Women’s & Gender Studies

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on the diverse methodologies employed in gender and feminist studies in an interdisciplinary perspective. In particular, the course moves from the debates between second and third wave feminism, the course investigates some feminist research methods in literary criticism focusing on how feminist and gender studies challenge the major methodologies employed for the interpretation of literary texts written by both men and women. The course provides students with critical tools which enable them to re-read women’s access to knowledge and education, the canon formation, and the process of exclusion and inclusion of female writers from and within the literary canon and the public sphere. The course is divided into two parts. The first part introduces students to the main important methodologies in women’s and gender studies with specific reference to the rise of feminist literary criticism and to some manifestos of second and third wave feminism(s) and their temporal rhetoric of “awakening” and “space.” In particular, it explores the debates on canon formation and female genealogy and explains the notion of re-vision, resisting reading, and situated knowledge. It also examines the categories of gender, class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality and their interconnection. The second part of the course is devoted to the close-reading of some extracts from emblematic literary texts written by women in different historical moments. These texts which significantly belong to different literary genre, are explored in order to interrogate how women negotiated their agency in the public sphere, in the print market and in the political, economic, and social order. They are also examined in order to discuss the way in which they resist or perpetuate patriarchy, gender inequality, and a heterosexual politic of desire and sexuality. But they are also interrogated to see how they contributed, together with their interpretation and appropriation across time and space, to place the female self within a specific social order, to define the otherness of race and gender, and to establish relations of power between men and women, but also subjects who become geographically, ethnically, and culturally distinct. Required texts covered in this course may include: Margaret Cavendish, THE CONVENT OF PLEASURE, (1668); Aphra Behn, OROONOKO, 1688; Mary Astell, A SERIOUS PROPOSAL TO THE LADIES, PART 1 (1694/1696); M. Shelley, FRANKENSTEIN, 1816 (1831); and C. Bronte, JANE EYRE.

This course is driven by very simple questions. What is gender? Does gender have only two categories as a man and woman? Or do we have another category? Sexual minorities have been growing in many countries as a worldwide debate ensues over their rights. The difficulty of legalization for same-sex marriage or prejudice and discrimination for sexual minorities remain around the world.

In Samoan culture, a “Third Gender” category exists for a biological man who considers himself as a woman. However, people of Samoa strongly insist that Samoan ways of “Third Gender” are not the same as “gay” or “transgender” as they are understood in the West.  Through reading Margaret Mead’s “Coming Age of Samoa,” this course addresses these inquiries and their differences. 

This course examines questions such as whether gender matters on the internet; how patriarchy, misogyny, and racism get coded into our digital tools; and if a feminist internet is possible. It engages with feminist scholarship from sociology, communication, and technology studies to discuss key theories about the relationship between technology, power, and gender and consider how they are applied to describe various digital pursuits – from Instagram influencer labor to Google searches to data visualizations. The course investigates how feminist theory makes sense of our digital and technologically mediated world. The last third of the course pivots to reviewing feminism put into practice by communities of technologists, designers, and data scientists.

This course offers an introduction to gender studies, extending to the study of feminist and queer theories, women's and LGBTQI+ movements, and masculinities. The course explores critical questions concerning gender in society while introducing key issues, questions, and debates in gender studies scholarship. It develops a gender prism to conduct gender analysis in a range of spheres, including political institutions, the labor market, healthcare systems, and media, cutting across various disciplines such as law, political science, sociology, and economics. Additionally, it provides the necessary critical tools to evaluate and participate in contemporary policy debates, such as same-sex marriage, surrogacy, and #metoo. The course provides a solid foundation in gender studies to be able to analyze gender dynamics in various contexts and engage thoughtfully in ongoing discussions about gender-related issues and contemporary debates.

Based on an exploration of visual and literary culture, this course addresses the place of women photographers and writers in the history of art; the expression of gender stereotypes in literary production and visual culture; and the deconstruction of these clichés by a new generation of artists, favoring a female gaze.

This advanced course offers a comprehensive examination of women's engagement in politics worldwide, with a primary focus on the French context. Through a nuanced and comparative lens, it explores the complex dynamics surrounding women's participation in political spheres. Students critically analyze the multifaceted challenges that women encounter in their pursuit of political power and decision-making roles but also in influencing political and intellectual debates. Drawing on extensive research and scholarly works, the course investigates the historical, social, and political factors that have shaped women's involvement in politics from a global perspective. 

This course examines sexuality and gender in Asia, where there are evidences that in pre-colonial societies, gender pluralism and societal inclusivity persisted and celebrated those within and beyond today's ideas of sexualities and genders. From the matriarchal practices in ancient and pre-colonial societies, to promised marriages, to the prohibition of women in artistic and political spaces, to the binding of feet and being leftover women, as well as the various cultural queer realities such as the Bissu, Maknyah, Asog, Sao Praphet sang, Hijra, among others; this course investigates these phenomena and realities. It also explores migration and diasporic narratives as well as how sexualities and gender are practiced and performed in media and culture.

The course analyses what it means to be a man or a woman in different socio-cultural contexts, how gender roles are learned, and how these gender roles translate into gender needs. The concepts of sexuality and gender, gender roles and how they are shaped and learned, triple roles of women, practical and strategic gender needs, gender-based access to and control of resource within households are explored. Gender equality, gender-based violence, gender mainstreaming and roles of the state, role of men and women in technology development and the innovation process are reviewed. During the practical session, students visit communities to identify gender roles and how such roles influence control and utilization of resource for crop and livestock production.

This seminar introduces students to a series of crucial texts in the development of radical theories of the politics of sexuality. Taking its title from Gayle Rubin's seminal 1984 intervention into the field, this seminar takes seriously her challenge to use the politics of sexuality – pleasures, desires, transformations, and the regulations thereof – as a point of departure from which to reconsider the ways we make and understand our world. Beginning with Rubin’s essay as a guide to our general approach, the seminar will then focus around five main points of departure: firstly, gay liberation and its discontents; secondly, queer challenges to those politics around both infectious disease and gender; thirdly, sexuality in women-of-color feminism; fourthly, queer theory’s move from queer lives as its object of inquiry to a nebulous ‘queering’ as its mode of analysis; and finally, the reintegration of queer theory and materialist analysis. Throughout, we will be attentive to our location in Berlin and to how manifestations of sexual politics in Berlin are similar to and different from those articulated in the canonical texts in the field. Students will leave with a broad sense of the evolution of and relationship between activist and academic debates about sex and sexual politics, and will be able to apply these theoretical insights and approaches to the analysis of a broad variety of research questions in the study of political theories, actors, institutions, and conflicts.

This course examines key concepts, issues, and modes of analysis in the interdisciplinary fields of feminist and social justice studies with an emphasis on the intersections of gender, race, class, sex, sexuality, and nation in systems of power from historical and contemporary perspectives and the means for collectively transforming them.