Women’s Studies Spring 2007 Graduate Courses
GSOC-447-301 HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE ECOLOGY
W 2-5 Valeggia (valeggia@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: ANTH-447
A seminar-style course designed to provide an overview of the latest advances in human reproductive ecology and the mechanics of writing a proposal. We will discuss readings and exchange ideas on the different directions that this relatively new discipline may take. As a way of reviewing the material and train ourselves to present our ideas to a funding agency, we will write individual research proposals that will be discussed in class to receive feedback.
GSOC-518-401 NURSING, HEALTH AND ILLNESS IN THE UNITED
STATES, 1860-1985
W 4-7 Fairman (fairman@uphs.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: NURS-518
Distribution: History & Tradition
This course uses nursing's history as a framework for analyzing gendered themes in health and health care since the Civil War. Thus, the ideas, events, people and institutions that have played a role in shaping the historical health care system are examined as part of an inclusive social context that considers the multifaceted meanings of women's work and women's experiences. Specifically, this course concentrates on the ways in which women have both challenged and collaborated with social structures and ideologies that were themselves gendered. This focus is presented as one way of understanding the complex interrelationships among gender, class, and race in the American health care system.
Content includes changing ideas about the nature of health and illness; changing forms of health care delivery; changing experiences of women as providers and patients; changing role expectations and realities for nurses; changing midwifery practice; changing segmentation of the health care labor market by gender, class and race.
GSOC-530-401 FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF CHRIST
T 1:30-4:30 Callahan (ldcallah@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: RELS-530
Distribution: Society
Description n/a
GSOC-556-401 NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE:
CRYING IN THE NIGHT
T 3-6 Auerbach (nauerbac@dept.english.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: ENGL-556
The seminar will analyze the role of the infantile in Victorian narrative, especially narratives by male writers. We will try to locate the transition from infantilism to authority in such sages as Wordsworth, Ruskin, Dickens, Tennyson, and Hopkins. We will also, of course, study Narratives by such women as the Brontes, Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who eschew infantilism even when they write about children.
GSOC-572-401 LANGUAGE AND GENDER
R 10-12 Pomerantz (apomeran@gse.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: EDUC-572
A critical investigation of the relationship between language, gender, and social structure which addresses the role of language in reflecting and perpetuating gender divisions. Students' ongoing discourse analytic projects are integral to our exploration of issues related to sexism in and through language. Implications for individual and social change are discussed.
GSOC-588-401 THE POLITICS OF WOMEN’S HEALTH
R 3-6 Lewis (lisaml@nursing.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: NURS-588
This course will utilize a multidisciplinary approach to address the field of women’s health care. The constructs of women’s health care will be examined from a clinical, as well as sociological, anthropological and political point of view. Topics will reflect the historical movement of women’s health care from an obstetrical/gynecological view to one that encompasses the entire life span and life needs of women. The emphasis of the course will be to undertake a critical exploration of the diversity of women’s health care needs and the past and current approaches to this care. Issues will be addressed from both a national and global perspective, with a particular focus on the relationship between women’s equality/inequality status and state of health.
GSOC-595-401 WOMEN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN S. ASIA
TR 4:30-6 Shaikh
Cross Listed: SAST-295/SAST-595/GSOC-295
One aspect of the position of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan is all too clear from the images and reports we see more and more frequently: veiled (or cocooned in a burka), victim of an honor killing, an acid attack or a gang rape; subject to Islamic laws that devalue them. But women in these two Muslim countries have sought to break the barriers of their rigidly patriarchal societies while refusing to surrender their identity as Muslims. Understanding how they have fared could hold the key to how women in South Asia and other parts of the Muslim world negotiate their autonomy and reclaim their right to participate as equal citizens on their own terms. At the same time, no women’s movement anywhere can develop in isolation. Therefore, this course will explore lines of conflict and co-operation between women and other groups in society, such as the rural peasantry, the urban poor, migrant labour, students and peace activists.
GSOC-599 INDEPENDENT STUDY (GRADUATE LEVEL)
Arranged TBA
See Department for Permission and Section Number
GSOC-683-401 GENDER, POWER AND FEMINIST THEORY
R 2:30-5:30 Hirschmann
Cross Listed: PSCI-683, ENGL-769
This seminar will examine the theme of power as it engages questions of sex and gender. Subsidiary themes that will be developed over the course of the semester include: the modernism/postmodernism debate as it particularly relates to feminism; the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class and how feminists can and do talk about "women"; the relevance of feminist theory to policy issues, and which theoretical approaches are the most appropriate or have the most powerful potential. The readings represent some of the newest scholarship as well as several more familiar texts to provide an understanding of how some of the latest developments in feminist theory have come to pass. In the first 5 weeks we will explore general issues of power and then turn to works that attempt to grapple with more specific political issues in which power is expressed.
