This course is designed to introduce students to social, cultural, historical, and political perspectives on gender and its construction. Through discussion and writing, we will explore the intersections among gender, race, class, and sexuality in multiple settings and contexts. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to a variety of questions, we will consider the distinctions between sex and gender, women's economic status, the making of masculinity, sexual violence, queer movements, racism, and the challenges of feminist activism across nations, and possibilities for change.

Topics include research design, ethical dilemmas, and the relationship between academic research and community based learning. Applied fieldwork and presentations are an integral part of this course.

In the summer and fall of 1888, a series of gruesome murders captured the attention of Londoners and brought questions of class, gender, race and social-economic change to the forefront of public debate. Though the culprit was never identified, Jack the Ripper became synonymous with the perceived dangers of late-Victorian London.

An exploration of writing, primarily fiction, by U.S. women from around 1900 to now, focusing on the theme of awakenings. We will examine how women writers represent political awakenings, transformations of physical embodiment and psychological consciousness, and discoveries of new literary forms. We will read a diverse group of writers and and foreground interpretive frameworks of race, gender, and sexuality. Authors may include Bechdel, Chang, Chopin, Cisneros, Davis, Dunbar-Nelson, Egan, Far, Gilman, Hurston, Larsen, McCullers, Morrison, Stein, Truong, Wharton, and Yamamoto.

Mount Holyoke's mission is "purposeful engagement in the world" but in a multilingual world, our goal can only be achieved with the help of translators and interpreters. As the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 46% increase in translation work 2012-2022, this course will consider tranlastion as a scholarly, professional and lay activity. Challenging stereotypes of translation as derivative or faulty, we reflect on the wealth of languages and cultures at Mount Holyoke College and how the curriculum depends on the work of translation.

How do we represent ourselves? How can the self -- that is to say, subjective experience, private life, identity, consciousness -- be translated into written form? How, in turn, does writing fashion and construct the self? Throughout history, authors and thinkers have engaged these questions in countless texts and textual forms -- in essays, confessions, autobiographies, and poetry. This seminar will sample influential and innovative works of literary self-portrayal from around the world, exploring how a wide variety of writers have rendered themselves in language, narrative, and text.

How do we represent ourselves as we document our lives and communicate with others? In this seminar we will move beyond critiques of selfie culture, instead analyzing self-representation as an important avenue for forming identities. We will study forms of self-representation across history and will focus on visual and new media as platforms for performing selfhood. Students will discuss the politics and aesthetics of self-fashioning across these media forms, and will execute multiple forms of self-expression, including the argumentative essay, the op-ed, the blog post, and the tweet.

Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Google -- smart technologies have transformed our world, disrupting old patterns of life, communication, work, and politics. As new technologies push us into an uncertain future, thinking critically about the positive and the negative effects of disruption has never been more important.

We will read and discuss current writing on politics, culture and the arts. Drawn from a variety of print and online sources (including The New Yorker, Arts and Letters Daily, and Bomb), subjects will range from literature, cinema, and art to international politics, crime, and celebrity culture. Using strategies and techniques learned from the readings, students will write essays and articles of their own.

This course surveys music in a range of women's, and womxn's, communities and ensembles--from medieval convents and "all-girl" swing bands to Cuba's Ibbu Okun and the Transcendence Gospel Choir. While the focus will be on Western art music, we will also encounter music from Afghanistan and the First Nations, working songs and playground songs, and rock/pop groups and DJ collectives. Performers will visit the class, and we will learn about the history of music ensembles at Mount Holyoke College.