internship may be taken during one or more terms but the units cannot exceed a total of 12.0 for the year.

This course applies a critical lens to representations of gender and identity in contemporary media. Taking gender and sexuality as a critical starting point, students examine the construction of identities under the simultaneous influence of race, class, and nationality. By focusing on popular representations in both the US and the country where the course is taking place, students gain a deeper understanding of identities as both culturally specific and influenced by global media. Instead of suggesting that contemporary identities are determined by what is on TV screens, computers, and in local movie theaters, the course seeks to describe the complex interactions between national audiences and concrete media productions. It analyzes how different audiences reproduce or challenge traditional concepts and stereotypes of gender, race, sexuality, and class. By combining the study of theoretical texts with examples from the advertisement industry, television, movies, and other forms of contemporary cultural expression, it offers a comprehensive and thorough introduction to contemporary studies of the media and identity.

The contemporary world is facing many challenges in promoting peace, justice and reconciliation, ranging from armed conflicts to social inequality, from environmental degradation to interfaith tensions. These complex challenges continue to afflict many parts of the globe. In this context, some fundamental questions may be asked: how do we define life?; What does it mean to live a life of integrity?; How does my life relate to just, sustainable and inclusive peace?; How do the ideas for making the world more just and peaceful shape our own lives and careers of purpose and vice versa? Seeking to explore these questions deeply, this course presents foundational theories behind peace and social justice and applies these concepts to specific fields of inquiry and practice, including: colonization, violence, oppression, racism, sexism, human trafficking, poverty, climate change and complex issues of peacebuilding, humanitarian aid and development. Various strategies and attempts to create social change for the greater good through different individual and organizational platforms are analyzed and assessed too. Throughout the course, students gain an understanding of the strengths and constraints on theory and practice in the context of the creation of a culture of “human flourishing”, particularly in post-conflict societies, and engage in a variety of topics with self-reflective approach.

This course examines the idea of family as a social institution that is both historically and culturally situated and investigates how the family unit both shapes and is shaped by transformations in the economy, the state, and other social institutions, as well as the systemic forces of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, nationalism, and other structural factors.  

The course critically evaluates theoretical frameworks and current research on family dynamics in the West and examines the challenges encountered by contemporary families in Korea. Moreover, it facilitates reflection on the underlying structural factors contributing to and potential resolutions for other social problems unique in the Korean context. 

Some topics covered in the course will include: how the nuclear family came to be treated as natural; how the concept of family has historically evolved; how contemporary sexuality and dating has transformed family formations; the inequality of race, gender, and class in family forms; the emergence of diverse families and changes in the roles of family members; an increase in small households and single-person households; the rise in the age at first marriage and the decline in birth rates; the dynamics of parent-child relationships, parenting practices, household labor, and the distribution of household chores; population aging; transnational and immigrant families; and other related topics. 

This course examines gender, sex and sexuality across a range of cultural settings seeking, in the process, to question most of what we - including most theorists of sex/gender - take for granted about the gendered and sexed character of human identity and difference. Topics explored include: the saliency of the categories man and woman; the relationships between race and gender; the role of colonialism and neocolonialism in the representation of gender, sex and sexuality; the usefulness of the notion of oppression; the relationship between cultural conceptions of personhood and cultural conceptions of gender; and the ethnocentricity of the concepts of gender, sex and sexuality themselves. To assist these explorations we will make use of cross-cultural case studies in a number of areas including rape, prostitution, work and domesticity, the third sex and homosexuality.