Women's and Gender Studies
Program Office: 763 Schermerhorn Extension; 212-854-3277; 212-854-7466 (fax)
https://issg.columbia.edu/
Director of Undergraduate Studies:
Prof. Lila Abu-Lughod, 756 Schermerhorn Extension; la310@columbia.edu
Located within the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and taught in cooperation with Barnard College’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the program in Women's and Gender Studies provides students with a culturally and historically situated, theoretically diverse, and transnational understanding of feminist and queer scholarship as it engages multiple disciplines.
The program introduces students to key feminist and queer discourses on the cultural and historical representation of nature, power, and the social construction of difference. It encourages students to engage in the debates regarding the ethical and political issues of equality and justice that emerge in such discussion, and links the questions of gender and sexuality to those of racial, ethnic, and other kinds of social difference.
Through sequentially organized courses in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as approved elective courses in a wide range of departments, the degree provides a thoroughly interdisciplinary framework, methodological training, and substantive guidance in specialized areas of research. Small classes taught by our core faculty members and mentored thesis writing give students an education that is both comprehensive and tailored to individual needs.
Graduates leave the program with critical reading, writing, and analytical skills, and gain the tools they need to analyze systems of power operating at personal, national, and international levels. While this prepares some for future scholarly work in the field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies, others take these skills and apply them to careers and future training in a variety of fields, including: law, public policy, social work, community organizing, public health, film, journalism, medicine, and other professions where gender and sexuality are currently being reimagined and there is a need for critical and creative interdisciplinary thought.
Major in Women’s and Gender Studies
The requirements for this program were modified on September 22, 2014. Students who declared this program before this date should contact the director of undergraduate studies for the department in order to confirm their correct course of study.
Students should plan their course of study with the undergraduate director as early in their academic careers as possible. The requirements for the major are:
Code | Title | Points |
---|---|---|
WMST UN1001 | INTRO-WOMEN & GENDER STUDIES | |
or WMST UN3125 | INTRO TO SEXUALITY STUDIES | |
WMST UN3311 | FEMINIST THEORY | |
WMST UN3514 | HIST APPROACHES TO FEM QUESTNS | |
WMST UN3521 | SENIOR SEMINAR I | |
WMST UN3915 | GENDER & POWER IN GLOBAL PERSP | |
Six approved Elective Courses on women, gender, and/or sexuality in consultation with the director of undergraduate studies.* |
- *
Electives will be selected in coordination with the director of undergraduate studies to best suit students' specific interests and to provide them with the appropriate range of courses, whether their focus is ethnic studies, pre-med, pre-law, sociology, public healthy, queer studies, visual culture, literature, or another area of interest. Students are encouraged to take a broad interdisciplinary approach. The director of undergraduate studies will help students fine-tune their academic program in conjunction with IRWGS courses, cross-listed courses, and other courses offered at Columbia.
Concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies
The requirements for this program were modified on September 22, 2014. Students who declared this program before this date should contact the director of undergraduate studies for the department in order to confirm their correct course of study.
The same requirements as for the major, with the exception of WMST UN3521 SENIOR SEMINAR I.
Special Concentration for Those Majoring in Another Department
The requirements for this program were modified on September 22, 2014. Students who declared this program before this date should contact the director of undergraduate studies for the department in order to confirm their correct course of study.
WMST UN1001 INTRO-WOMEN & GENDER STUDIES; plus four additional approved elective courses on gender.
Fall 2023
WMST UN3125 INTRO TO SEXUALITY STUDIES. 3.00 points.
This course is designed to introduce major theories sexuality, desire and identity. We will be considering the relations between the history of sexuality and the politics of gender. We will read some primary texts in gender theory, and in the study of sexuality, desire, and embodiment. This course also provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary examination of human sexual and erotic desires, orientations, and identities. We will study how desires are constructed, how they vary and remain the same in different places and times, and how they interact with other social and cultural phenomena such as government, family, popular culture, scientific inquiry, and, especially, race and class.
Fall 2023: WMST UN3125
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3125 | 001/11622 | M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm 313 Fayerweather |
Jack Halberstam | 3.00 | 65/80 |
WMST UN3521 SENIOR SEMINAR I. 4.00 points.
The Senior Seminar in Women's Studies offers you the opportunity to develop a capstone research paper by the end of the first semester of your senior year. Senior seminar essays take the form of a 25-page paper based on original research and characterized by an interdisciplinary approach to the study of women, sexuality, and/or gender. You must work with an individual advisor who has expertise in the area of your thesis and who can advise you on the specifics of method and content. Your grade for the semester will be determined by the instructor and the advisor. Students receiving a grade of B or higher in Senior Seminar I will be invited to register for Senior Seminar II by the Instructor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Senior Seminar II students will complete a senior thesis of 40-60 pages. Please note, the seminar is restricted to Columbia College and GS senior majors
Fall 2023: WMST UN3521
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3521 | 001/11603 | W 4:10pm - 6:00pm 754 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Lila Abu-Lughod | 4.00 | 3/10 |
WMST GU4000 GENEALOGIES OF FEMINISM. 4.00 points.
Genealogies of Feminism: Course focuses on the development of a particular topic or issue in feminist, queer, and/or WGSS scholarship. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates, though priority will be given to students completing the ISSG graduate certificate. Topics differ by semester offered, and are reflected in the course subtitle. For a description of the current offering, please visit the link in the Class Notes
Fall 2023: WMST GU4000
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 4000 | 001/11644 | T 2:10pm - 4:00pm 754 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Marianne Hirsch | 4.00 | 16/20 |
WMST BC1006 Introduction to Environmental Humanities. 3.00 points.
COURSE DESCRIPTION This course introduces students to key concepts and texts in environmental humanities, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies of race, gender, sexuality, capital, nation, and globalization. The course examines the conceptual foundations that support humanistic analyses of environmental issues, climate crisis, and the ethics of justice and care. In turn, this critical analysis can serve as the basis for responding to the urgency of calls for environmental action. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Students will learn what difference humanistic studies make to understanding environmental issues and climate crisis. The course will prepare students to: Identify humanistic methods and how they contribute to understanding the world; Demonstrate critical approaches to reading and representing environments; Engage ethical questions related to the environment; and Apply concepts from the course to synthesize the student’s use of humanistic approaches to address urgent environmental questions
Fall 2023: WMST BC1006
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 1006 | 001/00731 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm 504 Diana Center |
Janet Jakobsen | 3.00 | 63/70 |
WMST BC2140 Critical Approaches in Social and Cultural Theory. 3.00 points.
This course examines the conceptual foundations that support feminist and queer analyses of racial capitalism, security and incarceration, the politics of life and health, and colonial and postcolonial studies, among others. Open to all students; required for the major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE)
Fall 2023: WMST BC2140
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 2140 | 001/00730 | T Th 12:40pm - 1:50pm 405 Milbank Hall |
Marisa Solomon | 3.00 | 58/70 |
Spring 2024: WMST BC2140
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
WMST 2140 | 001/00763 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm Ll002 Milstein Center |
Janet Jakobsen | 3.00 | 66/70 |
WMST BC2150 PRACTICING INTERSECTIONALITY. 3.00 points.
This introductory course for the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE) is open to all students. We focus on the critical study of social difference as an interdisciplinary practice, using texts with diverse modes of argumentation and evidence to analyze social differences as fundamentally entangled and co-produced. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of this course, the professor will frequently be joined by other faculty from the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies (CCIS), who bring distinct disciplinary and subject matter expertise. Some keywords for this course include hybridity, diaspora, borderlands, migration, and intersectionality
Fall 2023: WMST BC2150
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 2150 | 001/00729 | M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm 405 Milbank Hall |
Sarah Ohmer | 3.00 | 72/90 |
Spring 2024: WMST BC2150
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
WMST 2150 | 001/00764 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm 405 Milbank Hall |
Marisa Solomon | 3.00 | 63/70 |
WMST BC3131 WOMEN AND SCIENCE. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 18 students.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 18 students. History and politics of womens involvement with science. Womens contributions to scientific discovery in various fields, accounts by women scientists, engineers, and physicians, issues of science education. Feminist critiques of biological research and of the institution of science
Fall 2023: WMST BC3131
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3131 | 001/00728 | T 6:10pm - 8:00pm Ll016 Milstein Center |
Laura Kay | 4.00 | 13/20 |
WMST UN3311 FEMINIST THEORY. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: LIMITED TO 20 BY INSTRUC PERM; ATTEND FIRST CLASS
This course explores the formation of desire, sexuality, and subjectivity through the frameworks of feminist epistemologies (the question of what we can know) and feminist ethics (the question of how to be responsible within our relationships and local and global communities). We will reflect on the tension between the limits of what we can know about ourselves and others and the imperative to care for each other and remain accountable for our individual and collective actions and inaction. We will investigate how our deepest emotions, intimate encounters, and secret fantasies are formed by larger social and political contexts. In turn, we will also question how these intimate relationships with ourselves and our companions may be seen as feminist acts of resistance, disruption, and creation. Objective I: to closely engage diverse feminist perspectives in late-twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury phenomenology, existentialism, Marxism, queer theory, critical race theory, and psychoanalysis. Objective II: to begin to locate your own feminist perspective within the intersection of your unique experiences and the larger historical and social contexts that form you and which you may seek to transform
Fall 2023: WMST UN3311
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3311 | 001/00727 | Th 2:10pm - 4:00pm Ll001 Milstein Center |
Marisa Solomon | 4.00 | 19/17 |
Spring 2024: WMST UN3311
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
WMST 3311 | 001/11762 | Th 10:10am - 12:00pm 754 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Rachel Aumiller | 4.00 | 17/22 |
WMST UN3525 Senior Seminar I (Barnard). 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to senior majors.
Student-designed capstone research projects offer practical lessons about how knowledge is produced, the relationship between knowledge and power, and the application of interdisciplinary feminist methodologies
Fall 2023: WMST UN3525
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3525 | 001/00726 | T 10:10am - 12:00pm 308 Diana Center |
Manijeh Moradian | 4.00 | 9/20 |
WMST BC3530 FEMINIST MEDIA THEORY. 4.00 points.
The integration of contemporary media and social practices of all types is intensifying. This seminar examines media theory and various media platforms including Language, Photography, Film, Television, Radio, Digital Video, and Computing as treated by feminists, critical race and queer theorists, and other scholars and artists working from the margins. Prerequisite: Either one introductory WGSS course or Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory or Permission of the Instructor
WMST GU4322 Planetary Questions. 4.00 points.
This advanced seminar examines important approaches, issues, perspectives, and themes related to planetary concerns of environmental crisis, climate change, life sustainability, and multi-species flourishing, with a focus on feminist, postcolonial, anti-racist, and queer perspectives. Topics for discussion and study include the global pandemic, histories of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism, Prereqs: BOTH 1 WMST Intro course PLUS any WGSS 'Foundation' course, OR instructor permission
Fall 2023: WMST GU4322
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 4322 | 001/00725 | W 11:00am - 12:50pm 402 Milstein Center |
Neferti Tadiar | 4.00 | 8/14 |
Spring 2024
WMST UN3311 FEMINIST THEORY. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: LIMITED TO 20 BY INSTRUC PERM; ATTEND FIRST CLASS
This course explores the formation of desire, sexuality, and subjectivity through the frameworks of feminist epistemologies (the question of what we can know) and feminist ethics (the question of how to be responsible within our relationships and local and global communities). We will reflect on the tension between the limits of what we can know about ourselves and others and the imperative to care for each other and remain accountable for our individual and collective actions and inaction. We will investigate how our deepest emotions, intimate encounters, and secret fantasies are formed by larger social and political contexts. In turn, we will also question how these intimate relationships with ourselves and our companions may be seen as feminist acts of resistance, disruption, and creation. Objective I: to closely engage diverse feminist perspectives in late-twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury phenomenology, existentialism, Marxism, queer theory, critical race theory, and psychoanalysis. Objective II: to begin to locate your own feminist perspective within the intersection of your unique experiences and the larger historical and social contexts that form you and which you may seek to transform
Fall 2023: WMST UN3311
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3311 | 001/00727 | Th 2:10pm - 4:00pm Ll001 Milstein Center |
Marisa Solomon | 4.00 | 19/17 |
Spring 2024: WMST UN3311
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
WMST 3311 | 001/11762 | Th 10:10am - 12:00pm 754 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Rachel Aumiller | 4.00 | 17/22 |
WMST UN3514 HIST APPROACHES TO FEM QUESTNS. 4.00 points.
This course will provide students with a comparative perspective on gender, race, and sexuality by illuminating historically specific and culturally distinct conditions in which these systems of power have operated. Beginning in the early modern period, the course seeks to destabilize contemporary notions of gender and sexuality and instead probe how race, sexuality, and gender have functioned as mechanisms of differentiation embedded in historically contingent processes. Moving from “Caliban to Comstock,” students will probe historical methods for investigating and critically evaluating claims about the past. In making these inquiries, the course will pay attention to the intersectional nature of race, gender, and sexuality and to strategic performances of identity by marginalized groups. This semester, we will engage research by historians of sexuality, gender, and capitalism to critically reflect on the relationship between critical studies of the past and debates about reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, and gay and lesbian rights in our contemporary moment
Spring 2024: WMST UN3514
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3514 | 001/12162 | W 2:10pm - 4:00pm 754 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Salonee Bhaman | 4.00 | 24/24 |
WMST UN3915 GENDER & POWER IN GLOBAL PERSP. 4.00 points.
Enrollment limited to 15.
Prerequisites: Instructor approval required
This seminar considers formations of gender, sexuality, and power as they circulate transnationally, as well as transnational feminist movements that have emerged to address contemporary gendered inequalities. Topics include political economy, colonialism/postcoloniality, war, refugees, global care chains, sexuality, sex and care work. Required for the major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), but open to non-majors, space permitting. Prerequisite: Either one introductory WGSS course or Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory or Permission of the Instructor
Spring 2024: WMST UN3915
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3915 | 001/11763 | F 12:10pm - 2:00pm 754 Ext Schermerhorn Hall |
Sonia Ahsan | 4.00 | 14/20 |
WMST GR6001 THEORETICAL PARADIGMS. 4.00 points.
Theoretical Paradigms in Feminist Scholarship: Course focuses on the current theoretical debates of a particular topic or issue in feminist, queer, and/or WGSS scholarship. Open to graduate students, with preference given to students completing the ISSG graduate certificate. Topics differ by semester offered, and are reflected in the course subtitle. For a description of the current offering, please visit the link in the Class Notes
WMST GR8001 GRAD STUDENT & FACULTY COLLOQ. 1.00 point.
This is a course is oriented to graduate students who are thinking about issues in teaching in the near and distant future and want to explore forms of pedagogy. The course will ask what it means to teach “as a feminist” and will explore how to create a classroom receptive to feminist and queer methodologies and theories regardless of course theme/content. Topics include: participatory pedagogy, the role of political engagement, the gender dynamics of the classroom, modes of critical thought and disagreement. Discussions will be oriented around student interest. The course will meet 4-5 times per SEMESTER (dates TBD) and the final assignment is to develop and workshop a syllabus for a new gender/sexuality course in your field. Because this course is required for graduate students choosing to fulfill Option 2 for the Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies at IRWGS, priority will be given to graduate students completing the certificate
WMST GR8880 FEMINIST THEORIES OF REPRESNTN. 4.00 points.
WMST BC1050 WOMEN AND HEALTH. 3.00 points.
Combines critical feminist and anti-racist analyses of medicine with current research in epidemiology and biomedicine to understand health and health disparities as co-produced by social systems and biology
Spring 2024: WMST BC1050
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 1050 | 001/00733 | T Th 10:10am - 11:25am Ll002 Milstein Center |
Cecelia Lie-Spahn | 3.00 | 86/90 |
WMST BC2140 Critical Approaches in Social and Cultural Theory. 3.00 points.
This course examines the conceptual foundations that support feminist and queer analyses of racial capitalism, security and incarceration, the politics of life and health, and colonial and postcolonial studies, among others. Open to all students; required for the major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE)
Fall 2023: WMST BC2140
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 2140 | 001/00730 | T Th 12:40pm - 1:50pm 405 Milbank Hall |
Marisa Solomon | 3.00 | 58/70 |
Spring 2024: WMST BC2140
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
WMST 2140 | 001/00763 | T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm Ll002 Milstein Center |
Janet Jakobsen | 3.00 | 66/70 |
WMST BC2150 PRACTICING INTERSECTIONALITY. 3.00 points.
This introductory course for the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE) is open to all students. We focus on the critical study of social difference as an interdisciplinary practice, using texts with diverse modes of argumentation and evidence to analyze social differences as fundamentally entangled and co-produced. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of this course, the professor will frequently be joined by other faculty from the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies (CCIS), who bring distinct disciplinary and subject matter expertise. Some keywords for this course include hybridity, diaspora, borderlands, migration, and intersectionality
Fall 2023: WMST BC2150
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 2150 | 001/00729 | M W 4:10pm - 5:25pm 405 Milbank Hall |
Sarah Ohmer | 3.00 | 72/90 |
Spring 2024: WMST BC2150
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
WMST 2150 | 001/00764 | T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm 405 Milbank Hall |
Marisa Solomon | 3.00 | 63/70 |
WMST BC2950 Science, Technology, Power. 3.00 points.
This course explores the intimate entanglements of technology, science, bodies, culture, and power, with a focus on post-World War II U.S. society. In this lecture course, we will draw on history, feminist thought, anthropology, sociology, science fiction, and visual/digital art to investigate the historical and cultural contexts shaping the dreams, practices, and products of technoscience. We will explore technologies and sciences as sites of power, complex pleasures, and embodied transformations in our own everyday lives
Spring 2024: WMST BC2950
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 2950 | 001/00765 | T Th 6:10pm - 7:25pm 302 Barnard Hall |
Jacqueline Orr | 3.00 | 24/35 |
WMST BC3138 AFFECT AND ACTIVISM. 4.00 points.
From love to anger to disappointment to hope, political activism mobilizes emotions towards certain ends but also generates new affective states and feelings along the way. This advanced seminar will familiarize students with feminist, anti-racist and queer scholarship on affect, feelings and emotion as intrinsic to politics and as crucial for understanding how political thought and action unfold in contingent and often unexpected ways. Mixing theoretical and cultural texts with case studies, we will look at how affect permeates structures of power and domination, embodiment and identity, and collective activist projects concerned with gender and sexual liberation. Students will have an opportunity to read theories of affect as well as to “read” activist movements for affect by working with archival documents (such as zines, manifestos, and movement ephemera) and other primary sources (such as memoir, photography and documentary film)
Spring 2024: WMST BC3138
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3138 | 001/00766 | W 12:10pm - 2:00pm Ll016 Milstein Center |
Manijeh Moradian | 4.00 | 12/15 |
WMST BC3512 Art/Work: Sex, Aesthetics, and Capitalism. 4 points.
Prerequisites: none
How can performances, theatrical texts, and other art/media objects illuminate the operations of gender, sexuality, and race in global capitalism? Drawing from a range of artistic media and critical traditions, we explore how aesthetic thought can help us analyze the sexual, racial, and national character of contemporary labor and life.
Spring 2024: WMST BC3512
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3512 | 001/00767 | M 2:10pm - 4:00pm 119 Milstein Center |
Alexander Pittman | 4 | 18/20 |
WMST UN3813 Knowledge, Practice, Power. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: WMST V1001 and the instructor's permission.
Knowledge, Practice, Power is a practical and multi-disciplinary exploration of research methods and interpretive strategies used in feminist scholarship, focusing on larger questions about how we know what we know, and who and what knowledge is for. Open to non-majors, but sophomore and junior majors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) are encouraged to enroll in this course as preparation for Senior Seminar I. This course is required for students pursuing the concentration or minor in Feminist/Intersectional Science and Technology Studies. Prerequisite: Either one introductory WGSS course or Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory or Permission of the Instructor
Spring 2024: WMST UN3813
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3813 | 001/00769 | M 4:10pm - 6:00pm 308 Diana Center |
Sandra Moyano-Ariza | 4.00 | 12/20 |
WMST UN3526 SENIOR SEMINAR II. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to senior majors.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to senior majors. Individual research in Womens Studies conducted in consulation with the instructor. The result of each research project is submitted in the form of the senior essay and presented to the seminar
Spring 2024: WMST UN3526
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 3526 | 001/00768 | W 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA |
Elizabeth Bernstein | 4.00 | 3/15 |
WMST GU4210 BLACK GEOGRAPHIES. 4.00 points.
Far from obvious renderings of place, maps are spatial arguments about who belongs where and how living should be defined. This course approaches place as something that is contested daily in the U.S. through the struggle of who gets to lay claim to a way of life. From the landscapes of dispossession to the alternative ways marginalized people work with and against traditional geographies, this course centers Black place-making practices as political struggle. This class will look at how power and domination become a landed project. We will critically examine how ideas about “nature” are bound up with notions of race, and the way “race” naturalizes the proper place for humans and non-human others. We will interrogate settler colonialism’s relationships to mapping who is and isn’t human, the transatlantic slave trade as a project of terraforming environments for capital, and land use as a science for determining who “owns” the earth. Centered on Black feminist, queer and trans thinkers, we will encounter space not as a something given by maps, but as a struggle over definitions of the human, geography, sovereignty, and alternative worlds. To this end, we will read from a variety of disciplines, such as Critical Black Studies, Feminist and Intersectional Science Studies, Black Geographies and Ecologies, Urban Studies and Afrofuturist literature. (Note: this class will count as an elective for the CCIS minors/concentrations in F/ISTS, ICORE/MORE, and Environmental Humanities.)
Spring 2024: WMST GU4210
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 4210 | 001/00770 | Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm 227 Milbank Hall |
Marisa Solomon | 4.00 | 14/16 |
WMST GU4310 CONTEM AMER JEWISH WOMEN'S LIT. 4.00 points.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 15 students. Sophomore standing.
The seminar will focus on trends that have emerged over the past three decades in Jewish American women's writing in the fields of memoirs, fiction and Jewish history: the representation and exploration through fictive narratives of women's experiences in American Jewish orthodox communities; reinterpretation of Jewish history through gender analysis; the recording of migration and exile by Jewish women immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Morocco, Iran, and Egypt; and gender transformations. Texts will be analyzed in terms of genre structures, narrative strategies, the role of gender in shaping content and Jewish identity, and the political, cultural and social contexts in which the works were created. The course aims for students to discuss and critically engage with texts in order to develop the skills of analytical and abstract thinking, as well as the ability to express that critical thinking in writing. Prerequisites: Both one introductory WGSS course and Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory, or Permission of the Instructor
Spring 2024: WMST GU4310
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 4310 | 001/00771 | T 4:10pm - 6:00pm 225 Milbank Hall |
Agnieszka Legutko | 4.00 | 14/20 |
WMST GU4330 SWANA Diasporas: Culture, Politics and Identity Formation in a Time of War. 4.00 points.
In this class we will study South-West Asian and North African (SWANA) diasporic populations, social movements and cultural production that have responded to the multi-faceted ramifications of the 21st century war on terror. We will focus on diverse Arab, Iranian, and Afghan diasporas in the United States, where 19th and 20th century legacies of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and Orientalism combined in new ways to target these groups after the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Drawing on an interdisciplinary array of texts, including ethnography, fiction, feminist and queer theory, social movement theory, and visual and performance art, we will look at how the “war on terror” has shaped the subjectivities and self-representation of SWANA communities. Crucially, we will examine the gender and sexual politics of Islamophobia and racism and study how scholars, activists and artists have sought to intervene in dominant narratives of deviance, threat, and backwardness attributed to Muslim and other SWANA populations. This course takes up the politics of naming, situating the formation of “SWANA” as part of an anti-colonial genealogy that rejects imperial geographies such as “Middle East.” We will ask how new geographies and affiliations come into being in the context of open-ended war, and what new political identities and forms of cultural production then become possible
Spring 2024: WMST GU4330
|
|||||
Course Number | Section/Call Number | Times/Location | Instructor | Points | Enrollment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
WMST 4330 | 001/00772 | T 12:10pm - 2:00pm 113 Milstein Center |
Manijeh Moradian | 4.00 | 14/20 |
WMST GU4336 GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN YIDDISH LITERATURE. 4.00 points.
Early publications in Yiddish, a.k.a. the mame loshn, ‘mother tongue,’ were addressed to “women and men who are like women,” while famous Yiddish writer, Sholem Aleichem, created a myth of “three founding fathers” of modern Yiddish literature, which eliminated the existence of Yiddish women writers. As these examples indicate, gender has played a significant role in Yiddish literary power dynamics. This course will explore representation of gender and sexuality in modern Yiddish literature and film in works created by Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, Fradl Shtok, Sh. An-sky, Malka Lee, Anna Margolin, Celia Dropkin, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kadya Molodowsky, Troim Katz Handler, and Irena Klepfisz. You will also acquire skills in academic research and digital presentation of the findings as part of the Mapping Yiddish New York project that is being created at Columbia. No knowledge of Yiddish required