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Introduction to Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies

UMM's course catalogue describes this class as an "overview of gender and feminist theories, history of the women's movement, and the impact of gender in everyday life.” To elaborate: we'll focus on understanding and practicing a variety of feminist strategies for reading and interpreting written and visual texts in order to develop our own frameworks for thinking about gender and sexuality. We'll look at a variety of narratives—fairy tales, literary and popular novels, academic and autobiographical essays, mainstream and independent movies and music—as a way to start exploring how definitions of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality have been created, maintained, negotiated, and resisted. We will pay particular attention to the complicated relationships between individuals and social systems, and to the ways in which class, race, ethnicity, age, and other identity categories intersect with definitions and representations of gender and sexuality. While we will consider some of the historical dimensions of women's movements, our readings and discussions will be organized primarily around contemporary issues.

The different points of view represented in the readings illustrate that there is more than one way of being feminist or understanding feminism; our emphasis will be on how, not what, to think. Regardless of perspective, we will all be challenging each other to articulate clearly and examine critically our opinions and beliefs.

Required Textbooks

My version of this class emphasizes the humanities rather than the social sciences, which is perhaps not surprising.

Assignments

Grades are based on class participation, response papers, two midterm exams, and a final exam; students may choose between in-class and take-home exams for both midterms and the final.

last updated: Thursday, 18-Apr-2013 16:00:26 CDT

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The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.