Women’ Studies Program
Summer Session 2002
12-Week
Summer Session (5/20/01 8/9/01)
MLA
WSTD-414-940 Family Ties: the Functions, Ideologies, and Politics of
Family
Relations in the West
T 6:00 – 9:10 Rabberman
In this course, we will explore some central debates and issues in the history
of the family by focusing on case studies from the United States,
England, France, and Germany from the medieval through the modern periods. How
were families created and dissolved over time, and how did changes in these
practices come about? How did people make the decision to get married, and how
important were emotional ties and material considerations in this process? How
did past societies treat their children, and did love for children increase
over time? Which people, inside and outside families, exerted power over family
members? How did political and economic developments influence families'
structure, function, and ideology? What do the changing structure and purpose
of families in the West tell us about changes in the role of the individual and
the relationship between public and private in the West? What do recent family
histories tell us about the relationship between the past and the present,
between individuals and their ancestors, at the end of the twentieth century?
Class assignments will include short response papers, and a 15-20 page paper
based on primary source research. If students choose, they can conduct research
into their own family histories.
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Summer Session I (5/20/01 6/28/01)
WSTD-112-910 India’s Working Women
M W
6-9 Nair (snair@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross-Listed: SARS-110
WSTD-296-910 Graphic Strips: Gender & Sexuality in
Comics & Animated Film
T R 2-5 Takahashi (sayumi@sas.upenn)
What do Jessica Rabbit, Power-Puff
Girls, Princess Mononoke, and Ranma have in common? Why have American comics
predominantly been a male genre, and where are all the women cartoonists? How
does one draw gender into comic strips? How is sexuality depicted in animation
films? This course examines gender and sexuality through comics and
animation films, and how these genres reflect and/or undermine gender norms and
stereotypes. We will view a number of animation films (ranging from Disney to
Japanese Anime), analyze comic strips by incorporating gender and queer
theory, and look at some of the cultural and historical influences at work in
the gendering and eroticization of the graphic arts. Readings and screenings
will include: Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Tank Girl, Michel
Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, and Susan J. Napier’s Anime from
Akira to Princess Mononoke.
WSTD-430-910 Communication,
Culture and Sexual Minorities
MTW 11-1 Gundelunas
Summer Session II (7/01/01 8/10/01)
WSTD-008-920 Human
Reproduction and Sex Differences
M W 4:30-7:40 Lexow
(Nedra_A_Lexow@sbphrd.com)
Cross-Listed: BIOL-008
WSTD-223-920 Courtly Love in the
Modern World
T R 5:00 - 8:40 Jessica
Rosenfeld (rosenfej@dept.english.upenn.edu)
Why do we love the way we do? Historians and psychologists have often turned to
literature for the answer, describing a modern unconscious haunted by medieval
courtly poetry's depictions of love as an experience of torture, debasement,
and unsatisfiable desire. This course will examine the modern legacies of the
courtly tradition in a variety of genres--from the romance novel to the horror
film. We will begin by gaining an acquaintance with medieval courtly
genres--the lyric poem, the romance narrative, instruction manuals on the
"art" of love--and spend most of our time considering their modern
incarnations--in the melodrama, _The Rules_, film noir, and elsewhere. Throughout
the class we will also address the consistently problematic role of women as
writers, readers, and idealized objects.