This course will examine a range of ways in which Islam has constructed women--and women have constructed Islam. We will study concepts of gender as they are reflected in classical Islamic texts, as well as different aspects of the social, economic, political, and ritual lives of women in various Islamic societies.

This course examines the contested roles and representations of Buddhist women in different historical and cultural contexts. Using a variety of ethnographic, historical, and textual sources, the course investigates both the challenges and opportunities Buddhist women have found in their religious texts, institutions, and communities.

This course introduces students to the major themes of U.S. women's history from the 1880s to the present. We will look both at the experiences of a diverse group of women in the U.S. as well as the ideological meaning of gender as it evolved and changed over the twentieth century. We will chart the various meanings of womanhood (for example, motherhood, work, the domestic sphere, and sexuality) along racial, ethnic, and class lines and in different regions, and will trace the impact multiple identities have had on women's social and cultural activism.

The power to produce food and reproduce society gave women significant public voice in African societies in the past. But over 200 years they lost that public voice and control over subsistence. Why, when women are still producing food and people, is the social and political voice of women so much less significant than it was before? We explore African womens' work of governing, production, and social reproduction across the tumultuous changes of the 20th century.

What do we mean when we say "queer writing" or "trans writing"? Are we talking about writing by queer and/or trans authors? Writing about queer or trans practices, identities, experience? Writing that subverts conventional forms? All of the above? In this course, we will engage these questions not theoretically but through praxis. We will read fiction, poetry, comics, creative nonfiction, and hybrid forms. Expect to encounter work that challenges you in terms of form and content. Some writers we may read include Ryka Aoki, James Baldwin, Tom Cho, Samuel R.

This survey course will review the complex interaction of gender and violence as a personal and institutional issue in Spain from Medieval times to the present. What are the ideological and sociocultural constructs that sustain and perpetuate violence against women? What are the forms of resistance women have put into play?

We examine the writing of major nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century theorists, such as Marx, Nietzche, Freud, Dubois, Arendt, Fanon, Foucault, Butler, and others through the lens of embodiment. Rather than read theory as an abstract entity, we explore how theory itself is an embodiment of actual lives in which human beings experience life as precarious. What are the social conditions that create vulnerable bodies? How do thinkers who lived or are living precarious lives represent these bodies?

This is a class about doing research as a feminist. We will explore questions such as: What makes feminist research feminist? What makes it research? What are the proper objects of feminist research? Who can do feminist research? What can feminist research do? Are there feminist ways of doing research? Why and how do the stories we tell in our research matter?

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.

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.