Undergraduate Programs

This is a topics course in GSWS that will introduce students to content, theories, and/or methodologies related to GSWS and it changes by semester. This course does not cover the same material as the introductory course, GSWS 105. Each semester this course is taught by a different graduate student at the University of Rochester who has been selected from a competitive pool to serve as a GSWS Teaching Fellow

Location

(T 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

(TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

The aim of this course is two-fold: First, to develop an understanding of the extraordinary variety of ways meaning is produced in visual culture; secondly, to enable students to analyze and describe the social, political and cultural effects of these meanings. By studying examples drawn from contemporary art, film, television, digital culture, and advertising we will learn techniques of analysis developed in response to specific media and also how to cross-pollinate techniques of analysis in order to gain greater understanding of the complexity of our visual world. Grades are based on response papers, class attendance and participation, and a midterm and a final paper. Occasional film screenings will be scheduled as necessary in the course of the semester.

Location

(MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course surveys African American literature of a variety of genres—primarily fiction, poetry, and non-fiction essays—from the early 20th century to the present. The course interprets this tradition not only as the creative expression of American writers of African descent, but also as a set works displaying formal characteristics associated with black cultural traditions. Discussion topics will include the meanings of race, the construction of black identity, and intra-racial differences of class, gender, and sexuality, as well as how experimentation, 1960s black radicalism, and the contemporary Movement for Black Lives have shaped black literature. Our readings will traverse a range of influential writers, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Claudia Rankine, and Danez Smith.

Location

(TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

Traditional Folkloric roots of Middle Eastern Dance, focusing on specific Bedouin dance styles of North Africa (Raks Shaabi). Discourse and research will address issues of gender and body image. Improving strength, flexibility and self-awareness of the body, the class work will include meditative movement, dance technique, choreography and improvisation. No prior dance experience necessary.

Location

(MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

In this colloquium we will look at the history of international feminism and explore its many faces. We will examine the various factors that have contributed to women’s historically lower status in society; will look at the emergence of women’s rights and feminist movements as well as the distinctions among various feminist theories, and will discuss the relevance of feminism today.

Location

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

In this colloquium we will look at the history of international feminism and explore its many faces. We will examine the various factors that have contributed to women’s historically lower status in society; will look at the emergence of women’s rights and feminist movements as well as the distinctions among various feminist theories, and will discuss the relevance of feminism today.

Location

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

This interdisciplinary course is an introduction to critical concepts and approaches used to investigate the intersections of gender, health, and illness, particularly in the context of individual lives both locally and transnationally. Special attention will be paid to the historical and contemporary development of medical knowledge and practice, including debates on the roles of health-care consumers and practitioners, as well as global linkages among the health industry, international trade, and health sector reform in the developing world. Emerging issues around the politics of global health include clinical research studies, bodily modification practices, and reproductive justice movements. This is a writing-intensive course and may be counted toward the University of Rochester’s Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies (GSW) major, minor, or cluster.

Location

(MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

Survey course on understanding sexuality. Includes such topics as biological sexual differentiation, gender role, gender-linked social behaviors, reproduction issues, intimacy, and the role of social and personal factors in psychosexual development.

This is a social science course.

Prerequisite: PSYC 101

Location

(TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This course is a discussion-based learning experience that explores the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, and intersex (LGBTQI) history, communities, and identity through theory, pop culture, literature, and intersectional analysis. Topics include the emergence of subcultures and the organized activist movements from the 1920's through today, early sexuality theory and poststructuralist queer theory, and major historical events including the AIDS epidemic and Stonewall Riots. Course will be taught by KaeLyn Rich, Assistant Advocacy Director (Chapters) of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Location

(M 6:15PM - 8:55PM)

Though we often assume that religion deals with the spirit or the soul, the earliest Christians were deeply and primarily concerned with the body. In this course, we examine the multiple and various early Christian debates and practices relating to the body focusing in particular on issues related to physical suffering, death, sexuality, identity, and asceticism. Topics include: early Christian debates over the nature of the body and its relationship to personal identity and the nature of the self; conflicting ideas about the nature of Jesus’ incarnated, crucified, and resurrected body; gender, sexuality, and the bodies of men and women; Christian valorization of physical suffering and the bodies of the ill; the cult of the martyrs and the cult of the relics; the rise of asceticism and the bodies of saints.

Location

(MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Addressing the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS in the United States, United Kingdom, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Haiti, and elsewhere, this uniquely interdisciplinary course will incorporate insights from the fields of public health, medical anthropology, and ethnomusicology. Studying the HIV/AIDS epidemic through the lens of musical expression, we will ask how individuals and communities affected by HIV/AIDS have mobilized musical sound in response to the disease. Topics addressed within the class will include musical representations of HIV/AIDS within queer communities; the use of music in public health campaigns to raise awareness about the disease; and the mobilization of musical performance within grassroots support groups for individuals affected by HIV/AIDS.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

Foundations and Principles of Dance/Movement Therapy examines the ways dance/movement therapy in the west has integrated Asian concepts, natural movement, formal elements of dance, creative processes, music, verbal expression, and constructs drawn from psychology and counseling to treat a wide range of populations. Students will compare and contrast the treatment of individuals seeking help for a range of concerns (e.g., psychosis, autism, anxiety, eating disorders, histories of abuse). Experientials, creative dance, and videotapes of actual sessions with a variety of populations highlight these concepts. Dress comfortably and be prepared to move.

Location

(MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

How do people across the world experience, construct, and perform gender? How have notions of gender been shaped by cultural, economic, political, and social forces? This course will examine gender as a key component of social life. Beginning with a basic overview of anthropological and sociological approaches to gender and sexuality, we will move on to examine some of the key theories and concepts that inform this work. What distinguishes sex from gender? How does gender intersect with race, class, religion, and nationhood? Special attention will be given to how colonialism, globalization, and neoliberal capitalism have shaped gendered experiences and practices across the world. By interrogating these concepts, we challenge binary understandings of gender and open space for a more inclusive, global exploration of the topic. Students will be introduced to feminist, queer, and decolonial theories, providing multiple perspectives for analyzing gender as a social structure and lived experience. The course will then examine ethnographic case studies from diverse regions, highlighting how gender is constructed and performed in different sociocultural contexts. Topics include rituals of gender transition in Indigenous cultures, gender nonconforming roles in South Asia (such as hijras), the fluidity of gender categories in Polynesia, and state regulation of bodies and identities. Students will be encouraged to think critically about how anthropological approaches to gender are relevant in everyday life. We will explore the gendered dynamics of work, politics, education, healthcare, and media, examining how cultural assumptions about masculinity and femininity are embedded in these spheres. Students will build essential skills in critical thinking, argumentation, and academic writing. Readings will span ethnographic studies, theoretical essays, and multimedia sources such as films and advertisements, offering diverse examples of how anthropologists study gender.

Location

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

In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson, certain fronts of feminist struggle we might have considered settled in the US have become open battlegrounds once again. This course explores key aspects of feminist thought and action across the Americas to explore what insights the North may draw from a dialogue with the South. We will focus on how media constitutes a key terrain where power configurations around gender play out and where much feminist political work unfolds. Drawing from historical episodes and scholarly interventions mainly from the 20th and 21st centuries, the course will consider how meanings, imaginaries, and forms of valuation attached to feminine subjectivity circulate and are experienced, (re)produced, and challenged. The first part of the course examines the conditions that shape the experience of feminized subjects: the combined and differentiated forms of oppression that feminists in the US and Latin America (heirs to different colonial histories) have theorized about; their intersection with race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and other dimensions of identity. The second part looks at the mediated construction of gender: how signs, practices of mediation, and patterns of in/visibility give rise to and sustain these ideologies. The final part considers the shifting contours of feminist struggle in the hemisphere, focusing on their aesthetic and semiotic dimensions—from the moment of its articulation into publics to their use of physical and online worlds as sites of protest within and across national spaces. The overarching goals of the course are a) to consider US-based feminist knowledge and struggle as heir one of multiple legacies in the hemisphere, attached to specific histories of power, oppression, and violence; and b) to see the historical effects and contemporary potential of imbricating these legacies to advance this emancipatory project.

Location

(TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course will explore the relationship between medical and legal understandings of gender. What does it mean to look beyond a simplistic binary of "man" and "woman"? We will center transgender identity to explore how law and medicine regulate lived experiences of gender and sexuality. Adopting a holistic framework that views the development of gender identity and expression as a complex dialogue between biology and culture, the course challenges the hegemonic artifice of a “natural” binary opposition between female/male and woman/man. We blur these contested categories, complicating them with sexuality, race, class, ability, history, and location. Citing current, historical and cross-cultural examples of individuals and communities who destabilize prevailing sex/gender norms, the course critiques how societies react to the presence of “other” gender identities, embodiments and expressions. We will focus on the recent increase in trans visibility and advocacy, and the ensuing challenges to legal, medical and social norms and attitudes predicated on the existence of only two kinds of gendered persons. We will center marginalized voices by reading scholarly texts written by trans people, and also watching films, listening to music, reading comics, memoirs, and magazines to theorize trans lives from the lived experience of trans people themselves. From this standpoint, we will take a critical and interdisciplinary look at trans studies across the fields of anthropology, history, interdisciplinary theory, politics, and the arts, to analyze global medical and legal discourses on gender.

Location

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

This course will explore the relationship between medical and legal understandings of gender. What does it mean to look beyond a simplistic binary of "man" and "woman"? We will center transgender identity to explore how law and medicine regulate lived experiences of gender and sexuality. Adopting a holistic framework that views the development of gender identity and expression as a complex dialogue between biology and culture, the course challenges the hegemonic artifice of a “natural” binary opposition between female/male and woman/man. We blur these contested categories, complicating them with sexuality, race, class, ability, history, and location. Citing current, historical and cross-cultural examples of individuals and communities who destabilize prevailing sex/gender norms, the course critiques how societies react to the presence of “other” gender identities, embodiments and expressions. We will focus on the recent increase in trans visibility and advocacy, and the ensuing challenges to legal, medical and social norms and attitudes predicated on the existence of only two kinds of gendered persons. We will center marginalized voices by reading scholarly texts written by trans people, and also watching films, listening to music, reading comics, memoirs, and magazines to theorize trans lives from the lived experience of trans people themselves. From this standpoint, we will take a critical and interdisciplinary look at trans studies across the fields of anthropology, history, interdisciplinary theory, politics, and the arts, to analyze global medical and legal discourses on gender.

Location

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

Under the guidance of a faculty advisor, Seniors identify a topic, develop a project plan, conduct substantive work, and present their findings or creations in a final written report, portfolio, performance, or presentation. Responsibilities and expectations vary by course and department.

Location

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

Under the guidance of a faculty advisor, Seniors identify a topic, develop a project plan, conduct substantive work, and present their findings or creations in a final written report, portfolio, performance, or presentation. Responsibilities and expectations vary by course and department.

Location

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

This course provides undergraduate students the opportunity to pursue in-depth, independent exploration of a topic not regularly offered in the curriculum, under the supervision of a faculty member in the form of independent study, practicum, internship or research. The objectives and content are determined in consultation between students and full-time members of the teaching faculty. Responsibilities and expectations vary by course and department. Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed through the Internship Registration form ( https://secure1.rochester.edu/registrar/forms/internship-registration-form.php)

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)