Rev. 8/22/05

Women’s Studies Fall 2005

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/wstudies/

WSTD-002-401 GENDER AND SOCIETY

MW 11-12 Lundeen (bshannon@sas)

Recitation

402 F 12-1

403 F 11-12

404 W 12-1

405 F 11-12

Cross Listed: COLL-001

General Requirement I: Society

This course examines the impact of sex and gender roles on contemporary American society. Differentiation by sex is the central organizing principle of nearly every human society. How can we understand the relationship between biological sex and socially constructed gender? How do maleness and femaleness affect the balance of power and resources in our society? How much has changed since the beginning of the Women's Movement of the 1960s? The course will examine key issues of gender difference and inequality including family life, paid work, economic status, violence, body image, sexuality, and reproduction. The course will examine men's roles and women's roles, treating gender as an interactive and dynamic concept.

WSTD-002-601 GENDER AND SOCIETY

T 6-9 Tracy (mtracy@sas )

General Requirement I: Society

See above course description

WSTD-004-401 THE FAMILY

MW 2-3                                  Furstenberg (fff@pop.upenn.edu)

Recitation

402 F 2-3

403 F 12-1

404 M 3-4

405 W 3-4

Cross Listed: SOCI-004

General Requirement I: Society

Fulfills College Quantitative Data Analysis

Historical and cultural development of the family, analysis of sexual codes; discussion of role differences between men and women; factors involved in mate selection and marital adjustment, analysis of family disorganization with both individual and societal implications.

WSTD-007-401 POPULATION AND SOCIETY

TR 1:30-3                                           Kohler(iliana@pop.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: SOCI-007/URBS-265

General Requirement I: Society

The course covers selected aspects of population and the study of demography, including social, economic, and political issues: population explosion, baby bust, population aging, abortion, teenage pregnancy, illegal aliens, racial classification, and population and development.

WSTD-008-401 HUMAN REPRODUCTION AND SEX DIFFERENCES

MWF 2-3 Waldron (iwaldron@sas)

Recitation

402 M 3-4

403 W 1-2

Cross Listed: BIOL-008

General Requirement V: Living World

This course will discuss human reproduction, including anatomy, physiology, hormonal control, genetics, development, infertility, contraception, sexual behavior, sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, and relevant basic molecular and cellular biology. In addition, this course will discuss sex differences and similarities in health and mortality, including relevant basic biology of the cardiovascular system and cancer.

WSTD-009-301 THE AMERICAN FAMILY

TR 12-1:30 Paxton (fpaxton@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: ENGL-003

Fulfills the College Writing Requirement

What do we mean when we say we're family? And what are family values? "No Place Like Home" is an interdisciplinary writing course that invites you to examine the evolution of American family life from 1900 to the present. Our approaches will be as varied as the families we study: we will explore how novelists, playwrights, and poets have depicted the American family; how advertisers and politicians have appealed to it; how legislators have defined it; how Hollywood has imagined it; and how academics and journalists have pronounced it to be alternately ailing and thriving. You will experiment with numerous, including creative non-fiction, autobiography, and journalism. You will complete formal and/or informal writing assignments every week. These will help you develop high level academic writing skills.

WSTD-019-401 AUTHORS & IMITATORS: JAPANESE WOMEN

TR 3-4:30 Chance (lchance@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: COML/EALC

Freshman Seminar

The vernacular prose works of women writers from the tenth and eleventh centuries have had an important place in the canon of Japan's national literature. Perhaps more surprisingly, English translations of these works have inspired artists outside Japan to produce a variety of imitations and variations. We will read the so-called "Pillow Book" of Sei Shonagon, a witty court lady, and English novels inspired by it (My Year of Meats, My Name is Sei Shonagon, White Oleander), as well as consider the Peter Greenaway film. Other texts will include Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji and anthropologist Liza Dalby's Tale of Murasaki, an imitation diary told in the voice of "the world's first novelist." Our questions will range from what makes an author global and the national literary exchanges, theories of originals and copies, and the role of gender in writing.

WSTD-060-401 INTRO TO LATINA/O LITERATURE:

TR 12-1:30 BEGINNINGS TO 1898

Padilla (amparo@dept.english)

Cross Listed: ENGL-070/LTAM-060

WATU Credit Optional

Distribution III: Arts and Letters

This course is an introduction to Latina/o literature, from the period of Spanish colonization to 1898 and the Spanish-American War. The readings are organized, with a few exceptions, in roughly chronological order. As we move through our survey of the literature, we will attend to the distinct historical and cultural conditions in which the texts were produced. Some of the historical narratives that will inform our discussions include Spanish colonization prior to the U.S. occupation of the borderlands, the 1846-48 Mexican War and its consequences, and U.S. economic and political interest in the Caribbean territories leading up to the Spanish-American War. Throughout the course, we will interrogate the possibilities, limitations, and the viability of studying these diverse literatures under the rubric of "latinidad." Writers will include Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, José Martí, and Américo Paredes.

WSTD-075-401 JAZZ: STYLE AND HISTORY

TR 10:30-12                                  Ramsey (gramsey@sas.upenn.edu

Cross Listed: FOLK/MUSC-075

Distribution III: Arts & Letters

Exploration of the family of musical idioms called jazz. Attention will be given to issues of style, to selected musicians, and to the social, cultural, and scholarly issues raised by

its study.

WSTD-082-401 RITUAL IN AMERICAN LIFE

W 2-5 Paxton (fpaxton@sas.upenn.edu )

Cross Listed: FOLK-082

Freshman Seminar

Distribution III: Arts and Letters

Starting with birth and working chronologically through a series of case studies, this course invites students to examine the centrality of ritual in modern American life. We will look closely at rituals that celebrate the human lifecycle as well as overtly competitive sporting and political rituals. We will explore rituals that unfold at the local level as well as those that most Americans experience only via the media. Rituals under examination will include birthday parties, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Halloween, Quinceañeras, Proms, graduations, rodeos, Homecomings, weddings, Greek initiations, beauty pageants, reunions and funerals. Students will be encouraged to critically examine their own ritual beliefs and practices and to consider these and other theoretical questions: What is the status of ritual in post-industrial culture? What distinguishes popular from official ritual and secular from religious ritual? How do sociological variables such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion shape people’s understanding of, and participation in, modern American rituals? What role does ritual play in family life? How do contemporary rituals bond Americans at the local and/or national level? All students will be expected to conduct original research on a ritual of their choosing.

WSTD-090-401 CONTEMPORARY WOMEN WRITERS

TR 9-10:30 Barnard (rbarnard@english.upenn.edu)

Cross-Listed: ENGL/COML-090

Distribution III: Arts and Letters

This course will cover a wide range of fiction by contemporary women writers from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. The first part of the course will explore several versions of the "mad woman in the attic" motif and consider the effects of patriarchal oppression in several different cultural contexts. The second part of the course will take a more optimistic turn and focus on various forms of resistance and creative self-affirmation. We will consider feminist revisions of received traditions and narrative forms, e.g., the Bible; fairy tales and legends; magic and other marginalized forms of knowledge; official and unofficial versions of history; and the politics of textual interpretation. Readings will include: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing; Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea; Tsisti Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions; Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon; Louise Erdrich, Tracks; Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the Only Fruit; Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis; and Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale. We will also view a few films, including Sugar Cane Alley, The Official Story, and Bend it Like Beckham. All interested Penn students are welcome in this course, irrespective of gender, age, and major. All that is required is a taste for good contemporary fiction, a willingness to work on your writing, and to get up a little early on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

WSTD-096-401 THEORIES OF GENDER & SEXUALITY

MW 2:00-3:30 Hsien

Cross-Listed: ENGL-096

Distribution III: Arts and Letters

Although Virginia Woolf burned the word feminism in the 1920s, and Simone de Beauvoir resisted the epithet 'feminist,' it is clear that literature and literary studies today would be completely different, if not direly impaired, without feminism. This class therefore departs from the premise that feminism is primarily political to explore its interconnections with literature and culture. We'll therefore read a variety of foundational texts, from the literary historical to feminist film and queer theories, that have become indispensable to literary study and interdisciplinary research. Readings will include: Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys; Sigmund Freud and Simone de Beauvoir; Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar; Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston; Azar Nafisi and Arundhati; Julia Kristeva, Laura Mulvey, and Donna Haraway; Michael Foucault, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick; and Gayatri Spivak, bell hooks, and Chandra Mohanty. Students are also expected to attend film screenings. Requirements include: short response papers and a longer essay, an oral presentation, one mid-term take-home exam, final exam.

WSTD-108-601 WOMEN AND HEALTH IN SOUTH ASIA

M 5:30-8:30                                     Sheehan (sheehanh@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: HSOC-109/SAST-230

Distribution I: Society

Drawing upon theoretical and empirical evidence, the course uses a socio-medical approach for understanding the health status and health behaviors of women in South Asia. We will consider the following issues: gender as a crucial explanatory variable of women’s survival experience; the burden of disease; nutritional status; and access to and utilization of health services. Girls and women face health and disease problems over their life course related to nutrition needs, reproductive health, work conditions, as well as to infectious and chronic disease. This course places the experience of women’s health in South Asia in contemporary, historic and comparative frameworks. Lectures, discussion and assignments provide entry to greater understanding of both the specialized nature of South Asian women’s health problems, as well as those common to women worldwide.

WSTD-118-401 IRAN CINEMA: GENDER, POLITICS, RELIGION

MW 2-3:30 Minuchehr (pardis@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: AMES/COML/FILM-118 and WSTD/AMES-418

Distribution III: Arts & Letters

WATU Credit Optional-See Instructor

Post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema has gained exceptional international reception in the past two decades. In most major national and international festivals, Iranian films have taken numerous prizes for their outstanding representation of life and society, and their courage in defying censorship barriers. In this course, we will examine the distinct characteristics of the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. Discussion will revolve around themes such as gender politics, family relationships and women's social, economic and political roles, as well as the levels of representation and criticism of modern Iran's political and religious structure within the current boundaries. There will be a total of 12 films shown and will include works by Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Beizai, Milani, Bani-Etemad and Panahi, among others.

WSTD-142-401 WOMEN IN UNITED STATES HISTORY: 1500-1865

TR 10:30-12 Brown (kbrown@sas.upenn.edu)

Communication within Curriculum

From the sixteenth century, when Native American populations flourished on the North American continent, to the Civil War, when North and South collided over the question of slavery, women have played a critical role in American society. This course traces the history of women and gender in America during this period with special emphasis on the importance of women's reproductive and economic roles to the emergence of ethnic, racial, regional, and socio-economic categories in the United States. Slides, lectures, and
readings drawn from primary documents introduce students to the conditions of women's lives during the colonial and revolutionary periods and to the rise of women's activism in the nineteenth century. In addition, we will consider how dramatic changes in housework, wage labor, female access to public forms of power, and ideas about female sexuality make it difficult to generalize about what is commonly thought of as women's "traditional" or "natural" role.

WSTD-149-301 LAW AND SOCIAL POLICY ON SEXUALITY AND REPRODUCTION

T 1:30-4:30 Tracy (lawproject@aol.com)

This course will examine how statutory law, court decisions and other forms of social policy, encourage or discourage various forms of sexuality, reproduction and parenting. Such issues as contraception, abortion, gay and lesbian rights, reproductive technology, family violence, and welfare and family policies will be covered.

WSTD-199 INDEPENDENT STUDY

Arranged Kurz (dkurz@sas.upenn.edu)

WSTD-235 PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMEN

401 T 4-7 Olson (olsonk@pobox.upenn.edu)

402 W 2-5 Staff

Cross Listed: EDUC-235

Critical analyses of the psychological theories of female development, and introduction to feminist scholarship on gender development.

WSTD-259-401 WOMEN AUTHORS/MALE CANON

TR 10:30-12:00 Gold (nscharf@nyc.rr.com)

Cross Listed: HEBR/JWST-259/HEBR-559

This course is especially designed as a first course in Hebrew literature. We will read and discuss Hebrew stories, poems and other texts in Hebrew. The course is open to students who have near-advanced or advanced knowledge of Hebrew, with some reading experience. It will start from the first level, and through contemporary literature, columns from Israeli newspapers and popular culture (films, songs, sketches) and bring the students gradually to an advanced level. On the way, we will follow Israeli culture as it deals with complex social, religious, and political issues in Israeli life.

WSTD-280-401 FEMINIST POLITICAL THOUGHT

MW 1:30-3               Hirschmann (njh@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: PSCI-280

General Requirement I: Society

This course is designed to provide an overview of the variety of ideas, approaches, and sub-fields within feminist political thought. Readings are divided into three sections, each representing one of the three major “kinds” of feminist theory that the discipline of Political Science engages in. The first is contemporary feminist theorizing about the meaning and status of “feminism” itself what is feminism about? What approaches are best? What values and ideas are central to the meaning of the term “woman?” How do race, class, and sexuality intersect with "gender"? Once these terms are introduced, the second section focuses on women in the history of Western political thought; what is the historical basis for the ideas we discussed in Section I? The third section is on feminist approaches to practical political problems and issues, including abortion, domestic violence, cultural difference, and sexual harassment; what can feminist theory contribute to the lived conditions of women’s lives?

WSTD-290-401 GENDER, TERROR, AND THE 19^TH CENTURY

TR 3-4:30 Auerbach (nauerbac@english.upenn.edu )

Cross Listed: ENGL-290

Distribution III: Arts & Letters

We will consider a range of terrifying novels and poems in relation to a central question: were nineteenth- and twentieth-century women frightened or frightening? Or are these two conditions inseparable?

Works we shall read include Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel, Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, Bram Stoker's Dracula and selected ghost stories by women. We will also read such twentieth-century works as Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne, Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, and Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale.

There will be two examinations, a midterm and a final. In addition, each student will write a 10-odd page paper on gender and terror in a nineteenth-century work not included on our syllabus.

WSTD-290-402 GENDER RELATIONS IN THE 19^TH CENTURY BALLET: SEX, DRUGS AND CRIME

TR 12-1:30 Kant (mkant2@english.upenn.edu )

Cross Listed: ENGL/THAR 290 HIST 491

Distribution III: Arts & Letters

Ballet has had a bad press for a long time. It is seen as a "misogynist", "conservative" art form and an "aristocratic" relic.

In this course we shall study the context and the content of romantic ballet as it emerged as a revolutionary movement in the early 19th century in France.

We shall read and analyze ballet libretti of French, English, German, Italian and Russian works and contextualize their stories. We are going to answer the following questions:

When and why do women become the heroines of ballet narratives?

What do these heroines stand for?

What is their relationship to their male counterparts?

Through the theories of Heinrich Heine and Théophile Gautier we are going to understand the concept of romanticism in dance and follow its development to the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century. Together with the narrative we shall trace the history of ballet from the 15th century to the French revolution, study the social reality of the dance world, the practice in the opera houses of Europe and the development of a particular dance aesthetic that made ballet world famous.

WSTD-293-601 MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS, TOGETHER AND APART: MYTH, THEORY, AND LITERATURE

M 5:30-8:30 Schanoes (schanoes@dept.english.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: ENGL-290-601

Oscar Wilde once wrote that all women eventually turn into their mothers, and that was our tragedy. But need the relationship between mother and daughter be tragic? The romance as well as the antagonisms between mothers and daughters have been beautifully addressed by some of the best writers of our time! In this course, we'll be examining the ways in which writers have represented the relationships between mothers, who are also daughters, and daughters, who see a possible future in their mothers. How does this first relationship inform what it means to be a woman? We'll start by examining a few influential myths regarding mothers and daughters: the stories of Persephone and Demeter, Snow White and her (step)mother, and Clytemnestra, Iphigeneia, and Electra. We'll then read contemporary literature alongside the work of feminist psychoanalytic theorists such as Nancy Chodorow and Luce Irigaray in order to gain an understanding of the complexity of these relationships. Writers may include: Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Rita Dove, Edith Wharton, Kirsty Gunn, Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, Tanith Lee, and Amy Tan. We may also watch the film Lovely and Amazing.

WSTD-305-601 INTERPRETING AFRICAN WOMEN’S LIVES

R 4:30-7:30 Blakely (pblakely@racc.edu)

Cross Listed: AFRC/AFST

This course critically examines the process of constructing and interpreting personal experience/life history narratives told by African women. Urban and rural women's narrative texts are considered as they inform our understanding of the nature of personal experience narrative, the role of collaborating researchers in life history production, and the significance of enabling African women to "speak for themselves."

WSTD-344-401 PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL GROWTH

T 4:30-7:30 Harpalani (harpalan@dolphin.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: EDUC-345

WATU Credit Optional- See Instructor

Intellectual, emotional and behavioral development in the college years. Illustrative topics: developing intellectual and social competence; developing personal and career goals; managing interpersonal relationships; values and behavior. Recommended for sub matriculation in Psychological Services Master's Degree program.

WSTD-400-301 SENIOR THESIS

F 2-5 Kurz (dkurz@sas.upenn.edu)

This seminar is for senior undergraduate Women's Studies majors who are writing their theses. The seminar will help students decide on their theses topic and methodology. The seminar will also focus on drawing conclusions from primary and secondary sources of data.

WSTD-405-640 ADULTERY AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION: MEDIEVAL TO EARLY MODERN

T 5:30-8:10 Reibling (reibling@sas)

Adultery has been a perennial theme in literature. Adulterous love has been alternately celebrated (for example in the courtly love tradition) and condemned (especially by religious authors). We will begin our exploration of literatures adulterous relationships by reading medieval Romance, where sexual relations outside marriage often defined love at its most elevated. However, as we will discover in this course, a marked anxiety over cuckoldry could never be completely eliminated. This is particularly evident in early modern England, where the consequences of even a suspicion of marital betrayal could be deadly. After the Restoration, literary anxieties seemed to have yielded to a much more relaxed attitude towards infidelity. In the culture dominated by the Rakish Court, the adulterous woman emerges as less a threat to men than an object of their sport. We will read background material from both literary and non-literary texts (poems, tracts, marriage manuals, etc.) before we tackle such authors as Chaucer, Malory, Shakespeare, Middleton, Wycherley, Etherege, and the Earl of Rochester.

WSTD-418-401 IRAN CINEMA: GENDER, POLITICS, RELIGION

T 2-3:30 Minuchehr (pardis@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: NELC-118 and WSTD/AMES-418

Distribution III: Arts & Letters

This course is the Graduate Level version of WSTD-118

WSTD-449-601 GLOBAL WOMEN’S LABOR

W 5:30-8:30 Diggs-Thompson (diggst@sas)

Cross Listed: ANTH/LTAM-449

On the surface, domestic and factory workers appear to perform radically different tasks. However, if we explore the conditions surrounding their employment, we see that globally, women in these occupations share some very important characteristics. These include similar household status, similar economic motivation and financial goals, and, similar placement on the occupational ladder. Many domestic and factory workers are also migrants, and although they are often better educated than women of previous

generations, the vast majority are underemployed. This course examines how new forms of production and the spread of global capitalism have impacted the lives of women. The course will also examine and critique previous and current theoretical constructs that have attempted to describe and explain the phenomenon. By also evaluating women in relation to their country or region of origin, we will compare how global economic, social, and political forces have created new and renewed forms of women’s oppression.

WSTD-499-000 INDEPENDENT STUDY

Arranged Kurz (dkurz@sas)

WSTD-502-401 FOLKLORE FIELDWORK

W 1-3 Hufford

Cross Listed: ANTH-506/FOLK-502

This graduate seminar explores the theory and practice of folkloristic ethnography, with a focus on sites in West Philadelphia. Through reading and exercises in ethnographic observation and writing, students consider the nature of the enthnographic encounter, its social functions and civic possibilities, and the writings, archives, films, recordings and community events that form its outcomes. Historical and contemporary reading provide an overview of ethnography as it has emerged in the social sciences over the past century, while attention to the techniques and technologies in field notes, sound and video recording, photography, archiving, and sensing will develop students' skills as ethnographic scholars, writers, and community activists.

Undergraduates may enroll with permission.

WSTD-532-401 GENDER, LABOR FORCE, AND LABOR MARKETS

MW 10-11:30 Madden (jmadden@ssw)

Cross Listed: DEMG/SOCI-541

Drawing from sociology, economics and demography, this course examines the causes and effects of gender differences in labor force participation, earnings and occupation in the United States and in the rest of the developed and developing world. Differences by race and ethnicity are also considered. Theories of labor supply, marriage, human captial and discrimination are explored as explanations for the observed trends. Finally, the course reviews current labor market policies and uses the theories of labor supply, marriage, human capital and discrimination to evaluate their effects on women and men.

WSTD-599 INDEPENDENT STUDY

Arranged Kurz (dkurz@sas)