WOMEN'S STUDIES (WMS)

This team-taught course is an introduction to the study of women. The course develops a coherent, integrated view of women and their roles; emphasizes the full range of contributions of and the limited opportunities for women; examines and appraises the experiences of women; and critically examines the thinking about women at various times and from various perspectives. The basic approach is interdisciplinary and the concentration of the course is on women in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. This course satisfies either one Social Science requirement or the second literature requirement in both Cores. In addition, the course can serve as an elective in the major or minor programs in Psychology, Sociology, or History. In Modern and Classical Languages, CLT 285 may count for the one course that French or Spanish majors may take from the Modern and Classical Languages offerings in English.

This team-taught course helps students learn about the character and quality of women’s lives across cultures in the contemporary period and to study the consequences of globalization by examining it through the prism of gender. Accounts of women’s lives in regions outside the United States are presented along with readings that provide the historical, social, political, and economic background needed to fully understand these lives. In this course we encounter the powerful and the powerless; the rich and the poor; the courageous and the meek; and in learning their stories we also learn something about the world they inhabit and that we inhabit along with them. In experiencing this world of women, we learn about the human struggles that unite and divide people across cultures in the modern world. This course qualifies as an elective in the major and minor programs in Anthropology, History, Psychology, or Sociology. It also can be chosen to fulfill the Cultural Perspectives requirement in the Health and Human Services major. This course satisfies the Global Awareness Core requirement, and, if taken as Comparative Literature or English, fulfills the second literature requirement in the Great Conversation part of the Core.

This course will examine the problem of Gender-Based Violence from a theoretical, historical, sociopolitical, sociological, and psychological framework. We will delve into intimate partner violence, sexual assault and rape, stalking and other forms of gender-based violence. We will consider how GBV is experienced differently based on persons’ experiences of discrimination and systemic oppression. We will consider whether and how survivors access support infrastructure and how social institutions may present barriers in help seeking.