2024-2025 Catalog

GNSE 20001. Theories of Sexuality and Gender. 100 Units.

This is a one-quarter, seminar-style course for undergraduates. Its aim is triple: to engage scenes and concepts central to the interdisciplinary study of gender and sexuality; to provide familiarity with key theoretical anchors for that study; and to provide skills for deriving the theoretical bases of any kind of method. Students will produce descriptive, argumentative, and experimental engagements with theory and its scenes as the quarter progresses.

Instructor(s): C. Riley Snorton     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prior course experience in gender/sexuality studies (by way of the general education civilization studies courses or other course work) is strongly advised.
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 20001, SOCI 20290

GNSE 12116. The "Bad Moms" Renaissance. 100 Units.

From the murderous matriarch to the overbearing stepmother, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary representations of mothers reveal the anxieties, fantasies, and social ideals of reproduction, family, and gender in the period. This course argues that what makes a mom "bad" in these texts is bound up in the racial, gendered, and sexual imagination of early modern England. We will read a broad range of early modern texts from epic poetry to prose fiction, from midwifery manuals to the plays of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In doing so, we will confront past (and present) understandings of motherhood, care, femininity, and family structures. (Pre-1650, Drama)

Instructor(s): Sarah-Gray Lesley     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 10103

GNSE 12121. Contemporary Feminist Politics: From the Sex Wars to Beyonce. 100 Units.

This course offers a survey of feminist politics and texts on feminist action from the 1980s to now. We look to texts and media from feminist scholars, activists, and scholar-activists in order to tackle questions of what feminism is and should be in theory and practice. This course will focus on key contentions and debates amongst feminists on questions of politics and culture, demonstrating that disagreement is characteristic and generative for feminist politics. With this in mind, we will cover topics such as the Sex Wars, the rise of Third Wave Feminism, #MeToo, and Beyonce in order to trace the contours of disagreement in our feminist present. Readings include works from bell hooks, Susan Faludi, Roxane Gay, Sara Ahmed, and Judith Butler. This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.

Instructor(s): Rhiannon Love Auriemma     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 12121

GNSE 12123. Global Perspectives on Reproductive Justice Theory and Practice. 100 Units.

The US Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization has sharpened our awareness of the perils that besiege our reproductive futures. This course offers a deep dive into comparative reproductive justice theory and practice rooted both in unique cultural particularities and in globally resonant issues and challenges. While exposing students to the foundational texts shaping the reproductive justice movement, the course shall engage critically with the possibilities and limitations of a rights based framework and the challenges and liberatory potential of a justice based approach to reproductive decision-making. Drawing from literature and media from across the world, the course shall provide global perspectives on issues as varied as contraception, assisted reproductive technology, mass sterilization, and family leave, along with scholarship and resources from the US. While engaging critically with theory, the course shall also provide practitioners' perspectives through guest lectures by ethnographers, lawyers, and healthcare professionals working in the field. This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.

Instructor(s): Malavika Parthasarathy     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 22123, HMRT 12123

GNSE 12124. Queering God. 100 Units.

Can God be an ally in queer worldmaking? Is God queer? What does queerness have to do with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam? This course introduces students to foundational concepts in queer and trans studies by focusing on queer Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologies. We will analyze the ways that contemporary artists, activists, and scholars are using theology to reimagine gender and experiment with new relational forms. Our readings will include a variety of genres: memoir, letters, scriptural interpretation, and a novel. There will be no presumption of previous acquaintance with any of the readings or topics discussed, or indeed with any academic theology or queer theory at all.

Instructor(s): Olivia Bustion     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 26105, RLST 26105

GNSE 12125. Living Queer: Experiences, Encounter, Affinities. 100 Units.

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore representations and expressions of queer and trans lives across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Assembling a diverse archive of artistic works and cultural artifacts (fiction, memoir, film, lyric poetry, anthology, activist ephemera) together with foundational works in the study of sexuality and gender, we will ask: How do hegemonic institutions, discourses, and definitions - from medical models of pathology to hostile bureaucratic infrastructure - shape the expressive forms available to queer and trans people? And how does the literary, artistic, and activist work of queer and trans people work in turn to reshape those very expressive possibilities? How can individual experiences of isolation and marginalization form the basis of a community or subculture? How are erotic creativity, imaginative life, and political action linked? Our readings will introduce a range of critical and creative methods - such as oral history, ethnography, autobiography, performance - that scholars and artists have used to theorize and represent queer life. Through short "micro-assignments," we will try out these methods for ourselves. By interweaving the creative work of queer and trans people and communities with practical experiments in research and making, we will aim to broaden our collective understanding of what it might mean to "live queer." (Previous experience in gender and sexuality studies is not required for this course.)

Instructor(s): Sarah McDaniel     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 12125

GNSE 12127. Indigenous Feminisms of Latin America. 100 Units.

This course examines how early modern visual and textual sources partook in the formation of gender and race differences in the Americas. We will explore colonial documents drawing on the work of contemporary Indigenous Feminist thinkers, such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Lorena Cabnal, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Yásnaya Aguilar, among others. Reading the colonial archive while thinking about contemporary Indigenous perspectives can help us bridge the past to the present and discuss issues concerning the underrepresentation of Indigenous women in the archive, language politics, communal identities, and Indigenous epistemologies while being particularly attentive to the rhetorical strategies deployed by colonial texts. Along the way, we will have in perspective how contemporary indigenous women resist, negotiate, and denounce the state, corporate, and patriarchal establishments. In this course, students will engage with primary sources of the colonial period in Latin America as they engage in debates surrounding gender and race in our present moment. Understanding these debates and the history surrounding them is crucial to participating in informed discussion, research, and activism regarding issues of colonialism, race, and gender discrimination of today. Students will participate in class discussions, write weekly responses, lead, and moderate academic-style presentations, and produce a final research paper.

Instructor(s): Andrea Reed-Leal     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 23325

GNSE 12159. Reading as a Writer: The Bad Girls Club. 100 Units.

Jezebels, witches, femme fatales, nasty women, sirens, madwomen, and murderesses: the world over, these women of many names-whom we'll collectively refer to as the Bad Girls Club-have alternately inspired the disdain and delight of multitudes. Whether jailed, expelled, excommunicated, or burned at the stake, their (anti)heroic antics have challenged, critiqued, or, some might say, corrupted the laws, mores, and sensibilities of societies. If it is true that polite, well-behaved women rarely make history, then what do impolite, badly-behaved women teach us about the construction of (his) story? In this course, we'll examine literature from around the world featuring members of the Bad Girls Club, who in opposing complimentary constructions of femininity, femaleness, and power invite introspection on the gendered nature of story and storytelling. In short critical papers, we'll analyze the tropes, features, and conventions of literature featuring these bad characters, and in short exercises, you'll write stories, poems, and essays inspired by them.

Instructor(s): Julie Iromuanya     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 12159

GNSE 12160. Beyond the Binary: Gender and Sexuality in Modern and Contemporary Art. 100 Units.

In recent years, cultural understandings of gender and sexuality have undergone seismic shifts around the world, accompanied by new theorizations that emphasize fluid, non-binary, and trans identities. Where did we come from and where are we going? This course proposes to explore issues of gender and sexuality as they have been taken up by artists and art historians from the mid-nineteenth century through the present day, with an emphasis on historiographic and global frameworks. The course will be organized thematically around key topics. We will begin with a week devoted to historiography that introduces foundational theorists such as Judith Butler, Laura Mulvey, and Griselda Pollock, followed by weeks on subjects such as craft and decoration, collecting and consumer practices, and exhibition strategies. Examples and readings will span different time periods and geographies. For instance, the week on craft and decoration will investigate gendered uses of African textiles in mid-nineteenth-century Brazil, feminine notions of the "decorative" in late nineteenth-century Europe, and queer textile artists in the late twentieth-century United States. Rather than considering these issues in a vacuum, we will investigate how gender and sexual identities intersect with other identities and will examine practices of making, consuming, and display, including some--such as interior decoration--that fall outside of a typical art historical framework.

Instructor(s): S. Strother     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 17414

GNSE 12161. Topics in EALC: Queer Literature and Politics in Contemporary East Asia. 100 Units.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of queer literature from East Asia in English translation. This course will focus on such contemporary fiction, exploring how "queer" interfaces with issues of identity and subjecthood; desire, embodiment and reproduction; creativity and labor, and more. To this end, beyond issues of fictional representation, we will work to parse the relation between queer as an identity or subject position (queer people/characters) and queer as a set of interpretive strategies and ethical orientations to cultural texts (queer critique). In the first half of the quarter, we will examine some of this recent fiction alongside queer literary criticism and theory, and hold in-class workshops to conceptualize together the "queer" in queer literature and learn about the current situation of queer activism and cultural production in East Asia. In the second half of the quarter, we will read further East Asian literature through several thematic clusters - family, fandom, desire, etc. - while applying the interpretive approaches we learned in the first. The course may include readings by authors such as Wang Xiaobo, Park Sang Young, Murata Sayaka, Li Kotomi and Chi Ta-Wei among others. No prior knowledge is required; all readings will be in English.

Instructor(s): N. Ogonek     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 10722

GNSE 13001. Introduction to Gender Studies. 100 Units.

This course invites students to take an empirical and theoretical approach to understanding gender. Drawing on scholarship from across the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities, we begin the course by learning about the questions, methodologies, foundational concepts, research findings, and theoretical frameworks that comprise the field of gender studies. Next, we delve into the diverse ways that gender emerges and operates in our everyday lives, including our own embodiment. We then identify the historical and socioeconomic forces that animate, construct, regulate, and transform gender from one generation to the next. And we end by analyzing the relationship between gender and systems of power. All of our inquiries will consider the complex ways that gender operates at the intersection of sexuality, race, class, age, ethnicity, religion, ability and other emerging categories of difference. This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.

Instructor(s): Red Tremmel     Terms Offered: Autumn

GNSE 13002. Introduction to Sexuality Studies. 100 Units.

Introduction to Sexuality Studies: This course introduces students to foundational concepts and emerging questions that animate the interdisciplinary field of sexuality studies. Using an intersectional and transnational lens, we will examine research, films and artistic practices to better understand the social, historical, and cultural dimensions of sex, sexuality, and the erotic. Zooming in and out, from the personal to the global and back again, students will gain a new understanding of how sexual fantasies, arousals, desires, and relations mutually constitute economic, political and ecological systems.

Instructor(s): Red Tremmel     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.

GNSE 13003. Sex, Power, Culture. 100 Units.

TBD

Instructor(s): Red Tremmel     Terms Offered: Spring

GNSE 15002-15003. Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations I-II.

This two-quarter sequence aims to expand students’ exposure to an array of texts—theoretical, historical, religious, literary, visual—that address the fundamental place of gender and sexuality in the social, political, and cultural creations of different civilizations. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.

GNSE 15007. Gender and Sexuality in World Civ III: Queer Medievalisms. 100 Units.

TBD

Instructor(s): Kris Trujillo     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring
Prerequisite(s): Admission to Paris Gender & Sexuality study abroad program for the Autumn 2024 section

GNSE 15008. Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations III: Feminism in Korea. 100 Units.

This course will explore contending strands of feminist thought and practice in modern Korea. Building on previous coursework on feminism and the postcolonial critique of Western feminism, we will consider how various Korean expressions of women's equality developed in historically contiguous and critical relation to other global feminist ideals and movements (e.g., "The New Woman", "revolutionary motherhood", Women of Asia, #MeToo, radical militant feminism, transfeminism, etc…). We will engage a diverse range of historical, literary, and ethnographic sources that probe feminist, proto-feminist, and anti-feminist ideas throughout different periods from Japanese colonialism to the North-South division to the neoliberal South Korean present.

Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): GNSE 15002 and 15003
Note(s): This course counts as the third quarter of Civ for students who have completed the first two quarters of the sequence (GNSE 15002 and 15003). The first two quarters are a prerequisite for enrolling in this course.

GNSE 17915. Women's Work. 100 Units.

As a haptic art, an art experienced through touch as well as the other senses, architecture operates at multiple scales: that of hand, building, city. The scale of the hand gives the most direct access to architecture and its furnishings: think of a handrail, a chair, a textile, a brick pattern, a wood detail. This is the realm of craft in architecture and was, for decades, the realm inhabited and ruled by women practitioners. Women designed furniture, made drawings, wove textiles, produced pottery and glasswork as a means of expression within the male world of architectural practice. As an introduction to the study of architecture, craft entails applying principles of proportion, scale, tactility, precision, materiality, and assembly; in this way, craft is a microcosm of architecture. Through a series of projects and readings centered around the craft arts and the women who advanced them, this studio course will introduce students to small-scale making and translate that process to larger scales. Students will undertake two investigations: the first a series of small craft objects and a set of orthographic drawings describing the making process, the second a spatial analysis and workspace for a craft practitioner.

Instructor(s): K. Mills     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): While this class does not require prior experience, all ARCH studio courses require consent. Starting July 31, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email.)
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 17915, ARCH 17915

GNSE 18128. Enigmas of the Novel: Fiction after 1900. 100 Units.

This course examines the centrality of opaque figures, happenings, and details to the workings of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century novel. To what degree are obscure elements in a work of fiction methodical in their appearance? Are enigmas necessarily code for something else? Where does the figure of the narrator live, exactly? Are characters more easily visualized, or less, when markers of race, class, and/or gender are invoked? Our first aim will be to identify the formal strategies and styles of opacity in modern and contemporary novels; our second will be to craft literary-critical arguments about the political and historical attitudes that seem to underlie these decisions. We'll examine the assumptions and paradoxes of novel form brought to the fore by its blurry parts, and consider how these parts offer frameworks for analyzing the wayward activities of perception, belonging, and power. Through discussion and writing assignments, students will hone their skills of close reading, argumentation with concepts, and critical practice. Prospective reading list includes Ford Madox Ford, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Rachel Cusk, and recent novels by Raven Leilani and Weike Wang. (Fiction, Theory)

Instructor(s): Rivky Mondal     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 10128

GNSE 19960. Comedy from the Margins. 100 Units.

This course examines the centrality of normativity to our conceptions of funniness, reading theories of comedy alongside stand-up, sitcoms, dramedy, and romantic comedy. We will ask: in what ways do comedic formulas establish ideas of the "normal" in order to subvert (or perhaps reinforce) them? How, does comedy about the "strange"-as the foreign, the queer, the excessive or the abject-reframe structures of sociality often taken for granted, forcing us to grapple with questions of citizenship and belonging, gendered and sexual norms, racialization and power? In addition to theories of comedy and joke theory, students will analyze theoretical works on race, gender and sexuality alongside popular television series, talk shows, and comedy specials. Possible texts and comics include: Chewing Gum, Fleabag, Insecure, Reservation Dogs, Ramy, Atlanta, Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, Julio Torres, Hasan Minhaj, Ali Wong, Jacqueline Novak, Dave Chappelle, Hannah Gadsby, and Ronny Chieng. (Theory, 1830-1940)

Instructor(s): Shirl Yang     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 19960, ENGL 39960, CRES 19960

GNSE 20001. Theories of Sexuality and Gender. 100 Units.

This is a one-quarter, seminar-style course for undergraduates. Its aim is triple: to engage scenes and concepts central to the interdisciplinary study of gender and sexuality; to provide familiarity with key theoretical anchors for that study; and to provide skills for deriving the theoretical bases of any kind of method. Students will produce descriptive, argumentative, and experimental engagements with theory and its scenes as the quarter progresses.

Instructor(s): C. Riley Snorton     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Prior course experience in gender/sexuality studies (by way of the general education civilization studies courses or other course work) is strongly advised.
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 20001, SOCI 20290

GNSE 20007. Africa in the Middle East and the Middle East in Africa. 100 Units.

From Mansa Musa's Hajj in 1324 to the contemporary Afrobeats scene in Dubai, African and Middle Eastern societies share long histories of interconnection. This course examines these interconnections from the early modern to the contemporary era through a series of case studies ranging from traditions of exchange on the Swahili Coast, to the Ottoman Scramble for Africa, to the creation of a long-standing Lebanese diaspora in West Africa and a more recent Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel. Students will examine debates that animate this field of scholarship including conversations about race; histories of slavery and its legacies; conceptions of indigeneity, nativism, and settler colonialism; religious encounters; gender and society; shared and divergent experiences of European colonialism and struggles for independence; and transnational collective-building projects such as Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism. In addition to scholarship based on textual analysis, students will develop skills to investigate cultural sources such as music, photography, film, fashion, literature, and sports. No prior coursework in Middle Eastern or African studies is required. However, a background in African Civ, Islamic History and Society Civ, or Islamic Thought and Literature Civ is recommended.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Assignments: Short papers; long paper; in-class presentation
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 20007, RDIN 20007

GNSE 20112. From the Harem to Helem: Gender and Sexuality in the Modern Middle East. 100 Units.

This course will provide a historical and theoretical survey of issues pertaining to gender and sexuality in the modern Middle East. First, we will outline the colonial legacies of gender politics and gendered discourses in modern Middle Eastern history. We will discuss orientalist constructions of the harem and the veil (Allouche, Laila Ahmed, Lila Abu-Loghod), and their contested afterlives across the Middle East. We will also explore colonial (homo)sexuality, and attendant critiques (Najmabadi, Massad). We will pay especial attention to local discourses about gender and sexuality, and trouble facile assumptions of "writing back" while attending to the various specificities of local discourses of everyday life across various sites of the Middle East. Eschewing reductive traps for more nuanced explorations of the specifics of life in Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, or Tehran - as well as to rural areas - we will show how gender and sexuality are constructed and practiced in these locales. In addition to foundational scholarly texts in the field, we will also engage with an array of cultural texts (films, novels, poetry, comics) and - where possible - have conversations with activists who are working in these sites via Skype/teleconferencing.

Instructor(s): Stephanie Kraver     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 30112, NEHC 30034, NEHC 20034

GNSE 20119. Language, Gender, and Sexuality. 100 Units.

This course focuses on the relationship, in theory and in practice, between language, gender, and sexuality. We begin with a brief overview of the field and some of its major theoretical developments. Then we expand on themes of desire and identity; binaries and normativities; embodiment; "interstices"; and performativity. The practical component of the course includes critical analysis of language used to construct gender and sexuality (e.g. in drag shows, communities you belong to personally, social media, and current events). We also consider binary language reform, abolition of linguistic gender systems, and emergence of identity categories as practices of everyday relationality that contest hegemonic systems. Readings are interdisciplinary and draw from fields including Linguistics, Anthropology, Performance Studies, Literary Studies, and Queer Studies.

Instructor(s): Tulio Bermúdez     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 22450, LING 22450

GNSE 20121. Women and Work in Modern East Asia. 100 Units.

Worldwide, women do about 75 percent of the world's unpaid care and domestic work. They spend up to three hours more per day cooking and cleaning than men do, and anywhere from two to ten hours more per day looking after children and the elderly. Women's underpaid work at home and in industry subsidized the early stages of industrialization in nineteenth-century Britain, early twentieth-century Japan, and contemporary China, and women's unpaid contributions to their households enable employers worldwide to keep wages low. We know, at least in outline, how women came to carry double burdens in Europe and North America, but little research has been done so far about this process in East Asia. In this course, we will discuss when and how China, Japan, and Korea developed a division of labor in which most wage work was gendered male and reproductive work was marked female. Are current divisions of labor between men and women rooted in local cultures, or are they the result of industrial capitalist development? How do divisions of labor differ between the three East Asian countries, and how did developments in one East Asian country affect others?

Instructor(s): Jacob Eyferth     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Not offered in 2023-24.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 24501, HIST 34518, GNSE 30121, EALC 34501, HIST 24518

GNSE 20124. Fictions of Patriarchy in German Literature and Thought. 100 Units.

In his 1861 study Mother Right, J. J. Bachofen argues that patriarchy is, at is most basic level, fictive. While the mother's connection to the child is materially perceptible-she gestates, births, and nurses her offspring-the father is a "remoter potency" whose relationship to his progeny, because it is always mediated through the mother, can never be known for sure. Paternity, Bachofen suggests, is a juridical invention rather than a naturally evident fact. Taking its cue from Bachofen, this course will investigate the relationship between notions of patriarchy and fictionality in German literature and thought. We will consider how philosophical texts use the figure of the father to ground their speculative claims, how literary narratives adapt changing ideas about the family and the state, and how concepts of patriarchy have structured thinking about fiction's function and effects. Readings from: Herder, Schiller, Fichte, Kleist, Bachofen, Hauptmann, Freud, Werfel, Heiner Müller, and Jelinek, among others.

Instructor(s): Sophie Salvo     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GRMN 33823, GRMN 23823, GNSE 30124

GNSE 20126. Shrews! Unladylike Conduct on Stage and Page in Early Modern England. 100 Units.

This course will move between three sites of inquiry to investigate the social and material history of an evergreen trope: the domestication of a refractory servant or wife. From rare book libraries and museum collections, we will track the common features of popular entertainments that traffic in this scenario. We will then bring our findings to bear in a theatre lab environment, where we will assay scenes from The Taming of the Shrew, The Tamer Tamed, and the City Madam. (Drama, Pre-1650)

Instructor(s): Ellen MacKay     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 20360, TAPS 20360

GNSE 20127. Black Women Work: The labor of Black women in communities, families, and institutions. 100 Units.

This multidisciplinary course will explore the labor of Black women in three distinct arenas-communities, families, and institutions. Students will explore these areas through engaging with historical and contemporary narratives, research, and popular media, heavily drawing in a U.S. context, but not exclusively. Through an engagement of Black women in the U.S. labor force, this course will explore three questions. How has the labor of Black women contributed to the sustainability of communities, families, and institutions? What are the choices Black women make to engage and sustain their work? What is the future of the labor of Black women? Is the future one that is liberatory or not? Students will leave this course with an understanding of the ways intersectional experiences of oppression contribute to complex conditions and decision-making, that shape the labor of Black women, the function of certain labor decisions as sites of resistance, as well as the generative resources that support the professional success and well-being of Black women.

Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 29600, SSAD 69600, SSAD 29600

GNSE 20128. Creating a Different Image: Black Women's Filmmaking of the 1970s-90s. 100 Units.

This course will explore the rich intersections between African American women's filmmaking, literary production, and feminist thought from the 1970s to the early 1990s, with an emphasis on the formation of a Black women's film culture beginning in the 1970s. We will examine the range of Black feminisms presented through film and the ways that these films have challenged, countered, and reimagined dominant narratives about race, class, gender, and sexuality in America. We will explore the power and limitations of filmmaking as a mode of Black feminist activism; the range of Black feminisms presented through film; and the specific filmic engagements of well-known Black feminist critics such as bell hooks, Toni Cade Bambara, and Michele Wallace. As many Black feminist writers were engaged with filmmaking and film culture, we will look at these films alongside Black women's creative and critical writing from the period. Approaching filmmaking in the context of Black feminist thought will allow us to examine the possibilities of interdisciplinary approaches to film studies broadly, as well as to think specifically about the research methods and theories that are demanded by Black women's filmmaking in particular.

Instructor(s): Allyson Field     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): This course is open to graduate and undergraduate students from across the disciplines; our conversations and presentations of the films will both depend on and be energized by different disciplinary perspectives.
Note(s): Not offered in 2024-25. Please email Professor Field at anfield@uchicago.edu before enrolling. Course Description Continued: We will discuss the form, aesthetics, and politics of individual films and we will examine larger efforts by artists and activists to build a Black women’s film culture, asking such questions as: What does a film history of Black feminism look like, and what scholarly and creative methods does such a history demand? To begin to answer these questions, we will revisit the 1976 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts—believed to be the first ever Black women’s film festival—organized by Michele Wallace, Faith Ringgold, Patricia Jones, Margo Jefferson, and Monica Freeman. The class will collectively participate in a homage series inspired by the 1976 festival, featuring work by filmmakers from the original festival such as Monica Freeman, Madeline Anderson, Michelle Parkerson, Ayoka Chenzira, Carol Munday Lawrence, Edie Lynch, and Camille Billops; as well as others including Julie Dash, Zeinabu irene Davis, Maya Angelou, and Yvonne Welbon. The weekly course screenings will be open to the public and students will gain experience in the public presentation of films by actively engaging in public-facing aspects of film exhibition (writing program notes, delivering introductions, participating in discussions, etc.). The class will culminate with a two-day symposium that will bring together around 35 Black feminist filmmakers and artists, including a number from the 1976 festival, to revisit the threads and legacies of the original event and discuss the present and future of Black women’s film practices.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 30128, CMST 21025, HIST 37415, KNOW 31025, HIST 27415, CMST 31025, HMRT 31025, CRES 21025, HMRT 21025

GNSE 20129. Writing Gender. 100 Units.

In German, even if you are not writing about gender, you are always writing gender: the grammatical categories "masculine," "feminine," and "neuter" are implicated in every noun declension and personal pronoun. How have writers negotiated this in their constructions of gender identity? In this course, we will examine how gender has been thought within and beyond the masculine/feminine binary in German intellectual history. We will study historical conceptions of grammatical gender as well as recent attempts to make German more inclusive for genderfluid and trans people (e.g., neopronouns). Finally, we will consider how authors use literature as a space for gender exploration, such as in Kim de L'Horizon's recent award-winning novel Blutbuch. Readings and discussions in English.

Instructor(s): Sophie Salvo     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 30129, GRMN 25524, GRMN 35524

GNSE 20130. Queer Theory. 100 Units.

This course offers a foundation in queer theory. In order to understand the contested definitions of the term "queer" and explore the contours of the field's major debates, we will work to historicize queer theory's emergence in the 1980s and 1990s amidst the AIDS crisis. Reading texts by key figures like Foucault, Sedgwick, Butler, Lorde, Bersani, Crimp, Warner, Halperin, Dinshaw, Edelman, Anzaldúa, Ferguson, and Muñoz in addition to prominent issues of journals like GLQ, differences, and Signs, we will approach these pieces as historical artifacts and place these theorists within the communities of intellectuals, activists, and artists out of which their work emerged. We will, thus, imagine queer theory as a literary practice of mournful and militant devotion, trace queer theory's relationship to feminism and critical race theory, critique the hagiographic tendency of the academic star system, and interrogate the assumptions of queer theory's secularity.

Instructor(s): Kris Trujillo     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 36855, CMLT 26855, RLST 26885, ENGL 26855, RLVC 36855, GNSE 36855, CMLT 36855

GNSE 20132. Gender, Race, and Horror. 100 Units.

This course will contend with the ways that horror as a film genre constructs and deconstructs notions of gender and race in society. We will attend to texts across decades and subgenres that will illustrate how gender and race are made and regulated through notions of confusion, fear, and repulsion. By attending to these universal human feelings, students will learn how emotions are evoked through the construction of the text, its portrayal of the disruption of gender norms and its construction of racial boundaries. Students will learn the necessary vocabulary and methodologies to be able to critically analyze (audio)visual texts. In order to do this, students will be guided through how to construct argumentative critical papers through proper utilization of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. By the end of the course, students will be well versed in cinematographic terms such that they will be able to critically analyze texts to understand the impact of perspective, interpretation, and judgment. This course is meant to help students navigate and make sense of an increasingly scary world by learning to appreciate fear as a necessary human expression. Finally, and most importantly, students will be able to engage with the age-old notion of terror to be able lead a more ethical and intellectually richer life.

Instructor(s): AE Stevenson     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 25507, CMST 35507

GNSE 20133. Trans Genres. 100 Units.

This course explores genres of writing and cultural production concerned with transgender life and politics. Students will engage genre's relationship to gender, as they will read across memoir, fiction, poetry, and criticism. (Theory).

Instructor(s): C. Riley Snorton     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 22408, RDIN 20408

GNSE 20134. Special Topics in Criticism and Theory: Gender and Sexuality. 100 Units.

An introduction to classic texts in feminist and queer literary criticism. (Theory, 1840-1990)

Instructor(s): Sianne Ngai     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 22212, CCCT 22212

GNSE 20135. Divas, Idols, Material Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Music Videos. 100 Units.

The stark black and white of Madonna's "Vogue" and the pinks and sparkles of "Material Girl." The explosive surprise releases of Beyoncé's BEYONCÉ and Lemonade visual albums. The lavish cinematic spectacle of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" and the fanbait intertextuality of SM Entertainment's Aespa. Since MTV's advent in 1981, hit music videos have made a number of pop songs inextricable from iconic imagery and choreography; ubiquitous digital devices and the rise of platforms like YouTube and TikTok have only increased pop music's audiovisuality. Looking at and listening to female pop icons raises fraught questions of agency, representation, race, sexuality/sexualization, bodies, commodification, and capital. In this course, students will gain a vocabulary for talking about both the audio and visual parameters of music video, and they will use this vocabulary to engage with critical frameworks for examining meaning, circulation, and reception in contemporary music videos. Assignments across the course will allow students to experiment with a range of writing and media genres, including critical close readings, micro-reception histories, thinkpieces, podcast episodes, and video essays.

Instructor(s): Paula Harper     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 27423, MAAD 14723

GNSE 20136. Generations, Gender, and Genre in Korean Fiction & TV Drama. 100 Units.

The seminar analyzes the issues of generations, gender, and genres that arise from a selection of popular literary and television dramas from modern and contemporary Korea. The selection for the course is marked by the creative contributions of Korean women as novelists, scriptwriters, directors, among others. It includes prose fiction by renowned authors such as Park Wan-sŏ (1931-2011), Han Kang (1970- ), and Cho Nam-joo (1978- ), as well as television series like Mr. Sunshine (2018; scripted by Kim Eun-sook), The Red Sleeve (2021; dir. by Chŏng Chi-in; adapted the 2017 novel by from Kang Mi-kang), and My Liberation Notes (2022; written by Park Hae-yeong). Through a blend of close textual analysis and historical contextualization, the course aims to uncover the ways in which the gendered and generational identities of these creators might have helped certain configurations of concerns, needs, and aspirations saliently emerge in response to social, cultural, historical, and political currents of their time. [Consent Required; No prior knowledge of the Korean language is necessary]

Instructor(s): K. Choi     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 23044, GNSE 30136, MAAD 13044

GNSE 20138. Gender Before Gender: Constructing Bodies in Ancient American Art. 100 Units.

In this course, we will seek to test the possibilities and limits of understanding gender and sex in premodernity through an inquiry into the artistic traditions of the ancient Americas. Works of art constitute a primary means by which we can access ideas about what we call gender and sex. Based on what we can reconstruct from visual, textual, and archaeological sources, these cultures conceptualized and represented gender in ways that might seem unfamiliar, in the process putting into question our own preconceptions. Indeed, pre-modern works of art might not have served to simply record conventions of gender but also helped construct the very idea of a sexed body within a given cultural context. As we discover commonalities and divergences between these Indigenous American traditions, we will learn to think across cultural contexts and disciplinary divides, putting into question some of our own assumptions. We will see that gender is not an immutable construct but something actively brought into being in different ways in different times and places.

Instructor(s): C. Brittenham     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor required; email Professor Brittenham a paragraph-long description about what you bring and what you hope to get out of this seminar.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 35731, ARTH 35731, ARTH 25731, GNSE 30138, LACS 25731

GNSE 20139. Midwives, Healers, and "Abortionists" 100 Units.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries in the US, most births moved from the home (where they were often attended by midwives) to the hospital (where they were almost always attended by male doctors). In recent decades, demand for midwives has reemerged across the political spectrum. Some see midwives as a bulwark against contracting reproductive rights and autonomy; some see them as protection from government overreach and regulation, or as a return to a lost traditional or religious past; many see them as an answer to a medical system that has failed to meet the needs of mothers and babies. This course will follow the history of midwives, women healers, and abortion providers from antiquity through the Middle Ages and to the present, with a focus on the political, legal, and religious context of midwifery in twentieth and twenty-first century US. Topics include witchcraft accusations of midwives and healers; the importance of Black midwives in the antebellum south; the role of race and gender in laws against practicing midwifery; convergences and divergences between the natural birth movement and the reproductive rights movement; and the prevalence of homebirth among Christian momfluencers.

Instructor(s): P. Heffington     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27808

GNSE 20555. The Sociology of Work. 100 Units.

From the Great Depression to the Great Resignation, paid work has played a central role in American life. The average American spends 1/3 of their life at work - making it an area of the social world heavily examined by politicians, journalists, and social scientists. In this course, we will look at the structural and interpersonal dynamics of work to consider the questions of what makes a "good job" in America and who gets to decide? Our topics will include low-wage work, the stigma of "dirty jobs," gender and racial inequality at work, physical and emotional labor on the job, side hustles and the gig economy, and life after retirement. Students will be required to write a 15 page research paper that draws on interview data they will collect over the quarter. No prior background in doing interviews is required!

Instructor(s): K. Schilt     Terms Offered: Winter. Not Being offered in 2024/25
Equivalent Course(s): PBPL 20555, SOCI 20555, CHDV 24711

GNSE 20620. Literature, Medicine, and Embodiment. 100 Units.

This class explores the connections between imaginative writing and embodiment, especially as bodies have been understood, cared for, and experienced in the framework of medicine. We'll read texts that address sickness, healing, diagnosis, disability, and expertise. The class also introduces a number of related theoretical approaches, including the medical humanities, disability studies, narrative medicine, the history of the body, and the history of science. (Theory)

Instructor(s): Julie Orlemanski     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 10620, HLTH 26020

GNSE 20700. Topics in EALC: Poets/Teachers/Fighters: Writing Women in China and Beyond. 100 Units.

This course offers a survey of women's writing in late Imperial and modern China, exploring the ways in which women (and men) reimagined the collectivity of women and the concept of "women's literature" in order to stake out a position in the cultural sphere. How did Chinese women use literature to redefine what it meant to be a woman, and what was their role (both of women and of literature) in the major social and political upheavals and in the revolutionary movements of their day? Readings include essays, poetry, diaries and fiction by women writers from the 12th to the 21th century in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. All assigned readings are in English translation, but students who read Chinese are encouraged to read the original texts.

Instructor(s): P. Iovene     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Not offered in 2023-24.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 10701

GNSE 21001. Cultural Psychology. 100 Units.

There is a substantial portion of the psychological nature of human beings that is neither homogeneous nor fixed across time and space. At the heart of the discipline of cultural psychology is the tenet of psychological pluralism, which states that the study of "normal" psychology is the study of multiple psychologies and not just the study of a single or uniform fundamental psychology for all peoples of the world. Research findings in cultural psychology thus raise provocative questions about the integrity and value of alternative forms of subjectivity across cultural groups. In this course we analyze the concept of "culture" and examine ethnic and cross-cultural variations in mental functioning with special attention to the cultural psychology of emotions, self, moral judgment, categorization, and reasoning.

Instructor(s): R. Shweder     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates must be in third or fourth year.
Note(s): CHDV Distribution: B, C
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 31000, KNOW 31000, AMER 33000, PSYC 33000, CRES 21100, CHDV 21000, CHDV 31000, ANTH 24320, ANTH 35110, PSYC 23000

GNSE 21303. Gender, Capital, and Desire: Jane Austen and Critical Interpretation. 100 Units.

Today, Jane Austen is one of the most famous (perhaps the most famous), most widely read, and most beloved of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novelists. In the 200 years since her authorial career, her novels have spawned countless imitations, homages, parodies, films, and miniseries - not to mention a thriving "Janeite" fan culture. For just as long, her novels have been the objects of sustained attention by literary critics, theorists, and historians. For example, feminist scholars have long been fascinated by Austen for her treatments of feminine agency, sociality, and desire. Marxists read her novels for the light they shed on an emergent bourgeoisie on the eve of industrialization. And students of the "rise of the novel" in English are often drawn to Austen as an innovator of new styles of narration and a visionary as to the potentials of the form. This course will offer an in-depth examination of Austen, her literary corpus, and her cultural reception as well as a graduate-level introduction to several important schools of critical and theoretical methodology. We will read all six of Austen's completed novels in addition to criticism spanning feminism, historicism, Marxism, queer studies, postcolonialism, and psychoanalysis. Readings may include pieces by Sara Ahmed, Frances Ferguson, William Galperin, Deidre Lynch, D.A. Miller, Edward Said, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Raymond Williams. (18th/19th, 20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Tristan Schweiger     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Open to MA and PhD students; 3rd- and 4th-year undergrads
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 40130, ENGL 21360, ENGL 41360, GNSE 41303

GNSE 21304. Medieval Romance. 100 Units.

Medieval romance is one of the main ancestors of fantasy and science fiction. This course examines the speculative work of fantasy in medieval romance's explorations of aesthetics, desire, and politics. (Pre-1650; Med/Ren)

Instructor(s): Mark Miller     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 41304, ENGL 40304, ENGL 20304

GNSE 21370. Ships, Tyrants, and Mutineers. 100 Units.

Since the Renaissance beginnings of the "age of sail," the ship has been one of literature's most contested, exciting, fraught, and ominous concepts. Ships are, on the one hand, globe-traversing spaces of alterity and possibility that offer freedom from the repression of land-based systems of power. And they are Michel Foucault's example of the heterotopia par excellence. From Lord Byron to Herman Melville to Anita Loos, the ship has been conceived as a site of queerness and one that puts great pressure on normative constructions of gender. At the same time, the ship has been a primary mechanism for the brutality of empire and hegemony of capital, the conduit by which vast wealth has been expropriated from the colony, military domination projected around the world, and millions of people kidnapped and enslaved. Indeed, the horror of the "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic slave trade has been a major focus of inquiry for theorists like Paul Gilroy and Hortense Spillers, interrogating how concepts of racial identity and structures of racism emerge out of oceanic violence. In the 20th and 21st centuries, science-fiction writers have sent ships deep into outer space, reimagining human social relations and even humans-as-species navigating the stars. While focusing on the Enlightenment and 19th century, we will examine literary and filmic texts through the present that have centered on the ship, as well as theoretical texts that will help us to deepen our inquiries. (18th/19th)

Instructor(s): Tristan Schweiger     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Open to open to 3rd and 4th years.
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 41370, ENGL 21370, GNSE 41370, ENGL 41370

GNSE 21400. Advanced Theories of Gender and Sexuality. 100 Units.

Beginning with the fraught legacy of the New Left and the proliferation of "new social movements" such as feminism and gay liberation, this seminar explores the key debates around which gender and sexuality were articulated as tenacious but open structures of power subject to political critique and social transformation. The relatively stable yet dynamic character of what Gayle Rubin in 1975 famously called "the sex/gender system" raises basic questions of structure and event: (1) how are systemic relations of domination and rule historically constituted and sustained over time?; and (2) how can that which is regularly reproduced be not only momentarily interrupted, but fundamentally altered through both quotidian and extraordinary forms of action and worlding? The unexpected character of the new social movements called for a radical rethinking of structures and their transformation. Haunted by unpredictable forms of resistance, heteropatriarchal structures challenged theorists and activists to forge new frameworks of critique that refigured basic concepts of power, subjectivity, and agency. These frameworks are examined with an eye to how racialized sexuality and gender are created and contested in the context of modern biopolitical capitalism and its constitution of naturalized conceptions of rule.

Instructor(s): Linda Zerilli      Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Undergraduates by Consent Only
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 31400, PLSC 31410, CCCT 31400, CCCT 21400, PLSC 21410

GNSE 21404. More than Human Ethnography. 100 Units.

In this course we explore the fields of more-than-human and 'multispecies' ethnography. We examine theoretical antecedents promoting the inclusion of non-human actors in ethnographic analysis and read examples of such work, including foundational texts on interspecies engagements, exploitations, and dependencies by Anna Tsing, Eduardo Kohn, Deborah Bird Rose, and Juno Parreñas among many others. We consider the role other species and 'actants' played in early social science and contemplate recent studies of "becoming with" animals, plants, fungi, bacteria-encountering complex ecological relationships, examining naturalcultural borders, and querying the role of decolonial thought and queer ecologies in the 'more-than' turn. Multispecies and posthumanist approaches encourage a decentering of traditional method; we will couple ethnographic examples with literature by biologists, physicists, and philosophers. The is a discussion-based seminar with significant time devoted to the logistical aspects of 'more than' work-to querying how such studies have been conducted in practice.

Instructor(s): Wilhoit, Mary     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 33807, MAPS 31404, ANTH 21426, GNSE 31404

GNSE 21650. Kafka's The Trial. 100 Units.

This very close reading of Kafka's arguably most well known unfinished novel means to move away from megalithic glosses of Kafka as a writer of allegory-of bureaucratic oppression, social alienation, and a world abandoned by God, etc.-instead to look deeply at Kafka's precision, and strategic imprecision, of language, language as trauma, wound, and axe. Knowledge of German is not necessary.

Instructor(s): M. Sternstein     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): open only to Fundamentals majors. all other majors need consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 21650, REES 22009

GNSE 21720. Science fiction against the state. 100 Units.

Ursula Le Guin's anarchist utopia, The Dispossessed was published 50 years ago, but its complex imagining of a whole way of life without law, police, money or sovereignty, and its investment in thinking that way of living in relation to environment, gender, freedom and work offers a science fictional horizon for what it might be to live communally in our own moment. This course will read The Dispossessed and other science fiction that imagines what it might mean to live against, beyond or without the state, alongside theorizations that may help us formulate our own visions of other possible worlds. We will pay particular attention to questions of environment and ecological relations, race, gender and social reproduction, and feminist utopias. We'll also spend some time thinking about actually existing forms of living against the state (including blockades, encampments, autonomous zones). SF authors may include Le Guin, Samuel Delany, Kim Stanley Robinson, Tade Thompson, Sally Gearhart, Iain Banks, and ME O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi. Other authors read may include Saidiya Hartman, Monique Wittig, Fredy Perlman, James Scott, Pierre Clastres, and David Graeber.

Instructor(s): Hilary Strang     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 41720, GNSE 41720, ENGL 41720, ENGL 21720

GNSE 21721. Women Who Wrote In Yiddish. 100 Units.

This course explores memoirs, plays, essays, poetry, novels, and journalistic writing of women who wrote in Yiddish, as well as a discussion of the context in which they wrote and their reception and self-perception as "women writers." Among the writers whose work may be represented in this course are Glikl, Yente Mash, Kadya Molodwsky, Chava Rosenfarb, Yente Serdatsky, Rosa Palatnik, Anna Margolin, Celia Dropkin, Rokhl Korn, Beyle Shaechter-Gottesman, Gitl Shaechter-Viswanath, Bella Chagall, Blume Lempel, Esther Kreitman, Debora Vogel, Rokhl Brokhes, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, Malka Lee, Ida Maze, Roshelle Weprinski, Miriam Karpilove, Zina Rabinovitz, Rokhl Szabad, Rokhl Faygnberg, Paula Prilutsky, Shira Gorshman, Esther Shumiatsher-Hirshbein and Freydl Shtok. Many of these writers have been underexamined in the history of Yiddish literary studies and this course will bring renewed attention to their work. This course will be taught in English with readings translated from Yiddish.

Instructor(s): Jessica Kirzane     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): YDDH 21721, JWSC 27651, YDDH 31721, GNSE 31721

GNSE 22035. The Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Pastoral Epistles. 100 Units.

In the early second century there were bitter battles over the legacy of Paul and his preserved letters in terms of gender, sexuality, family life, asceticism, church administration, and theological vision. We can see these well by reading the narrative text The Acts of Paul and Thecla alongside the "Pastoral Epistles" (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus), the former championing a female, cross-dressing ascetic Christ-missionary and the latter, in pseudepigraphical epistolary texts written in the dead Paul's name, insisting on patriarchal family life and women's adherence to traditional roles. In this course we shall read both sets of texts carefully in Greek, noting points of similarity and contestation, and test various models of how these sources-each of which seeks to "fix" the Pauline legacy in its own way-are related to one another. Time allowing, we shall also look at the later reception of the cult of Saint Thecla and late antique interpretations of "the apostle," Paul, on these issues of sexuality and gender roles, and their perduring influence in contemporary debates.

Instructor(s): Margaret Mitchell     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): At least one year of Greek, or equivalent.
Note(s): This course meets the HS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): BIBL 42035, HCHR 42035, GREK 37423, GNSE 42035, GREK 27423, FNDL 22035, RLST 22035

GNSE 22151. Pacific Worlds: Race, Gender, Health, and the Environment. 100 Units.

This discussion-based course will introduce students to both classical and recent scholarship in Pacific World historiography. By adopting micro-historical, comparative, and transnational methods, students will examine the formation of three overlapping "worlds": The Antipodes, Polynesia, and the northeastern Pacific. Analyzing the myriad intersections of race, gender, health, and the environment, we will explore a range of large-scale historical processes that shaped and reshaped the Pacific between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. These processes include European exploration, settler colonialism, and indigenous sovereignty; sex, depopulation, and race science; labor, migration, and urbanization; industrialization and environmental exploitation; and imperial expansion and citizenship. The course is intended for students with an interest in the Pacific Islands, Australasia, and the North American West, as well as those interested in race, gender, health, or the environment within indigenous, immigrant, or settler colonial contexts. Required readings - which will consist of book chapters and academic articles - will be used to contextualize and critically analyze a variety of primary sources during each class session.

Instructor(s): Christopher Kindell     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts towards the ENST 4th year Capstone requirement. Restricted to 3rd and 4th year students.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25030, HIPS 20151, GLST 25151, HLTH 20151, CRES 20151, ENST 20151

GNSE 22156. Staging Identity in the Eighteenth Century. 100 Units.

This course will consider connections between theatre, performance, and identity in the eighteenth century, a time when selfhood is everywhere depicted as both metaphorically and literally theatrical. We will ask: How does actual theatrical practice shape the way that identity was understood in this period?  What components of identity, particularly in terms of race, class, gender, and sexuality, are privileged or destabilized by the eighteenth-century stage? Course reading will focus primarily on Restoration and eighteenth-century British drama, but may also include short works of eighteenth-century fiction and philosophy, as well as selected secondary readings in theatre history, performance studies, and gender and sexuality studies. The final syllabus will be shaped by what's on in London in the fall; we will hopefully be able to attend a performance or two, and consider how recent playwrights look back to the eighteenth century in their own work.  (1650-1830, Drama)

Instructor(s): Heather Keenleyside     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Admission to the London Program (study abroad) is required.
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 20156

GNSE 22182. Early Modern Loss and Longing. 100 Units.

This course examines depictions of early modern desire and loss in genres including the essay, lyric, drama and fiction. The class will also have substantial engagement with affect theory as well as period theorizations (Neoplatonic accounts of desire, humoral accounts of melancholy, etc.) (Med/Ren, 18th/19th).

Instructor(s): Sarah Kunjummen     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 42182, ENGL 20182, ENGL 40182, MAPH 40182

GNSE 22207. Caste, Reproduction, and Citizenship in India. 100 Units.

This undergraduate and graduate level seminar will center on caste and reproduction in understanding notions of citizenship in India. The course will systematically engage with ideas of belonging to the post-colonial nation-state, particularly as experienced from following standpoints-gender, caste, indigeneity, and class. Understanding how citizenship is constituted, performed and negotiated in India, especially in relation to the biological and political reproduction of "good citizens", reveals the scopes and limits of citizenship as governance. The course is premised on the centrality of reproduction to governance in the largest democracy of the world. Drawing on a set of interdisciplinary literature, the readings are organized around feminist theorizations of the State, governance, and citizenship to locate the body within the body politic. The aim is to develop critical thinking on how the politics of reproduction is deeply imbricated with the reproduction of democratic politics; a politics that is entangled with knowledge, expertise and constructed human difference. In so doing, the course brings together reproductive governance with articulations of social justice in India.

Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 32203, CHDV 32203, RDIN 32203, CHDV 22203, SALC 35704, RDIN 22203, GNSE 32207

GNSE 22225. Race in African History. 100 Units.

This course examines the category of race in African history from the nineteenth century to the contemporary era. It references the legacies of earlier identity constructions in the creation of these categories, as well as analyzing its transnational and trans-imperial dimensions. The class combines intellectual, cultural, and social history to illuminate the actors, encounters, and debates animating this dynamic field of study-moving beyond assumptions of African societies as spaces of ethnic-and not racialized-identities to examine the construction of difference through transnational history of science, gender and sexuality studies, histories of slavery, Middle Eastern colonial projects, as well as the invention of the category of "native" in European colonial discourse. Are categories of differences primarily due to European colonialism, as many claim? Or are they embedded in a more complex configuration coming from settler colonial projects, national liberation struggles, and postcolonial nativist discourses? Students examine case studies from across the continent-from Ghana to Sudan to South Africa-paying close attention to experiences of Asian, Arab, and mixed-race peoples navigating colonial and postcolonial African states; while keeping an eye on how debates about difference, diaspora, and nationalism in North America and Europe inform discussions of race in Africa, and how Africans shape discourses of race in colonial metropoles and the United States.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students who have not take African Civiliizations I, II, and III are asked to read African History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2007) in preparation for this course.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 20205, HIST 20205, HIPS 20205

GNSE 22260. Housekeeping: Domestic Drama and Material Culture. 100 Units.

The theatre represents a new and wildly successful commodity in the early modern English market. Yet it is often kept separate from other fashionable goods of the period by virtue of its intangible form. This course overturns the orthodoxy that an early modern play was a co-imaged event and the early modern theatre was an "empty space" by attending to the Renaissance theatre's frequent recourse to household stuff. We will read plays designed for private performance, that use the fixtures of the household to build theatrical worlds. We will investigate dramatists who liken the playhouse to key venues of commodity culture, including the pawnshop, the Exchange (the precedent of the shopping mall), and the fairground. We will draw from Henslowe's Diary to recover the business of theatrical property-making and the allure of a company as disclosed by its holdings. All the while, we will question how the fiction of emptiness takes hold in theatre history, and how plays that depict a furnished world are relegated to second-class genres like domestic tragedy and city comedy. (Med/Ren)

Instructor(s): Ellen MacKay     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 20260, ENGL 40250, TAPS 20362, TAPS 30362, GNSE 40250

GNSE 22266. Coming of Age: Autobiography, Bildungsroman, and Memoir in Victorian Britain and its Empire. 100 Units.

In this course, we will consider the broad generic category of "coming of age" stories that characterized the literary writing of the nineteenth century. Across several different kinds of writing, a focus on the growth and development of the child into adulthood became an obsessive focus. We will read autobiographies by Mill and Martineau, Bildungsroman by Bronte and Eliot, memoirs by Dickens but also lesser known figures: working class autodidacts, women in childbirth, colonial subjects. We will, along the way, learn more about Victorian childhood, the emergence of developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, and the socio-psychological "invention" of adolescence. (1830-1990)

Instructor(s): Elaine Hadley     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 20266

GNSE 22295. Morrissey's America: Contemporary Social Problems. 100 Units.

What are the most pressing social problems in the U.S.? What do we know about them and what can we do to address them? We will use the life and music of Morrissey, the controversial former frontman of The Smiths, as a lens through which to explore our country's most critical social issues. An outspoken defender of animal rights and disaffected youth's preeminent lyricist, Morrissey has also increasingly flirted with nationalist policies. As such, he embodies the tensions, complexities, and ambiguities around critical topics that characterize our time. Guided by sociological theory, we will examine the latest social science evidence on race, immigration, gender and sexuality, health, poverty, segregation, crime, and education as they are key sites in which social inequality is produced and reproduced today. Finally, we will discuss potential solutions to these problems.

Instructor(s): R. Flores     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20295

GNSE 22320. Critical Videogame Studies. 100 Units.

Since the 1960s, games have arguably blossomed into the world's most profitable and experimental medium. This course attends specifically to video games, including popular arcade and console games, experimental art games, and educational serious games. Students will analyze both the formal properties and sociopolitical dynamics of video games. Readings by theorists such as Ian Bogost, Roger Caillois, Alenda Chang, Nick Dyer‐Witheford, Mary Flanagan, Jane McGonigal, Soraya Murray, Lisa Nakamura, Amanda Phillips, and Trea Andrea Russworm will help us think about the growing field of video game studies. Students will have opportunities to learn about game analysis and apply these lessons to a collaborative game design project. Students need not be technologically gifted or savvy, but a wide-ranging imagination and interest in digital media or game cultures will make for a more exciting quarter. This is a 2021-22 Signature Course in the College. (Literary/Critical Theory)

Instructor(s): Patrick Jagoda     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 12320, CMST 27916, SIGN 26038, MAAD 12320

GNSE 22333. Cassandras: Truth-Telling in Times of Crisis. 100 Units.

In public life, why and how are some people accepted as truth-tellers while others are not? Is truth simply a problem of and for "correct" reasoning? What assumptions about argumentation and evidence go unexplored in this way of framing the problem? What if truth were a problem of truth-telling instead? When and how do social, racial, and gender hierarchies authorize received understandings of a (credible) truth-teller? What is credible telling usually thought to sound like? What are the conditions for listening and hearing the truth? To think through these questions, we take as a lens the archetype of Cassandra, the babbling prophetess of classical Greek myth and tragedy doomed not to be believed. Cassandra has served as a resource and source of inspiration for a range of critical thinkers, including but not limited to theorists, feminists, poets, and novelists. What is a "Cassandra"? Does her "deranged" way of seeing the world - her prophetic speech - disorient or destabilize? We will consider how, in her different representations, Cassandra places questions of language, patriarchy, and sexual violence at the center of general discussions of credibility and critique. Readings range from ancient Greek thought to 21st century theory.

Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 22333, FNDL 22333, GNSE 32333, PLSC 32333, CCCT 32333, CCCT 22333

GNSE 22423. Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Spain. 100 Units.

How did men and women understand their roles in early modern Spanish society as dictated by their gender? Could individuals challenge, or even transgress, the societal-and, therefore, gendered-norms by which they were bound? How were the ideals of femininity and masculinity constructed in artistic and literary production? To what extent were gender and sexuality fixed or fluid in the early modern imaginary? These are but a few of the questions that will be addressed in this course, as we examine the complexities and nuances of gender and sexuality in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish culture. We will engage primarily with literary sources, such as poetry, narrative, theatrical works, and autobiographical writings from key literary figures (Garcilaso de la Vega, Teresa de Ávila, María de Zayas, Lope de Vega, to name a few). Moreover, we will examine visual art as well as medical and moral treatises in order to gain as comprehensive as possible an understanding of the notion of gender and sexuality during this time period. In addition to expanding their knowledge of Spanish literature and culture, this course will allow students to continue enhancing their Spanish linguistic competence.

Instructor(s): Lizette Arellano
Note(s): Taught in Spanish. Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 22423

GNSE 22440. Women in Italian Organized Crime Through Cinema. 100 Units.

In this course, we will study filmic representations of women in Italian organized crime, and the implications these portrayals have on the understanding of gender and the mafias through Italian cinema. Sociological and psychological studies have underscored the importance of female roles in relation to mafia organizations, notwithstanding the rigid patriarchal structure that allows only male affiliation. One of the main goals of this class is for students to gain an understanding of different Italian mafias and to get a deeper comprehension of the construction of gender in a selection of films centered around these organizations. We will also discuss how movies contribute to the perception of organized crime. This class will draw on a variety of fields, including sociology, gender studies, and film studies. Taught in English. Students seeking credit for the Italian major/minor must complete a substantial part of the course work (e.g., readings, writing) in Italian.

Instructor(s): Veronica Vegna      Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 22440

GNSE 22509. Intersections of Gender and Race Throughout the Modern Middle East. 100 Units.

This course will explore how parts of the modern Middle East confronted notions, questions, and definitions of race and gender. Organized thematically and covering a region that spans from North Africa to Iran, we will use the analytics of race and gender in an intersecting way to explore topics in the Middle East such as: structural racism, colonialism, slavery, local nationalisms, whiteness, racism in nation building, eugenics, scientific racism, and global solidarity movements. In so doing, our course will reveal that race is an operative category in the study of Middle East history, the historical racial logics operating in various Middle Eastern countries, and how race and gender intersect at the site of individual as well as the effects of this. This course is designed for anyone interested in race theory, gender theory, intersectionality, and Middle East history. By the end of this course, students will have the tools to think in a multidimensional way about aspects of Middle East history that do not often receive such an intersectional treatment. Additionally, they will develop the methodological tools to discern local race and gender logics that might be different than what they're most familiar with. Finally, through coming to understand their relationship to the knowledge of our course, students will also be able to use the course as a springboard for continued learning in other courses that treat race, gender, and the Middle East.

Instructor(s): Chelsie May     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 22500, CRES 12500

GNSE 22520. Economics of Gender in International Contexts. 100 Units.

In this class, students will engage basic issues, conflicts, and innovative field research in economics of gender in international contexts. In particular, we will review theoretical foundations, data and methods of research, and a review of recent work in international research related to economics of gender. At the end of the course, you will have a suite of research approaches, topics, and methods, to investigate gender differences in a variety of economic outcomes and contexts.

Instructor(s): A. Gonzalez     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ECON 10000 or ECON 20000 or ECON 20010 or PBPL 22200. STAT 22000 also recommended.
Equivalent Course(s): ECON 14520

GNSE 22690. (re)Queering the American Musical. 100 Units.

In this combined studio and seminar course, we explore a selection of musicals (tentatively including Fun Home, Falsettos, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, A Strange Loop, and Indecent) considering their dramatic structure, character construction, performance norms, and musical conventions. In what sense(s) are these works "queer"? Students will investigate course materials through readings, discussions, staging experiments, and a choice of either a final paper or an artistic project. Open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Previous experience in theater, music, and/or film analysis or production is preferred but not required; an interest in detailed textual analysis, rigorous discussion, and focused creative engagement is essential. Team-taught by Leslie Buxbaum (Professor of Practice in TAPS), Erin McKeown (Visiting Gray Center Fellow and composer of the musical "Miss You Like Hell"), and David Levin (Professor in TAPS, CMS, Germanics, and Sr Advisor to the Provost for Arts) as part of their collaborative Gray Center fellowship "An Un-dosical" which seeks to explore the norms of the American musical.

Instructor(s): L. Buxbaum, E. McKeown, D. Levin     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 22622, TAPS 32690, GNSE 32690, MUSI 32622, TAPS 22690

GNSE 22705. Abortion: Morality, Politics, Philosophy. 100 Units.

Abortion is a complex and fraught topic. Morally, a very wide range of individual, familial, and social concerns converge upon it. Politically, longstanding controversies have been given new salience and urgency by the Dobbs decision and the ongoing moves by state legislatures to restrict access to abortion. In terms of moral philosophy, deep issues in ethics merge with equally deep questions about the nature of life, action, and the body. In terms of political philosophy, basic questions are raised about the relationship of religious and moral beliefs to the criminal law of a liberal state. We will seek to understand the topic in all of this complexity. Our approach will be thoroughly intra- and inter-disciplinary, drawing not only on our separate areas of philosophical expertise but on the contributions of a series of guest instructors in law, history, and medicine. (A)

Instructor(s): Jason Bridges, Dan Brudney     Terms Offered: Not offered in 2024-2025
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Third or fourth-year standing. Students should opt into a discussion section that fits their schedule.
Note(s): Philosophy majors: this course fulfills the practical philosophy (A) requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 22700, HMRT 22702, PHIL 22702, HIPS 22701, BPRO 22700

GNSE 22800. Japanese Lit/Film: Manliness. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): JAPN 32800, GNSE 32800, EALC 32800

GNSE 22805. Cinematic Sicily: Exploring the Island and its Otherness through Film. 100 Units.

This course explores portrayals of Sicily in Italian films and their relationship with the social, cultural, and political realities of the island. Students will analyze how these films construct the "otherness" of Sicily, enforcing or challenging stereotypes and preconceptions about the island and its people. This course will also examine Sicily's criminal underworld and its impact on society, as well as women's emancipatory efforts and achievements against patriarchy and misogyny. The class will reflect on the historical and cultural context in which the films were made, giving students a deeper understanding of the ways in which cinema shapes our perception of Sicily in relation to the rest of Italy. The course will include films from different genres and references to TV series set in Sicily. Vocabulary to discuss formal cinematic elements will be provided throughout the quarter. Films will be available with subtitles in English and Italian.

Instructor(s): Veronica Vegna
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 20300 or consent of instructor
Note(s): Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 22800

GNSE 22822. Women and Horror in Contemporary Latin America. 100 Units.

In this seminar, students will explore questions relevant to both horror studies in general and contemporary Latin American horror specifically from a feminist perspective. What does horror as a genre contribute to the representation and exploration of women's experiences of terrifying events in Latin American history and politics? How can we understand the gendered dynamics of Latin American culture and politics through horror? What do gendered themes in Latin American horror say about societal attitudes, oppression, and struggles for equality? How does the representation of Latin American women in horror texts contribute to or subvert forms of oppression? This interdisciplinary course will transverse the region as well as genres, covering such texts as the short stories of Amparo Dávila (Mexico) and Mariana Enríquez (Argentina); novellas by Carlos Fuentes (Mexico) and Felisberto Hernández (Uruguay); and films such as As boas maneiras (Brazil, 2017).

Instructor(s): Laura Colaneri     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Discussion will be in Spanish, with readings in both English and Spanish. Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 22821, LACS 22821

GNSE 23002. Workshop: Regulation of Family, Sex, and Gender. 50 Units.

This workshop exposes students to recent academic work in the regulation of family, sex, gender, and sexuality and in feminist theory. Workshop sessions are devoted to the presentation and discussion of papers from outside speakers and University faculty. The substance and methodological orientation of the papers will both be diverse. Continuing students only.

Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 33002

GNSE 23142. Religion and AIDS. 100 Units.

The AIDS crisis was not an epoch that we survived. It is a battle that we are still fighting…when Americans talk about AIDS they are rarely just talking about a scientific problem or a pharmaceutical solution. They are instead offering a sociology of suffering and a plan for spiritual warfare." - Kathryn Lofton Is it possible to understand current debates over public health or the role of religion in the public sphere without first examining religious responses to the AIDS crisis? This course focuses on the emergence of the AIDS epidemic during the peak of the American culture wars. As such, students will analyze the fraught intersection of political power structures, medical epistemologies, and religious views on bodies, sex, and public morality. Through a varied catalog of disciplinary frameworks, e.g., history, theology, medical ethics, sociology of religion, and history of medicine, students will weigh the accuracy of Lofton's claim that for Americans, AIDS is more than just a disease. Thus, we will scrutinize moral rhetoric surrounding contraception and its public availability. We will discuss the extent to which religious philanthropy, especially on the international stage, reshaped approaches to global health. Finally, we will revisit the role of religious communities in providing both care for the sick and theological responses to suffering. Prior knowledge of religious studies and/or medical history is not required for the course.

Instructor(s): Mark M. Lambert     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 20563, RLST 26301, HLTH 26301, HMRT 26301, HIST 28007, PBPL 25301, CCTS 21014, CHST 26301, HIPS 26301

GNSE 23145. Queer South Asia. 100 Units.

This course explores representations of queerness, same-sex love, sexualities and debates around them by introducing students to a variety of literary texts translated from South Asian languages as well as films, geographically ranging from India and Pakistan to Sri Lanka. We will also read scholarship that will help us place the production and reception of these primary sources in historical, political, cultural and religious contexts. In particular, we will examine questions of history and continuity (recurrent themes and images); form and genre (differences of representation in mythological narratives, poetry, biography, fiction, erotic/legal/medical treatises); the relationship of gender to sexuality (differences and similarities between representations of male-male and female-female relations); queerness as a site for exploring other differences, such as caste or religious difference; and questions of cross-cultural and transnational dialogue and cultural specificity.

Instructor(s): Nisha Kommattam     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SALC 26113, CMLT 26113, CRES 26115, HMRT 26113

GNSE 23146. Religion, Sex, and Law in American History. 100 Units.

Religion and law both offer frameworks for how we ought to live and behave, and often these frameworks become entangled in ways that affect who we are, what we can do, and with whom we can do it. To make things even more complicated, religion is also an object of the law-the law tries to adjudicate the rights of religious Americans under a system of religious freedom, with varying degrees of success. Often, the tension between law and religion comes to a head on issues of sex. The collision of religion, sex, and law presents a whole host of problems and questions: How have religion and law historically related to each other when it comes to sex? How has religion shaped the law on issues of sex, and vice versa? What is, or should be, the role of the law in adjudicating issues of sexual morality and religion? In this class, we will begin with the question: how do religion and law shape our lives? Through attention to issues of sex and gender, we will explore what it means to live within the institutions of law and religion and how those institutions interrelate. The class will focus on topics such as: marriage, anti-miscegenation laws, reproductive justice, sexual education, and religious freedom. This class is intended to be interdisciplinary and assumes no prior knowledge. This class is especially suitable for students interested in religious studies, law and letters/pre-law, gender studies, and history.

Instructor(s): Erin Simmonds     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 28009, RLST 26910

GNSE 23150. Dark Stairways of Desire": Lusting beyond the Norm in Contemporary Catalan Literature. 100 Units.

Although we can find a significant number of authors exploring queer desire and identities throughout the history of Catalan Literature (from lesbian scenes in Joanot Martorell's "Tirant lo blanc" to expanding gender identities in Maria Aurèlia Capmany's "Quim/Quima"), more recent Catalan Literature is blooming with queerness and non-normative lust. This course will give an overview of contemporary Catalan works influenced by feminist and queer debates from the seventies on. Beginning with renowned poet Maria Mercè Marçal's only novel, "The Passion According to Rennée Vivien," winner of several of the most prestigious literary awards for Catalan Literature, we will go on to discover 21st-century works by Eva Baltasar and Anna Punsoda. We will also read poems, short stories and excerpts from authors such as Maria Sevilla, Mireia Calafell, Raquel Santanera, Sebastià Portell, Sil Bel and Ian Bermúdez, among others.

Instructor(s): Bel Olid     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 21950, GLST 21950, CATA 21950

GNSE 23151. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender politics in the United States. 100 Units.

This courses surveys academic research on sexuality and gender in American politics. Drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives, it focuses on key arguments and debates about how politics shapes and is shaped by sexuality and gender relations. We will pay particular attention to the development of sexuality and gender identity as analytic and political concepts; the role of the State and political institutions to the formation of sexuality and gender; the relationship between social movements, counter-movements, and political parties; the political behavior and attitudes of LGBT people; and the ways in which intersectional inequalities structure LGBT politics.

Instructor(s): Proctor, Andrew     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 30342, MAPS 33805, GNSE 33805, PLSC 33805, PBPL 23805, PLSC 23805, HMRT 33805

GNSE 23152. History of Sexuality and Sin. 100 Units.

Since Foucault's groundbreaking work on the History of Sexuality, we have become attuned to the effects of power and the political implications of the science of sexuality. While Foucault's text has offered a critical avenue to examine the secular state's administrations of sexuality, it begins with Christianity's techniques of power based on the confession of one's sex. The Christian formulation of the relationship between 'sex' and 'sin' is essential to understanding the techniques of power that connect sexuality, legality, criminality, normality, and transgression in modern secular contexts. In this class, we will begin with the critical questions of the History of Sexuality, then turn to primary texts in order to examine the way 'sex' and 'sin' became conceptually connected in Christianity, and finally interrogate the effects of this relation for medieval and modern politics. Over the course of these readings, we will trace the relation between the concepts and their effects to discern the histories of sexuality that lie at the root of contemporary debates on freedom, power, resistance, and desire. No prerequisites.

Instructor(s): Maureen Kelly     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 24806, MDVL 24803, RLST 24803, HIPS 24803

GNSE 23154. Is It Ethical to Have Children in the Climate Crisis? 100 Units.

Climate change is not just an urgent environmental crisis for scientists, engineers, and policy makers: it is a moral problem that also informs individual and intimate aspects of human life, including choices about reproduction and parenting. For example, a 2018 survey published in the New York Times found that young adults in the U.S. are having fewer children than they would otherwise prefer, in part due to concerns about climate change and overpopulation. In this course, we examine the moral dimensions of having and raising children in an era shaped by climate change, looking closely at two main questions: 1) Is it ethical to have children in light of the world that the next generation will inherit, which may include more extreme weather events, unvoluntary human migrations, diminished access to resources, and heightened insecurity? 2) Is it ethical to have children in the context of the affluent West, where consumptive human populations disproportionately contribute to the effects of climate change that impact the world's most vulnerable? We will examine various points of view on these questions, engaging material from the disciplines of environmental studies and ethics, science and technology studies, and religious and philosophical ethics. Responses from feminist, queer, Indigenous, Black, and religiously diverse authors (and intersections therein) will shape our course readings and discussions.

Instructor(s): Kristi Del Vecchio     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CCTS 21023, CEGU 24000, ENST 24000, RLST 24000, HIPS 24100, HLTH 24000

GNSE 23156. Empowering the Solo Voice: A Feminist Exploration of Francophone Theater Performance. 100 Units.

In this course, we will delve into the world of contemporary Francophone theater, focusing on the genre of solo performances, or "seules en scène''. We will examine the lineage, history, and practice of this genre, with a special emphasis on feminist playwrights and performers, such as Typhaine D, Jalila Baccar, Fanny Cabon, and Florence Foresti. We will study the underlying components of solo performances and learn how to integrate them into different modes, including storytelling, one-woman or one-man shows, and standup. The selected plays will illustrate how the art of the solo voice can empower under-represented communities and minorities to share powerful narratives and create a new space for visibility and listening. The class will combine history, practice, and creative writing, and will afford students the opportunity to apply this knowledge in a series of live performances that will allow them to creatively connect to the issues raised in the readings and draw from their own experiences, inspirations, and questions. Students will develop creative and critical tools to fully explore the solo voice as a form of artistic expression, honing their talents in writing, devising, composing, producing, and creating work. Performance recordings will be obtained and shared with the class to further enhance the learning experience. One of the unique opportunities of this course is the opportunity to work with texts obtained directly from the playwrights.

Instructor(s): Khouloud Gargouri     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Prerequisite(s): Reading knowledge of French.
Note(s): Class will be conducted in English with a separate discussion section available for students seeking credit for the major/minor. Readings will be in French and in English.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 20235, FREN 24724

GNSE 23157. Alone in the Mountains: Tales of Freedom and Violence in Contemporary Catalan Literature. 100 Units.

From witches to "goges" ("water women"), Catalan folklore shows a tradition of women living on their own in the mountains, liberated from societal conventions. These women are portrayed as fascinating yet threatening figures. This ancient imagery has permeated contemporary literature, manifested in novels that depict women who remove themselves from "civilization" to inhabit rural areas of Catalunya, seeking freedom and having to confront at the same time societal norms, abusive partners or even their own personal demons. The mountains, far from ideal and peaceful, are an untamed and often brutal space in which human lives hold no greater value than those of goats, mushrooms, rivers. In this course we shall engage with four novels authored by women: "Solitude (1904) by Victor Català, "Stone in a Landslide" (1984) by Maria Barbal, "When I Sing Mountains Dance" (2019) by Irene Solà, and "Alone" (2021) by Carlota Gurt. Through the analysis of these literary works, we aim to delve into Catalan culture and explore its literary archetypes, while establishing significant connections among these texts and their place in modern and contemporary literature.

Instructor(s): Bel Olid     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Taught in English, but students seeking credit for the HLBS major/minor must do part of the readings and written work in Catalan or Spanish as necessary for their degree.
Equivalent Course(s): CATA 23500, GLST 23500, SPAN 23501

GNSE 23158. Que otros sean lo Normal": Pertinencia y otredad en la literatura trans en español. 100 Units.

¿Qué nos dicen de una sociedad sus alteridades? Es decir, ¿cómo nos informa de la norma lo que queda fuera de ella? A partir de la lectura y análisis de obras escritas por autores trans, conoceremos más a fondo la actualidad de algunos países hispanohablantes, centrándonos en un elemento básico de cualquier identidad: el género. El curso está organizado a partir de la lectura y visualización de materiales reales y con actividades orales y escritas dirigidas a ampliar el conocimiento de la literatura contemporánea en español (y las sociedades en las que florece), y también a reforzar las habilidades de expresión oral y escrita de les participantes.

Instructor(s): Bel Olid
Note(s): Taught in Spanish. Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 22770, GLST 22770

GNSE 23162. Histories of Women in Science. 100 Units.

In the mid-1980s, only two female students drew women when asked what a scientist looked like and none of the male students in the study did. Only 8% of STEM workers in 1970 were women; in 2019 that number was still only 27%. This would seem to suggest that the history of women in science is a recent one. Yet historians of science have foregrounded women's involvement in fields ranging from early modern medicine to twentieth century astrophysics. This class introduces students to these histories, investigates how and why science came to be a gendered as male, and asks to what extent gendered values continue to inform modern conceptions scientific achievement or value. In so doing, this course also introduces students to feminist science studies and challenges students to reflect upon their own (gendered) experiences of science. Students are strongly encouraged to develop final research projects that draw upon their own interests, scientific expertise, and linguistic competencies. No prior experience with history is required for this course, although an enthusiasm for history is advised.

Instructor(s): Kristine Palmieri     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 27011, HIST 27806, GNSE 37011, CHSS 37011, PHSC 27010, KNOW 37011, ASTR 23700

GNSE 23164. Feminist Documentary Filmmaking. 100 Units.

This course examines the ways that women-identifying documentary makers have given cinematic form to feminist thought. Drawing from film and media theory and history, we will focus on the formal and narrative techniques that have been employed by filmmakers to reflect on questions pertaining to gender and sexuality, with an emphasis on the specific ways that non-fiction filmmaking expanded feminist theoretical frameworks and research methodologies. Considering topics such as cinematic realism, film spectatorship, viewing pleasure, counter-cinema, and theories of intersectionality and diaspora, we will ask questions such as: What are the stylistic devices that feminist documentary films have mobilized, and for what purposes and ends? What is documentary's relation to the history of fiction film, particularly of Hollywood cinema? How have women documentary makers understood cinema's role in social processes of transformation? What are the possibilities and limitations of collaborative methods, appropriation strategies, and oppositional techniques? We will watch films with a critical eye and engage closely with academic and popular writings to survey the aesthetic, social, and political genealogies operating in the history of feminist documentary production. In this discussion-based course, we will cover a variety of non-fiction film and media forms: film diaries, docu-fictions, home-movies, video essays, auto-ethnographies, ethno-fictions, collage, and found-footage films.

Instructor(s): Cinta Peleja     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 18205, CMST 28205

GNSE 23165. Sexuality in U.S. History to 1900. 100 Units.

In this course we will study the history of changing sexual practices, relations, politics, cultures, and social systems in the region of North America now comprising the United States and 574 sovereign tribal nations. We begin in the pre-colonial period and end in the late twentieth century, focusing on how gendered, racial, economic, religious, medical, and commercial discourses shaped and were shaped by sexual ones. Moving through various contexts, such as occupied indigenous territories, the secret parties of enslaved people, scientific societies, urban drag balls, medical schools, liberatory movements, and popular culture, we will use primary and secondary sources to develop a research-based understanding of how sexual discourses are produced, revised, and remixed among and across generations.

Instructor(s): Red Tremmel     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course counts as a Concepts course for GNSE majors.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27807

GNSE 23166. Existing Otherwise: Asian Diasporic Literature in Latin America and the Caribbean. 100 Units.

Are minor lives worth documenting? How do we have access to the lives of the multitude, the dispossessed, the outcasts and the enslaved-the lives that archival documents have little to tell us about? Is it ethical to recreate and recover the unheard lives of peoples historically perceived as illiterate, undesirable, "diseased" and unassimilable? What is the power of imagining and writing about existing otherwise? We will consider these questions throughout the course by turning to the under-explored history of Asian diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean. We will contextualize examples of life writing (broadly-defined) spanning from late seventeenth-century to the twenty-first century, both by members of the Asian diasporas themselves and as they have been re-imagined by contemporary authors. Some examples of primary texts include the spiritual biography of a seventeenth-century Mughal princess-slave who became a mystic in colonial Mexico, queer imagination of a Chinese "coolie" in late nineteenth-century Jamaica, the memoirs of Japanese-Peruvians in the internment camp during WW2, semi-autobiographical poems and short stories by contemporary Asian-Latinx writers. With the help of supplementary critical readings on radical life writing, we will consider throughout the course how imaginative, anti-racist, feminist and queer narratives may expand our current knowledge of the lives of the marginalized and the racialized.

Instructor(s): Yunning Zhang      Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students will engage with course materials through collaborative discussion and presentation, and the creation of a public-facing website that will include blog posts and a multimedia final project, where each student crafts a creative piece for an Asian diasporic subject of their own choosing.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 22090, CMLT 21090, GLST 21090, CMLT 31090, RDIN 21090

GNSE 23167. Black Girlhood. 100 Units.

First popularized on social media in 2013, the phrase "Black Girl Magic" has expanded far beyond its initial use as a twitter hashtag. It can be seen on (a bunch of different objects and the cover of many children's books and poetry anthologies). However, the visibility of the phrase did not come without controversy. Some critics argued that rather than being an uplifting rallying cry for positive depictions of black girlhood, it instead reinforced dehumanizing stereotypes of the "strong black woman". This debate leads us to question: How do black girls tend to be depicted both popular media and in literature? How might these depictions differ depending on author, type of media, or social context? What do they say about the ways that black girls experience childhood, gender, and friendship? To engage with these questions, this course will explore literary works including The Bluest Eye, Betsey Brown, and Abeng, along with television shows such as Lovecraft Country to examine 20th and 21st century depictions of black girlhood. We will also think with theoretical works of black feminism and black girlhood studies.

Instructor(s): Danielle Jones     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 20400, GNSE 33167, ENGL 30422, ENGL 20422, RDIN 30400

GNSE 23168. Sex and the Ethnographic Tradition. 100 Units.

This course examines the role sex has played in the formation of ethnographic knowledge, with particular attention to how studies of sex have challenged static notions of identity and illuminated the complex relationship between social behavior and gendered sense of self. We will consider interest in sex as a motivating factor in the ethnographic enterprise and, reading studies on everything from desire, kink, and play to procreation, heritance and power, will examine complex and social construction of sexed, gendered, and raced selves and Others. How has ethnographic research contested the ubiquitous salience of male/female dichotomies, of patriarchy, and of the cross-cultural, trans-historical applicability of concepts like 'third gender? We will also take a methodological eye, querying how sex has moved from a supposedly 'taboo' category of social inquiry to a focal topic in ethnographic work of all kinds. This is an introductory graduate level course with select spots for advanced undergraduates.

Instructor(s): Wilhoit, Ella     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): MAPS 35503, ANTH 35503, ANTH 25222, GNSE 33168

GNSE 23169. Queer/Trans/Media. 100 Units.

This seminar stages a sustained dialogue between theories of queer, trans, and media, exploring how each of these disciplines animate and challenge one another. This course explores the possibilities of an expanded understanding of queerness, following queer scholar Eve Sedgwick's claim that "work around 'queer' spins the term outward along dimensions that can't be subsumed under gender and sexuality at all." More recently, queer scholars like David Eng have read "queerness as a critical methodology based not on content but rather on form and style" while trans scholars like Toby Beauchamp similarly engage "the transgender of transgender studies as a mode of critique" and "not as a predetermined category into which identities or bodies are slotted." What might it mean to consider "queer" and "trans" not as a field with a delimited object of study (sexuality or gender), but as an analytic, a methodology, a critical sensibility, a conceptual strategy, a reading practice, a politics, an aesthetic, etc. Throughout the course, we explore often-unconventional pairings of media objects and scholarly readings to work through these challenging questions. Ultimately, this course is designed to help students read for the similarities within the aesthetic forms of film/media and queer/trans theories to understand their force of expression.

Instructor(s): Basil Dababneh     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 20602

GNSE 23507. American Religion, Gender, and Race. 100 Units.

This seminar looks at the impact of religious identity on their understandings and performance of racial and gendered identities. This graduate-level course delves into the impact such intersectional identities have on one's movement within personal, political, and community spheres. We will pay particular attention to American religious denominations. Students can also expect to read and reflect on foundational works in the sociological study of religion.

Instructor(s): Painia, Brianne A.     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 23507, MAPS 23504, SOCI 30334, GNSE 33503, MAPS 33504

GNSE 23602. Critical Security Studies. 100 Units.

This graduate-level elective course is designed to introduce students to approaches to global politics beyond the traditional mainstream canon, surveying a range of perspectives that fall under the heading of 'critical.' The main goal is to develop an understanding of what is at stake, politically, with some of the main concepts, theories, methodological approaches, and empirical objects within the study of international relations (IR) and international security. The course is divided into two sections. First, we begin by considering what makes a critical approach critical-that is, how is it set apart from conventional approaches? In particular, we will explore how critical approaches encourage us to question our assumptions, first, about what security, power, sovereignty, and other core concepts mean in global politics, and second, about who or what (individuals, groups, nonhuman animals, states, the planet) can be agents of global politics. Some examples of approaches we cover are: theories from the Global South, approaches to human security, global feminisms, securitization theories, ontological security, emotions and affect, the visual turn, new materialisms, and post-colonial perspectives. In the second half of the course, we apply these approaches to a range of issues, including nuclear weapons, borders and immigration, drone warfare, terrorism, and climate change.

Instructor(s): Kara Ann Hooser     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): INRE 43600, PLSC 23600, INRE 23600, GNSE 43602

GNSE 23702. Sexual Health: Identity, Behavior, and Outcomes. 100 Units.

Sexual health is a growing component of public health outreach. The goal of this course is to provide students with a foundational understanding of sexual health from a public health perspective. Through participation in this course, students will increase their knowledge about the history of sexual health promotion in the public health sphere. They will delve into sexual and gender identity construction and explore identity-behavioral expressions. They will critically examine and discuss common sexual health issues addressed by public health practitioners, their epidemiology, and their underlying social determinants; a global health lens will be applied to such examinations. Additionally, recognition of the key methodological considerations in the measurement of sexual behavior and sexual health outcomes will be elucidated (including strengths and limitations of various methodological approaches -quantitative, qualitative, clinical, and biomedical). By the completion of the course, students should be able to demonstrate knowledge and application of key theoretical foundations of sexual health promotion and sexual health behavior change and be able to promote sexual health messages through marketing and dissemination. From a policy perspective, student can expect an increased knowledge about issues related to social and legislative policy analyses, their applications, and implications.

Instructor(s): David Moskowitz     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 23700, PBHS 33700, GNSE 33702, PBHS 23700

GNSE 23809. Pain, Truth, and Justice. 100 Units.

Why should the truth hurt? Does pain guarantee the truth told? Is pain the price of exposure to the truth? Does that make punishment just? In this course, we will take a historical and philosophical approach to examine the relations between pain, truth, and justice. In the premodern period, we will draw from Genesis, Sophocles' Oedipus, Augustine, Tertullian, martyrdom accounts, and public penance in medieval Christianity. To study the theme in the early modern nation-state spectacles of punishment, colonial contexts, and contemporary scenes of justice, we will turn to the writings of Foucault, Fanon, and others. Over the course of the historical and philosophical examinations, we will trace the themes of body, affect, and performance; truth, law, and ritual; power, religion, and the nation-state. In the end, we will turn a critical eye to contemporary cultural discourses and representations of pain, truth, and justice in the arts, law, literature, philosophy, and politics. No prerequisites.

Instructor(s): Maureen Kelly     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 23809, MDVL 23809, RLST 23809

GNSE 24006. Embodiment and the Senses. 100 Units.

This course approaches bodies as points of insight into governance, the varied experiences of being governed, and efforts to evade and reconfigure institutional expressions of authority. First, we will examine bodies as targets of governance, objects to be reformed, regulated, contained, disciplined, educated, incarcerated, treated, trained, and "cared" for. Next, we will consider how bodies accrue power as sites of resistance, refusal, and critique. Certain bodies in certain places elicit discomfort, unsettling familiar divisions such as of private and public space, of developed and backward, of religious and secular, of reason and madness, of citizenship and (often racialized) non-citizenship. Finally, we will ask how bodies and sensory practices figure in ethical projects of crafting exemplary kinds of subjectivity or collectivity. In this way, the course will introduce students to anthropological approaches to embodiment as well as related questions of bio-politics, gender and race, political subjectivity, care and self-making, post/colonialism, sensory politics and the aesthetic. Along the way, students will gain a new appreciation of the political potency of bodies and bodily practices near and far-from Lenin's preserved body to Trump's "small" hands, reproductive labor to sex work, dirty protest to women's marches, indigenous eco-rituals to queer intimacies.

Instructor(s): Mareike Winchell
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 20006, RLST 26006

GNSE 24026. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Feminist Biography. 100 Units.

The personal is political - that slogan of Women's Liberation - has long been understood, among other things, as a call for new forms of storytelling. One of those forms, feminist biography, has flourished in publishing since the 1970s, and it continues to evolve today, even as the terms of feminism and of biography are continually re-negotiated by writers and critics. In this workshop, we read some of those writers and critics. And we read illustrative examples of contemporary feminist biography (and anti-biography) in various nonfiction genres, including magazine profile, trade book, Wiki article, audio performance, personal essay, cult pamphlet, avant-garde art piece. Mostly, we try out the form for ourselves, in our own writing. Each workshop writer will choose a biographical subject (single, collective, or otherwise), and work up a series of sketches around that subject. By the end of the quarter, workshop writers will build these sketches into a single piece of longform life-writing. The workshop will focus equally on story-craft and method (e.g. interview and research techniques, cultivating sources); indeed we consider the ways that method and story are inevitably connected. This workshop might also include a week with an invited guest, a practicing critic or biographer.

Instructor(s): Avi Steinberg     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Open bid through my.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory. Contact the instructor for a spot on the waiting list. Course requires consent after add/drop begins.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 24026, CRWR 44026, GNSE 44026

GNSE 24205. Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Queering the Essay. 100 Units.

In Advanced Nonfiction Workshop: Queering the Essay, we'll approach the essay as a vehicle for queer narratives, as a marker of both individual and collective memory, and as a necessary compliment to the journalism and scholarship that have shaped queer writing. Through readings and in-class exercises, we'll explore tenets of the personal essay, like narrative structure and pacing, alongside considerations of voice and vulnerability. After a brief historical survey, we'll look to contemporary essayists as our guides--writers like Billy-Ray Belcourt, Melissa Faliveno, Saeed Jones, Richard Rodriguez, and T. Fleischmann-- alongside more familiar writers like Alison Bechdel and Maggie Nelson. And through student-led workshops, we'll wrestle with concerns that often trouble narratives of otherness: What does it mean to write a personal narrative that has a potential social impact? How can we write trauma without playing into harmful stereotypes? How can our writing work as--or make demands toward--advocacy, rather than voyeurism?

Instructor(s): Victoria Flanagan     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Instructor consent required. Apply via creativewriting.uchicago.edu. Attendance on the first day is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): CRWR 24025, CRWR 44025, GNSE 44205

GNSE 24220. Anxious Spaces. 100 Units.

This course explores built (architectural), filmic, and narrative spaces that disturb our bearings, un-situate us, and defy neurotypical cognition. In the sense that "angst" is a mode that can be understood as both stalling and generative, we analyze spaces and representations of spaces such as corridors, attics, basements, canals, viaducts, labyrinths, forests, ruins, etc., spaces that are 'felt' as estranging, foreboding, in short, anxiety-provoking, in order to understand why-despite or because these topoi are hostile-they are produced, reproduced, and craved. We will pay special attention to abject spaces of racial and sexual exclusivity, sites of spoliation, and of memory and erasure. Among our primary texts are films by Kubrick, Tarkovksy, and Antonioni, and Chytilová, short fiction by Borges, Kafka, Nabokov, and selections from the philosophical/theoretical writings of Bachelard, Deleuze & Guattari, Debord, Foucault, Kracauer, and the edited volume, Mapping Desire, Geographies of Sexuality.

Instructor(s): Malynne Sternstein     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): REES 24220, GNSE 34220, REES 34220, ARCH 24220

GNSE 24426. The Witch Craze in 17th-Century Europe: Scotland, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and Moravia. 100 Units.

In this course, we look carefully at the reasons for and repercussions of the "witch craze" in the long 17th-century, focussing on primary texts such as trial reports, legal literature, pamphlets, woodcuts, scholarly dissent, and other paraphernalia. The course follows a sweep of the craze from Lancashire in Scotland, where trials began in the 1590s, to Poznań in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to the Russian village of Lukh on the outskirts of Moscow, where between 1656 and 1660 over twenty-five individuals, most of them male, were tried and several executed, and finally to Northern Moravia under Habsburg rule where inquisitor Hetman Boblig presided over the burning of almost 100 "witches." In each region, trials followed different customs-Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic-and answered to different legislative discourse-ecclesiastical, laic, secular-yet all can be said to be the product of a common desire and collective fear. To supplement our understanding of the multifaceted anxieties that are expressed in works such as King James' Daemonologie (1597), and to ask more questions of the intersectional phobias around gender, sexuality, religion, and class (rural-urban; colony-metropole), we take up theory from Foucault, Federici, and Mbembe, and others.

Instructor(s): Malynne Sternstein     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 34426, REES 24426, REES 34426

GNSE 24511. Kawaii (cuteness) culture in Japan and the world. 100 Units.

The Japanese word kawaii (commonly translated as "cute" or "adorable") has long been a part of Japanese culture, but, originating from schoolgirl subculture of the 1970s, today's conception of kawaiihas become ubiquitous as a cultural keyword of contemporary Japanese life. We now find kawaii in clothing, food, toys, engineering, films, music, personal appearance, behavior and mannerisms, and even in government. With the popularity of Japanese entertainment, fashion and other consumer products abroad, kawaii has also become a global cultural idiom in a process Christine Yano has called "Pink Globalization". With the key figures of Hello Kitty and Rilakkuma as our guides, this course explores the many dimensions of kawaii culture, in Japan and globally, from beauty and aesthetics, affect and psychological dimensions, consumerism and marketing, gender, sexuality and queerness, to racism, orientalism and robot design.

Instructor(s): Nisha Kommattam     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 14510, CMLT 24510, ENGL 24510

GNSE 24526. Forms of Autobiography in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. 100 Units.

This course examines the innovative, creative forms autobiography has taken in the last one hundred years in literature. We will study closely works written between 1933 and 2013 that are exceptional for the way they challenge, subvert and invigorate the autobiographical genre. From unpublished sketches to magazine essays and full-length books, we will see autobiography take many forms and engage with multiple genres and media. These include biography, memoir, fiction, literary criticism, travel literature, the graphic novel and photography. Producing various mutations of the autobiographical genre, these works address some of the same concerns: the self, truth, memory, authenticity, agency and testimony. We will complement discussions of these universal issues with material and historical considerations, examining how the works first appeared and were received. Autobiography will prove a privileged site for probing constructions of family narratives, identity politics and public personas. The main authors studied are Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Vladimir Nabokov, Roland Barthes, Paul Auster, Doris Lessing, Marjane Satrapi and W.G. Sebald. (20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Christine Fouirnaies     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 24526, GNSE 34526, ENGL 34526

GNSE 24903. Religion and Human Rights. 100 Units.

Religion played a crucial, but often overlooked, role in the development of post-World War II conceptions of human rights, providing principles and ideas that continue to influence contemporary human rights debates in the fields of law, public policy, and international relations. This no-prior-knowledge-necessary course explores the complex, sometimes fraught, relationship between religion and human rights from World War II to the present. We will begin by juxtaposing the role religious ideas played in the drafting of core post-war human rights documents (e.g. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, etc.) with the decision by drafters to omit direct references to the divine or the beliefs of specific religious communities. Using case study analysis and close reading of primary religious texts, scholarly commentary, and historical accounts, we will examine the ways in which individuals and groups from multiple religious (and non-religious) traditions both apply and push back against existing human rights norms. Throughout the course we will discuss the role religion might play in debates surrounding emerging, but still contentious, conceptions of human rights. This includes: universal healthcare, LGBTQIA+ rights, ever more complex manifestations of religious freedom, as well as whether human rights as conceived of in the mid-20th Century can be reconciled with decolonial and post-colonial perspectives.

Equivalent Course(s): RLST 24901, DEMS 24901, GLST 24902, HMRT 24901

GNSE 25020. Opera Across Media. 100 Units.

Open to all undergraduates. Over the course of the last hundred and twenty years, opera and cinema have been sounded and seen together again and again. Where opera is commonly associated with extravagant performance and production, cinema is popularly associated realism. Yet their encounter not only proves these assumptions wrong but produces some extraordinary third kinds-media hybrids. It also produces some extraordinary love affairs. Thomas Edison wanted a film of his to be "a grand opera," and Federico Fellini and Woody Allen wanted opera to saturate their films. Thinking about these mutual attractions, "Opera across Media" explores different operatic and cinematic repertories as well as other media forms. Among films to be studied are Pabst's Threepenny Opera (1931), Visconti's Senso (1954), Powell and Pressburger's Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Zeffirelli's La traviata (1981), De Mille's Carmen (1915), Losey's Don Giovanni (1979), Bergman's The Magic Flute (1975), and Fellini's E la nave va (1983). No prior background in music performance, theory, or notation is needed. Students may write papers based on their own skills and interests relevant to the course. Required work includes attendance at all screenings and classes; weekly postings on Canvas about readings and viewings; attendances at a Met HD broadcast and a Lyric Opera live opera; a short "think piece" midway through the course; and a final term paper of 8-10 pages.

Instructor(s): Martha Feldman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Open to all undergraduates
Equivalent Course(s): MUSI 25020, MAAD 13020, ITAL 25020, CMST 24617, SIGN 26058, TAPS 26516

GNSE 25118. Islam, Politics and Gender. 100 Units.

This course examines the relationship Islam and politics with a focus on gender and sexuality. For this class, politics is broadly construed, including religious law, family law, social issues, and war. Gender is an inextricable part of Islamic law, and the connection between Islam and the state pervades scholars' understanding and interpretation of political development in the Muslim world. While many texts and discussions will focus on women, gender is considered expansively. We will consider the role of sex in religious law, as well as sexual identity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. We will also incorporate areas outside of the Islamic "heartland" of the Middle East, such as Europe and Asia.

Instructor(s): Hannah Ridge, Pozen Center for Human Rights Postdoctoral Instructor     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 35118, GNSE 35118, HMRT 25118

GNSE 25180. Women Writing God. 100 Units.

This course examines imaginative works by women that take on the task of representing divine or supernatural being from the medieval era to the present. Drawing on the work of critics such as Luce Irigaray, Caroline Walker Bynum, and Judith Butler, we explore what strategies these writers employ to depict an entity simultaneously understood to be unrepresentable and to have a masculine image. Texts range from premodern mystics such as Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila to Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. (Med/Ren)

Instructor(s): Sarah Kunjummen     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Instructor consent required for first and second year undergraduates.
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 40180, ENGL 20180, GNSE 45180, MAPH 40180

GNSE 25218. Reading Nonhuman Animals: A Challenge to Anthropocentrism. 100 Units.

How can we "read" a literary nonhuman animal? In what ways does literature deal with ethical and political issues concerning nonhuman animals? What does it mean to live in a multicultural and multispecies world? What does it mean to be "human"? In this course we will ask these and other related questions as they are presented and represented in Italian 20th century literary texts, read alongside philosophical writings, scholarly essays, and visual materials. While maintaining a focus on Italian literature, a comparative approach involving literary works of non-Italian authors will be key in understanding the pervasiveness of the problems that have caused our detachment from nature and our broken relationship with nonhuman animals. We will closely analyze and critically evaluate the works of several authors, including those by Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Anna Maria Ortese, Elsa Morante, Italo Svevo, Alice Walker, and Franz Kafka, giving particular attention to techniques of close reading. A thematic approach will enable us to explore a large number of critical discourses, from the moral status of nonhuman animals to the long-held assumptions regarding the anthropocentric set of values that have defined (Western) culture. We will also take into consideration different theoretical frameworks such as posthumanist theory and gender studies in order to discuss and evaluate the selected texts from different perspectives and entry points.

Instructor(s): E. Tavella
Note(s): Taught in English. No previous knowledge of Italian is required. Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 25218, CMLT 25218

GNSE 25311. The Harem: Gender, Family and Power in Early Modern and Modern South Asia. 100 Units.

Even today, the word "harem" evokes orientalist imaginings of an exotic east. Popular images drawn from colonial-era representations continue to define our understanding of this complex institution. In this course we will work to complicate this understanding through considering the harem as a site of interplay between gender, family ties, and power. Taking into account influences from the larger Islamicate world as well as more local, Indic practices, we will historicize the harem, tracking its changes over the course of this long period, and critiquing its various (mis)representations. We will explore how the harem constituted a diverse space including not only elite women and their male relatives, but also other figures such as slave girls, eunuchs and guards. We will furthermore look at how this space was transformed in the era of European expansionism and colonial rule in the subcontinent, becoming a flash point over questions of social reform and Indian nationalism. Materials will include not just secondary literature but also excerpts from contemporary historical accounts, paintings, short stories, photographs, and films. No prior knowledge of South Asian history required.

Equivalent Course(s): SALC 25311, HIST 26612

GNSE 25403. The Bible in U.S. Politics: The Use and Abuse of Sacred Texts in the Public. 100 Units.

People across the political spectrum continue to cite the Bible to justify their viewpoints. Black Lives Matter protestors carried signs citing scriptural support for the rights of African Americans to life and justice, while some of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th first marched around their state capitols in recreation of biblical Israel's circling of the doomed city Jericho. How can the same book serve the political ends of such ideologically distinct movements? In this course, we will explore the variety of ways in which the Bible, especially the Christian New Testament, informs contemporary political discourse. We will discuss what the Bible is and where it comes from, and how an interpreter's social location and culturally and historical-bound assumptions shape their interpretation. We will build upon this foundation by examining several contentious political issues in which the Bible is commonly invoked, including abortion, sexuality, immigration, and gun rights. We will analyze the key passages used by supporters of various policy positions to support their claims, situating these texts in their original contexts and highlighting the historical distance that problematizes their use today. Prior familiarity with biblical literature is not required.

Instructor(s): Douglas Hoffer     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 25400, FNDL 25405, RLST 25400, KNOW 25400

GNSE 25506. Grandes voix féminines des Lettres africaines. 100 Units.

Ce cours s'intéresse aux œuvres des écrivaines francophones majeures de l'Afrique sub-saharienne dont Mariama Bâ, Aminata Sow Fall, Fatou Diome, Léonora Miano, Scholastique Mukasonga, et Véronique Tadjo. Il s'agit d'étudier les thématiques abordées par ces auteures et les techniques qu'elles utilisent non seulement pour représenter et repenser la condition de la femme africaine mais aussi pour contribuer activement aux débats socioculturels et politiques qui résonnent à travers le continent et sa diaspora. Dans ce cours, on analysera les questions d'engagement, de résistance et d'émancipation telles que mises en scène par des voix féminines africaines qui luttent contre les préjugés et opposent aux stéréotypes la diversité et le dynamisme de leurs créations.

Instructor(s): Khalid Lyamlahy     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 20500 or 20503
Note(s): Taught in French.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 35506, FREN 25505, FREN 35505

GNSE 25560. Race, Religion, and the Formation of the Latinx Identity. 100 Units.

In this class, we will focus on the conditions of possibility, development, and problems surrounding the formation of the Latinx identity. We will pay special attention to how such an identity is expressed through and informed by religious experience, and to how religious experience is theoretically articulated in Latinx theology and religious thought. To pursue this task, we will devote the first part of the class to the examination of the conditions of possibility of latinidad by focusing on the formation of the Latinx self. What makes Latines, Latines? Is this a forcefully assigned identity or one that can be claimed and embraced with pride? Is there such a thing as a unified Latinx self or shall we favor approaches that stress hybridity or multiplicity? In the second part of the class, we will shift from self-formation to community-formation by examining the experience of mestizaje (racial mixing) and its theoretical articulation in Latinx theology. Is this concept useful to describe the Latinx experience or does it romanticize the violence of European colonialism? Lastly, we will return to the formation of Latinx identity considering the ambiguities of religious ethnic identity through the examples of tensions between Catholic and Evangelical Latinos, and those emerging from the experiences of Latinos converting to non-Christian religions. No prerequisites.

Instructor(s): Raul Zegarra     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 25560, KNOW 25560, LACS 25560, RLST 25560

GNSE 25724. Yes, but make it fashion!" Fashion, Culture, and Identity. 100 Units.

In this course, we will explore the role of fashion in socio-cultural life, and the ways in which fashion simultaneously expresses and is shaped by identity. How do communities on the margins challenge dominant ideas of beauty, modesty, freedom, desire, and fashion? Conversely, how does fashion on the margins become mainstream? Drawing on studies across disciplines and the world, we will use fashion as a lens to examine among other things, blackness, queerness, masculinities, caste, Islam, and occupation.

Instructor(s): Anindita Chatterjee     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 25724

GNSE 25910. bell hooks and Cornel West: Education for Resistance. 100 Units.

Cornel West and bell hooks are two of the most influential philosophers and cultural critics of the past half-century. Their writings-including their co-authored book-address pressing questions about politics, religion, race, education, film, and gender. In different ways, they each find resources for hope, love, and liberation in an unjust social order. In this course, we will read selections from their writings over the last forty years alongside the authors who influenced their thinking (including Du Bois, Freire, Morrison, King, and Baldwin). We will pay special attention to how hooks and West communicate to popular audiences, how they engage religious traditions (their own and others'), and the role of dialogue in their thought and practice. The goal of the course is not just to think about hooks and West, but to think with them about ethics, writing, American culture, and the aims of education. No prior familiarity with either author is required.

Instructor(s): Russell Johnson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 25911, CRES 22910, RLST 25910

GNSE 25997. Three Comedies of Sexual Revolution. 100 Units.

This seminar will discuss three comedies of sexual revolution from three different times and places. Aristophanes's Assemblywomen recounts how under the leadership of the able Praxagora the women of Athens take over the Assembly and legislate a new regime in which private property is replaced by communism and sexual equity is achieved in favor of the old and unattractive at the expense of the young and attractive. Machiavelli's Mandragola dramatizes the tricks by which young Callimaco manages with the aid of the trickster parasite Ligurio to have sex with Lucrezia, the beautiful young wife of the elderly lawyer Nicomaco, with the consent of both her and her husband, ushering in a new regime in which all are satisfied. In Shakespeare's Measure for Measure Angelo the interim duke of Vienna institutes a repressive sexual regime in which the brothels are closed and extramarital sex is a capital crime. What might we learn about sexual relations from these diverse plays? Why are they comedies?

Instructor(s): Nathan Tarcov & Glenn Most      Terms Offered: Spring. Spring 2024
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates need the Instructor's permission to register.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 35997, SCTH 25823, CLCV 27623, GNSE 35997, PLSC 35997, SCTH 35997, CMLT 25823, CLAS 37623, FNDL 21772, PLSC 25997

GNSE 26003. Introduction à l'autobiographie. 100 Units.

This course traces the history of the autobiographical genre in France from the eighteenth century to the present. The study of key texts will be accompanied by an introduction to some critical perspectives. We will give special emphasis to questions of reference and authenticity, identity and subject formation, and gender and the family. Authors include Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Colette, Perec, and Sarraute.

Instructor(s): A. James     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 20500 or 20503
Note(s): Taught in French. This is an introductory-level course.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 26003

GNSE 26210. Witches, Sinners, and Saints. 100 Units.

This course examines representations of women's bodies and sexualities in early modern Iberian and colonial Latin American writings. We will study the body through a variety of lenses: the anatomical body as a site of construction of sexual difference, the witch's body as a site of sexual excess, the mystic's body as a double of the possessed body, the tortured body as a site of knowledge production, and the racialized bodies of women as sites to govern sexuality, spirituality, labor, and property in the reaches of the Spanish Empire.

Instructor(s): Larissa Brewer-García     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Prerequisite(s): For undergrads: SPAN 20300 or consent of instructor.
Note(s): Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26212, GNSE 36210, CRES 26220, LACS 36212, SPAN 36210, SPAN 26210, CRES 36220

GNSE 26240. Black Experimentation in Dance. 100 Units.

In this course, experimentation is explored as a choreographic approach to dancing and making dances. Grounded in process, practice, inquiry, and improvisation, experimentation has a long history in Black expressive culture. This class pairs readings at the intersection of Black performance theory, feminist and queer of color theory, and Black dance studies with examples of dance performances and artists interrogating topics such as the problem of aesthetic categorization, navigating racial visibility/invisibility onstage, and the politics of Black dancing bodies. The class focuses on concert dance in the United States, but may cover examples from social dance, popular entertainment, performance art, and global contexts.

Instructor(s): Tara Aisha Willis     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 26240, TAPS 36240, TAPS 26240, GNSE 36240

GNSE 26301. Women in French Literature. 100 Units.

TBD

Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 26300, FREN 36301

GNSE 26305. Moral Reasoning Between Church and State: The Case of Abortion. 100 Units.

What is the moral reasoning of those inspired by Christianity to overturn Roe v. Wade? Given constitutional blocks on the state's establishment of religion, how do Christians justify legislating religiously-grounded moral beliefs? How do these Christians imagine the role of the church in secular democratic space? What is the nature of their religious lives? Under what mandates do they operate? What scriptures do they read? What worship do they participate in? This course takes a close look at those vocationally-even, "spiritually"-called to severely limit women's reproductive rights. Specific attention will be given to how these communities understand God, scripture, gender, family, government, democracy, law, freedom, etc. While much of the course's attention will be given to arguments and rationales (including legal and judicial arguments and rationales), equal attention will be given to ethnographically understanding the lived experience of ardent pro-life advocacy. The course will conclude by examining religiously-inspired pro-choice alternatives to pro-life positions, with specific attention to how carefully pro-choice advocates attend to the arguments and worldviews of their pro-life counterparts. A wide range of texts and types of texts will be considered.

Instructor(s): Jonathan Tran     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the CS Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 26305, GNSE 36305, THEO 36305

GNSE 26313. Judaism, Medicine, and the Body. 100 Units.

For centuries the "Jewish doctor" has existed as an archetype, but is there such a thing as Jewish medicine? Does Judaism teach a distinct approach to the body, illness, and healing? And more significantly, why should religion have anything to do with one's health today? In this course we will grapple with our assumptions regarding modern Western medicine by discussing topics in Jewish medical thought and ethics. We will study how Judaism - its texts, history, laws, and traditions - intersect with issues of science, medicine, and the body. In particular we will think about how a Jewish approach to medicine, and more broadly a religious approach, might complicate contemporary assumptions about the body and healing. We will also consider how Jewish bodies have been imagined and stereotyped, and think about how that might affect Jewish approaches to disease and medical ethics. This course will thus offer students a way to think about alternatives to assumptions about medicine, the body, and ethics in the secular West, which will be explored both in class materials and in personal projects. No prior work in Jewish studies, medical ethics, or religious studies necessary.

Instructor(s): Ranana Dine     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 26313, HLTH 26313, CCTS 21022, KNOW 26313, RLST 26313, JWSC 26313

GNSE 26504. Renaissance Demonology. 100 Units.

In this course we analyze the complex concept of demonology according to early modern European culture from a theological, historical, philosophical, and literary point of view. The term 'demon' in the Renaissance encompasses a vast variety of meanings. Demons are hybrids. They are both the Christian devils, but also synonyms for classical deities, and Neo-platonic spiritual beings. As far as Christian theology is concerned, we read selections from Augustine's and Thomas Aquinas's treatises, some complex exorcisms written in Italy, and a recent translation of the infamous "Malleus maleficarum," the most important treatise on witch-hunt. We pay close attention to the historical evolution of the so-called witch-craze in Europe through a selection of the best secondary literature on this subject, with special emphasis on Michel de Certeau's "The Possession at Loudun." We also study how major Italian and Spanish women mystics, such as Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi and Teresa of Avila, approach the issue of demonic temptation and possession. As far as Renaissance Neoplatonic philosophy is concerned, we read selections from Marsilio Ficino's "Platonic Theology" and Girolamo Cardano's mesmerizing autobiography. We also investigate the connection between demonology and melancholy through a close reading of the initial section of Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" and Cervantes's short story "The Glass Graduate" ("El licenciado Vidriera").

Instructor(s): A. Maggi
Note(s): Course taught in English. Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 27602, HIST 22110, ITAL 26500, RLST 26501

GNSE 26624. Repression, Resilience, and Gender Politics in Basque Cultural Memory. 100 Units.

This course aims to explore the resilient character of contemporary Basque artistic and cultural production, with a particular focus on the increasing presence of strong female voices. One of the goals will be to explore forms of Basque cultural resistance that question the silencing and homogenizing tendencies of political institutions and their cultural hegemony, thus shedding light on both the dialectic between culture and counterculture and the mechanisms and agents of artistic censorship that come into play. Significant attention will also be given to the narrative poetics of the post-ETA period, during which works by female authors have played a leading role in examining the gender policies that have governed the so-called Basque conflict. The link established between the female figure and the transmission of a "dangerous" memory must be interpreted in the light of the current historical moment characterized by the struggle for the telling of the past and the interrogation of gender. Thus, with a focus on memory and gender, and drawing upon a diverse range of materials -including literary texts, sculptural works, music, and films- the course will provide students with a broad overview of contemporary culture in the Basque Country.

Instructor(s): Amaia Elizalde Estenaga
Note(s): Classes will be conducted in Spanish, and prior knowledge of the Basque language or culture is not necessary.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 26624, GNSE 36624, SPAN 36624, BASQ 36624, BASQ 26624

GNSE 26700. Jeanne d'Arc, histoire et legende. 100 Units.

S'appuyant sur l'exemple de Jeanne d'Arc, ce cours s'intéressera à la manière dont nous transformons le passé à la lumière des besoins et des soucis du présent. Nous situerons Jeanne d'Arc dans son contexte historique à l'aide des documents légaux, littéraires, et ecclésiastiques. Nous considérerons ensuite les représentations multiples et variées de Jeanne au cours des siècles suivants, examinant par exemple des textes de Voltaire, de Michelet, d'Anouilh, et d'autres, ainsi que des films qui présentent la vie de Jeanne d'Arc.

Instructor(s): Daisy Delogu     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 20500, 20503 or a literature course taught in French.
Note(s): Taught in French.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 26700, MDVL 26700

GNSE 27006. Research in Archives: Human Bodies in History. 100 Units.

How have we come to know and experience our bodies? This undergraduate seminar develops humanities research skills necessary to study the body in history. Spanning early modern cultural practices to modern medicine, science, and technology, this course explores how ideas and practices concerning the body have changed over time and how the body itself is shaped by culture and society. A major focus will be learning how to conduct different forms of historical research to produce cutting-edge humanities scholarship about the human body. Readings will introduce key themes and recent scholarship including work on disability, reproduction, race, gender, ethics, extreme environments, and identity. This dynamic research group will grapple with issues at the heart of our corporeal existence by combining perspectives from the history of science, medicine, and technology, cultural history, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS).

Instructor(s): J. Bimm and I. Clever     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course partially fulfills the research seminar requirement for the IRHUM major.
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 27706, KNOW 26076, HIST 25513, IRHU 27006

GNSE 27300. Le Roman de la Rose. 100 Units.

The "Roman de la Rose" (mid-13th century), a sprawling, encyclopedic summa composed by two separate authors, was arguably the single most influential vernacular text of the Middle Ages. Whether they hated or admired it, subsequent writers could not escape the long shadow cast by this magisterial œuvre. And, as Kate Soper's recent opera adaptation of the "Rose" demonstrates, this labyrinthine work remains a source of creative inspiration. In this course we will read the "Rose" together. Each student will choose a critical lens (e.g. gender and sexuality, animal and/or ecocritical studies, ethics and philosophy, reception studies, manuscript studies, text & image, etc.) to structure their engagement with the text, and together we will collaborate to chart a rich and diverse set of interpretive paths through this complex work. All registered students will attend the cours magistral (taught in English). In addition, all registered students will select and attend either the French discussion section, or the critical theory section. Students are welcome to attend both.

Instructor(s): Daisy Delogu     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): For undergrads, FREN 20500 or 20503 and one literature course taught in French. Taught in English.
Note(s): All registered students will attend the cours magistral (taught in English). In addition, all registered students will select and attend either the French discussion section, or the critical theory section. Students are welcome to attend both.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 21700, FNDL 21700, FREN 31700

GNSE 27508. Women and the Mafia in Contemporary Italian Cinema. 100 Units.

This course will examine how gender dynamics within mafia contexts have been represented in a selection of Italian films. Students will engage in cinematic analysis by drawing from sociological and psychological studies on female roles in relation to organized crime. Both these fields, sociology and psychology, have underscored the important part that women play in relation to the mafia, notwithstanding the rigid patriarchal structure that allows only male affiliation. Although focusing primarily on Sicilian mafia, this course will include information on other types of Italian mafia, namely Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita. Vocabulary in Italian to identify formal elements of the films will be provided throughout the course.

Instructor(s): Veronica Vegna
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 20300 or consent of instructor.
Note(s): Taught in Italian. Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): ITAL 27500

GNSE 27544. Unfinished Business: Revenge and Narrative Form. 100 Units.

What does it mean for something-a concept, an object, a historical inheritance-to "return with a vengeance"? Is revenge motivated by a desire for justice-a clear if ruthless commitment to equivalence-or does it demonstrate a drive towards excess? Does revenge restore order to a system of accounting, or does it compound wrongs that could never have been righted in the first place? Whom exactly is the post-breakup "revenge body" for? As these questions suggest, revenge possesses a special knack for confusing categories of self and other, and resurrecting uncertainties when it comes to cause and effect. Its resistance to closure makes it a complex model for social relation and narrative form. Revenge also has no respect for scale. Making no pretension to being impersonal or detached, revenge is linked to more minor forms like pettiness or grudges. Yet revenge plots often address scales far beyond the personal: events or contexts unfolding at the register of the historical, the intergenerational, the global. Revenge thus undoes unsustainable dichotomies between subject and object, social and individual, and more. We will explore revenge in novels and films alongside theories of revenge: psychoanalytic theories of fixation and the refusal to mourn, queer theorists and affect theorists writing on disaffection and alien affects, and even self-help writers counseling against the self-destructive, corrosive effects of not letting something go.

Instructor(s): Shirl Yang     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 27554, ENGL 27554

GNSE 27606. Beyond Ferrante: Italian Women Writers Rediscovered and the Global Editorial Market. 100 Units.

In this class we read selected works from some of the most influential Italian women writers who are not named Elena Ferrante. Some of these writers contributed to the cultural and literary background that produced Ferrante as well. Others can be seen as Ferrante's peers and even heirs. The remarkable global success of Ferrante's work has created the so-called "Ferrante effect." Both in Italy and abroad, editors and scholars are finally paying attention to long overlooked Italian women writers. We will explore this trend of reissues, new publications, and new translations. How has the Ferrante effect recast our assumptions about literary value? Can restorative justice take place within the global editorial market? Is it legitimate to speak about an editorial affirmative action? What is the relationship between Italian periphery and the dominant literary empire? Among the authors we will read are classics--such as Elsa Morante, Natalia Ginzburg, and Anna Maria Ortese--but also new and overlooked voices--such as Fabrizia Ramondino, Fausta Cialente, Paola Masino, Brianna Carafa, Claudia Durastanti, and Veronica Raimo.

Instructor(s): Maria Anna Mariani
Note(s): Taught in Italian. Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): GLST 27600, ITAL 27600

GNSE 27608. Women and Islam. 100 Units.

This course is an introduction to the field of women, gender and Islam. We will examine the literature on Islamic legal, historical, Quranic and sacred textual constructs of women as well as critically explore the lived realities and experiences of Muslim women living in Muslim-majority societies and in the west. In centering the work of Muslim feminist scholars, students will gain an understanding of the contemporary debates around women's rights, sexuality, roles, responsibilities and gender relations in the context of Islamic law and the hadith literature. The discursive constructions and social realities of Muslim women are critically examined through historic and literary representations, ethnographic accounts, human rights discourses, sexual politics and secular and Islamic feminism(s). Moreover, this course situates Muslim women as complex, multidimensional actors engaged in knowledge production and political and feminist struggles, as opposed to the oppressed, victim-centered images that have regained currency in the representation of Muslim women in the post 9/11 era.

Instructor(s): Maliha Chishti     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course meets the LMCS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 27601, ISLM 37601, HMRT 27601, GNSE 37608, GLST 27601

GNSE 27880. Gendering Arabs: Embodiment, Agency, Affect. 100 Units.

This course explores the diverse ways that gender and sexuality are represented in contemporary cultural texts-film, fiction, and art-from the Middle East and North Africa. These creative works will be paired with critical writings from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives (gender studies, queer theory, affect theory, literary and cultural studies, anthropology, Islamic studies, and activist literature). While we will attend to the layered histories and legacies of colonialism, orientalism, globalization, military occupation, and war, our goal is to center gender discourses and practices as they are negotiated, performed, and contested by artists, writers, and thinkers in and from the region. Our readings and films emphasize how questions of agency, affect, and embodiment shape the lifeworlds and creative imaginaries of cultural producers from the Middle East and North Africa.

Instructor(s): Hoda El Shakry     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): NB: This course is designed for undergraduates and MA students. PhD Students will not be admitted.
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 27880, CMLT 37880, AASR 37880, CMLT 27880, GNSE 37880, ENGL 37880, ISLM 37880, RLST 27880, CHDV 27880

GNSE 28103. Regendering the Medieval Body Politic. 100 Units.

TBD

Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): FREN 38102, GNSE 38103, FREN 28102

GNSE 28122. Diasporic Practices in Contemporary Art. 100 Units.

The class will examine various phenomena of "Diasporic Practices in Contemporary Art", such as fragmented histories, the question of origin(ality), the limits of translation, social belonging and "the chosen family", and (over-)representation of origin. In class we will discuss readings by (a.o.) Grada Kilomba, Adrian Piper, Éduard Glissant, Langston Hughes, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Hito Steyerl. Students will be asked to present on contemporary artists highlighting their diasporic strategies, while also producing creative works through assignments that employ diasporic strategies and that will be discussed in class.

Instructor(s): J. Phillips     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Note(s): Please email Julia Phillips juliaphillips@uchicago.edu with a brief description of how your work relates to a diasporic experience and/or your personal investment in the subject (150-300 words).
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 38122, ARTV 34122, ARTV 24122, CRES 24122, ARTH 24122

GNSE 28498. Women, Development and Politics. 100 Units.

This course will explore the dominant and emerging trends and debates in the field of women and international development. The major theoretical perspectives responding to global gender inequities will be explored alongside a wide range of themes impacting majority-world women, such as free market globalization, health and sexuality, race and representation, participatory development, human rights, the environment and participation in politics. Course lectures will integrate policy and practitioner accounts and perspectives to reflect the strong influence development practice has in shaping and informing the field. Course materials will also include anti-racist, postcolonial and post-development interruptions to dominant development discourse, specifically to challenge the underlying biases and assumptions of interventions that are predicated on transforming "them" into "us". The material will also explore the challenges of women participating in politics and what are the consequences when they do or do not.

Instructor(s): Bautista, M. and Chishti, M.      Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 28498, PBPL 28498

GNSE 28600. Pasolini. 100 Units.

This course examines each aspect of Pasolini's artistic production according to the most recent literary and cultural theories, including Gender Studies. We shall analyze his poetry (in particular "Le Ceneri di Gramsci" and "Poesie informa di rosa"), some of his novels ("Ragazzi di vita," "Una vita violenta," "Teorema," "Petrolio"), and his numerous essays on the relationship between standard Italian and dialects, semiotics and cinema, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary Western culture. We shall also discuss the following films: "Accattone," "La ricotta," "Edipo Re," "Teorema," and "Salo".

Instructor(s): Armando Maggi
Note(s): Taught in English. Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 23500, GNSE 38600, CMST 33500, FNDL 28401, ITAL 28400, ITAL 38400

GNSE 28640. The Book of Ruth: Bible, Literature, Gender. 100 Units.

The Book of Ruth offers the most elaborate tale of a woman to be found in the Bible, but even this relatively detailed account is astonishingly laconic. The Book of Ruth is not really a book. It is only four chapters long - more of a short story, or a very short story, than a book. And yet, despite its ellipses, Ruth's cryptic tale is remarkable for its capacity to provide, with but few vignettes, a vibrant portrait of one of the most intriguing characters in the Bible. The first part of this course will be devoted to the biblical text itself. We will consider literary and feminist readings of the Book of Ruth while exploring broader issues of biblical poetics. Special attention will be given to questions of migration - to different accounts of the Book of Ruth as a paradigmatic tale of a migrant woman. The second part of the course will be devoted to the reception of the Book of Ruth - from the Midrash and the Zohar to modern literature. Among the modern and contemporary writers to be considered: S. Y. Agnon, Allen Ginsberg, Toni Morrison, and Michal Ben-Naftali. The discussion will also entail an exploration of adaptations of the Book of Ruth in art - from Nicholas Poussin to Adi Nes.

Instructor(s): Ilana Pardes     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): RLST 22640, GNSE 38640, BIBL 38640, FNDL 28640, JWSC 28640, CMLT 38640, CMLT 28640

GNSE 28705. Literature as Resistance: Reclaiming Italian Margins. 100 Units.

Resistance takes on many forms, some more explicit, some more elusive and covert; the act of writing is one of them. How has writing been used as an act of resistance in the Italian social landscape? How does literature present marginalized individuals with a way to resist cultural and physical oppression, and provide them with a means to promote social and cultural transformation? To answer these and other related questions, this course will explore the formation of counter-hegemonic discourse through the literary production of contemporary writers at the margins of Italian society.

Instructor(s): Elizabeth Tavella
Note(s): Taught in English. Course not offered in 24-25.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 28705, ITAL 28705

GNSE 28775. Racial Melancholia. 100 Units.

This course provides students with an opportunity to think race both within a psychoanalytic framework and alongside rituals of loss, grief, and mourning. In particular, we will interrogate how psychoanalytic formulations of mourning and melancholia have shaped theories of racial melancholia that emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century. Turning to Asian American, African American, and Latinx theoretical and literary archives, we will interrogate the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality and ask: How do literatures of loss enable us to understand the relationship between histories of racial trauma, injury, and grief, on the one hand, and the formation of racial identity, on the other? What might it mean to imagine literary histories of race as grounded fundamentally in the experience of loss? What forms of reparations, redress, and resistance are called for by such literatures of racial grief, mourning, and melancholia? And, finally, how, if understood as themselves rituals of grief, might psychoanalysis and the writing of literature assume the role of religious devotion in the face of loss and trauma?

Instructor(s): Kris Trujillo     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): PhD Students in Comparative Literature and Divinity are given priority registration and should email Ingrid Sagor, isagor@uchicago.edu with consent requests.
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 28775, CMLT 38775, RLVC 38775, ENGL 38775, RLST 28775, GNSE 38775, CRES 22775, CMLT 28775

GNSE 28802. United States Labor History. 100 Units.

This course will explore the history of labor and laboring people in the United States. The significance of work will be considered from the vantage points of political economy, culture, and law. Key topics will include working-class life, industrialization and corporate capitalism, slavery and emancipation, the role of the state and trade unions, and race and sex difference in the workplace.

Instructor(s): A. Stanley     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Graduate students by consent of instructor
Note(s): Assignments: short papers and an in-class presentation
Equivalent Course(s): LLSO 28802, HIST 38802, GNSE 38802, HIST 28802

GNSE 29000. The American Culture Wars. 100 Units.

Should we tear down statues of Confederate soldiers? Should religious institutions be exempt from public health regulations? How (if at all) should we regulate abortion? These questions are only the latest battlefields in the "culture wars," the long-running conversation-or, more often, shouting match-about how Americans ought to live. This seminar will explore how Americans have wrestled with questions of morality and national identity since the country's founding. Two questions will drive our discussion. First, why do certain issues become the subject of fierce cultural conflict? Second, do these conflicts enrich or undermine American democracy?

Instructor(s): William Schultz     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27715, RLST 29000, AMER 29000, DEMS 29000, CRES 27000

GNSE 29003. Islam Beyond the Human: Spirits, Demons, Devils, and Ghosts. 100 Units.

This seminar explores the diverse spiritual and sentient lifeforms within Islamic cosmology that exist beyond the human-from jinn, angels, and ghosts to demons and devils. We will focus on theological, scientific, philosophical, anthropological, and historical accounts of these creatures across a variety of texts, as well as their literary and filmic afterlives in contemporary cultural representations. In so doing, we consider the various religious, social, and cultural inflections that shape local cosmological imaginaries. We ask how reflecting on the nonhuman world puts the human itself in question, including such concerns as sexuality and sexual difference, the boundaries of the body, reason and madness, as well as the limits of knowledge.

Instructor(s): Alireza Doostdar and Hoda El Shakry     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Enrollment by Consent Only (for both grads and undergrads). Students should send the instructors a paragraph explaining their interest and prior preparation or familiarity with the themes in the course.
Note(s): This course meets the LMCS or SCSR Committee distribution requirement for Divinity students.
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 49003, GNSE 49003, ANTH 49003, ANTH 29003, CMLT 29003, AASR 49003, NEHC 29003, CMLT 49003, NEHC 49003, ISLM 49003, RLST 29003

GNSE 29117. Theater and Performance in Latin America. 100 Units.

What is performance? How has it been used in Latin America and the Caribbean? This course is an introduction to theatre and performance in Latin America and the Caribbean that will examine the intersection of performance and social life. While we will place particular emphasis on performance art, we will examine some theatrical works. We ask: how have embodied practice, theatre and visual art been used to negotiate ideologies of race, gender and sexuality? What is the role of performance in relation to systems of power? How has it negotiated dictatorship, military rule, and social memory? Ultimately, the aim of this course is to give students an overview of Latin American performance including blackface performance, indigenous performance, as well as performance and activism.

Instructor(s): Danielle Roper     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25.
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates must be in their third or fourth year.
Note(s): Taught in English.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 38479, SPAN 39117, RDIN 29117, SPAN 29117, LACS 29117, TAPS 28479, LACS 39117, GNSE 39117, RDIN 39117

GNSE 29237. Black Social Thought. 100 Units.

This course will familiarize students with social science academic and lay intellectual theorists who speak to and about the political, economic, and gender ways of being within the African Diaspora. Most of the course will highlight the voices of Western scholars, pan-African international scholars and thought will be discussed as well.

Instructor(s): Painia, Brianne     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 30339, KNOW 30237, GNSE 30237, MAPS 30237, CRES 22237

GNSE 29427. Fashion, Empire, Capitalism. 100 Units.

Clothing, famously termed the "social skin", mediates the space between individuals and societies. Whether articulating personal taste or reflecting a collective identity, dress can be a powerful symbol-both historically and in the contemporary world. Worn against the skin, clothing is both intimate and connects us to a global, multi-billion-dollar system that employs roughly one in every ten people worldwide. This course addresses the multivalent history of dress from early modern imperial encounters in the Atlantic World, to anti-colonial movements in South Asia, to the nineteen-forties American Zoot Suit Riots-demonstrating the ways that clothes are connected to gendered and racial categories, political projects, and the shape of global capitalism. Students will analyze case studies from Malabar to Manchester, colonial Lima to revolutionary France, nineteenth-century Zanzibar to nineteen-eighties New York. Examining the history of dress and its global interconnections necessitates an interdisciplinary approach; therefore, students will combine historical scholarship with theoretical frameworks from the anthropology of dress and methodologies from material culture studies to analyze sources ranging from museum objects to films, haute couture fashion to flip-flops. Finally, this course sheds light on historic interconnections and the development of fashion systems, asks what ways these continue to animate our contemporary world, and imagines new possibilities for the future.

Instructor(s): K. Hickerson     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Assignments: material analyses, essays, and an original research project.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 29427, RDIN 29427

GNSE 29647. Tutorial: Mathematical Knowledge: Race, Politics and Materiality. 100 Units.

Mathematical knowledge is commonly treated as objective and neutral, even though it is produced through specific societal contexts and in turn impacts those same contexts. In this course we will take a thematic approach to studying how mathematical and quantitative knowledges are produced and used through political processes from which they cannot be separated. We will look at examples such as the connections between plantation slavery and the precise measurement of molasses barrels in the 18th century, the gendered nature of the prestigious Tripos exam in the 19th century, 20th century attempts to quantify and manage reproduction, and 21st century issues of algorithmic policing. We will consider multiple angles for approaching the study of mathematics by connecting mathematical knowledge to topics such as labor, racial sciences, pedagogy, material tools, masculinity, nation-building, and embodiment. This will allow us to move beyond simply considering representation (of women in STEM, for example) to think about how gender and race are part of the construction of mathematical knowledge. In particular, this course will encourage students to think creatively about other possibilities for how we could justly and effectively use mathematics in our lives. There are no mathematical pre-requisites; students with a variety of experiences with mathematics will be able to participate fully in this course.

Instructor(s): Abigail Taylor-Roth     Terms Offered: Spring. Offered in Spring 2024
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 25508, HIPS 29647

GNSE 29700. Readings in Gender Studies. 100 Units.

This is a general reading and research course for independent study not related to the BA thesis or BA research.

Terms Offered: Autumn,Spring,Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and director of undergraduate studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. May be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. With prior approval, students who are majoring in Gender Studies may use this course to satisfy program requirements.

GNSE 29800-29900. BA Seminar; BA Essay.

GNSE 29800 and 29900 form a two-quarter sequence for seniors who are writing a BA essay.