Spring 2008 Courses
Please note that the registrar's website is the official listing of courses.
Core Courses
WMGS 5a Women and Gender in Culture and Society
S. Lanser, M/W 2:00-3:30 pm
Note: Discussion sections will meet outside of class
This interdisciplinary course introduces central concepts and topics in the field of women's and gender studies. Explores the position of women in diverse settings and the impact of gender as a social, cultural, and intellectual category in the United States and around the globe. Asks how gendered institutions, behaviors, and representations have been configured in the past and function in the present, and also examines the ways in which gender intersects with many other vectors of identity and circumstance in forming human affairs.
WMGS 105b Feminist Theories in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective
J. Mandrell, T/F 12:00-1:30pm
Prerequisite: Students are encouraged, though not required, to take WMGS 5a prior to enrolling in this course. May not be repeated for credit by students who have taken WMNS 105a in previous years.
Examines diverse theories of sex and gender within a multicultural framework, considering historical changes in feminist thought, the theoretical underpinnings of various feminist practices, and the implications of diverse and often conflicting theories for both academic inquiry and social change.
WMGS 106b Women in the Health Care System
L. Klerman, Th 2:00-5:00pm
May not be repeated for credit by students who have taken WMNS 106b in previous years.
Explores the position and roles of women in the U.S. health care system and how it defines and meets women's health needs. The implications for health care providers, health care management, and health policy are discussed.
WMGS 140a – Diversity of Muslim Women’s Experiences
M. Shavarini, T, F 9:00-10:30AM
Fulfills the Cultural Differences Elective requirement
A broad introduction to the multidimensional nature of women's experiences in the Muslim world. As both a cultural and religious element in this vast region, understanding Islam in relation to lives of women has become increasingly imperative. Special one-time offering, spring 2008.
WMGS 146a Gender, Technology, and the Body
C. Castañeda, M/W 3:30-5:00pm
Explores the ways in which specific technologies are involved in establishing gender as a natural fact or in reshaping it through bodily manipulation. Investigates technologies ranging from photography, film, and anthropometry to bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery.
WMGS 205a Graduate Foundational Course in Women's and Gender Studies
M. Smiley, T 4:30-7:30pm
An advanced interdisciplinary inquiry into the history, theories, concepts and practices that have formed women's and gender studies as a scholarly field, with particular attention to current intellectual trends and critical controversies.
Elective Courses
AAAS 125b –
F Smith, M,W 2:00-3:30PM
Fulfills the WGS Cultural Differences Elective requirement
Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction and music to examine the relationship between women’s sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective.
AMST 124B – American Love and Marriage
J. Antler, T, F 10:30-12:00PM
Fulfills the WGS History Elective requirement
Examines changing ideals and practices relating to love, courtship, marriage, and divorce from the colonial period to the present, looking at gender identity, family and household organization, sexual mores, demographic change, generational conflict, and ethnic, class, and racial differences.
ANTH 127a – Medicine, Body and Culture
J. Kirst, T, F 12:00-1:30PM
Examines main areas of inquiry in medical anthropology, including medicine as a sociocultural construct, political and economic dimensions of suffering and health, patients and healers in comparative medical systems and the medical construction of men’s and women’s bodies.
ECON 69a – The Economics of Race and Gender
S. Lee, M,W 5:00-6:30PM
Prerequisite: ECON 2a
The role of race and gender in economic decision making. Mainstream and alternative economic explanations for discrimination and analysis of the economic status of women and minorities. Discussion of specific public policies related to race, class and gender.
ENG 197b – Within the Veil: African American and Muslim Women’s Writing
A. Abdur-Rahman, T,F 10:30-12:00PM
Fulfills the WGS Cultural Differences Elective requirement
In 20th century
HIST 154b – Women in American History, 1600-1865
T. Hangen, M,W,Th 12:00-1:00PM
Fulfills the WGS History Elective requirement
An introductory survey exploring the lives of women in Anglo America from European settlement through the Civil War. Topics include the “history of women’s history”; the role of gender in Native American, African, and European cultures; women’s religion, work, and sexuality; and the changing possibilities for female education and expression from the colonial period through the nineteenth century.
SAS 101a – South Asian Women Writers
H. Singh, M,W 2:00-3:30PM
Fulfills the WGS Cultural Differences Elective requirement
Includes literature by South Asian women writers from
SAS 110b – South Asian Postcolonial Writers
H. Singh, M,W 5:00-6:30PM
Fulfills the WGS Cultural Differences Elective requirement
Looks at the shared history of colonialism specifically British imperialism, for many countries and examines the postcolonial novel written in English. Works read include those from
SOC 115a – Masculinities
G. Fellman, T,F 3:00-4:30PM
Men’s experiences of masculinity have only recently emerged as complex and problematic. This course inquires into concepts, literature, and phenomenology of many framings of masculinity. The analytic schemes are historical, sociological, and social psychological.
SOC 130a – Families
R. Zincavage, T,F 12:00-1:30PM
Investigates changes in the character of American families over the last two centuries. A central concern will be the dynamic interactions among economic, cultural, political, and social forces, and how they shape and are reshaped by families over time. Particular attention is paid to how experiences of men and women vary by class, race, and ethnicity.
SOC 206b – Advanced Topics in Family Studies
K. Hansen, Tuesdays 1:30-4:30PM
Studies the evolution of the Western European and American families and the historical processes that have shaped them, especially industrial capitalism, slavery, and immigration. Explores various controversies regarding the family: the family as an economic unit vs. a group of individuals with varying experiences; the effects of the shift of activity from primary production to consumption; increased privatization vs. increased public intervention; recent changes in family structure and fertility patterns; and resolution of the double burden associated with the second shift for women. The course will take a different topical focus each time it is taught.
Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies
Please visit web.mit.edu/gcws for additional information about GCWS.
Transsexuality, Transgenderism, and the Rest...
January 31 - May 8, 2008
Thursdays, 4:00 - 7:00 pm
Location: Harvard University, building and room TBA
This course will cover narrative, anthropological, historical, and theoretical texts (including films) about transsexuality and transgenderism. We begin with transsexuality before and beyond identity politics and its transformation in the light/shadow of identity politics and theories of gender. While the course will remain located in the Americas and Europe, we will consider how trans-subjectivities produced in other socio-cultural formations inform histories and politics of transsexuality and transgenderism in so-called western contexts.
Faculty:
Claudia Castañeda teaches feminist science and technology studies in Boston area universities, and works as a writing coach for academics at all stages of the research/writing process. She is the author of Figurations: Child, Bodies, Worlds (Duke University Press, 2002), and other articles that focus on scientific and technological materialization of bodily differences including race, class, gender, and sexuality in broader circuits of power and exchange.
Afsaneh Najmabadi teaches History and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her last book, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), received the 2005 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association. She is an associate editor of the six-volume Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2004-2008), and is currently working on Sex in Change: Configurations of Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Iran.
Jyoti Puri writes and teaches in the areas of sexualities, states, nationalisms, and transnational feminisms. Her book, Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India (Routledge 1999), addresses how constructs of gender and sexuality are shaped across national and transnational contexts. Encountering Nationalism, (Blackwell Publishers 2004), is a feminist sociological exploration of nationalism and the state. A number of related articles and chapters are published in journals and edited volumes on sexuality and gender. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants, including a Rockefeller Research Fellowship and a Fulbright Senior Research award. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Sexualizing the State: Biopolitics and Sodomy Law in India.
Feminist Inquiry: Strategies for Effective Scholarship
January 31 - May 8, 2008
Thursdays, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Location: MIT campus, building and room TBA
This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines. Doing feminist research involves rethinking disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, developing new understandings of what counts as knowledge, seeking alternative ways of understanding the origins of problems/issues, formulating new ways of asking questions and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study. The course will focus on methodology, i.e., the theory and analysis of how research should proceed. We shall be especially attentive to epistemological issues--pre-suppositions about the nature of knowledge. What makes research distinctively feminist lies in the complex connections between epistemologies, methodologies and research methods? We shall explore how these connections are formed in the traditional disciplines and raise questions about why they are inadequate and/or problematic for feminist inquiry and what, specifically, are the feminist critiques of these intersections.
Faculty:
Laurie Crumpacker (Professor and Chair of History; Acting Chair of Women’s Studies at Simmons College.) She holds a B.S. from Simmons in English/Education, an M.A. from Harvard/Radcliffe in English Literature, and a Ph.D. from Boston University in American Studies. At Simmons, she was founding Director of the Women’s Studies Program (now the Department of Women and Gender Studies) and also of the Liberal Studies/ Women’s Studies Masters Program (now the Gender and Cultural Studies Program). She has been the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Susquehanna University and at Wheelock College. Her publications include The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr (Yale, 1984) and Second to None: A Documentary History of American Women (U. Nebraska, 1994). She has recently written articles on African American and white working women’s education and on the impact of feminist theory on liberal education.
Frinde Maher is Professor of Education at Wheaton College, where she directs the Secondary Education Program. She has taught Women’s Studies courses for many years, including, for the past decade, Feminist Theory. She has published widely in the fields of feminist pedagogy and women in education, and is co-author, with Mary Kay Tetreault, of two books: The Feminist Classroom (1994; second edition 2001) and Privilege and Diversity in the Academy (2007).