Spring 2010 Graduate Course Descriptions
Course: WS 521
Instructor: Barbara Wejnert
Title: Democracy and Gender
Day: Tuesday
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:50 p.m.
Location: 708 Clemens
Reg. #: 255063
Description: How are democracy and transition to democracy interconnected with gender? This course will survey recent debates about transitions and diffusion ofdemocracy. In particular using a broad scope of the most current theoretical approaches from theoretical frameworks of diffusion, modernization, democracy and development, the world system theory, and cultural relativism perspective, this course examines current research in several pertinent areas of democratic processes through the lens of gender equality. Conceptual and practical understanding the concept of democracy; democratic principles; processes of democratization and re-democratization; types of democratic systems; and the most suitable conditions for development of democracy, will constitute the core of our investigations. Through lively class discussions, we'll assess the impact these forces have on gender relations; culture and cultural identity; women vs. men social, economic, and political opportunities; and maternal health in the contemporary United States and in other countries.
The course will conclude with the comparative investigation of the conditions and processes embedded in democratic, vs. democratizing, vs. undemocratic countries.
Course objectives will be achieved through lectures, guest lectures, individual work, and class work on conducted projects.
Course: WS 540
Instructor: Ram Alagan
Title: New Ethnographic Methods
Day: Thursday
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:40 p.m.
Location: 114 Baldy
Reg. #: 421554
Description: This course is designed to introduce students to ethnographic and qualitative research. What should the researcher expect before going out into the field? What are some of the research methods involved in doing qualitative research? What are some of the practical and ethical concerns raised by feminist scholars and social ethnographers? What are some of the practical and theoretical implications of carrying out research in the field (including cultural differences and language barriers)? These questions will be addressed by looking at the literature on ethnographic case studies, ethnographic/qualitative methodology, and oral histories. We will discuss some of the dilemmas of fieldwork (i.e. the strengths and weaknesses of using oral testimony as a source of evidence) and other methodological implications of doing “qualitative” research. Our readings also raise pertinent issues with regard to conducting fieldwork: how to take field notes, how to analyze and interpret data, how to be a good participant observer, and so on. We will also look at the many practical issues raised by sociologists and anthropologists regarding their varied experiences “in the field”. The general objective of this course is to help students think about designing and carrying out their own research project. As such, students will be required to conduct a small-scale qualitative research project over the course of the semester. The classroom will serve as a setting where students can talk about their experiences in the field with their classmates, ask questions, exchange ideas, and receive constructive feedback on their projects.
Course: WS 590
Instructor: Gwynn Thomas
Title: Feminism and Body Politic: Gendered Citizens and Nation-States
Day: Monday
Time: 5:00 pm - 7:40 pm
Location: 708 Clemens
Reg. #: 006040
Description: Recent feminist scholarship has addressed the gendered foundations of political communities by critically interrogating accepted understandings of the nation, the state, and citizenship. Taken together citizenship, nation and state compose the “Body Politic.” Central to the debates in literature around these concepts are the issues that surround how to define and delineate political communities and what are and should be the relationships between members of those communities. This course examines how gender has been an integral part of creating and maintaining political power and authority, fostering the emotional bonds of national sentiment, developing and implementing the institutions and process of state development, and shaping the ideals of citizenship. We will explore the following questions: How does gender shape men and women’s roles in political communities? How does gender shape understandings of political power, authority and legitimacy? How does gender shape the development of the state and its institutions? How are nationalism and gender connected and what does this mean in terms of men and women’s involvement in nationalist movements? What role did gender play in the development of different types of state projects (colonial and imperialism, revolutionary states, welfare regimes)? These are just a few of the questions that feminist theorist have explored in trying to analyze the creation and maintenance of political communities as well as men’s and women’s role in these processes. In this class we will explore the above questions through an examination of recent feminist worked on the gendered nature of the state, nation and citizenship.
Course: WS 601
Instructor: Barbara Wejnert
Title: Contemporary Global & Gender Issues
Day: Tuesday
Time: 3:00 p.m. – 5:40 p.m.
Location: 708 Clemens
Reg. #: 381839
Description: This course will explore the complex relationships and nexus between gender and poverty from a global and comparative perspective. It will interrogate the analytical and conceptual framing, definitions and measurements of poverty by interposing human poverty with consumption/income poverty, and subjective/qualitative characterizations of poverty with normative, quantitative definitions, and measurements of poverty. The contested notion and shifting pattern of poverty as it links to “the feminization of poverty,” viewed from particular historical moments and diverse economic, social, ideological, and cultural contexts will be explored to critically analyze the conceptual underpinning of “poverty” and the universal validity of the “feminization of poverty.” Drawing from multiple theoretical and conceptual frameworks, interdisciplinary, and feminist scholarship encompassing canonical and emergent literature, the course will examine poverty discourses, public policies and poverty alleviation strategies and responses at micro and macro levels in order to capture the multifaceted dimensions of poverty. It will shed light on current issues such as global warming, financial crisis and global food crisis to broaden students’ analytical, theoretical and practical understanding of the intersecting dimensions, competing discourses and paradigms on gender and poverty.
Course: WS 662
Instructor: Professor DeVeaux
Title: Outing Whiteness: Race, and the Social Narrative
Day: Wednesday
Time: 4:00 p.m. – 6:50 p.m.
Location: 109 Baldy
Reg. #: 161651
Description: In contemporary parlance, the term “race” has become code for public and private discourse on “black” people, “people of color, “the racial” other. Thus, historically, “race” has marked the bodies and experiential knowledges of
“black” people and “people of color” with difference and hypervisibility. In liberal discourse, the term “race” rarely refers to “white” bodies; “whiteness” both constitutes the racial “normative” and signifies “white” bodies as unmarked. “Whiteness,” then, is invisible within discourses of difference. Making use of feminist epistemologies, this course seeks to position “white”/unmarked bodies and “whiteness” within contemporary discursive analyses of difference, as a way of interrogating more radical approaches to theorizing race and gender in the global moment of the twenty-first century. Required readings will include Staging Whiteness (Mary Brewer), Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical Reflections (ed. Kim Hall and Chris Cuomo), Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racism in the United States (Eduardo Silva-Bonilla), Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Toni Morrison), White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Ruth Frankenberg), White By Law (Ian F. Haney Lopez), Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to be White (ed. David R. Roediger), Working Through Whiteness: International Perspectives (ed. Cynthia Levine-Rasky), Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage (ed. Joe Feagin and Leslie Houts Picca), and White (Richard Dyer).
Rationale: This course will add depth to existing required and elective courses within the department’s Feminist Studies concentration, particularly as a follow up to Readings in Feminist Theory (required). As such, it will provide a more complex reading of gender and gender theory by highlighting the intersecting nature of race and gender in social discourse.
Duplication: I reviewed the online offerings in departments in the College of Arts and Sciences. While graduate courses in multiple departments-including English, History, Sociology, and American Studies-treat with race in titles and course content, none of the current offerings in these departments address race from this perspective-as a critical category of “white” bodies, “whiteness,” and “white” identity. Therefore this course brings a particular angel of vision to the subject of race.