GRADUATE SEMINARS IN THE DEPARTMENT
The following courses are graduate seminars offered in the Department. Please also see this link for a listing of approved graduate electives offered outside the Department.
Proseminar
WST 5933-Class # 17103
Proseminar (seminar that prepares you for more advanced work) introducing graduate students to Women’s Studies scholarship. Overview of feminist thought, interdisciplinary research, and feminist practice. Students are introduced to scholars in the field, and learn how to design and implement an independent research project appropriate to Women’s Studies.
The syllabus can be found here.
Feminist Methods in Research and Scholarship
WST 6004- Class # 26683
Provides graduate training covering a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods for giving voice to the diversity of women’s experiences and those of understudied and marginalized populations, making visible the invisible and undercounted aspects of people’s lives and studying intersectionality. Includes overview of feminist critiques of science and epistemologies. Prerequisite: None. Open to all graduate students in all colleges.
The syllabus can be found here.
Independent Study
WST 6905-Section departmentally controlled
Variable Credits, Grading Scheme: Letter Grade
Independent reading or research under guidance. Prerequisite: consent of instructor and department chair; and 1 women’s studies course, or course that counts for women’s studies.
WST 6935: Special Topics in Women’s Studies
Selected topics in gender and women’s studies, emphasizing new knowledge production and contributions in feminist scholarship. Examines a specific topic, a major figure, or a current problem in more depth than is regularly possible in a more general course
Topic: Race, Gender, and Labor
WST6935– Class # 17894
This course investigates how work shapes people’s lives, especially women of color, in both domestic and international settings. Examines scholarly and activist debates about what constitutes work and how certain kinds of work are distributed across race, gender, and class. Focuses primarily on unpaid and unacknowledged work, but also discusses various forms of paid work and the kinds of changes that women of color have demanded in workplaces, such as higher compensation and freedom from sexual harassment. Explores how workers have creatively resisted to transform the meaning of work.
The syllabus can be found here.
Topic: Data Feminisms
WST6935– Class 28351
Draws from critical data and algorithm studies and feminist science and technology studies to develop critical tools of inquiry needed to approach data within a context of racialized, gendered, colonial, and classed systems of power. Combines practical data workshops with critical readings to analyze data across key uses in domains such as healthcare, security apparatuses, carceral systems, and digital infrastructures.
The syllabus can be found here.
TOPIC: Latinx Sexualities
WST6935– Class # 28402
Introduces the interdisciplinary field of Latina/o sexuality studies from an understanding of Latinx sexualities as complex processes in flux. Engages Latinx sexualities through transnational histories, memoirs and testimonios, artworks, literature, music, film, and video to understand how Latinx sexual identities and practices are shaped.
The syllabus can be found here.
TOPIC: Feminist International Relations Theory
WST6935– Class # 29476
This course explores theoretical and empirical approaches to analyzing the role of gender in international relations. While the field of IR has a long history of minimizing the role of gender in global politics, this course centers gender as an analytic framework and as an organizing principle that shapes international relations. We will examine the theoretical foundations of feminist IR as they relate to some of the central tenets of ‘mainstream’ IR (e.g., power, security, and militarism). We will then expand to examining how understandings of global conflict and political violence shift when studied through a feminist lens, how these processes shape understandings of gender, and the political implications of those understandings. We will also explore the role of gender in related political issues such as peace processes, human rights, international political economy, and more.
The syllabus can be found here.
Internship
WST 6946-Section departmentally controlled
Variable Credits, Grading Scheme: S/U
Prerequisite: Permission of Graduate Coordinator. Practical experience in community. Internship with local agency, group, or business in women’s issues. Click here for more information and an on-line application.