#gwss

Which I’m sure you know, since I reblog like a fiend. I’ve been working on some things in the bg, but that doesn’t exactly give me a lot of content to share with y’all </3 

So! I’ve decided to share a little snip of something I have been cooking for a while. :) 

In the end I’m reaching toward a disability politics of transness, not one of simple analogy, but one that delves into the lived experiences of our bodies, that questions the idea of normal and the notion of cure, that values self-determination, that resists shame and the medicalization of identity—a politics that will help all of us come home to our bodies.

Heyooooooo.

Welcome to topic number one: the “invisible knapsack”. Today, we’re going to discuss what it is, what it does, how fashionable it is, and what it means for those with the heaviest sack (hehe).

Let’s break this sh*t down.

We’ve still got lots of room is some courses this summer that could have interest for students across disciplines. 

GWSS 255: Masculinities

GWSS 333: Gender and Globalization

GWSS 374: Intro to Transgender Studies

GWSS 464: Queer Desires

Featured Courses You Will Not Want To Miss!

GWSS 200: Intro to Women Studies, (5) I&S,DIV Fabian Romero

Feminist analysis of the construction and enforcement of gender differences and gender inequalities in various contexts. Emphasis on the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and nationality in the lives of women. Topics include feminist theory, motherhood, popular culture, sexual autonomy, racism, and activism in the United States, Asia, Latin America. 

SLN 11475, MW 3:30-5:40, Full Term

GWSS 255 Masculinities (5) I&S, DIV Saad Khan

What does it mean to be a man?  What is men’s relationship with power structures such as patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism? This course will attempt to answer these questions by exploring aspects of men and masculinity through the theoretical lenses of intersectionality, queer, transgender, transnational and decolonial studies.  Students will read essays, engage with different genres of writing and study various media texts (movies, music videos and tv shows), and will be encouraged to be critically self-reflexive about aspects of position, power and privilege in the U.S. and beyond. Students will also figure out what non-toxic and non-threatening expressions of masculinity may look like. The course will explore the importance of talking about masculinities, in relation to gender, women and sexuality studies, so that one can productively engage with feminist discussions and actions for positive social changes in the world we live in.

SLN 11749, MW 10:50-1:00, Full Term

GWSS 333/JSIS B 333: Gender and Globalization, (5) I&S, DIV Akansksha Misra

Netflix, Gap Jeans, US Economy, Pride Parades and so much more. Globalization means all of this to us and yet is a term that escapes easy definition. Is it a recent phenomena? What is the role of the internet and social media in connecting the globe? Is it good that my food comes from another country? While all of these are important questions, in this class we will focus more on the effects of globalization in our lives. Our lens will be gender and sexuality and we will focus on specific areas that globalization touches like international human rights, popular culture/media, education, sex trafficking, politics, and social movements. By using gender and sexuality as our lens, we will try to understand how globalization impacts social relations and the ways people see themselves and live their lives. We will try to focus on lived experiences and draw on contemporary media sources, news, and tv/movie/music to make sense of the world and our lives in it and how systems of inequality thrive but are constantly challenged as well. The only requirement is curiosity, interest in understanding cultures, and the desire to imagine a better world for all!

SLN 11752, TTh 3:30-5:40, Full Term

GWSS 374: Transgender Studies (5), I&S, DIV Mediha Sorma,

This course offers a selective introduction to transgender studies as an emerging field of inquiry and ‘transgender’ both as a gender identity category and as an analytic. The main objective of this class is to complicate the definitions of sex and gender by blurring the pre-scripted distinctions between “woman” and “man”. We will engage with movies, videos, ethnographic work, autobiographical writing to expose and challenge binary understanding of gender.  Trans identity will be complicated with sexuality, race, class, ability, history, and location, which entails an intersectional and decolonial lens. Some of the questions we will be elaborating on are: How did ‘trans’ emerge as a historical subject? What is the impact of medicine on the construction of trans identity? Why did transgender studies emerged as a field of inquiry while Queer studies was supposed to address the issues related to LGBTQ community as an umbrella field? In what ways does it make an intervention to feminism and queer theory? What are the limitations and benefits of ‘trans’ as an umbrella category for gender-nonconforming people?

SLN 11756, TTh 10:50-1:00, Full Term

GWSS 390: LGBTQ+ Politics in Global Perspective (5), I&S Cricket Keating, online/hybrid Course!

Worldwide movements for LGBTQ+ rights, justice, and inclusion have had much success over the past twenty years, as well as many challenges. On the one hand, in many high-profile and often violent cases, states have mobilized, consolidated, and/or fomented homophobia to further particular ends, whether it be to consolidate national identity, to quash or to build opposition, and/or to legitimate the centralization of authority. On the other hand, the number of countries in which same-sex acts are illegal is decreasing and an increasing number prohibit employment discrimination, punish hate crimes, and recognize same-sex marriage and adoption. LGBTQ+ activism has also led to path-breaking scientific discoveries for life-saving treatments for people with AIDS.

Globally, LGBTQ+ movement work takes many different forms across multiple institutional and cultural contexts. This course takes up this varied landscape of activism and advocacy. Taking a transnational, intersectional, and interdisciplinary approach, students will analyze various aspects of LGBTQ+ politics including movement histories, geographies, activism, legal struggles, human rights, and intersections with other progressive movements.

SLN 11757, TTh, 10:50-3:20, A-Term

GWSS 464: Queer Desires (5), I&S, DIV Jey Saung

This course sets out to trace a genealogy of the terms "queer" and "to queer" through the fields of feminist and queer studies. We will be examining the ways in which these fields interrogate institutions of power, such as medicine, education, the law and the family, that continue to produce and reinforce stabilized categories of binary gender and sex. Our primary texts will examine "queering" as a framework and an instrument of critique. We will be reading foundational texts in queer theory, such as Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, and Cathy Cohen's "Punks, Bulldaggers, and Queens" as well as more recent texts such as José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia and Dean Spade's Normal Life. Through these texts, we will develop a foundational understanding of queer theory as well as its application to critique and future-building.

SLN 11759, MW 3:30-5:40, Full Term

GWSS 490: Black Feminist Thought (5), I&S, Bettina Judd online/hybrid course

In order to understand the growing body of scholarship that is black feminist theory, we will analyze the development of US black women’s feminist consciousness from the mid-19th Century to the present through the essays, speeches, and creative work that has named the complex systems of power which affects the lives of black women on the primary intersections of race, gender, and class.  We will examine closely the important contributions of black feminist thought to the fields of African American and Africana Studies and Women and Gender Studies through concepts by Black Feminist Scholars such as intersectionality. 

2019 Featured Spring Quarter Course Offerings

GWSS 290 A: QTPOC New Media Art, (5) I&S, Dr. Kemi Adeyemi,

This course explores how contemporary artists of color who inhabit a variety of gender and sexuality expressions use new media technologies to theorize the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.  We will learn how to contextualize and analyze the ways that new media practices develop and circulate, especially on online platforms like Tumblr.  Using feminist and queer theories, and queer of color critique, students will learn how artists use new media practices to reflect upon (and oftentimes resist) racism, homophobia, misogyny, imperialism, and capitalism.

GWSS 390 A: Feminist Social Reproduction Theory and Radical Politics of Care (5) I&S, Jiwoon Yulee, PhD,

The class will read major works of feminist social reproduction theorists, such as Siva Federici, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Lisa Vogel, Nancy Fraser and Tithi Bhattacharya, and be introduced to critical concepts, like “life’s work,” and “life-story.”  The course will encourage students to develop their own critical understandings of current neoliberal conditions of life and slow death that are sustained by intersecting systems of power and the evolving material and discursive relations between the global north and south.  Reviewing the major sites of reproductive struggles around the world, the course will collectively explore alternative forms of radical resistance against the neoliberal ways of life.  

GWSS 445: Feminist Science Fiction Studies (5), VLPA/I&S Dr. Regina Y. Lee,

What is an ecological ethics? How does science fiction theorize a racialized and gendered present? And what can speculative stories show us about our relationships to each other in ecological and social contexts?  This course uses developments in both evolutionary research and feminist theory to explore narratives which trouble and transform the human, the inhumane, the scientific apparatus, and the natural world. We examine how the stories we tell articulate our social material contexts into being, in order to examine more fully the intricate interactions of gender, race, sexuality, and ability.

GWSS 490 A: Oral History Methodology (5) I&S, Priti Ramamurthy, PhD

Ordinary people tell extraordinarily important stories.  We’ll learn how to listen and record their stories, transcribe, interpret and archive them.  You’ll do one oral history with someone you choose.  A second, with a person in the GWSS community, is for our community history project which commemorates 50 years since the Department was founded. 

GWSS 490 C: Neoliberalism & the changing shape of identity (politics) (5) I&S, Dr. Kemi Adeyemi,