Women's And Gender Studies
Courses for J-Term and Spring, 2008
J-Term 2008
ARTD 390
Gender & Art
In this class, we will consider how gender and sexuality affect the
production and reception of art and, more broadly, visual culture as a
whole. While
the course is structured chronologically, it is not an art-historical
survey. Instead, we will consider examples from various points in the
history of international modernism, with an emphasis on the 19th and
20th centuries in Europe and the U.S. Within this framework, we will
ask a series of questions about representation and subjectivity: how
have artists conceived of femininity and masculinity? What role have
race and class played in the construction of gendered identities in
art? As we investigate art and artists, we will also consider other
modes of representation such as television, film, and advertising and
the ways in which they construct and perpetuate ideas about gender.
For more information, contact Heather Mathews, mathewhe@plu.edu.
RELI 190 (227)
Christian Theology: Visions of Peace in Film and Art
How do we
imagine a world at peace? How do the visions of artists and filmmakers
impact personal motivation and public discourse in movements for peace
and justice? What is the relationship between liberation theologies and
these creative visions?
This course wrestles with these questions by exploring artistic
expressions including popular films, visual arts, textile arts, street
theater, and demonstrations/speeches. We will examine contemporary and
historical works representing a diversity of race, class, and gender
perspectives. As we seek to "read" these visual texts, we will utilize
the different theologies of liberation as viewpoints for analysis of
how the arts have been used to promote religious and political beliefs.
Following the course focus on the relationship between religious
beliefs, art and social change, this course will include a
service-learning component.
For information, contact Kathi Breazeale, breazeka@plu.edu
Spring 2008
WMGS 201
Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
This course is designed as an introduction to Women's and Gender
Studies. We will examine the major themes, concepts and methods used in
the social and cultural study of gender in the U.S. and other nations.
The course explores the richness and diversity of women's and men's
lives and experiences from multicultural and interdisciplinary
perspectives with a particular focus on the intersections of gender,
sexuality, race and class.
For information, contact Jennifer Smith, smithjb@plu.edu.
ANTH 350
Women and Men in World Cultures
An overview of the variation in sex
roles and behaviors throughout the world; theories of matriarchy,
patriarchy, mother goddesses, innate inequalities; marriage patterns,
impact of European patterns; egalitarianism to feminism.
For more information, contact Laura Klein, kleinlf@plu.edu.
[Note: Professor Klein is on sabbatical in the fall of 2007]
COMA 303
Gender & Communication
In this course we focus upon the manner in which our language shapes
our
notions of gender and creates expectations for how our personal and
professional relationships ought to be structured, and how our actual
language use constructs those relationships. We also focus upon the
role
of mass mediated images in constructing preferred and marginalized
social models of gender, sexuality, and human relationship. Throughout
the course we examine gender as a cultural construction and
performance. Moreover, as we will come to see, gender cannot be
understood apart from sexual embodiment, sexual orientation, race,
ethnicity, and social and economic class. We further examine how
relations of gender are also relations of power, privilege,
subordination, and disadvantage. The overarching frame for these issues
is how you have come to be gendered, how you have come to hold the
assumptions about gender that you hold, how you communicatively perform
gender, and how your assumptions about gender function in your
interactions.
For information, contact Peter Ehrenhaus, ehrenpc@plu.edu
ENGL 190 (232)
Women's Literature: Women Writers and the Body Politic
“There
are a hundred ways to be a good citizen, and one of them is to look,
finally, at the things we don’t want to see.” Barbara Kingsolver
In
this course we’ll read a wide range of literature by women within the
last twenty-five years. Beginning with the classic science fiction
novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, we’ll use the text as a lens for exploring
the body politic. While the novel takes a futuristic approach to
questions about reproductive rights and freedoms for women, the
questions it raises are certainly appropriate ones to consider now.
From there we’ll move through Iranian comic books, a blog from Baghdad,
a cancer memoir, and a collection of women’s poetry on the body. Along
the way, we’ll look at how women’s bodies are politicized through
religious institutions, in war, and as a result of environmental
toxins. Students will have a variety of writing projects, including an
essay styled as a comic strip, a monologue (modeled after The Vagina
Monologues), and lots of reading reflections. The course is only open
to first year students.
For more information, contact Lisa Marcus, marcusls@plu.edu.
ENGL 213
Topics in Literature, Themes and Authors: Women's Worlds
When she first imagined having “a room of one’s own,” Virginia Woolf
was articulating a vision that women had been dreaming about for more
than six centuries. In this course, we will be reading some of those
earlier visions of “women’s worlds,” beginning with Christine de
Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, composed in 1405, and
continuing through Moderata Fonte’s The Worth of Women (1592), Margaret
Cavendish’s startling Convent of Pleasure (1668), and Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s 1916 feminist utopia, Herland, written a decade before Woolf’s
A Room of One’s Own was published (1929). We will also be tackling more
recent views of women’s worlds, including Marjane Satrapi’s
autobiographical graphic novel Embroideries and Doris Lessing’s just
published The Cleft. The reading load is ambitious, but the pleasure
and delight of discovery will be worth the effort.
For information, contact Sharon Jansen, (253) 535-7227.
ENGL 341
Feminist Approaches to Literature
Beginning with Virginia
Woolf’s classic manifesto, A Room of One’s Own, we’ll explore feminist
perspectives and pronouncements about the literary canon. We’ll spend
some time thinking about (and arguing with) Woolf’s thesis, and then
move through an examination of ways in which male writers have cast
women. How, for example, did Shakespeare script femininity? What about
Henry James? How do women writers recast their own fictive and poetic
possibilities? To answer that last question we’ll read a variety of
diverse texts by mostly twentieth century women writers, including Kate
Chopin’s The Awakening and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were
Watching God. We’ll also explore the construction of gender through a
couple of compelling transgender texts like Woolf’s Orlando and
Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body. We’ll end the class with more
contemporary feminist manifestos and I’ll ask you to write your own
manifesto in response to the course readings.
For more information, contact Lisa Marcus, marcusls@plu.edu.
HIST 359
History of Women in the U.S.
Why do we need a class specifically devoted
to the experiences of WOMEN in the United States? What elements of the
past in the U.S. have been omitted by "mainstream history" and why?
Whose version of a historical event becomes the accepted version? What
kinds of events are considered "historical" in the first place? Which
values and criteria dictate the kinds of topics and questions that
historians attempt to address through the collection and assessment of
evidence, through debates and discussions with other historians?
In this class, we will return frequently to those questions about the
processes of history, as we explore women's experiences in the past. We
will ask how “woman” has been defined---how have social forces like
racism or homophobia or classism shaped the dominant definitions of
“woman” and how have marginalized women resisted or criticized such
dominant definitions? We will consider the influences that women's
historical activism and dissent have had on our society today—ranging
from the many accomplishments of feminisms to persistent problems of
sexism. We will use our examinations of women's past experiences to
broaden and rearrange our understanding of the boundaries of history,
and will simultaneously examine the ways in which alternatives to
"mainstream" history emerge and become influential.
For information, contact Beth Kraig, kraigbm@plu.edu.
INCT 232
Topics in Gender: Global Gender Issues
What does it mean to think globally about
gender? Students will engage in a wide-ranging examination of global
gender issues from cultural, political, and historical perspectives,
filtered through a transnational feminist lens. We’ll study a diverse
array of texts – from an Iranian comic book to a Kenyan environmental
tract, from political manifestos to maps, blogs to films – as we
attempt to think about gender issues from a transnational perspective.
We’ll pay particular attention to the connections between gender and
war as we seek to understand rape as a weapon of war in the Bosnian
crisis and in Darfur. The slogan “think globally, act locally” will
have special import in this class as we’ll conclude the course by
engaging in a service project in our local community.
For more information, contact Lisa Marcus, marcusls@plu.edu.
PSYC 375
Psychology of Women
This
course will acquaint you with the history and current status of the
psychology of women as a distinct area of theory and research. You'll
have the opportunity to increase your critical understanding of the
subjects through in-class discussion. We'll think critically about
materials in terms of quality of psychological research and theory and
in terms of the ideology about women that it employs.
For information, contact Dana Anderson, andersda@plu.edu.
RELI 227
Christian Theology: Theologies of Liberation and Democracy
This course explores the complex
relationships between religion/theology and democratic ideals from a
variety of perspectives including democracy as religious tolerance,
colonialism/postcolonialism, and gender. Given the tension between
belief in the separation of church and state, and the view that
religion is a critical resource for developing ethical citizens without
whom democracy crumbles, this course examines various liberation
theologies that have emerged from Christians demanding social justice
in Latin America, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean. The
substantial service-learning requirement will enable students to learn
from the residents of Salishan, an immigrant community in Tacoma. As
new U.S. citizens, these residents’ opinions about religion, politics
and democratic ideals provide particularly appropriate "texts" for this
course.
[Note: Service Learning Component included]
For information, contact Kathi Breazeale, breazeka@plu.edu.
RELI 368
Feminist and Womanist Theologies
If God is sparing the world, it is because of the prayers of women.
Annie Nachisale, Malawi, Africa
How do different women understand their experiences of God or the
Sacred? How does being a girl or woman influence one's experiences as a
human being? How can women and men work toward social justice? We will
discover how women's experiences from around the globe can serve as a
foundation for rethinking conceptions of God, human nature, evil/sin,
and social change. We will examine revisionist movements within
Christianity, as well as other expressions of feminist spirituality.
Theological readings will be enriched with literature, on-campus
events, films, art, music and service learning. Service learning
opportunities in organizations that serve women and children will be
especially appropriate “texts” for this course because the theologies
we will be analyzing emerged from the daily lives of women struggling
for justice.
For information, contact Kathi Breazeale, breazeka@plu.edu.
SOCI 440
Sex, Gender, and Society
In this
course, we will question taken for granted assumptions concerning
gender and sexuality as they relate to social institutions and social
interactions across the life course. Examples of topics to be covered
include education, work/employment, family, body/reproduction, sexual
behaviors, and popular culture.
For information, contact Dan Renfrow, renfrodg@plu.edu.
WRIT 101
Women, "Beauty," and Media Manipulation
This seminar explores what feminist writer
Naomi Wolf has identified as “the beauty myth.” Together we will
undertake a critical and rigorous examination of the way the idea of
“beauty” is constructed—that is, at the ways advertisers, filmmakers,
television producers, music companies, and the diet and weight-control
industry, to name only a few, have narrowly defined “beautiful” and
have determined what “beauty” looks like. We will explore the effects
of this representation on us as women—do such images constitute
empowering fantasies, or do they send powerful warnings aimed at
controlling and undermining twenty-first century women? We will also
move beyond this narrowly focused theme to see how the media
manipulation of “beauty” connects to larger social, political, and
economic issues women face.
For information, contact Sharon Jansen, (253) 535-7227.
