(Offered as BLST 236 [US] and SWAG 330)  From the modern era to the contemporary moment, the intersection of race, gender, and class has been especially salient for people of African descent—for men as well as for women. How might the category of sexuality act as an additional optic through which to view and reframe contemporary and historical debates concerning the construction of black identity? In what ways have traditional understandings of masculinity and femininity contributed to an understanding of African American life and culture as invariably heterosexual?

(Offered as SWAG 329 and BLST 377 [US].) History has long valorized passive, obedient, and long-suffering black women alongside aggressive and outspoken black male leaders and activists.  This course provides an alternative narrative to this misrepresentation, as we will explore how “bad” is defined by one’s race, gender, class, and sexuality as well as how black women have transgressed the boundaries of what is means to be “good” in US society.

This seminar will explore the influence of gender studies and of feminism on our research questions, methods and the way we situate ourselves in relationship to our scholarship. For example, how can we employ ethnography, textual analysis, empirical data and archival sources in studying the complex ties between the local and the global, and the national and the transnational? Which ideas and methods are best suited to analyzing the varied forms of women’s resistance across ideological, class, racial and national differences?

(Offered as SOCI 237 and SWAG 237.)  How has the rise of working women complicated modern workplaces and the idea of work? One challenge is how to value women’s work fairly. One index of this challenge is that in workplaces across the world, women earn significantly less than men and are underrepresented in high status positions. What explains such gender gaps in the workplace? Taking an empirical, social-science perspective, this course will discuss three main aspects of gender and work.

(Offered as SWAG 210 and ANTH 210.) This course draws on anthropological literature to study the socio-cultural making of human sexuality and its variations. We will critically examine theories of sexuality as a domain of human experience and locate sexual acts, desires and relations in particular historical and cultural contexts. The course offers analytical tools to understand and evaluate different methods and approaches to the study of human sexuality.  We will examine the relation of sex to kinship/family, to reproduction and to romance.

(Offered as ENGL 112 and SWAG 106.)  This course will examine the phenomenon of “realism” in a variety of artistic media.

This course introduces students to the issues involved in the social and historical construction of gender and gender roles from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. Topics change from year-to-year and have included women and social change; male and female sexualities including homosexualities; the uses and limits of biology in explaining human gender differences; women’s participation in production and reproduction; the relationship among gender, race and class as intertwining oppressions; women, men and globalization; and gender and warfare.

Our world is awash in data. To allow decisions to be made based on evidence, there is a need for statisticians to be able to make sense of the data around us and communicate their findings. In this course, students will be exposed to advanced statistical methods and will undertake the analysis and interpretation of complex and real-world datasets that go beyond textbook problems. Course topics will vary from year to year depending on the instructor and selected case studies.

(Offered as STAT 360 and MATH 360.) This course explores the nature of probability and its use in modeling real world phenomena. There are two explicit complementary goals: to explore probability theory and its use in applied settings, and to learn parallel analytic and empirical problem solving skills. The course begins with the development of an intuitive feel for probabilistic thinking, based on the simple yet subtle idea of counting. It then evolves toward the rigorous study of discrete and continuous probability spaces, independence, conditional probability, expectation, and variance.