Women’s Studies Fall 2006 Courses

GSOC-002-001 GENDER AND SOCIETY
TR 10:30-12 Lundeen (bshannon@sas)

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.

GSOC-002-601 GENDER & SOCIETY
W 6-9 Lundeen (bshannon@sas.upenn.edu)

General Requirement I: Society

See Above Description

GSOC-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 4-5
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.

GSOC-008-401 HUMAN REPRODUCTION AND SEX DIFFERENCES
MWF 2-3 Waldron (iwaldron@sas.upenn.edu)

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.

GSOC-009-301 GENDER IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA
TR 12-1:30 Paxton (fpaxton@sas.upenn.edu)

Fulfills the College Writing Requirement

Are you a macho-man? A tom-boy? A girly-girl? How do you know? This interdisciplinary writing class invites you to think and write critically about how gender operates in your everyday life. We'll start with some basics: What is gender? What do people mean when they say it is socially constructed? When did you learn your first "gender lessons"? We'll go on to examine how writers have approached the issue of gender as well as how it plays out in controversies close to home (e.g. Penn's new gender neutral housing policy). While gender will be our umbrella theme, you'll be given freedom when it comes to selecting specific topics/texts to write about. You'll also be encouraged to view writing as a process, not a product, and as social, not solitary. Revision, peer-review and collaborative workshops will, therefore, be essential components of the course; they'll help us to remember that writing, like gender, is part of every day life and merits ongoing critical attention.

GSOC-009-302 GENDER IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA
TR 3-4:30 Paxton (fpaxton@sas.upenn.edu)

See Above Description.

GSOC-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.

GSOC-096-401 THEORIES OF GENDER & SEXUALITY
MW 3:30-5 Higginbotham (higginbj@dept.english.upenn.edu)

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.

GSOC-108-601 WOMEN & HEALTH IN SOUTH ASIA
M 5:30-8:30 Sheenan (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.

GSOC-118-401 IRANIAN CINEMA: GENDER, POLITICS, RELIGION
MW 2-3:30 Minuchehr (pardis@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: COML/NELC-118 and GSOC-418
Distribution III: Arts & Letters

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.

 

GSOC 125-401 THE ADULTERY NOVEL AND FILM ADAPTATION
TR 10:30-12 Platt (kmfplatt@sas.upenn.edu )

Cross Listed: CINE 125, COML-127, RUSS-125
Arts and Letters Sector

The object of the course is to analyze a series of novels (and a few
short stories) about adultery from the late eighteenth through the late
nineteenth centuries. At the same time, we will be examining a series of
films concerning the same subject matter—half of them adaptations of the
works that we will read and half original treatments of infidelity. Our
reading will teach us about novelistic traditions of the periods in
question and about the relationship of Russian literature to the
European models to which it responded. Our film viewings will allow us
to consider the meaning of adultery today through a different medium of
communication, as well as problems of literary adaptation and the status
of classic literature in contemporary society. In our coursework we will
apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its
social and cultural context, including: socio¬logical descriptions of
modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic
institution, Freudian/ Psychoanalytic interpretations of family life and
transgress¬sive sexuality, Feminist work on the construction of gender.
In general, we will see the ways in which human identity is tied to
gender roles, and the complex relationship tying these matters of the
libido and the family to larger issues of social organization. All
readings and lectures in English.

GSOC-149-301 WOMEN, GENDER, SEXUALITY AND THE LAW
(formerly: Law and Social Policy on Sexual Reproduction)
T 1:30-4:30 Tracy (ctracy@lawproject.org )

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.

GSOC-199 INDEPENDENT STUDY
Arranged Kurz (dkurz@sas.upenn.edu)

Permission needed from department.

GSOC-223-401 WOMEN AND WRITING IN MEDIEVAL
M 3:30-5 RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
Wallace (dwallace@dept.english.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: ENGL-221
Distribution III: Arts & Letters

In this course we'll consider the relationships of women to writing from c. 1220 (Ancrene Wisse, a text written for enclosed religious women) to 1673 (the death of ‘Mad Madge,’ a playwright much reviled by Virginia Woolf). We'll concern ourselves mostly with texts written, dictated, inspired or commissioned by women, plus texts written against or forced upon women: texts, in short, that helped shape the possibilities of premodern women's lives.

This course questions traditional periodizations by shooting the medieval/ Renaissance divide and by considering arguments of advance and decline for women. Does the rise of the university, for example, bring a diminution of educational opportunities for women? Is the Middle Ages to be seen, as some feminist historians have seen it, as a feminine 'golden age'? Does the coming of the 'Renaissance' reduce female options to that of marriage or marriage? How do both the observant and oppositional activities of women shift as we move from Catholic through Lollard to Protestant cultures? We might consider here the writings of Protestant Elizabeth I and embroideries of Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots; other authors might include Anne Askew, Isabella Whitney (fl. 1567-1573), Mary Herbert (1562-1621), Elizabeth Cary (1585?-1639), and Rachel Speght (c. 1597-16??). Such developmental narratives can be challenged by others suggesting strange resemblances over time, featuring women occupying liminal places: the anchoress; the pregnant woman. We can thus read Trotula texts (female-authored gynaecological manuals), a manual for female recluses (Ancrene Wisse), a mystical text by a woman who uses her body as a spiritual laboratory (Julian of Norwich) and best-selling texts by Renaissance women who will not survive pregnancy. We can match texts from women centuries apart: such as Christine of Markyate (1096-1160), who defied family expectations of marriage to live as a recluse, eventually leaving us with an extraordinary lifestory and a psalter of her own; and Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mad Madge’) who wrote several plays that imagined all-female academies long before Virginia penned A Room of One’s Own. The question of continuing nun-nostalgia in Protestant cultures might also be raised. So too the question of women and travel: how did Margery Kempe manage to traverse the face of the known world, avoid injury, and return to compose her text? As centuries pass, do women travel less?
Examination in this advanced undergraduate seminar will be by two essays: one of 5 pages (written after about six weeks) and one researched in the latter part of the semester and handed in during the final week of class (12 pages). We'll try to develop a friendly, collaborative working mode in this seminar; students will have the opportunity of writing a one-page, brainstorming abstract of their final paper in week 12.
Attendance: please let me know by e-mail of any intended absences due to religious holidays, illnesses, or other causes.

GSOC-235-401 PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMEN
T 4-7 Staff
Cross Listed: EDUC-235

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

GSOC-249-401 THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
TR 3-4:30 Detlefsen (detlefse@phil.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: EDUC-576, PHIL-249

Is the purpose of education to allow individuals to better themselves by pursuing personal tastes and interests, or should education be primarily aimed at creating good citizens or good members of a group? Is there a way of reconciling these two aims? Assuming that adult relations with children are inherently paternalistic, is it possible for children to be educated for future autonomy to pursue major life goals free from such paternalistic control; and if so, how? How much, if any control over education can be allocated to the state, even when this conflicts with the educational goals parents have for their children? Such questions are especially relevant in multicultural or pluralistic societies in which some groups within a liberal state are non-liberal. Should a liberal democratic state intervene in education to ensure the development of children's personal autonomy, or must toleration of non-liberal groups prevail even at the expense of children's autonomy?

GSOC-250-301 TOPICS IN 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE: JANE
TR 3-4:30 AUSTEN AND ROMANTIC FICTION
Auerbach (nauerbac@english.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: ENGL-251

With the help of recent movies, Jane Austen has been pigeonholed as a sweet isolate writing, timeless, crowd-pleasing romances. Yet she wrote in an age of visionary extravagance. We will read her five loved novels in relation to contemporary works like Mary Wollstonecraft’s MARIA and VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN, Walter Scotts THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMORE, Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, and Maturin’s MELMOTH THE WANDERER, works that oscillate between Utopianism and spiritual despair. We shall explore ways in which Jane Austen quietly shares the bold visions of her contemporaries, if she does. There will be a midterm and perhaps a final, and a paper.

GSOC-257-401 CONTEMPORARY FICTION AND FILM OF JAPAN
F 2-5 Kano (akano@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: CINE-222, EALC-257, COML-256

This course will explore fiction and film in contemporary Japan, from 1945 to the present. Topics will include literary and cinematic representation of Japan s war experience and post-war reconstruction, negotiation with Japanese classics, confrontation with the state, and changing ideas of gender and sexuality. We will explore these and other questions by analyzing texts of various genres, including film and film scripts, novels, short stories, mangazines, and academic essays. Class sessions will combine lectures, discussion, audio-visual materials, and creative as well as analytical writing exercises. The course is taught in English, although Japanese materials will be made available upon request. No prior coursework in Japanese literature, culture, or film is required or expected; additional secondary materials will be available for students taking the course at the 600 level. Writers and film directors examined may include: Kawabata Yasunari, Hayashi Fumiko, Abe Kobo, Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo, Yoshimoto Banana, Ozu Yasujiro, Naruse Mikio, Kurosawa Akira, Imamura Shohei, Koreeda Hirokazu, and Beat Takeshi.

GSOC-293-601 MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS TOGETHER AND
APART: MYTH, THEORY AND LITERATURE
T 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 has 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.

GSOC-305-601 AFRICAN WOMEN’S VOICES
R 5:30-8:30 Blakely (pblakely@racc.edu)

Cross Listed: AFRC/AFST-305

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."

GSOC-307-401 GENDER IN LATIN AMERICA
TR 9-10:30 Farnsworth-Alvear (farnswor@sas.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: HIST/LALS-307

GSOC-318-401 RACE, GENDER, CLASS AND THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN HEALTHCARE
W 2-5 Fairman (fairman@nursing.upenn.edu)

Cross Listed: HSOC-341, NURS-318
Benjamin Franklin Seminar

This multidisciplinary course surveys the history of American health care through the multiple perspectives of race, gender, and class, and grounds the discussions in contemporary health issues. It emphasizes the links between the past and present, using not only primary documents but materials from disciplines such as literature, art, sociology, and feminist studies that relate both closely and tangentially to the health professions and health ca issues. Discussions will surround gender, class-based, ethnic, and racial ideas about the construction of disease, health and illness; the development of health care institutions; the interplay between religion and science; the experiences of patients and providers; and the response to disasters and epidemics

GSOC-344-401 PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL GROWTH
T 4:30-7:30 Staff

Cross Listed: EDUC-345
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.

GSOC-347-401 GENDER, HISTORY & AMERICAN FILM
TR 10:30-1200 Peiss (peiss@sas.upenn.edu )

Cross Listed: HIST-347, CINE-308

More than any other medium, the motion pictures fostered new ideals and images of modern womanhood and manhood in the United States .Through the twentieth century, gender representations on the screen bore a complex relationship to the social, economic, and political transformations marking the lives and consciousness of American men and women. This course explores the history of American gender in the last 100 years through film. It treats the motion pictures as a primary source that, juxtaposed with other kinds of historical evidence, opens a window onto gendered work, leisure, sexuality, family life, and politics. We will view a wide range of Hollywood films since 1900, as well as films made by blacklisted artists, feminists, and alternative film-makers. Students will write several short papers and do a research project on a film of their choice. Note: Attendance at screenings is mandatory.

Screenings held on W 6-8

GSOC-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.