Current Course Offerings

Wintersession 24

Introduction to Gender Studies

Exploration of the growing body of research available from many disciplines (humanities, social sciences, sciences) for the study of women and men in the United States and abroad. Investigation of femininity and masculinity and the intersection of gender with other categories of identity.

Online 1
Instructor:

Gender and Sexuality in cinema

This course examines representations of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality across different modes of film practice in the history of popular US cinema, with specific attention to how these representations intersect with race, ethnicity, nation and class. Using analytical approaches from gender and sexuality studies, film and media studies, and cultural studies we will investigate the ways in which popular US cinema critically engages in the historical, social, and cultural construction of gender and sexuality. This course teaches basic concepts of film analysis so that students can apply them to the films we watch, which will include: Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979); All that Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1959); American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999); Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933); Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002); A Florida Enchantment (Sidney Drew, 1914); Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017); Hollywood Shuffle (Robert Townsend, 1987); Lip (Tracey Moffatt, 1999); Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015); Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975); Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958).

Online 1
Instructor: L. Delassus

Fall 2024

Women in Antiquity

An introduction to the history and culture of ancient Greece and Rome through a consideration of the role and status of women in the classical world. Lectures with slides will be supplemented by readings of ancient texts in translation, in addition to textbook assignments.

Crosslisted as CLC 103

Online 1
Instructor: Hame, K

Introduction to Gender Studies

Exploration of the growing body of research available from many disciplines (humanities, social sciences, sciences) for the study of women and men in the United States and abroad. Investigation of femininity and masculinity and the intersection of gender with other categories of identity.

In-Person

Section 1
Instructor: S. Ilinskaya
TTH 1-2:15, Bishop 104

Section 2
Instructor: P. Mora
TTH 9:30-10:45 AM, Brevard 122

Section 3
Instructor: P. Gordon
TTH 8-9:15 AM, Lamar 214

Section 4 - Freshmen Only
Instructor: P. Gordon
TTH 9:30-10:45 AM, Lamar 212

Section 5 - Honors
Instructor: T. Starkey
TTH 1-2:15 AM, Honors 025

Introduction to Queer Studies

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of queer and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) studies with a particular focus on the queer south. This course examines the historical and social contexts of personal, cultural and political aspects of queer/LGBT life, and it explores LGBT liberation movements in relation to families, religion, laws, and society using intersectional lenses that consider gender, ethnicity, race, class, and ability. We consider the status, roles, and experiences, of lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and transgender people, using a variety of sources from fields such as anthropology, history, literature, sociology, southern studies, and women’s studies. Through the readings, discussions, and assignments, students develop critical analytical skills to consider social change movements with particular attention to how sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, sexual orientation, and other systems of power shape people’s everyday lives.

Online 1
Instructor: J. Enszer

Online 2
Instructor: J. Enszer

Topics in Gender and Culture

A study of gender roles within traditional and popular culture. The specific content of the course may vary in different semesters. Possible emphases might include women in the arts, women in film, women in the media, and women in popular culture.

Section 1 - Honors
Instructor: O. Njoku
TTH 1-2:15 PM Music 157

Section 2
Instructor: P. Gordon
MWF 1-1:50 PM Lamar 519

Queer Young Adult Fiction

Queer Young Adult Literature has emerged in recent years as a publishing phenomenon across a dizzying array of genres and exploring a diverse spectrum of LGBTQ+ identities and experiences. In this class, we will read some classic texts that have helped establish the importance of Queer YA literature (Annie on My Mind and Simon v. the Homo Sapiens Agenda) as well newer titles (Felix Ever After, Hell Followed with Us, and Heartstopper) that move from presentations of sexual orientations to explorations of gender identities and utilize a range of romance, speculative, and graphic genres to present queer lives. Final projects will include both a research and creative option; additional projects will explore queer books bans, strategies for teaching queer YA lit, and canon building across genres.

Online 1
Instructor: A. LaGrotteria

Gender, Geography, and Appalachia

This Gender Studies course explores the varied experiences of people living in Appalachia by focusing on texts in which this regional location plays a prominent role. Understanding that regional boundaries are fluid and open to interpretation, we will discuss Appalachian novels, essays, poems, memoirs, personal narratives, photographs, films, and/or music videos that raise questions of: what and where is Appalachia; issues of gender, class, sexuality, region, and race; stereotypes; and what roles Appalachia plays in relation to the United States as a national entity. Students will be asked to frame their own experiences with place and identity in broader cultural and political terms.

Online 2
Instructor: J. Hovey
Gender and Zombies

This course will look at post-apocalyptic fiction, films, and games, most of which feature actual zombies or zombie-like figures, to ask what zombies mean at different historical moments, including our own.  Although there are several prototypical zombie novels in the nineteenth century, the zombie as we know it today is a creature of late capitalism, representing twentieth and twenty-first century popular anxieties about gender, labor, immigration, disease, class, sexuality, technology, race, national identity, and consumer culture.  Beginning with the origins of the zombie in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, following imperialist anxieties about whiteness, gender, and Haitian voodoo in 1930s films, we will trace the evolution of the apocalyptic zombie during the Cold War and Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, and look at recent zombie apocalypse fiction and games to analyze how zombie literature, films, and games criticize sexism, racism, imperialism, capitalism and consumer culture, ecological carelessness and destruction, and the exploitation of the poor. Texts will include Frankenstein, The Magic Island, I Am Legend, The Zombie Survival Guide, Deadlands, and The Road. Films will include Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and the television series The Walking Dead, as well as White Zombie, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, and The Road. We will also look at how video games developed from Dawn of the Dead, and look briefly at some popular zombie games such as the 2002 game Resident Evil, the 2013 game The Last of Us, and The Walking Dead tie-in games. Students should expect to write 2 papers, complete a final project, and participate in regular discussion forum posts and some online meetings.

IS Sec 12 Independent Study
Instructor: K. Cozart
Queering Television

IS Section 21 Independent Study
Instructor: K. Cozart
Gender and Poverty

Sociology of Gender

Examines the social and cultural construction of gender differences in contemporary U.S. society, focusing on the social history of gender roles and gender inequality in current cultural and institutional practices.

Cross-listed as SOC 325

Section 1
Instructor: A. McDowell
TTH 1-2:15 PM Honors College Room 016
Limited to students in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College

Theories in Gender

Feminist writers and thinkers have developed a multiplicity of theories to explain sex and gender as well as power and domination. Feminist theory is not limited to these concepts, however; feminists also theorize race, identity, nation, sexuality, bodies, work, citizenship, activism, and women’s position in the family, the workplace, and society. This course examines feminist theories about these topics, and more, in the context of the historical moment and the intellectual traditions to which they relate. 

In Gender Theory, we interrogate theories in two ways. First, we ask, how are theories generated and constructed? Second, we ask, what does theory mean? We examine key words in feminist theory, including history, sex, gender, standpoint epistemology, situated knowledges, intersectionality, poststructural epistemology, nation, transnational, economics, sexuality, lesbian, and queer. Through readings that elucidate the meanings of the key words and examine how theory is generated, we consider the tensions within the key words and within the generation of theory. We also consider poetry and stories in our intensive thinking about feminist theory. Throughout the class, we ask these questions: 

• how does feminist theory comes into being?

• how do feminist activists use theory? 

• how does theory travel between and among feminist communities? 

• what does theory offer feminists?

• what limitations does theory present for feminists? 

• who is recognized as a feminist theorist? 

• who is not recognized as a feminist theorist? 

• why? 

Ultimately, through readings and engagement with feminist theory, we seek to understand what feminist theories are meaningful and useful to each of us in our life work. In the course, students complete a weekly discussion board posts, write a belief’s paper, and write their own feminist manifesto.

Section 1
Instructor: T. Starkey
W 3-530, S Residential College 123

Online 1
Instructor: E. Venell

Gender and Sexuality in cinema

This course examines representations of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality across different modes of film practice in the history of popular US cinema, with specific attention to how these representations intersect with race, ethnicity, nation and class. Using analytical approaches from gender and sexuality studies, film and media studies, and cultural studies we will investigate the ways in which popular US cinema critically engages in the historical, social, and cultural construction of gender and sexuality. This course teaches basic concepts of film analysis so that students can apply them to the films we watch, which will include: Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979); All that Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1959); American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999); Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933); Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002); A Florida Enchantment (Sidney Drew, 1914); Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017); Hollywood Shuffle (Robert Townsend, 1987); Lip (Tracey Moffatt, 1999); Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015); Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975); Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958).

Online 1
Instructor: L. Delassus

Online 2
Instructor: L. Delassus

Gender and Sexuality in the Media

This course teaches students to examine and analyze how representations of gender and sexuality have or have not changed over time. This exploration will include theoretical readings and analysis of television, film, music & music videos, broadcast and print journalism, magazines, advertising, social media, comic books, graphic novels, anime, user-generated online content, and online gaming.

Online 1
Instructor: K. Cozart

Visualizing Gender and Sexuality in Media

This course will examine and analyze how representations of gender and sexuality aligned with or countered cultural norms over time. Students will use gender and communications theories to explore representations through a survey of visual media genres including television, film, theatre, music videos, broadcast and print journalism, magazines, advertising, social media, comic books, graphic novels, anime, and user-generated online content.

Studies in Gay and Lesbian Literature and Theory

Queer Young Adult Fiction

Queer Young Adult Literature has emerged in recent years as a publishing phenomenon across a dizzying array of genres and exploring a diverse spectrum of LGBTQ+ identities and experiences. In this class, we will read some classic texts that have helped establish the importance of Queer YA literature (Annie on My Mind and Simon v. the Homo Sapiens Agenda) as well newer titles (Felix Ever After, Hell Followed with Us, and Heartstopper) that move from presentations of sexual orientations to explorations of gender identities and utilize a range of romance, speculative, and graphic genres to present queer lives. Final projects will include both a research and creative option; additional projects will explore queer books bans, strategies for teaching queer YA lit, and canon building across genres.

Section 1
Instructor: P. Gordon
MWF 1-1:50 PM Lamar 519
Crosslisted as ENG 384

Race, Place, and Space

Maps are instructive. Some tell us where to go. Others tell us where we’ve been. They can reveal closed and detoured routes. They can show if we are ahead of schedule and alert us when we are behind. This class is about maps—in particular, the racial maps of the contemporary United States of America. Here, we are using “map” both as a metaphor for how racial inequality manifests in geographically-distinct ways and as a framework for understanding how racism structures American culture, politics, social institutions, and everyday life. We will focus special attention on black maps, surveying classical and contemporary scholarship to debunk dominant fictions and reveal uncomfortable truths about the experiences and everyday realities of black folks. As with most trips, this course begins with good music. The first section draws on the mixtape metaphor to explore foundational concepts and theories in the study of racism and racial inequality. Then, we “map” the nation’s contemporary racial landscape, beginning in the Lawndale community in Chicago and ending in the Beautiful, Dark, Twisted imagination of Kanye West. Along the way, we’ll talk Kendrick, J. Cole, Big Freedia, and A Seat at the Table. We’ll read Bonilla-Silva and Zandria Robinson. We’ll debate reparations and explore the school-to-prison pipeline. We’ll hear from James Baldwin. Importantly, we’ll also hear from each other, treating our own selfhood as a type of racial map, with lessons, questions, and new routes to bear.

Crosslisted as AAS 414, SST 314, SOC 414

Online 1
Instructor: R. Parsons

Women in United States History

History of the struggle for equality in U.S. politics and culture.

Crosslisted as HST 428

Section 1
Instructor: W. Smith
MWF 2- 2:50, S. Hume Room 113

Special Topics in Gender Studies

Content varies. May be repeated once for credit with permission of the director.

Section 1
Instructor: C. Wigginton
MWF 11-12:15 PM, Hume 108

Literature and the Body

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed many revolutions: in politics, in religion, in education, in science and technology, and in beliefs about human rights, gender, and race. Both British and American literatures from this time highlight that revolutions transformed not only national borders and knowledge about the natural world, but also how people understood their embodied selves. The body, though spoken of as self- contained, is also defined by its inter-connections. Bodies reside with their pleasures and pains at the nexus of the natural world and human communities, freedom and bondedness, mind and soul. In this class, we will read fiction, memoir, poetry, and other genres to explore how embodiment in literature expresses and shapes these revolutions in thought, personhood, and society. How are race and nation influenced by weather and food consumption? What is free will if the devil can possess one’s limbs? Does a wedding merge bodies as well as hearts and lives? When does bodily punishment discipline the internal self? Do clothes make the man? Our ultimate aim will be to have lively conversations about literature, bodies, and the centuries’ many changes. Possible texts include Mary Rowlandson’s Sovereignty and Goodness of God; Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette; Eliza Haywood’s “Fantomina”; Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno”; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy; and the poetry of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, and Christina Rossetti. This is a capstone course, and students will be required to create a substantial research project. 

Also offered as ENG 435

Directed Readings in Gender Studies

Individual research into selected issues in gender studies; content varies. May be repeated once for credit with permission of director.

Section 1 Independent Study

TBD

Graduate Courses

G ST 596- Queer Mississippi

This interdisciplinary course focuses on Queer Mississippi lives, communities, and movements from a historical and sociological perspective. It trains students how to conduct qualitative research on LGBTQ+ individuals, analyze materials from the Queer Mississippi archive, and execute public-facing scholarship.

Crosslisted as SOC/S St 595

Section 1
Instructor: A. McDowell
TH 1-3:30, Lamar 518

Gender Theory

In this class, we will examine a variety of theoretical perspectives and themes used by researchers of gender from the last century (e.g., Intersectionality, Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory).

Gender theory is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that questions cultural assumptions about sexuality and gender. Rather than viewing sexuality and gender expression as natural and fixed, gender theorists interrogate the ways that specific cultures frame certain gender identities as normal and others as deviant.  “Masculinity” and “femininity” are under a site of inquiry and critique, and intersectionality—the complex array of identity categories that emerge under systems of power—is a constant frame for contemplating gender. 

As an interdisciplinary mode of analysis, gender theory incorporates the literary, the historical, the political, the sociological, the biological, the cultural, and the postcolonial. In this course, we will look at some of the most influential theories of gender, and also consider how competing theories of gender and challenges to social construction—including critiques of biological discourse and trans theory—have influenced gender theory. Theorists include Jack Halberstam, Judith Butler, Jasmine Puar, Chandra Mohanty, Gloria Anzaldua, L.H. Stallings, Susan Stryker, and more.  Students will write a weekly 500-word response journal and a 20-page final seminar paper. 

Section 1
Instructor: T. Starkey
W 3 - 5:30, SRC 123

ENG 740: Studies in Critical theory

Section 1
Instructor: A. Friedlander
T 3 - 5:30, Bondurant 208C

Introduction to Queer Theory

This course will introduce students to queer theory by reading foundational works (Foucault, Butler, Sedgwick, Spillers, etc.) and more recent touchstones (Stryker, Puar, Snorton, McRuer, etc.). Students will be introduced to queer theory’s multitudinous angles of approach: as political analytic, as historical lens, as literary hermeneutic, and as activist praxis. The course will also trace queer theory’s increasingly crucial intersections with critical methodologies pertaining to the study of race, religion, affect, class, gender, asexuality, and disability.

SOC 625: Current Debates in Gender

This course offers an overview and analysis of empirical research and theory on gender identity and gender inequality in the U.S.   We begin by discussing what gender is and how it has been studied by sociologists and feminist theorists. We then move to empirical case studies to examine current gender dynamics in a variety of institutions and social locations.  Each case study is paired with one of five well-established theoretical perspectives to offer the opportunity to explore how structural, symbolic interactionist, multiracial feminist approaches, masculinity studies, and transnational feminist thought contribute to the current sociological understanding of gender.

Instructor: K. Dellinger
T 2:30 - 5, TBA

Others to be announced.