Graduate Program

Spring Term Schedule

Spring 2024

Number	Title	Instructor	Time
GSWS 406-1 Global Politics of Gender and Health Rachel O'Donnell MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM
Graduate section of GSWS 206: Global Politics of Gender and Health Location Lechase Room 104 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)
GSWS 459-1 Birth in the Nation: Reproduction in the United States Brianna Theobald W 2:00PM - 4:40PM
Why did fertility rates decline over the nineteenth century? Why did women begin choosing hospital rather than home births in the twentieth century? What difference have the Pill and other reproductive technologies made in shaping how women think about pregnancy and childbirth? Why have breastfeeding rates been rising since the 1970s? How have women's reproductive experiences differed along lines of race and class? In this course, we will consider these questions and more as we explore how women's reproductive experiences and the meanings attached to such experiences have changed over time and why. This is a research seminar, so students will further explore these issues through their own research and writing on some aspect of the history of reproduction. Readings and discussions will focus on the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but students may explore the location and period of their choice in their papers. Location Rush Rhees Library Room 305 (W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)
GSWS 532-1 Subjectivity and Form: Trans Aesthetics Rachel Haidu R 2:00PM - 4:40PM
Trans studies is an interdisciplinary field that addresses questions of gender, sexuality, and embodiment through the lens of transgender experiences. How does this field change both the ways we look at objects and their forms, and how we consider subjectivity —the ways in which we are overdetermined by not only our individual and interpersonal experiences, but the many frameworks (race, class, etc.) that tell us who we are? In other words, how do we understand a field that is about “who” we are but also about change and transition to fundamentally alter the concept of subjectivity? Further: how can we understand the process of transition as a question inside not only subjectivity, but also form? What terms—from “becoming” to “the body,” from “capacity” to “visibility”—lend trans aesthetics a specific usefulness to thinking about form, and make it an urgent set of methods and methodological challenges for the present? Objects from film and television to contemporary art and media will be the main focus, along with texts by Susan Stryker, Eliza Steinbock, Marquis Bey, Kay Gabriel, Paul Preciado and others; a background or some prior readings in queer theory or queer studies is recommended. Location Morey Room 524 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Number	Title	Instructor	Time
Monday
Monday and Wednesday
GSWS 406-1 Global Politics of Gender and Health Rachel O'Donnell
Graduate section of GSWS 206: Global Politics of Gender and Health
Tuesday
Tuesday and Thursday
Wednesday
GSWS 459-1 Birth in the Nation: Reproduction in the United States Brianna Theobald
Why did fertility rates decline over the nineteenth century? Why did women begin choosing hospital rather than home births in the twentieth century? What difference have the Pill and other reproductive technologies made in shaping how women think about pregnancy and childbirth? Why have breastfeeding rates been rising since the 1970s? How have women's reproductive experiences differed along lines of race and class? In this course, we will consider these questions and more as we explore how women's reproductive experiences and the meanings attached to such experiences have changed over time and why. This is a research seminar, so students will further explore these issues through their own research and writing on some aspect of the history of reproduction. Readings and discussions will focus on the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but students may explore the location and period of their choice in their papers.
Thursday
GSWS 532-1 Subjectivity and Form: Trans Aesthetics Rachel Haidu
Trans studies is an interdisciplinary field that addresses questions of gender, sexuality, and embodiment through the lens of transgender experiences. How does this field change both the ways we look at objects and their forms, and how we consider subjectivity —the ways in which we are overdetermined by not only our individual and interpersonal experiences, but the many frameworks (race, class, etc.) that tell us who we are? In other words, how do we understand a field that is about “who” we are but also about change and transition to fundamentally alter the concept of subjectivity? Further: how can we understand the process of transition as a question inside not only subjectivity, but also form? What terms—from “becoming” to “the body,” from “capacity” to “visibility”—lend trans aesthetics a specific usefulness to thinking about form, and make it an urgent set of methods and methodological challenges for the present? Objects from film and television to contemporary art and media will be the main focus, along with texts by Susan Stryker, Eliza Steinbock, Marquis Bey, Kay Gabriel, Paul Preciado and others; a background or some prior readings in queer theory or queer studies is recommended.