Love, hate, desire, disgust, shame or anger: we experience a rollercoaster of emotions in our daily lives, and it is often our feelings that connect us with each other and ourselves. While emotions seem to be universal and transgressing boundaries of all sorts, they are often essentialized—scrutinized—into “feminine” and “masculine.” Emotions are bound to and produced by every body, but different bodies, and are therefore complexly grounded in personal and collective experiences shaped by the intricate intersection of gender, sexuality, race, class and ability. In this class, we will investigate how media objects of contemporary (popular) culture represent and produce these complex feelings viscerally—sometimes even hitting us in the gut to reflect upon and to challenge notions of who is allowed to feel what and when. We will work with a range of readings from, among others, psychology, affect theory, feminist theory and visual culture to analyze how cultural objects such as HBO’s Euphoria, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite allow us to feel gender or to make senseable sexualities; especially during a time in which our cognitive abilities to make sense of events happening around us often seem exhausted. Students will have the opportunity to create audiovisual projects to reflect and practice visceral media.

Location

Lattimore Room 540 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary scholarship of Gender, Sexuality and Women's studies. As a survey course, this class is designed to give students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines a basic understanding of debates and perspectives discussed in the field. We will use gender as a critical lens to examine some of the social, cultural, economic, scientific, and political practices that organize our lives. We will explore a multitude of feminist perspectives on the intersections of sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, religion, and other categories of identity. In this course, we will interrogate these categories as socially constructed while acknowledging that these constructions have real effects in subordinating groups, marking bodies, and creating structural, intersectional inequalities.

Location

Hylan Building Room 105 (M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Exploration of anthropological interpretation, research, and writing on the way different peoples understand and deal wit issues of illness and disease. Open only to First Year and Sophomore students.

Location

Morey Room 205 (MW 6:15PM - 7:30PM)

This course will examine texts written by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian mystics in different historical and geographic locales. We will begin by developing an understanding of mysticism within each Abrahamic religion before focusing on the mystical expressions of practitioners in testimonies and poetry. One of the main questions that we will explore will be the nature of the relationship between the mystic, their purported experience, and their textual report (i.e. the memoir). The role of gender in mysticism will be foregrounded, whether via texts written by women, by men “thinking with” women, or men that imagine themselves as “feminine.”

Location

Wegmans Room 1005 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

For as long as there have been movies, filmmakers have used the medium of film to explore concerns central to the study of religion: how does (or doesn’t) God act in the world? What worlds do “religious” institutions engender, and what room do these worlds afford for individual will and desire? Within and without these structures, how is one to be good? Special attention will be paid to questions of representing metaphysics, of ethics, and of power and agency, particularly vis-à-vis gender and sexuality.

Location

Lechase Room 163 (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

This course surveys American history through the words and work of women. Well-known historical events and developments--including but not limited to the Revolutionary War, the abolition of slavery, the Great Depression, and the protest movements of the 1960s look different when considered from the perspective of women. The course will further examine how social categories such as race, class, sexuality, and religion have shaped women's historical experiences. Broad in chronological scope, this course is not intended to be comprehensive. Rather, we will utilize primary and secondary sources to delve into important historical moments and to explore questions about the practice and politics of studying women's history.

Location

Gavett Hall Room 312 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

The study of issues surrounding human sexuality as it has been treated in world religions. Issues, such as homosexuality, transgender/transsexual, marriage, family, sexual ethics, gender in world religions will be covered. Also, the role of Eros in mystical traditions of various world religions (Sufi, Christian Mysticism, Hinduism) will be examined in those instances where the erotic and the spiritual have been manifested together. Classroom discussion about what is the connection between sexuality and spirituality and how have religious traditions dealt with that connection? College hook-up culture is also examined in light of the study of spirituality and sexuality.

Location

Interfaith Chapel Room 200 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

The goal of this course is to radically problematize the concepts of queer, gender and sexuality, fundamentally questioning the assumptions that attend the usage and deployment of these terms in quotidian discourse. This will not be your typical queer theory course as we will not move from the center to the margins, relegating racialized bodies to the position of reactionary actors responding to an epistemic erasure. Rather we will center these critiques as the basis for a new canon and thus grounds for theory.

Location

Lechase Room 148 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course explores the relationship between the environment and social inequality, focusing specifically on issues of gender, race, and class. Using intersectional feminist analysis, we will investigate the historical roots of modern dualist constructions that juxtapose humans and the environment, men and women, creating an anthropocentric, racialized, and gendered framework that produces and maintains social inequalities and a destructive attitude toward the environment. Topics may include the following: historical ideas about nature and environment; eco-imperialism; eco-feminism; climate change and its connection to issues of race, gender, and class; justice and sustainability; poverty and natural resources; food justice; natural disasters and their context; racialized outdoors, and others. The course features multiple field trips and time outdoors. 

Location

Hylan Building Room 305 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course explores the relationship between the environment and social inequality, focusing specifically on issues of gender, race, and class. Using intersectional feminist analysis, we will investigate the historical roots of modern dualist constructions that juxtapose humans and the environment, men and women, creating an anthropocentric, racialized, and gendered framework that produces and maintains social inequalities and a destructive attitude toward the environment. Topics may include the following: historical ideas about nature and environment; eco-imperialism; eco-feminism; climate change and its connection to issues of race, gender, and class; justice and sustainability; poverty and natural resources; food justice; natural disasters and their context; racialized outdoors, and others. The course features multiple field trips and time outdoors. 

Location

Hylan Building Room 305 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This seminar will examine the representation of Orthodox Jews by American Jews on both page and screen. This course should equip you to understand—historically and critically—the core factors in this contemporary culture war such as (gender, religious authority, political affiliation) as well as to empathetically appreciate current concern over acculturation, Americanization, and Jewish continuity.

Location

Lechase Room 104 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

We usually think of technology as something that is separate from our bodies and neutral toward gender, race, and sexual orientation. How do our cultural biases about gendered and racial identities inform the development and use of technology? Media archaeology offers a means to understand these biases inherited by technology through studying both new and obsolete technologies—and their cultural representations—for successes, failures, and alternative possibilities. By digging through layers of technological history and challenging accepted narratives of progress, this course questions assumptions underlying how and for whom technology is developed. The course examines the relationship of technology to society and our everyday, embodied lives through taking concrete examples, like photography and artificial intelligence, as case studies. We will look for the stories of people forgotten by history (often women) who created media and contributed to the development of new technologies, and we will consider the place of technology in our cultural imagination, including narratives about its oppressive and emancipatory possibilities. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach in the chosen readings and incorporates films and popular media. Classes rely upon student participation and discussion. Students will acquire critical skills to better understand our technological present with implications for the methodology and practice of creating new media and technologies that break with the biases of the past. 

This class may count for a media history, theory & practice requirement for the DMS major or minor. This course may also be taken to fulfill an upper-level writing requirement in consultation with the instructor. 

Location

Lattimore Room 540 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

We usually think of technology as something that is separate from our bodies and neutral toward gender, race, and sexual orientation. How do our cultural biases about gendered and racial identities inform the development and use of technology? Media archaeology offers a means to understand these biases inherited by technology through studying both new and obsolete technologies—and their cultural representations—for successes, failures, and alternative possibilities. By digging through layers of technological history and challenging accepted narratives of progress, this course questions assumptions underlying how and for whom technology is developed. The course examines the relationship of technology to society and our everyday, embodied lives through taking concrete examples, like photography and artificial intelligence, as case studies. We will look for the stories of people forgotten by history (often women) who created media and contributed to the development of new technologies, and we will consider the place of technology in our cultural imagination, including narratives about its oppressive and emancipatory possibilities. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach in the chosen readings and incorporates films and popular media. Classes rely upon student participation and discussion. Students will acquire critical skills to better understand our technological present with implications for the methodology and practice of creating new media and technologies that break with the biases of the past. 

This class may count for a media history, theory & practice requirement for the DMS major or minor. This course may also be taken to fulfill an upper-level writing requirement in consultation with the instructor. 

Location

Lattimore Room 540 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This course traces the development of the fantasy literature genre from ETA Hoffmans The Golden Pot to JK Rowlings Harry Potter series. Particular attention is devoted to the tropes and structures of fantasy narratives as they offer the reader an escape from a mundane or threatening world and provide intricate social critiques. Topics addressed include: wizards, witches, talking cats, flights of fantasy, new worlds, and social constructions of work, class, others, families, mothers, fathers, masculinity, femininity etc. Authors include: Hoffmann, Rowling, Shelley, Orwell, Tolkien, Kafka, Atwood etc.

Location

Lechase Room 141 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Rochester sits in one of the world’s most explicitly carceral landscapes, with more than a dozen state prisons within a 90 min drive. This co-taught course is a collaborative ethnographic research project designed to examine how the presence of prisons in towns around Rochester reflects and shapes the political, economic, and cultural lives of those who live in the region. Students will be introduced to methods and practices of ethnography and conduct firsthand research on the cultural politics of prison towns. Through assigned reading, students will learn about the history, sociology, and cultural logics of Rochester and the wider region, and of mass incarceration. What does a prison mean for a person living near one? How does the presence of prisons shape people’s notions of justice, citizenship, and punishment? How do these nearby but largely invisible institutions shape the ways that we live in Rochester? Recommended prior courses: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology or Incarceration Nation

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 269 (M 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course contests its title. There is language and literature/film that records how language has failed as a means of (human) species adaptation toward conflict resolution in domestic and international contexts. This course, following the observations of Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas (1939), tries to document the language/literary connections between domestic violence and war making. In domestic situations, violence is protected by traditions of privacy and male governance of households; in public situations, there has been an inertia throughout recorded history in enacting the ideal announced in Isaiah: "[nations] shall not learn war any more." In our own society genres of popular and elite culture teach the necessity and glory of war through literature, film, toys, sports, and ideals of heroic behavior. Our normal ways of speaking still presuppose violence and war as a "last resort" in solving domestic and international antagonisms.

Location

Morey Room 504 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Dance/Movement Therapy Foundations examines the field’s approaches to (1) enhancing personal, professional, and creative development, and (2) treating a wide range of challenges (e.g., autism, anxiety, eating disorders, abuse, developmental challenges, and psychosis). To these ends, students will learn how Dance/Movement Therapy integrates natural movement, formal elements of dance, music, language, psychology, counseling, neuroscience, and concepts drawn from Asian approaches to healing. Improvisational dance, music-making, role plays, live music, and videotapes of actual sessions highlight these concepts. Dress comfortably. Be prepared to move. Participation in 3 labs during the semester will be required.

Location

O'Brien Residence Hall Room 104 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

An isolated country parsonage. A half mad father. A profligate brother addicted to drugs. Three uniquely gifted sisters who burned their hearts and brains out on the moors, but not before leaving us some of the most passionate and revolutionary literature of the 19th c. This is the stuff of the Brontë legend. This course will explore the continuing appeal of the Brontës and the peculiar fascination that they have exercised on the literary imagination. Looking intensively at some of the best-loved novels of all time, we will explore the roots and reaches of the Brontë myth. We will also consider the Brontës’ legacy in in some of the many adaptations (and continuations) of their work in print and on the screen. And we will look at our seemingly insatiable appetite for new tellings of the Brontës’ life stories. The course, then, will consider not the only the Brontës’ literary productions, but also our culture’s production and reproduction of “the Brontës” over the years. 

Location

Meliora Room 205 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room 442 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

How does Black Paris, as the lived experience of today marginalized immigrants, as a site of the production of a certain understanding of blackness, contribute to our understanding of the global black condition? This course is a study of Black Paris, as imagined by generations of Black cultural producers. Paris is a space of freedom and artistic glory that African American writers, soldiers and artists were denied back home. For students from French colonies, Paris was the birthplace of Negritude, the cultural renaissance informed by the Harlem Renaissance. Black Paris, for those caught in poor suburbs, calls to mind images of riots, dilapidated schools, but also rap music and hip-hop, elements of transnational black imagination that sometimes speaks the language of the Black Lives Matter movement. In English

Location

Lechase Room 182 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Exploration of the ways males and females differ in interaction, theories of development of sex differences, consequences for social change.

Location

Meliora Room 203 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

What kinds of power do words really have? What does it mean to be a writer-activist? How can we use writing as a tool for social change? Drawing on social and political concepts like community, power, justice, and democracy, and scholars who reflect on these issues, this course will engage with a variety of texts (scholarship, blogs, documentary films) as we consider how the political can inform what we believe and impact the choices we make as writers. Through experiential learning and reflective writing, students will explore the power of writing to elicit equity, inclusion, and change. Research projects may include traditional academic source material, primary research such as fieldwork, surveys, and interviews, and direct work with local community organizations. Class time will include visits from community speakers and off-campus events. This is a community-engaged course that meets the requirement for the citation in community-engaged scholarship.

Prerequisite: Completion of Primary Writing Requirement

Location

Rush Rhees Library Room G108 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Recently, women have collectively mobilized to announce and describe their anger to the public. We ask how to locate anger in social relations as well as in individuals. We try to distinguish between the behaviors emerging from men’s and women’s anger. We read Mercy and other works by Andrea Dworkin, graphic stories by Phoebe Gloeckner and Isabel Greenberg, the off-genre What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life by Marie Calloway, The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh, Vox by Christina Dalcher, autobiographical/documentary films by Michelle Citron, Su Friedrich, and Cheryl Dunye, the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale, and political writings such as Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister, Eloquent Rage: a Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower by Brittney Cooper, and Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly. Weekly essays, final essay, no exams.

Location

Morey Room 205 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This course will examine the varieties of thought about, and practice of, civil disobedience within social movements, with an emphasis on contemporary activism. When, why, and how do communities choose to push back against structures of violence and injustice? Throughout the semester, we will study canonical texts? of modern resistance history speeches, writing, direct action protests, art and will consider the role of this form of counter-conduct within larger campaign strategies to build power from below and get free.

Location

Meliora Room 224 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

For GSWS Majors in their senior year. Since this is a small group, our meeting day and time will be flexible and dependent on student schedules.

Location

(W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

For GSWS Honors Majors in their senior year. Since this is a small group, our meeting day and time will be flexible and dependent on student schedules.

Location

(W 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.