Women’s & Gender Studies

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.

This course studies gender categories and roles in Thai society. It provides an overview of the different theories relevant to the understanding of gender and sexuality; examines the social structure and ideas related to gender and sexuality in Thailand’s history and contemporary society; and analyzes the progress of feminism and LGBT’s rights in Thailand.

The goal of this course is to popularize women's health and health care knowledge to non-medical students in school, so that students can master the basic knowledge of common obstetrics and gynecology diseases in women and how to prevent health care, and to strengthen the popularization of some common emergencies in obstetrics and gynecology among students. The understanding of abdominal diseases enables students to grasp the significance of timely medical treatment based on disease assessment. Lay a good foundation for further strengthening awareness of prevention and health care.

The teaching of this course should enable students to master the basic theories and basic knowledge of common diseases in obstetrics and gynecology, with special emphasis on cultivating students' ability to analyze and solve practical problems, so that students can grasp the significance of timely medical treatment based on disease assessment. Lay a good foundation for further strengthening awareness of prevention and health care. This course will also mobilize the enthusiasm of all types of students through various learning activities and evaluation methods, so that students can generate and maintain curiosity and critical thinking about scientific issues, and improve students' self-control ability, learning ability, expression ability, and critical thinking ability. , cooperation skills and other comprehensive training, so that they will be brave and able to contribute to the promotion of human health in the future.

This course examines the social scientific study of gender, sexuality, and family in Japan from the postwar to the contemporary period from a comparative perspective. 

This course examines Hong Kong’s history through the narratives of women, a group often made invisible in history writing, as social actors in the fabric of (post-)colonial Hong Kong. From elites’ households to squatter huts, from brothels, textile factories to convents and schools, from public housing estates, government offices to LegCo Chamber, women of different generations and ethnicities have been caregivers, breadwinners, and pioneers, contesting the prescribed gender role and identity in a patriarchal society. By examining their private lives and public voices informed by their (marginalized) positions interweaved in different social and historical contexts, this course seeks to not only explore how they lived, or how their lives are shaped and reshaped by their own unyielding efforts, but also how their stories can make their ways into narratives and representations in the history of Hong Kong. 

This course examines major concepts in gender studies, including: biological determinism, cultural essentialism, social constructionism, power and inequalities, sexuality, and queering categories of difference. Using a variety of case studies from social media, politics, sport, fashion, film, and music, the course will analyze how sex, gender, age, ethnicity, race, class, politics and social movements intersect to influence our understanding of sex, gender, and culture.

This course examines key issues in the history of sex, gender, power and identity. It will examine the challenges faced by women (and people of other minoritized genders and sexualities) in gaining legal and political recognition. Attention will be given both to structural inequalities and changing assumptions about masculinity and femininity, gender relations, sex roles and sexual practices.