Women’s & Gender Studies

This course examines the challenges women filmmakers have faced, as well as the unique and innovative contributions they have made to film aesthetics and narrative form. It introduces students to some of the central debates within feminism from the 1970s onwards, in particular feminism's influence on women's independent film production, and with a focus on questions of female authorship. What kind of aesthetic and narrative strategies have women filmmakers used to create alternative fictions and documentations of gender conventions, female pleasure, everyday life and social experience? Analyzing the work of female filmmakers who have broken with or resist institutional and aesthetic conventions, and who work primarily on the margins of mainstream industries, this course will address the relationship between film form and ideology. 

This course covers gender issues such as employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and reproductive rights. The course explores how feminist legal theory has questioned the way the law is constructed and applied according to certain stereotypical views of sexual identity and the roles of women. The seminar also investigates how queer theory has influenced the legal field by rejecting traditional gender identities which do not fully encompass the issues that concern the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transsexual population. Students use a comparative perspective to consider what can be learned from these different legal standpoints as we encounter changes in family law and employment law, how queer theory influences gender law, and what might be new ways to consider legal concepts such as consent, personal autonomy, and discrimination.

This is a foundation course in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. In this course, the general frameworks, basic concepts, and historical backgrounds of gender studies are examined. The course describes and discusses gender research and analyses in various disciplines in order for students to obtain the basic analytical power in dealing with gender analysis in interdisciplinary fields. The course enhances students' understanding of how GSS develops in a respective field, what the current issues are, and what the future development might be, and helps them grasp the importance of the perspectives of gender, which is interdisciplinary. The course gives students an important tool to think deeply about the way the new "knowledge" opened up by the GSS should be and encourages them to transform the "knowledge" into actions, or activism in a broad sense.

This course offers a study of the works of Margaret Atwood. The first part of the course focuses on speculative elements, feminist themes, and the role of the narrator in Atwood's work, and examines how her novels' form contributes to their meaning. This part of the course discusses the claustrophobic first person narrative in THE HANDMAID'S TALE, the unreliable patchwork narrative of ALIAS GRACE, and the mythopoeic style of the PENELOPIAD. The course utilizes samples from TV adaptations, and a selection of essays by and about Atwood to provide a broad spectrum of perspectives and a basis for in-class discussion. The second part of the course builds on the theoretical context and literary analyses from the first part of the course. Students review essays and further context material on topics related to Atwood's novels such as the history and development of dystopian fiction in Anglophone literature, feminist literary theory, and the role of gender in classical mythology and modern adaptations. The second part of the course also offers exercises and room for discussion with regards to academic writing and working with secondary texts. Regular attendance is required. Students participate in class discussions, complete written assignments, and give an oral presentation.

The course analyzes the complex relationship between media and gender, focusing on gender equality, women’s rights, and unbiased gender views. It draws on the theories, topics, and qualitative methods of western feminist critical communication research, revealing that the global media organization and power system rely on the operation of political economy and ideology, and construct the relationship between audience goods and class, gender, race and science and technology to create surplus value.

This course explores the 18th century's fascination with the body and constructions of the self by considering literary representations of the body. Ideals of beauty are examined, as well as anxieties surrounding sexuality and the roles of both men and women, as masculinities and femininities are debated with regards to cultural production. The course also investigates material considerations, reflecting on clothing and disguise, as well as considering the body in relation to discourses of travel and the military. Slavery, incarceration, and the body in pain are particular concerns in writing from this period, and theories engaging with class and race inform our analysis of various relationships and power structures. Students also investigate how authors consider the physical and emotional response of their readers in achieving their aims, and engage with disability studies in considering these authors and their characters in terms of 18th-century concepts of defectiveness. This course explores the 18th-century body across a range of genres, engaging with novels, poetry, and a play, as well as discussing examples of life writing, including letters and biography.

This course explores the history of women and gender in Spain in the twentieth century.

This course presents a survey of contemporary theories and research regarding the interaction between gender and communication. Emphasis is on a variety of factors and contexts involved in daily communication such as language, non-verbal messages, interpersonal and familiar relationships, educational process, mass media, and work place. Topics include essential features of current theories which seek to cast light on the gender communication process; the impact of changing roles of gender in the society as constituted and presented by communication; the differing social and cultural expectations and portrayals of men and women in various situations; the differences between males and females in perception, information processing, and verbal and non-verbal communication patterns; distinct standpoints and insights derived as valid and acceptable.

This course analyzes the issues of power, leadership, and authority from the perspective of gender, and the strategies of women's leadership that contribute to altering controversial barriers and produce benefits for men and women. It examines the contribution of women in developing countries whose domestic, professional, and public activities have transformed communities at the local and global level.