WGST 5180 - Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

Understanding the various methods that serve as the foundation for the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies discipline. Given that this discipline is in many ways interdisciplinary, how we conceive of methods is markedly distinct. As such, the methods that serve as foundational for this course concern particular lenses that could (or ought to) be applied to any field of study and yet are also central to Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Not only does this course seek to understand the experiences of race, gender, sexuality, but it will also seek to expand a framework to account for a multiplicity of systems of oppression, such as ableism, xenophobia, and settler colonialism. Also, this course complicates understandings of these various systems, of the ways in which they compound and intersect. Finally, how we ought to do the work of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies is considered. For instance, how are we to be accountable to the communities we seek to engage with textually? In what ways ought we to develop our political and philosophical commitments when doing this work?

Credit Hours: (3)

Schedule of Classes