Students participate in full-time student teaching in early childhood and elementary classrooms for 12 weeks. During this semester-long field-based placement, students hone classroom management skills, implement an extended integrated curriculum unit, deliver lessons in all content areas, and develop a wide range of assessment skills. The practicum culminates in two weeks of Lead Teaching, during which the student is responsible for managing all aspects of the classroom program.

This course addresses core competencies outlined in the Massachusetts Department of Education's English Language Learner certificate requirement. Readings in language acquisition theory, language learning and teaching, effective lesson design and assessment, Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, and knowledge of intercultural learners are covered. Students will have experience developing and adapting lessons and curriculum to address the needs of students in their pre-practicum settings.

This course will examine narrative non-fiction biographies written by women biographers in order to determine the specific ways in which women tell the stories of other women's lives. We will investigate stylistic and theoretical approaches to writing biographies in which gender is a central focus. We will ask if 'feminist biography' constitutes a literary genre. We will experience the challenges (and thrills) of conducting archival and primary research. The course will culminate in students writing chapter-length biographies.

This course examines body images and practices in diverse religious traditions around the world. Working with different methodological and theoretical perspectives, we will ask the following questions: What are bodies? How do body images perpetuate or challenge religious and social norms? What roles do bodies play in religious experience? We will generate answers to these questions by investigating a wide range of religious phenomena including healing rituals, relics, saints, fasting, asceticism, and modest dress.

This course will focus on portrayals of women in nineteenth- through mid-twentieth-century America, particularly in the context of nature and landscape. We will explore how women, often objectified in visual images of the period, appropriated established devices or developed new images and structures to represent womanhood in their own terms. Texts will include selected poetry, sketches, autobiographical essays or memoirs, short stories, novels, paintings, films, and photography.

This colloquium will explore the history of South Asia as seen from women's perspectives. We will read writings by women from the ancient period to the present. We will focus on the diversity of women's experiences in a range of social, cultural, and religious contexts. Themes include sexuality, religiosity, rights to education and employment, violence against women, modernity and citizenship--in short, those issues central to women's movements in modern South Asia.