Please stop by the office for our Spring 2008 course guide or click here to download a pdf version.
V3111 Feminist Texts I: Wollstonecraft to Beauvoir.
E. Gillooly
Call#27596
W 4:10-6pm, 754 Schermerhorn Extension
4pts. The important contributions to the elaboration of feminist thought in the West, evaluated through critical discussion. Analysis of works by Mary Wollstonecraft, Emma Goldman, Anna Cooper, Radclyffe Hall, C. P. Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, and others in an attempt to discover the roots of the contemporary feminist movement. Permission of instructor required. Enrollment limited to 20 students.
V3112 Feminist Texts II.
E. Bernstein
Call#02735
T 11:00am-12:50pm, TBD
4pts. Contemporary issues in feminist thought. A review of the theoretical debates on sex roles, feminism and socialism, psychoanalysis, language, and cultural representations.
BC3117 Women and Film.
J. Beller
Call#09389
T 7:10-9:30pm R 4:10-5:30pm, TBD
3pts. Critical interpretation of film from a feminist perspective and exploration of the relationship of gender to the language of film.
BC3121 Black Women in America.
L. Collins
Call#02095
R 11:00am-12:50pm, TBD
4pts. Examines the experiences of African-American women from slavery through the present. Emphasis will be on the history and historiography of these experiences, as well as on critical issues facing African-American women today.
BC3123 Women and Art.
N. Kampen
Call#04851
TR 9:10-10:15am, TBD
3pts. Discussion of the methods necessary to analyze visual images of women in their historical, racial, and class contexts, and to understand the status of women as producers, patrons, and audiences of art and architecture.
V3130 Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies.
E. Glasberg
Call#03365
M 6:10-8:00pm, TBD
4pts. Investigation of who or what constitutes the subject(s) of gay and lesbian studies. Themes include the historical, methodological, and epistemological crisis points of essentialism/constructionism; thinking sexuality cross-culturally; gender versus sexuality; the binaries of hetero/homo and male/female; community, identity, differences; personal life and the politics of liberation; the place of feminism in les/bi/gay studies.
V3312 Theorizing Women's Activism.
C. Cynn
Call#07248
T 2:10-4:00pm, TBD
4pts. Helps students develop and apply useful theoretical models to feminist organizing on local and international levels. It involves reading, presentations, and seminar reports, as well as talks by guest lecturers. Students use first-hand knowledge of the practices of specific women's activist organizations as the basis for theoretical work. Prerequisites: Feminist Texts I or II and permission of instructor.
BC3515 Women in Israel.
I. Klepfisz
Call#08742
T 4:10-6:00pm, TBD
4pts. Helps students develop and apply useful theoretical models to feminist organizing on local and international levels. It involves reading, presentations, and seminar reports, as well as talks by guest lecturers. Students use first-hand knowledge of the practices of specific women's activist organizations as the basis for theoretical work. Prerequisites: Feminist Texts I or II and permission of instructor.
V3522 Senior Seminar II.
M. Hirsch
Call#85798
M 2:10-4pm, 754 Schermerhorn Extension
4pts. Seminar for the preparation of the senior thesis for
Columbia’s Women’s and Gender Studies majors. Individual research in
Women’s and Gender Studies conducted in consultation with the
instructor.
V3522 Senior Seminar II.
T. Szell
Call#01088
W 4:10-6:00pm, TBD
4pts. Second semester of a seminar for the preparation of the senior thesis for Barnard majors. Individual research in Women's Studies conducted in consultation with the instructor. The result of each research projects submitted in the form of the senior essay and presented to the seminar. Open to Columbia majors.
V3813 Colloquium on Feminist Inquiry.
N. Tadiar
Call#09530
W 11:00am-12:50pm, TBD
4pts. Survey of research methods from the social sciences and interpretive models from the humanities, inviting students to examine the tension between the production and interpretation of data. Students will receive first-hand experience practicing various research methods and interpretive strategies, while simultaneously considering larger questions of epistemology about how we know what we know. Corequisites: Feminist Texts I or II and permission of instructor.
W4300 Advanced Topics in Women's and Gender Studies: C.P. Cavafy: The Typography of Desire.
K. Van Dyck
Section 001
Call#21477
T 2:10-4pm, 754 Schermerhorn Extension
These seminars are directed toward students with previous work in feminist scholarship but are open to all majors.
This seminar explores the relation of desire to poetry through a reading of the poetry and prose of C. P. Cavafy, the Greek poet of Alexandria who had a profound influence on writers such as E.M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell, W.H.Auden, Marguerite Yourcenar, James Merrill and Joseph Brodsky. To what extent does Cavafy's oeuvre offer a queer theory of poetry? What light does it shed on contemporary theories of gender, sexuality, and textuality? Particular attention will be paid to the reception and remaking of Cavafy in Britain and the US in poetry, photography, and other mediums. Throughout the course the issue of translation will be a central concern. Though this course presupposes no knowledge of Greek, students wanting to read Cavafy in the original are encouraged to take the 1-credit tutorial offered simultaneously through the Program in Hellenic Studies.
G8010 Advanced Topics: Body and Power: The Politics of Life
E. Povinelli
Call#23299
T 4:10-6pm, 754 Schermerhorn Extension
3pts. This course examines a radical genealogy of the body in contemporary critical theory. It examines a number of authors who are interested in the use of the body to produce truth and naturalize power. The purpose of the course is to understand how these authors, and this genealogy of thought, variously links bodies to power—power over life and death, power to cripple and rot certain worlds while over-investing others with wealth and hope. Course Requirements: Students must attend class having done the assigned reading and ready to discuss it vigorously. At the beginning of each class students must turn in one page on which the assigned text is summarized and a set of critical questions asked. At the end of the course students must turn in a twenty page research paper on a topic relevant to the course.
Crosslisted Courses
83920 Gender & Sexuality in Medieval Poetry.
S. Crane
Call#62848
R 11am-12:50pm, TBA
4pts. Same as ENGL W3920. This seminar will concentrate on three flash points for medieval thinking about women. First, the proposition that heterosexual love can be an all-encompassing and transforming experience generates long fictions of romantic love such as Tristan and Lancelot. What is the heterosexual experience for women within this new literature of romantic love? How does a noble heroine's authority over her suitor enable or constrain her? Second, although the church prohibits women from occupying positions of institutional authority, mystic visions and physical suffering can offer women some precarious claims to spiritual authority. With what languages and gestures of faith can women shape and redefine their sexuality? And finally, a few women authors comment on gender in their plots and polemics, unmasking the self-interested suitor, the misogynist husband, and the apologist theologian. To what extent can these authors question the terms of their social inscription, and to what extent do those terms remain inaccessible to analysis?
C3930 Transgressing Black Female Gendered-Sexualities.
J. Humphries
Call#86446
W 2:10-4pm, 754 Schermerhorn Ext.
4pts. Same as AFAS C3930. This undergraduate level course explores Black female gendered-sexuality from a transnational perspective. Drawing primarily from a social science perspective we will examine the theoretical, conceptual, historical, and socio-cultural context in which race, gender, and sexuality are used as analytical concepts. Using new media technology we will explore the fluidity of these concepts as social constructions that shape and influence our notions about women of Afro-descent as racialized gendered sexual beings. Students will learn an interdisciplinary approach to the study of race, gender, and sexuality and apply this newly acquired information to analyze historical and contemporary shifts in the field of sexuality studies. Additionally, students will develop their analytical, critical, and public speaking skills through dialogical engagement with fellow students, and reviewing empirical based studies.
83950 British Drama: The Plays of Caryl Churchill.
J. Howard
Call#81772
W 11:00am-12:50pm, 612 Philosophy Hall
4pts. Same as ENGL W3950. This seminar will explore a full range of plays by Caryl Churchill, arguably the most inventive English playwright of the late 20th and early 21st century. A consistently political writer who began her career as a member of a theatrical commune, Churchill has written over twenty-five theater pieces exploring such topics as the English Revolution of the seventeenth-century, the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, the politics of cloning, Margaret Thatcher's destruction of the British post-war social contract, the relationship of the United States and Britain at the turn of the twentieth century, modern totalitarianism, and the possibilities for love in late capitalism. Among the first to employ cross-race and cross-gender casting, Churchill is an indefatigable experimentalist when it comes to theatrical form. In this seminar we will be reading approximately 15 to 20 of her plays, some very short, and exploring both her dramaturgy and her ideas. As part of the seminar's work, we will be attending a revival of her 1982 play, Top Girls, at the Manhattan Theater Club and a production of her 2006 play, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, at the Public Theater. Participants will be required to make several in-class presentations on her work and to write one fifteen-page seminar paper.
84422 Women & American Citizenship.
A. Kessler-Harris
Call#81096
W 2:10-4pm, 302 Fayerweather
3pts. Same as HIST W4422. This year, the seminar will explore some of the essential ingredients of American citizenship, including liberty, equality, and democracy to examine how gender and gendered ideas have participated in creating particular meanings for each. The class will move through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A research paper is required.
86090 Women and Literary Communities in Early Modern England and France.
J. Crawford
Call#62035
W 4:10-6pm, TBA
3pts. Same as CLEN G6090. This class will look at specific literary communities in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century England and France that were characterized not only by the dominant roles that women played, but also by complex kinship ties and political alliances. The class has two main goals, the first to reconsider authorship from the perspective of the community or faction rather than the individual, and the second to look at the relationships between literary exchange and other forms of social, religious, and political activism. For France, we will look at the poems, prose tracts and letters exchanged both between Madeleine and Catherine des Roches and between the des Roches and other poets, historians, political activists, and members of the royal family. Texts will include works by the des Roches, Madeleine de Scudery, Louise Labé, Pierre Ronsard, and Joachim Du Bellay. (Knowledge of French is preferable, but we will be reading all French works in dual translation). For England, will look primarily at the intertwined Sidney/Herbert circle. Texts will include Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Mary Sidney Herbert's poems, Mary Wroth's Urania, and Anne Clifford's diary, as well as lesser known poems, letters, translations, and miscellaneous manuscripts by other members of their circle. In addition to these literary texts, we will be reading historical, literary critical, and theoretical works on gender and sexuality, kinship, inheritance and property rights, community, regionalism, and political economy.
86320 The Law of Desire: Eros, Gender & History in Spanish Cinema.
E. Amann
Call#71301
T 4:10-8pm, 505 Casa Hispánica
3pts. Same as SPAN G6320. This course examines the intersection of desire and politics in Spanish cinema from the surrealist masterpieces of Buñuel to the recent international success of Almodóvar, Medem and Bigas Luna. Discussions will focus on how gender and eroticism are used to come to terms with the past or to question it in films dealing with various historical issues: the conflict between modernity and traditionalism, the traumatic legacy of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime, the uneasy transition to democracy, ETA terrorism, etc. Directors to be considered include: Luis Buñuel, J.A. Bardem, Carlos Saura, Pilar Miró, Pedro Almodóvar, J.J. Bigas Luna, Julio Medem, Ventura Pons and Patricia Ferreira. (Discussions and readings will be in English, and all films will have English subtitles.)
G6560 Woolf, Gender, History, Modernism.
S. Cole
Call#88046
W 2:10pm-4:00pm, 652 Schermerhorn Hall
3pts. Same as ENGL G6506. This course has two primary aims: to read closely and widely among Virginia Woolf's writings, as well as those of a handful of other British women modernists, and to consider broad questions of culture, history, and literary production through the (gendered) point of view developed in their works. In addition to Woolf, we will read a selection of works by such figures as Jean Rhys, Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Mansfield, and Rebecca West, along with a variety of theorists, critics, and cultural historians.
86820 Heroines of Disaster: Novels and Feminist Literary Theory.
M. Hirsch and N. K. Miller
Call#68247
R 2:10-4pm, 754 Schermerhorn Ext.
4pts. Same as CLEN G6820. The fate of heroines captured the imagination of second-wave feminist critics and theorists who saw in the novel a template ripe for cultural analysis. Initially, feminist literary theory focused on the sexual politics of fictional plots and, at the same time, the resistance on the part of women writers to stories of victimization. We will consider the transformation of the heroine’s plot from its nineteenth-century avatars to twentieth and twenty-first century fictional and theoretical texts, in which female protagonists become subjects as well as objects, acting in the political field. The seminar will revisit feminist classics in literature and criticism, grappling with contemporary debates about the crossings of gender, race, colonization, and sexuality. What kinds of new theoretical imaginings are emerging from the gendered plots of the last decades? Readings include: Brontë, Cixous, Coetzee, Feinberg, Flaubert, Freud, Julavits, Kincaid, Larsen, Morrison, Rhys, Shields, Walker and Woolf; as well as Butler, Gilbert and Gubar, Johnson, McDowell, Millett, Prosser, and Spivak. NB: This is a consortium course with alternate meetings at Columbia and CUNY Graduate Center. Students interested in this course should contact Professor Hirsch as soon as possible.
88738 Seminar on Gay/Lesbian Issues in Public Health.
I. Meyer
Call#80800
W 5:30pm-7:30pm, 722 W. 168th St., 9th fl. Conference Room
3pts. Same as SOSC P8738. Needs instructor permission to add class. Provides theoretical and methodological tools for conducting public health research, designing public health interventions, or developing health programs for lesbian and gay populations. Addresses theory as well as conceptual and methodological research issues. Topics include the social construction of homosexuality; lesbian/gay world and culture; methodological problems in research on gay and lesbian populations; the social psychology of prejudice, stigma, and stereotyping; homophobia and heterosexism; antigay violence; gay/lesbian identity development; lesbian/ gay families; psychosocial impact of AIDS on the lesbian/gay community; health effect of prejudice and stigmatization; lesbian health and illness; availability and utilization of health services by lesbian and gay populations. Methodological topics include defining a population of lesbians and gay men; sampling problems; the effect of bias in lesbian/gay research on internal validity and generalizability of research results.
88760 Seminar in Medical Anthropology: Sex Work, Trafficking, Health, and Human Rights.
C. Vance
Call#66803
M 3:00-5pm, 722 W. 168th St., 9th fl. Conference Room
3pts. Same as SOSC P8760. The seminar explores the use of ethnographic and social research methods in producing accurate, complex, and culturally grounded descriptions of diverse combinations of work, sexuality, migration, and exploitation, in the US and globally. The seminar examines contemporary issues of sex work and trafficking into forced prostitution, with emphasis on implications for public health and human rights. In addition, the seminar considers the relationship between social research and the development of policy and health interventions, as well as issues of representation. Historical background and current legal frameworks are also examined. Students from diverse disciplines are welcome. (Permission, email csv1@columbia.edu)
89402 History of American Women & Gender.
A. Kessler-Harris
Call#73596
T 2:10pm-4:00pm, 311 Fayerweather
4pts. Same as HIST G9402. TThis course is designed to help you produce a research paper on a topic of your choice concerning the history of women and/or gender. Weekly discussions based on the close reading of a few articles will introduce you to research methodologies, interpretive frameworks and source materials in the field. In-class critiques of each other’s papers will provide a forum for learning to give and receive useful advice. The course is open to PhD candidates in History; other students may register by permission.
89719 Critical Approaches to Research on Gender & Sexuality.
J. Hirsch and C. Nathanson
Call#88549
R 3:00pm-5:00pm, 722 W. 168th St., 9th fl. Conference
3pts. Same as SOSC P9719. This course will prepare students to engage in theoretically-grounded research on contemporary issues in health, particularly reproductive and sexual health. We will examine in depth contemporary social science approaches to the analysis of gender, exploring their relevance to the development of researchable hypotheses on a range of topical issues. Through the reading of social theory and ethnography, students will master key concepts and ideas, including structure and agency, gender stratification, social constructionist approaches, and bargaining theory, and critically employ these concepts both in the analysis of existing research approaches to such topics as fertility and infertility, maternal mortality, HIV and STIs, gender-based violence, sex work and sex trafficking (precise topics to be determined) and in the development of a critical literature review on a topic of their own selection. This course is intended for doctoral students in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. It is open to other students by permission only.
Gender Related Courses in Other Departments
For more information about these courses, including day/time, professor, and description, please look in our course guide.
American Studies
W3931 Equity in American Higher Education.
Anthropology
V3977 Trauma.
V3974 Lost Worlds, Secret Spaces: Modernity and the Child.
Art History
BC3948 The Visual Culture of the Harlem Renaissance.
BC3956 Body And Abstraction.
Classics
V3120 Daughters of Dido.
East Asian Languages and Culture
W4390 Gender and Nationalism in 20th c. Asia.
English & Comparative Literature
BC3140 Women and Theatre.
BC3180 American Literature, 1800-1870.
BC3188 The Modern Novel.
W3269 British Literature 1900-1950.
W3345 Studies in ihe 18th Century Novel: Oriental Tales.
W3982 Film Narrative: Film Noir.
BC3998 Sec. 2: Senior Seminar: Film: The Man in the Crowd/The Woman of the Streets.
BC3998 Sec. 3: Senior Seminar: Film: The Family in Turn-Of-The-Century American Fiction.
BC3998 Sec. 4: Senior Seminar: Film: Courtship in the Works of Chaucer.
BC3998 Sec. 6: Senior Seminar: Film: Modernist Visions: Conrad, Eliot, Woolf.
W4021 Medieval English & French Romance.
W4122 Renaissance Women Writers.
G4563 Psychoanalysis & Literature: Reading Lacan.
G4791 Medieval Drama.
G4822 The Novel in Europe II: Country & City in 19thc. Novels.
Ethnicity & Race
W3200 Migration, Generation, Race-Global America.
W3925 Comparative Social Formations of Urban Space.
First Year Seminar
BC1181 The American Supernatural.
BC1329 Women and Culture II.
BC1333 Women and Culture II.
BC1584 Global Literature: Imagining South Asia
Germanic Languages
W3270 Ingmar Bergman and the Development of Scandinavian Film.
History
W3111 European Renaissance.
W3881 History Of Modern China II.
W3901 The History of Sexuality.
W4663 Gender & Sexualities in Latin America.
BC3323 European Women/Age of Revolutions.
BC4375 Gender & Citizenship in Modern History.
BC4762 Perspectives on Power in 20thc. Latin America.
BC4763 Children & Childhood in African History.
BC4805 Caste, Power and Inequality.
International Affairs
U6404 Gender & International Human Rights.
U8356 Micro-Enterprise Development & Women.
U8510 Women-Power: Impact of Public and Private Sector Policy.
U8785 Gender, Politics & Development.
U8792 Women & Non-Profit Management.
Italian
G4180 Imagining Africa: Italian Colonialism & Its Legacy.
G4391 Challenging Genres, Gendering Fiction: The Experience of Italian Women Writers 1870-1930.
Law
L6252 Family Law.
L8006 Seminar: Domestic Violence and the Law.
L8007 Battered Women's Legal Service.
L8157 Women in the Legal Profession.
L9149 Seminar: Sexual Harassment in Employment: Policy & Practice.
L9169 Seminar: Abortion: Law in Context.
L9232 Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic.
L9551 Seminar: Feminist Legal Theory Workshop.
Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture
V3974 Hindu Goddesses.
Psychology
BC3382 Adolescent Psychology.
Religion
W3570 Women/Judaism: Folklore or Religion.
W4502 Jewish Rites: Gender and Power.
Sociology
V3200 Social Inequalities: Gender, Class, Race.
V3220 Masculinity: A Sociological View.
BC3318 The Sociology of Sexuality.
G8190 Social Movements & Social Change.
Sociomedical Sciences
P8720 History Of Sexual Health Promotion.
P8727 Women, Children & Aids.
Spanish & Portuguese
BC3149 "Other" in 19thc. Bourgeois Literature.
BC3150 Race and Performance in the Carribean.
W3300 Advanced Language through Content: Hispanic Cultures in the Age of Globalization.
Union Theological Seminary
O2370 Power, Gender, and Sexuality.
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