SPRING 2021

Bonnie Hagerman

An introduction to gender and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) studies, including the fields of women’s studies, feminist studies, & masculinity studies. Students will examine historical movements, theoretical issues, & contemporary debates, especially as they pertain to issues of inequality & to the intersection of gender, race, class, sexuality, & nationalism. Emphasis will vary according to the interdisciplinary expertise & research focus of the instructor.

Special Note: Required for all WGS majors and minors, Intro courses do not count toward concentrations.

Lisa Speidel

Examines human sexuality from psychological, biological, behavioral, social, and historical perspectives. Topics include sexual research and theoretical perspectives, sexual anatomy and physiology, sexual health, intimacy, communication, patterns of sexual response and pleasure and sexual problems and therapies. Course will also include examination of the development of sexuality and the intersections of other identities, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexuality and the law, sexual assault, and other social issues in sexuality. This course will focus on creating a safe environment for honest and authentic conversations about the issues.  Confidentiality and respect will be emphasized to create a community of trust. Students will learn about these issues of sexuality through discussion, experiential activities, film, readings, research, reflective writing and guest speakers.

Course Category: Sexuality Concentration

Lisa Speidel

Typically, men are dealt with in a way that casually presents them as representative of humanity.   This course addresses the various ways that men are also “gendered,” and can be the subject of inquiries of gender, sexuality, inequality, and privilege in their own right.

Course Category: Gender Concentration

Matthew Chin

This course is an interdisciplinary analysis of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) Studies.  We will study  historical events and political, literary, and artistic figures and works; contemporary social and political issues; the meaning and development of sexual and gender identities; and different disciplinary definitions of meaning and knowledge.

Course Category: Sexuality Concentration

Bonnie Hagerman

In ancient Greece, women risked death if they participated in or even attended the Olympic Games. As Pierre de Coubertin looked to revive the games in 1896, he thought women better suited to cheering on the male victors, than to competing themselves. This course will explore women’s early participation in the Olympic Games, the pressures upon Olympic sportswomen to be feminine, and the important intersections of race, class, place and sexual orientation. We will also consider the future of the Olympic Games, its global reach, and women’s place in this brave new world, both as athletes and administrators. This course fulfills the Global Requirement.

Course Category: Gender Concentration

Brittany Leach

This course places women, feminism, and activism in a transnational perspective, and offers students the opportunity to examine how issues considered critical to the field of gender studies are impacting women’s lives globally in contemporary national contexts. We will look closely at how violence, economic marginality, intersections of race and gender, and varied strategies for development are affecting women in specific geographical locations. 

Course Category: Gender Concentration, Global Requirement

Andre Cavalcante

This course will explore the complex cultural dynamics of LGBTQ media visibility, along with its social, political, and psychological implications for LGBTQ audiences.  It explores four domains:  (1) the question of LGBT media visibility (2) the complex processes of inclusion, normalization, and assimilation in popular culture (3) media industries and the LGBT market (4) the relationship between digital media, LGBT audiences, and everyday life.

Course Category: Sexuality Concentration

Bonnie Hagerman

From Female Seminaries to the beginning of co-education, this course will explore the history of women who wanted to pursue higher education in the United States more broadly and at the University of Virginia in particular. We will examine the importance of the Seven Sisters, land grant colleges, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities and how Title IX affected the sports landscape of higher education. We will also consider the landscape of higher education. We will also consider the landscape of sexual violence female students have had to confront on American college campuses as well as other challenges like integration and co-education.

Course Category: Gender Concentration

Brittany Leach

This course will examine reproductive health and politics domestically and globally, primarily from a reproductive justice perspective that views reproductive rights broadly and in connection with other issues of social justice (such as racism, colonialism, economic and environmental injustice, etc). Specific topics include birth control, population control, abortion, sterilization abuse, eugenics, miscarriage, birth, and reproductive technology.

Course Category: Gender Concentration

Maryam Zehtabi

This course examines the politics of gender and sexuality in varous Muslim societies since the 19th century. It covers a range of topics and themes, including: historical, theological, political, and anthropological accounts of gender discourse; various feminist movements; and sexuality, marriage, family, masculinity, and LGBTQ issues. Of particular interest is how social and state actors have attemped to mobilize gender for political gain.

Course Category: Gender Concentration, Sexuality Concentration, Global Requirement

Cori Field

This course explores the significance of gender and sexuality in the territory of the present-day U.S. during the period from the first European settlements to the Civil War.

Course Category: Gender Concentration, Sexuality Concentration

Doug Meyer

This course introduces students to some of the key and some of the controversial theoretical texts that make up the emerging field of queer theory.  We will consider the beginnings of queer theory and also look at more recent work in fields such as queer gothic and phenomenology. The approach of the course will be interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on literary and aesthetic criticisms that may shift according the instructor's areas of expertise. The goal of the course is to develop critical practice by working through a variety of perspectives, not only across academic disciplines but also across cultures. Insofar as queer theory reads for the often unseen, or submerged, reality embedded in cultural texts, contexts, and literatures, we will engage conscious critical practice in the class: active reading and informed discussion. As of Fall 2015: This course fulfils the Second Writing Requirement

Special Note: Queer or Feminist Theory is required for all WGS majors/minors.

Course Category: Sexuality Concentration

Brittany Leach

This course provides an overview of the historical bases and contemporary developments in feminist theorizing and analyze a range of theories on gender, including liberal, Marxist, radical, difference, and postmodernist feminist theories. We will explore how feminist theories apply to contemporary debates on the body, sexuality, colonialism, globalization and transnationalism. Throughout the course we will incorporate analysis of race, class, and national differences as well as cross-cultural perspectives.

Special Note: This, or Queer Theory, required for all WGS majors and minors.

Course Category: Gender Concentration

Deborah McGrady

This course will explore religious, social, scientific and legal views on gender, sexuality and identity that may extend from medieval through early modern Europe with an emphasis on the French tradition. Readings will include literary texts and cultural documents as well as current scholarship on questions of sexuality, gender, and identity politics.

Course Category: Gender Concentration, Sexuality Concentration

Lisa Speidel

In an effort to streamline our offerings, we are looking to propose that we take the 2000-level “Gender Violence and Social Justice” and the 4000-level “Gender-Based Violence” and essentially combine them into a 3000-level course, keeping the title of “Gender Violence and Social Justice”; we then plan to deactivate Gender-Based Violence once we have this approval. There is marked overlap in the two courses in terms of content and approaches, so we propose one course at the 3000-level that would still attract students from outside the Major but allow the instructor to encourage students to engage in the critical thinking and written/oral communication skills that are demanded at the 3000-level.

Course Category: Gender Concentration

Doug Meyer

This course emphasizes violence against minority groups. Particular attention will be paid to violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, although the class will also focus on forms of abuse against other historically-marginalized groups. Topics covered will include racist and sexist violence, sexualized abuse, including rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, and the politics of hate crime. 

Course Category: Sexuality Concentration

Geeta Patel

Gender and sexuality have been seminal to South Asian cinema from its inception.  This course will encompass fiction and documentary, independent movies and small scale movies made in Mumbai, Bengali cinema and the cinemas of the south.  Issues will include transgender activism, family dramas, social and national change, re-envisioned sexualities, the good woman and the courtesan.

Course Category: Gender Concentration, Sexuality Concentration, Global Requirement

Matthew Chin

This course focuses on embodied forms of closeness that take shape across different spaces and times. It will consider theories of history, temporality, intimacy, and globality and explore methods of historical inquiry that may be used to construct accounts of intimate relations in the past. It will then mobilize these theories and methods to analyze historical case studies of intimacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in relationship to African enslavement and Asian indentureship in the Americas as well as US-Philippine and French-Algerian imperialisms. Inspired by postcolonial, feminist, and queer approaches, our critical and interdisciplinary conversations will allow us to consider the complexities, contradictions, and problems that arise from attempts to both describe and analyze formations of intimacy in the past.

Course Category: Gender Concentration, Sexuality Concentration, Global Requirement

Cori Field

This course will take a global approach to understanding the shifting intersections of age, race, and gender from the sixteenth-century to the present in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.  Through a series of case studies, we will explore the social history of older women in various contexts, literary representations of women's aging, and visual images.  We will consider foundational concepts and new developments in the interdisciplinary field of feminist age studies and pose questions about how age impacts health, sexuality, family life, political involvement, and spirituality.  Throughout, we will pay particular attention to how beliefs about age shape racial and class formations in different parts of the world.  
Students will complete a twenty-page research paper on a topic of their choosing related to older women.

Course Category: Gender Concentration, Sexuality Concentration, Global Requirement

African American and African Studies
AAS 2224-001     Black Femininities and Masculinities in the US Media Lisa Shutt                                
AAS 2224-002     Black Femininities and Masculinities in the US Media Lisa Shutt                                  

Anthropology
ANTH 2420-100 Language and Gender    LEC                                         Grace Reynolds                             
ANTH 2420-101 Language and Gender    DISC                                       Staff                                                  
ANTH 2420-102 Language and Gender    DISC                                       Staff                                           
ANTH 2420-103 Language and Gender    DISC                                       Staff                                                 

History-United States History
HIUS 3611            Gender & Sexuality in AM, 1600-1865                      Cori Field                                           
HIUS 3611            Gender and Sexuality in the US, 1600-1865 Disc  Daniele Celano                             
HIUS 3611            Gender and Sexuality in the US, 1600-1865 Disc  Daniele Celano                             
HIUS 3611            Gender and Sexuality in the US, 1600-1865 Disc  Daniele Celano                              

Japanese in Translation
JPTR 5390            Women in Modern Japanese Literature                 Anri Yasuda                                 

Media Studies
MDST 3409          LGBTQ Issues in the Media                                           Andre Cavalcante                         

Psychology
PSYC 4603 Psychology of Sexual Orientation                                        Charlotte Patterson                   

South Asian Literature in Translation
SATR 3000           Women Writing in India & Pakistan: 1947-Pres    Mehr Farooqi                               

Sociology
SOC 2320-100     Gender and Society         LEC                                         David Skubby                                
SOC 2320-101     Gender and Society         DISC                                       Staff                                                  
SOC 2320-102     Gender and Society         DISC                                       Staff                                                   
SOC 2320-103     Gender and Society         DISC                                       Staff                                                   
SOC 4350             Comparative Gender Stratification                           Rae Blumberg                                 

Spanish
SPAN 4621 Latin American Women Poets                                             Gustavo Pellon