Women's Studies

Explorations in Gender, Culture, and Society What does it mean when Aretha Franklin sings a line such as “You make me feel like a natural woman”...? Have you ever scoffed at phrases such as “real men don’t eat quiche” or stared at a bathroom door to consider how little the icon on the door actually resembles your gender (or what might happen on the other side of that door)? This introductory course will begin with discussion and consideration of the binary gender categories we all use—men and women—but do not always question, even as we’re conditioned to accept these conventional definitions of gender, and the limitations they place on our lives. Focusing primarily on the American experience over the past 50 years, we will draw on essays from the discourses of science, social science, cultural studies, feminist and queer theory to identify where binary gender comes from, what in our culture promotes it, and why we’re so attached to these often limiting categories. In the latter part of the course we will look at gay and lesbian sexual orientations, bisexuality and queer sexuality, as well as transvestism, transgendering and drag, all of which challenge conventional notions of the “natural” order of human sexuality. The course will be interdisciplinary and multigenre, incorporating films, theory readings, and first-person narratives; students will produce several short analytical papers in addition to response journals, and the collaborative final written project may include a possible performance aspect as well.

Cultural Perspectives: Gender and Violence Gendered violence is epidemic in our society, but it often goes unrecognized. When school shootings occur, for example, they are always committed by young men, but the gender of the assailants, the fact that it is young men who are committing acts of violence in the schools, is generally passed over by the press. Where violence is concerned, women are more often the victims, men more often the actors. Why are young men more prone to pick up a gun and shoot their classmates or teachers than young women? Young men and boys are also more likely than young women and girls to play violent video and computer games, and to be attracted to violent movies and pornography. Why? Can we blame it all on testosterone, as a “natural,” biological phenomenon that won’t go away no matter what we do? Or is the violent tendency of boys learned behavior that can be unlearned, or at least not taught to successive generations? What would have to change in our social relations in order for young men to grow up less attracted to (or consumed by) violence? Through research in sociology, psychology, biology, political science, and gender studies, as well as literary texts and films, this class will explore the effect of violence on both genders, and look for solutions to this local, national, and indeed global problem. Areas to be explored include: 1) media violence; 2) pornography; 3) rape and sexual assault; 4) rape as a war crime; 5) sex tourism/sex trafficking; 6) the gendered assault on the environment. In addition to regular response journals, students will each write and present one ten-page research paper on a topic related to our theme, and will take a final exam.

Cultural Perspectives: Emperors, Samurai, and the Men who Love Them Queer culture in East Asia exists at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, and East and West. Both China and Japan have long historical and textual traditions of male homosexuality, traditions sometimes embraced and sometimes rejected by today’s East Asian gay communities. This course examines films, novels, and popular culture, together with historical studies and primary documents, as a means toward understanding the homosexual traditions of both the past and the present. Though the traditional materials are focused on male homosexuality, the course will also examine the role of both lesbians and straight women in the formation of queer identities in contemporary East Asia. This course assumes no previous background in Asian culture.

Cultural Perspectives: Introduction to Women’s Studies: An Incomplete Revolution Women’s studies is an approach to broadening our concept of “the human” by placing women’s experience at the center of analysis. This course investigates the ways in which women have been defined in our society, the effect of this definition on our lives, and the ways in which women see themselves. Special attention is given to issues of particular importance to young women, including eating disorders, pornography, rape, sexuality, and ideal constructions of femininity and womanhood.

Cultural Perspectives: Women in the Academy and on “The Street” This course focuses on critical issues debated by scholars and activists arguing from the varied feminist perspectives articulated in the 20th century, particularly since the late 1960s. It documents the ways that feminist analysis has significantly rethought core assumptions of the traditional academy, as it has contested Western conceptions that define the male as “the human” and woman as “the sex.” Further, this course explores the ways that feminist analysis can contribute to the understanding of our contemporary cultural, political, and personal milieux and change them for the better. It argues that the academic/real world dichotomy is false; and invites students to accept Nietzsche’s challenge “to want to see differently.”

Women Writing Activism: Changing the World This course will introduce students to a series of contemporary women writers, some famous Nobel prizewinners, others less well-known, all of whom have used their writing as a way to strengthen and manifest their political ideals. Drawn from different countries, cultural backgrounds, and languages, representing various facets of the interconnected global struggles for social justice and human rights, and working in a range of literary genres (poetry, fiction, essay, journalism, translation, and literary analysis), these writers provide inspirational models of the ways in which women activists have melded together their art and their politics into effective rhetorical strategies. In addition to the primary texts, we will also see a series of documentary films about the writer/activists, and will consider other media women have used as activist "texts," particularly music, art, film, and theater. Required coursework will include response journals, a midterm paper and a final paper, which will be presented to the class, and which may either combine analysis of one or more primary texts with background research on the issues involved, or may take the form of an original literary activist intervention.

Cultural Perspectives: Women’s Words in China, Japan, and Korea Women in East Asian societies have long had distinct ways of expressing their stories. The literary forms, and even the very languages, women used in the traditional periods were often distinctly their own, yet their writings have come to influence both male and female writers of the contemporary era. This course focuses on three autobiographical texts, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon from Japan, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong from Korea, and Yang Jiang’s Six Chapters from My Life Downunder from China. These real women’s stories are juxtaposed against fictional work by traditional and modern authors including Murasaki Shikibu, Tanizaki Junichiro, Kono Taeko, O Chonghui, Xi Xi, Li Ang, and Zhu Tianwen. This course assumes no previous background in Asian culture.

Motherhood in Women’s Fiction and Theory Motherhood is both a fact and a myth in all societies; the nature and meaning of the myths and symbolism of motherhood differ historically and culturally. Myths about motherhood have particular significance for women. Fiction affords women writers an opportunity to question, rewrite, and contest those myths, inventing new stories about motherhood and rendering the experience from inside. In this course, an exploration of the theme of motherhood is the focus of questions about how women writers confront cultural, literary, and intellectual traditions and about how they invent anew. Authors include Atwood, Drabble, Emecheta, Gordon, Lessing, Rich, Tan, and Chodorow. Prerequisite: English 100 or permission of the instructor.

Film and Female Pleasure Film theory’s analysis of the gaze and how it addresses differently viewers who are male, female, black, white, gay or lesbian is the starting point for this course. We analyze the cult appeal of star icons like Garbo, Dietrich, West, Hepburn —Katherine and Audrey, Garland, Monroe, Madonna, Cher, or Streep; we interrogate the perverse pleasure in suffering in the melodramatic women’s films of the 1940s, and contrast newer films by female directors that attempt to disrupt dominant cinema with traditional Hollywood narratives and relevant films by male auteurs. A diverse range of films are studied, from traditional women’s pictures like She Done Him Wrong or Camille to more recent popular films like Girlfriends or Thelma and Louise, and more experimental work by feminist directors like The Piano. Narrative structures, cinematic techniques, and the psychology of spectatorship—all are considered in this course. We will cover 12 films in depth and each student will select one additional film on which to do a self-directed research project.

Cultural Perspectives: Women, Writing, and Resistance in the Caribbean This interdisciplinary course explores a series of novels, testimonials, autobiographical writings, essays, and poetry by contemporary Latina and Caribeña women writers who use writing to resist the entrenched patriarchal, imperialistic, racist, and exploitative regimes that have dominated their countries for centuries. Many of these writers have been thrust out into the Latino-Caribbean diaspora by violent forces that make differences in language and culture seem less significant than connections based on collaboration in on-going struggles for human rights and social justice. The course will draw on the disciplines of history, economics, politics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, literary studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and women’s studies to explore the impact of globalization on the region, the relation of women writers to male-dominated political, social, and literary movements, the intersection of politics and aesthetics, and many other issues raised by this emergent body of literature. Writers include Rigoberta Menchu, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, and Gloria Anzaldua.

Global Feminism This course serves as an introductory survey of the challenges faced by women in six major regions of the world: Africa, China, India, the Middle East, Latin America, North America and Europe. Students read one or more works of literature by women from each region as windows into the culture from a woman’s perspective, supplemented by readings in feminist and postcolonial theory, as well as historical and cultural background, designed to provide a broader understanding of the situation of women in each cultural context. Each student also undertakes an extended Inquiry Log research project, in which s/he engages more deeply with global feminist issues, comparing and contrasting women’s roles, issues and political movements in one or two countries from one or two regions of the world. Students are encouraged to consult primary documents whenever possible, for example UNIFEM or Amnesty International reports, or information from women’s organizations from various countries that may be available on-line, when language permits. Frequent classroom visits from relevant members of the international community at Simon’s Rock also help to “bring the world home” for the seminar group. Students present their inquiry log research twice during the semester, and write up their findings in a series of three papers, each a minimum of 10 pages. Students are also required to write a series of four 5-page response papers on the primary texts. In recent years, readings have included: Nawal El Saadawi, Buchi Emecheta, Jung Chang, Fatima Mernissi, Aurora Levins Morales, Margaret Randall, Adrienne Rich, Gayatri C. Spivak, Alice Walker, and Virginia Woolf.

Doing Theory: Feminist, Postcolonial, Queer This upper-level Gender Studies seminar takes as a basic premise that theory is valuable only as it relates to and affects conditions in the real world. The course explores the politicized issues of identity, territoriality and liminality raised by emergent theorists working within the three broad categories of feminist, postcolonial, and queer theory, looking for intersections and conjunctures between various theorists, schools of thought, and regional applications of theory. In addition, part of our agenda will be to critique the split between the abstract language of high theory and the pragmatic language of activism, seeking to find a common ground, in language and in action, between these two often disjunctive discursive realms. Beginning with theories of global feminism, we will work through the theoretical questions raised by the Subaltern Studies group in India, as well as its active North American/Latin American counterpart; questions of identity and subjectivity, in language and in “reality,” raised by feminist and queer theorists; and articulations of strategic alliances across the bounds of “feminist, postcolonial and queer” theorists and activists. Topics to be discussed include, but are certainly not limited to: essentializing and its discontents; straight white American privilege; questions of “experience”; “Third World” feminist/postcolonial critiques of the “First World”; transnational feminism and the politics of location; feminist/postcolonial/queer critiques of academe; theoretical bases of, and practical challenges to, strategic alliances; feminist readings of postcolonial politics; envisioning new social structures and political bases of action. Theorists will include Gayatri Spivak, Gloria Anzaldua, John Beverly, Uma Narayan, Linda Nicholson, Steven Seidman, Chantal Mouffe, Stanley Aronowitz, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Cindy Patton and many others.

Women’s Studies Tutorial Under these course numbers, juniors and seniors design tutorials to meet their particular interests and programmatic needs. A student should see the prospective tutor to define an area of mutual interest to pursue either individually or in a small group. A student may register for no more than one tutorial in any semester.