Women’s & Gender Studies

This interdisciplinary course practices a critical way of examining contemporary cultural practices. In these practices of production, dissemination, and reception, masculinity and femininity are permanently (re)constructed, just as are concepts of class, race, ethnicity, and geopolitical location. Students study cultural practices manifest through popular culture as well as examine the cultural logic underlying art practice and visual ethnographic research. In all, old and new identities are contested and reconstructed; the interaction between text and image is the main focus.

This course gives students an overview of the major issues surrounding gender and sexuality in Russian society: social constructions of masculinities and femininities, sexual and gender variance, family, reproduction, women's agency, and women's movements. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject employing historic and social analysis and exploring different media, which engage and articulate gender and sexuality in Russian culture. The course follows a chronological order with emphasis on the following time-periods: Russia's Middle Ages, the Petrine reforms, the post-Petrine, “modern” phase of Russian history, the state socialism, and post-socialist Russia. Readings comprise texts written by historians and social scientists, as well as literary fiction, memoirs, autobiographies, and visual texts. Artistic works serve not as illustrations of some historic truths, but as ways to contest and complicate the understanding of gender and sexuality constructs under the changing regimes of power.

The course covers major artistic periods - Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque - from the point of view of women's presence as artists, patrons, and subjects of the art of Rome. It takes advantage of the richness of monuments and works of art in the Eternal City, and uses them for direct analysis and discussions in the light of women's studies. Special importance is given to the reading of primary sources as well as to feminist art historical scholarship, with related discussions in class. The last part of the course is a monographic study of the Roman born Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. In recent decades, art historical scholarship has re-discovered and re-evaluated this woman artist. For some scholars, her biographical experience and her career as a painter have become emblematic of women's presence in the visual arts. The course considers not only the life and career of this woman artist in its historical context, but also the impulse the study of her experience has given to women's studies in the field of art history.

This course explores the career paths of many excellent female scientists, including how they have persevered through a variety of challenges. It examines many classic and contemporary female role models in science, such as Mary Curie (Mrs. Curie), Academician Wu Jianxiong, Dr. Inez Fung, Dr. Susan Solomon, Dr. Joanne Simpson, Academician Wang Yu, Academician Peng Wang Jiakang, Academician Meng Huaiying, and more.

Students analyze how gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexual orientation are shaped by cultural and societal influences. The focus is on the comparisons of European and U.S. gender regimes and diversity differences, interpretation and evaluation of social actions by religious, gender, ethnic, racial, class, sexual orientation groups affecting equality and social justice in Europe and the U.S. Discussions within this framework include Communist concepts of gender equality, post-socialist transformation, and globalization as well as of current cultural gender representations, beauty myths, and advertising. Documentaries, other visual materials, field trips, and a guest speaker lecture are a part of this course.

This course applies a gender perspective to different sociological objects and illustrates how this perspective can enrich our analysis of society. The course covers how sociology has integrated gender (or not) in the analysis of the family, education, labor markets, or politics. This is a general sociology course that addresses some of the key questions that interest sociologists while systematically applying a gender perspective to these questions. It also studies gender as a social category, discusses how it is produced and reproduced in society, and how it relates to social inequalities. This course provides a new perspective on some of the topics covered in introductory sociology classes, and it covers also some additional ones. Some previous background in sociology is recommended, but not required to follow the course.

This course focuses on the centrality of gender as a factor structuring, ultimately, all social relations. The course explores relationships between men and women, men and men, women and women, as personal and sexual relations, within the household, the labor market, and the state; how gender relations and practices are performed in different cultures; the role of gender in processes of social transformation and the impact of industrialization and migration on gender relations.