Explores the historic roots of the demand for political, social, and economic justice for women. Studies the development of feminist theory and activism through comparative analysis. Emphasizes the diversity of feminist thought and how successive generations have revised the meaning of feminist theory and practice.

This course aims to engage students in a discussion on transgender social, cultural, and political issues. Rather than focusing on individual identity, we will turn to structural and institutional forms of power that focus on gender. How have trans people historically resisted their subjugation and exclusion? What would transgender justice look like?

How do novels by contemporary African American and Black British women writers encourage us to rethink our understandings of racial identity?  This course examines the literary devices and formal innovations employed by Black women writers to represent the lives of black characters and black people more broadly.  It responds to a style of interpreting black novels that reads them only as sociological documents that grant insights into what is then positioned as an alien culture; it replaces this purely sociological focus with an insistence on the artistry of the text, an analysis of the ways that Black women writers invent new formal techniques and artistic innovations for representing realities that are less readily acknowledged in the larger culture.  At the center of the course is the oppositional voice of Black women writers.  The course reads these writers as responding to canonical representations of blackness through their own insistent presentations of the racial past and its possible futures, through their remaking of the literary genres of the canon that help generate representations of blackness, and through their reimagining of the very category of Black womanhood in new, more expansive and liberating ways.

Examines social constructions of gender in the visual arts from the Renaissance through today, focusing on artists including Artemisia Gentileschi, Rosa Bonheur, Georgia O'Keeffe, Elizabeth Catlett, Judy Chicago and Vaginal Davis. Considers the intersections of race and class with gender, the power dynamics inherent in seeing and being seen, and the role of arts institutions in the creation and reception of art.

Examines the development and current manifestations of different feminist views, including liberal, radical, and Marxist feminism, as well as more recent feminist theory deploying psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and multiculturalism.

Analyzes global politics from a feminist and gendered perspective on foreign policies, conduct of war, military, and prospects for development. Explores gender and sexuality in the construction of nationalism and identity, justice for war crimes and human rights abuses, trafficking in persons, resolution of conflict, and terrorism.

Examines the scope and variety of violence in the family from an interdisciplinary perspective that includes: (a) a theoretical framework of economics, law, public policy, psychology, and sociology; (b) a cross-cultural understanding of family violence against girls and women; and (c) an exploration of the sociopolitical, legal, and cultural response to family violence. Discussion of the theories used to describe and research family violence that include: violence against women, children, intimate partners, and elderly family members.

Examines the development and current manifestations of different feminist views, including liberal, radical, and Marxist feminism, as well as more recent feminist theory deploying psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and multiculturalism.

Analyzes global politics from a feminist and gendered perspective on foreign policies, conduct of war, military, and prospects for development. Explores gender and sexuality in the construction of nationalism and identity, justice for war crimes and human rights abuses, trafficking in persons, resolution of conflict, and terrorism.

Examines the scope and variety of violence in the family from an interdisciplinary perspective that includes: (a) a theoretical framework of economics, law, public policy, psychology, and sociology; (b) a cross-cultural understanding of family violence against girls and women; and (c) an exploration of the sociopolitical, legal, and cultural response to family violence. Discussion of the theories used to describe and research family violence that include: violence against women, children, intimate partners, and elderly family members.