Gender and Sexuality Studies
- AAS 303/GSS 406/HUM 347/GHP 313: Topics in Global Race and Ethnicity: Scientific Racism Then and NowThis course explores the intellectual history of scientific racism, paying close attention to how its theories influence power and institutions today. Reading primary sources from the history of science, each class will trace the reverberations of scientific racism in media, education, politics, law, and global health. Our conversations will consistently analyze the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and age in the legacies of scientific racism. We will also examine the impact of scientific racism in public discourse about the Black Lives Matter Movement and collectively brainstorm for activism towards restorative justice.
- AAS 332/GSS 333: A History of Intellectual Appropriation of BlacknessThis course explores the history of intellectual appropriation of Blackness through an intersectional lens. We will first focus on intellectual appropriation within the entertainment industry and social media. Students will then analyze the historical connection between intellectual erasures, racialized enslavement, and colonialism. This course will also closely examine Blackfishing, the memeification of Black celebrities, and the intellectual appropriation of Black emotionality and struggles.
- AAS 352/GSS 348/HIS 347: Race and Reproduction in U.S. HistoryThe course examines how issues of race and gender shape the medical, social, and cultural discourses of reproduction. It will explore contested meanings of reproductive health alongside histories of eugenics, contraception, pregnancy, childbirth, emerging reproductive technologies, and reproductive justice activism. It will also address the enduring legacies of racism and reproductive violence in medical practice, and their impact on current issues of health inequality.
- AAS 522/COM 522/ENG 504/GSS 503: Publishing Journal Articles in the Humanities and Social SciencesIn this interdisciplinary class, students of race as well as gender, sexuality, disability, etc. read deeply and broadly in academic journals as a way of learning the debates in their fields and placing their scholarship in relationship to them. Students report each week on the trends in the last five years of any journal of their choice, writing up the articles' arguments and debates, while also revising a paper in relationship to those debates and preparing it for publication. This course enables students to leap forward in their scholarly writing through a better understanding of their fields and the significance of their work to them.
- ANT 232/GSS 232/HUM 232/SAS 232: Love: Anthropological ExplorationsLove is a deeply personal experience. Yet, powerful social, political, and economic forces determine who we love, when we love, and how we love. Looking at practices of romantic love, dating, sex, marriage, queer love, friendship, and familial love across different social and global contexts, this course explores how social and cultural factors shape our most intimate relationships. Drawing on ethnography, history, and journalism, we examine the intersections between love and technology, gender, race, the law, capitalism, colonialism, and religion. For the final project, students will use creative writing or multi-media to tell a love story.
- ANT 337/GSS 279: Queer BecomingsThe goal of this course is to understand what queer lifeworlds are like in diverse cultural and sociopolitical contexts. What is the relationship between queerness and larger forces such as culture, coloniality, global capitalism, religion, and the state? What counts as queer and whose recognition matters? What is the nature of the work of becoming that is involved, and what resources do they draw upon in doing so? What factors enable or curtail these possibilities? Is queer always radical and against the norm? We will answer such questions by reading ethnographies, theories, and biographies that focus on queer lifeworlds across the world.
- ANT 339/GSS 323: Behavioral Biology of WomenIn almost every human society, women are expected to perform different tasks than men. Was there a biological or cultural reason for this? True - women are the only sex to give birth to date, but does that mean there is no escape from traditional sex roles? In this class we will explore female behavioral biology from an evolutionary and biocultural perspective. We will pair physiology and life-history theory with cultural outcomes to engage with feminism and social and political debates. Topics include menstrual taboos, sexual differentiation and gender identity, reproduction, contraception, women's health, workplace equality, etc.
- ANT 461/AAS 461/GHP 461/GSS 461: Disability, Difference, and RaceWhile diseases are often imagined to be scientific or medical conditions, they are also social constructs. In the 19th century the condition of Dysaesthesia Aethiopis (an ailment that made its sufferers "mischievous") was considered nearly universal among free blacks. Today AIDS and tuberculosis are often associated with personal attributes, while the social forces at work to structure risk for acquiring these illnesses are glossed over. We will examine work from anthropologists, sociologists, historians, queer studies scholars and scientists who work on issues of disability to investigate how people challenge contemporary visions of society.
- ART 389/GSS 390/EAS 389: Women and Gender in Chinese ArtWomen and their associated symbolism are a perpetual presence across a wide range of mediums throughout Chinese art history. Spanning the longue durée from 1200 BCE to the twentieth century, this course focuses on how the production, mediation, and reception of gendered artistic symbols operate in various contexts. It proceeds chronologically and thematically. The instructors intend to incorporate novel formats, such as classroom interviews and VR headsets, in investigating Chinese artworks concerning women and their relevant discourses from the angles of gender politics and identity construction, with a special emphasis on women's agency.
- ART 490/GSS 490/VIS 490: The Feminist Critique, Fifty Years LaterThis course examines feminist critiques of art history and contemporary art. What challenges did they pose to the fields of art history and contemporary art? Drawing on artworks by Rosa Bonheur, Georgia O'Keeffe, Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Shahzia Sikander, Andy Warhol and others from the Princeton University Art Museum, as well as readings in art history, art criticism, cultural criticism, literature and philosophy, we will see how the feminist critique transformed art history and contemporary art, and was itself transformed in the process.
- CHV 390/PHI 390/GSS 391: The Ethics of Love and SexAn examination of the moral principles governing love and sex. Questions to be addressed include: Do we ever owe it to someone to love him or her? Do we owe different things to those we love? Do we owe it to a loved one to believe better of him than our evidence warrants? What is consent, and why is it morally significant? Is sex between consenting adults always permissible, and if not, why not? Are there good reasons for prohibiting prostitution and pornography? Everyone has opinions about these matters. The aim of the course is to subject those opinions to scrutiny.
- CLA 212/HUM 212/GSS 212/HLS 212: Classical MythologyAn introduction to the classical myths in their cultural context and in their wider application to human concerns (such as creation, sex and gender, identity, transformation, and death). The course will offer a who's who of the ancient imaginative world, study the main ancient sources of well known stories, and introduce modern approaches to analyzing myths.
- DAN 215/ANT 355/GSS 215/AMS 215: Introduction to Dance Across CulturesBharatanatyam, butoh, hip hop, and salsa are some of the dances that will have us travel from temples and courtyards to clubs, streets, and stages around the world. Through studio sessions, readings and viewings, field research, and discussions, this seminar will introduce students to dance across cultures with special attention to issues of migration, cultural appropriation, gender and sexuality, and spiritual and religious expression. Students will also learn basic elements of participant observation research. Guest artists will teach different dance forms. No prior dance experience is necessary.
- EAS 239/COM 254/GSS 239: Modern Chinese Poetry: Seeing Modern China through the Poetry CloudThis course explores the work and life of poets across the Chinese-speaking world from the tumultuous twentieth century to the present. How does poetry adapt to the evolving media landscape and serve as a storage device for the events, experiences, and myths of modern China? How did poets transform crises--dynastic collapse, colonialism, national failure, revolution, war, displacement, state and mass violence, political repression, environmental calamity--into critical reflections on the diverse yet interconnected human condition? Concluding with a glimpse into the creativity of AI poets, we ask: why do humans still need poetry?
- ENG 339/COM 342/GSS 438: Topics in 18th-Century Literature: Jane Austen Then and NowThis class considers Jane Austen not only as the inventor of the classic novel but also as an inspiring, ceaslessly discussable author who is--thanks to a steady stream of adaptations and spinoffs--our contemporary. Pairing each novel with recent adaptations and current issues, we will discuss how Austen treats love, violence, sisterhood, sex, and power. Exploring Austen's difference as well as her modernity, we will learn as much about ourselves as about her novels.
- ENG 383/GSS 395/AMS 483/AAS 340: Topics in Women's Writing: Archival Silence & Aesthetic InnovationIn this course, students will think dynamically about the relationship between archival records of Black life and Black women's creative expression to interrogate the possibilities and the limits of historical archives. Through hands-on engagement with archival objects in special collections and deep readings of literature, poetry, and visual arts, we will explore what the archival record affords, erases, and silences, and, conversely, how imaginative practices can begin to address and redress its subjects and their histories.
- ENG 384/GSS 394: Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies: Gender, Sex, and Desire in Early ModernityThis course explores early modern figurations of gender and sex in the literature and philosophy of Europe. We will look carefully at poetry, plays, utopian fiction, and natural philosophy from early modern England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the wider Atlantic world. Orienting our reading around the intersecting paradigms of faith, labor, and utopia, this course will offer us the chance to explore historical theories of gender, sex, and desire as well as consent, race, and property. We will also consider how early modern problems and assumptions inform more recent debates concerning gender and sexuality.
- ENV 251/GSS 251: Coming to Our Senses: Climate Justice - Climate Change in Film, Photography and Popular CultureThis immersive, multimedia course invites us to come to our senses in creative ways, exploring climate crises like melting ice, rising oceans, deforestation and displacements. We will come alive to hidden worlds, kayaking the Millstone and trips to Manhattan, engaging animal and environmental studies. Through film, images and writing, we explore the vital ways environmental issues intersect with gender, race and sexualities. Themes include: wilderness; national parks; violent settler colonialism; masculinities; militarization; Indigenous knowledges; animal intelligence and emotions; slow violence; the commons; and strategies for change.
- GER 218/MED 218/GSS 235: Medieval Gender Politics: Wicked Queens, Holy Women, Warrior SaintsIs there a historical basis for the fierce ladies of 'Game of Thrones'? Why do modern depictions of medieval queens portray them as wickedly ambitious? In a variety of texts about the villainy and sanctity, eloquence and wit, humility and power of women--both real and imagined--this course will explore the long history of negative reactions to leading women, the multiple strategies by means of which such figures have asserted various kinds of authority, as well as what they have suffered in consequence. By unraveling the complex gender and power dynamics of the past we will also develop a better understanding of such issues in the present.
- GSS 201: Introduction to Gender and Sexuality StudiesThis course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of gender and sexuality studies. How do gender and sexuality emerge from networks of power and social relations? And how are they entangled and co-constituted with other axes of identity such as class, race, and ability? As we survey a wide variety of writers, texts, issues, and methods - historical and contemporary, theoretical and practical, artistic and scholarly - we will engage the diversity of thought and approach contained under the rubrics of feminist, gender, sexuality, and queer studies as foundation for further work in the field.
- GSS 297: Gender, Sexuality and MigrationThis seminar examines how gender and sexuality shape processes of migration. It mainly focuses on the experiences of women. It addresses the constitution of gender and sexuality in the process of migration, analyzes the ways that society disciplines migrants via the control of their gender and sexuality, examines how race factors in these processes, and lastly identifies the ways that migrants utilize gender and sexuality to negotiate the various structural inequalities they confront in the process of migration. This course situates our discussion of gender and sexuality in the state, labor market, and family.
- GSS 322/MTD 324/THR 324/AMS 325: There She Is: Beauty, Pageantry, & Spectacular Femininity in American LifeAfter more than 100 years running, the Miss America Pageant (1921- ) stands among the most enduring - and enduringly controversial - popular performance traditions of American life and culture. This course offers an intensive, method-based historical overview of how "Miss America" as both idea and event documents the shifting ways gender, sexuality, race and embodiment been comprehended in the United States, even as it also examines the disparate ways the "beauty pageant" as a performance genre has been adopted and adapted by/for communities excluded by the rules of Miss America.
- GSS 336/AMS 436: Crime, Gender, and American CultureAn exploration of the ways in which gender and crime are intertwined in some of the most significant and popular works of American fiction. Our analysis of the aesthetic, cultural, and psychological dimensions of narratives based on crime and detection will focus on texts by both women and men with an emphasis on the capacity of gender studies to illuminate American crime fiction's recurring concern with questions of race and class, justice and power, violence and victimhood.
- GSS 373/AMS 383: Graphic MemoirAn exploration of the graphic memoir focusing on the ways specific works combine visual imagery and language to expand the possibilities of autobiographical narrative. Through our analysis of highly acclaimed graphic memoirs from the American, Franco-Belgian, and Japanese traditions, we examine the visual and verbal constructions of identity with an emphasis on the representation of gender dynamics and cultural conflict.
- GSS 507/SOC 507: Gender in a Global SocietySince the publication in the 1980s of the seminal essay by Chandra Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes," feminist scholarship has sought to decolonize knowledge by decentering the Global North and rejecting the universalization of Western experiences. Differences in experiences across cultures and nations became a focal point of feminist inquiry. Universal claims engendered suspicion, leading many to reject analysis of larger systems such as "patriarchy." The avoidance of ethnocentrism also became a priority. How do we achieve these goals? In other words, how do we decolonize feminist knowledge?
- HIS 420/SAS 420/GSS 430: Desi Girl, Mother India: Gender, Sexuality, and History in Hindi CinemaHow do representations of men and women, past and present, intersect with popular memories of and attitudes towards gender and sexuality? Thinking through this question with reference to India, this course will entail a close reading of one Bollywood film (with English subtitles) each week alongside an engagement with scholarly studies of the histories of gender and sexuality and of film in South Asia. Students will learn to be critical and historically sensitive viewers of film. They will also reflect critically on the crafting and re-crafting of popular memory, placing remembered pasts in dialog with scholarly approaches.
- HIS 519/GSS 519/HOS 519: Topics in the History of Sex and Gender: History of Women/Gender/Sexuality in the U.S.This seminar surveys the allied fields of women's history, gender history, and the history of sexuality, situating recent works in the context of canonical texts and longstanding debates in the field. Please see instructor for a draft of the syllabus.
- LAO 356/GSS 425: Body, Culture, PowerThis course explores the construction, imaging, and experience of the racialized body while considering modern regimes of power. It examines the legacies of White supremacy and Coloniality in relation to cultural production and the body. This course's pedagogical approach is rooted in Chicana/o Studies and will examine power in relation to Latinx and other communities of color-it does not focus on Mexican/Latinx communities exclusively. When analyzing power, it recognizes the importance of contextualizing visual, audio, and embodied performative representations of culture to understand how the body speaks back to power.
- LAS 229/AAS 229/GSS 231: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin AmericaThis course will explore the intellectual history of race, gender, and sexuality in Latin America. We will first analyze the representation of these intersections in reggaetón and Latin trap. Students will then examine the impact of conquest, colonization, and slavery in the rise of racial categories and heteronormative gender norms in the history of Latin America. Furthermore, we will focus on multiple case studies, such as the legacies of the Haitian Revolution, the history of racial genocide in Puerto Rico, the Hollywood representation of Latin America, and colorist beauty standards in Brazil and Mexico.
- NES 301/GSS 339/GHP 310: The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global SouthIntroduces the transdisciplinary field of trauma studies by examining visions of humanity from the Global South that prioritize alternative narratives and paradigms of healing individual and collective trauma. Re-orienting healing as a decolonizing process enables students to re-politicize personal trauma as it intersects with global legacies of violence, war, racism, slavery, patriarchy, colonialism, orientalism, homophobia, ableism, capitalism, and extractivism. The course participates in a new project to help illuminate how the humanities itself can offer new paths to understanding trauma and healing.
- NES 374/GSS 343: Global Feminisms: Feminist Movements in the Middle East and BeyondThis course explores how feminist thought & activism circulates globally by examining a variety of feminist movements in the Middle East & North Africa. Beginning with modern feminist thought and activism in mid-19th century Syria & Egypt, we'll trace feminist movements in various contemporary contexts, from Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon & Egypt in the 20th century, to women's participation in the Arab Spring and transnational Islamic movements in the 21st century. We'll map the local and geopolitical discourses that have shaped regional feminisms, and ask how local feminisms are transnational or global.
- REL 337/NES 357/GSS 448: Slavery, Sex and Empire in Muslim SocietiesThis course explores the theory and practice of slavery in specific Muslim societies from the 8th century up through the 20th. Our goal is to recover the lives of the enslaved and to explore intersections of sex, gender and slavery. Students will read primary sources in translation: papyri, letters, chronicles, coins. Why did some former slaves become rulers? What role did the sexual/reproductive labor of female slaves play in the family? Why did European colonial authorities perpetuate slavery in the modern period? What is the legacy of slavery in Muslim societies?
- SPA 585/GSS 585/HUM 563/LAS 575: El cuarto de los temblores: Rewriting Gender in Latin AmericaWoolf once said, "It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly." We address and complicate the notion that women need a room of their own in order to write and create by examining the ways in which Latin American women and queer writers, artists, and filmmakers interrupt, deconstruct, reshape, and at times shake the patriarchal house of writing and the dominant gaze of film and art by performing gender in unexpected and ingenious fashions, feminizing and expanding the sites of symbolic production.
- SPI 373/GSS 205: Women, Law and Public PolicyThis course will explore how women's rights activists, lawyers, and legal scholars have considered legal institutions and law to be arenas and resources for transforming women's lives and gender norms, identities, and roles. Since the early 1970s, feminist legal scholars and lawyers have challenged traditional understandings of law and the core civic values of freedom, justice, and equality. Others have questioned whether litigation-centered approaches to reform have harmed more than helped advance the goal of women's equality and liberation.