Gender, Culture, and Society Spring 2007 Courses
GSOC-002-601 GENDER AND SOCIETY
M 5:30-8:30 Grosh (katie.grosh@villanova.edu)
Society Sector
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-004-601 THE FAMILY
T 5-8 Lundy (garvey@pop.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: SOCI-004
Fulfills College Quantitative and Data Analysis Requirement
Society Sector
This course provides an introduction to sociological perspectives on families, focusing largely on contemporary American families. The course begins with a brief overview of theoretical perspectives on families and family patterns and changes over the past several decades. We will then turn our attention to family formation and dissolution, considering cohabitation, marriage, divorce, remarriage, and fertility. In the final section of the course, we will examine how the worlds of work and family intersect and conflict, considering both paid and unpaid labor (housework, childcare, etc.). Throughout the course, we will pay special attention to how gender structures and is constructed in family life and consider how race and class shape family experiences. Students will be taught to critically evaluate the research of others, while also conducting their own data analyses on a family-related topic of their choice.
GSOC-009-301 GENDER IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA
TR 12-1:30 Paxton (fpaxton@sas.upenn.edu)
Fulfills 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 )
Fulfills College Writing Requirement
See description above.
GSOC-015-401 WOMEN IN BUDDHISM
TR 1:30-3 Kaneko
Cross Listed: EACL-016
GSOC-028-601 FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY
R 6:30-9:30 Meyer (mwmeyer@phil.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: PHIL-028
Distribution I: Society
Feminist theory grows out of women's experience. In this course we will investigate how some contemporary feminist thinkers' consideration of women's experience has caused them to criticize society and philosophy. Traditional philosophical areas addressed may include ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and epistemology.
GSOC-090-401 GENDER, SEXUALITY AND LITERATURE
TR 3:30-5 Burnham (dburnham@english.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: COML/ENGL-090
Distribution: Arts and Letters
In this class, we'll be reading novels and short stories that examine marriage, family and childhood, as well as theoretical material that explains, subverts and enriches the fiction. The course is divided into four sections, each with texts that can be made to comment upon each other. For example, in the first section, we'll be looking at the idealization of marriage by reading Jane Eyre, Pearl Abrams' The Romance Reader and Janice Radway's classic work on romance novels and their readers. We'll also look at the realities of marriage through The Awakening, The Yellow Wallpaper and stories by the Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, and at unconventional versions of childhood and "home" through Ella Leffland's Rumors of Peace, Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping and stories by Toni Cade Bambara. Throughout, we'll be investigating the ways in which fiction codifies, subverts and re-codifies notions of "proper" female behavior, domestic relations and individual freedom.
You'll have short, frequent writing assignments, including response papers and discussion questions designed to focus and energize class discussion. You'll also do a longer paper (7-10 pages) in which you bring the theoretical readings to bear on the fiction.
GSOC-122-401 SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER
TR 1:30-3 Leidner (rleidner@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: SOCI-122
Society Sector
The assignment of gender roles and the construction of gender identities has profound consequences for women and men at every level of society: from their intimate relations, how they manage and participate in the institutions of society, their place in society's stratification systems. This course examines four aspects of gender relations: historical and cross-cultural examples of gender roles; gender relations in contemporary American institutions; theories of sex differences and gender inequality; and movements and policies for gender equality. Some specific topics to be covered are: Women and the economy, women and the professions, working class women, changing male identities, the nature of male power, and the women's liberation movements
GSOC 125-401 ADULTERY NOVEL
TR 10:30-12 Platt (kmfplatt@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: COML-127, RUSS-125
Arts and Letters Sector
The course examines a series of 19C and 20C novels (and a few short stories) about adultery, film adaptations of several of these novels, and several adultery films in their own right. Our reading will teach us about novelistic traditions of the period in question, about the relationship of Russian literature to the European models to which it responded. about adaptation and the implications of filmic vs. literary representation. Course readings include: Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and other works. Films include: Frears' Dangerous Liaisons, Vadim's Dangerous Liaisons, Nichols' The Graduate, Mikhalkov's Dark Eyes, and others. Students will apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its aesthetic, social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic institution, Freudian/ Psychoanalytic interpretations of family life and transgressive sexuality, and Feminist work on the construction of gender.
GSOC 162-401 WOMEN AND JEWISH LITERATURE
TR 10:30-12 Hellerstien (khellers@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: GRMN-262, JWST-100, NELC-154
Benjamin Franklin Scholars
Arts & Letters Sector
This course will introduce Penn students of literature, women's studies, and Jewish studies -- both undergraduates and graduates -- to the long tradition of women as readers, writers, and subjects in Jewish literature (in translation from Yiddish, Hebrew, and in English). By examining the interaction of culture, gender, and religion in a variety of literary works by Jewish authors, from the seventeenth century to the present, the course will argue for the importance of Jewish women's writing. Authors include Glikl of Hameln, Cynthia Ozick, Anzia Yezierska, Kadya Molodowsky, Esther Raab, Anne Frank, and others.
"Jewish woman, who knows your life? In darkness you have come, in darkness do you go." J. L. Gordon (1890)
GSOC-199 INDEPENDENT STUDY
Arranged TBA
See Department for Permission and Section Number
GSOC-206-401 HISTORY AND PRIVATE LIVES IN CHINA
R 1:30-4:30 Fei (siyen@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: HIST-206
This seminar will examine important questions about the lives of women in the last thousand years of Chinese history through a survey of the best recent research in a variety of disciplines. We will also read selected primary sources in translation, including fiction by Ding Ling and Pa Chin, essays by Lu Xun and Mao Zedong, and two memoirs of the Cultural Revolution. Weeks 2-6 cover the later imperial period; weeks 7-14 cover China’s century of revolution. Although our topic is historical, the course as a whole explores theoretical questions fundamental to women’s studies generally: how has the category of “woman” been shaped by culture and history? How has gender performance interacted with bodily disciplines and constraints (e.g., medical, reproductive, and cosmetic technologies)? How relevant is the experience of Western women to women in other parts of the world? By what standards should liberation be defined? The seminar is cross-listed with Women’s Studies; prior knowledge of Chinese history is welcome but not required.
GSOC-221-401 GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND SOVEREIGNTY IN ROMANCE
TR 9-10:30 Sanchez (sanchezm@english.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: ENGL/COML-222
This course will examine the ways in which gendered identities, sexual desire, and political authority work as expressions of and analogues for one another in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century romance. We will consider a number of early modern English authors (Spenser, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Wroth, Cavendish, Milton, and Behn) in the context of their classical and medieval precursors (possible figures include Virgil, Achilles Taitus, Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, and John Gower, among others) and their continental contemporaries (Ariosto and Cervantes). Of particular concern will be questions about the relation between gender and genre: How does romantic challenge or reinforce conventional gender roles? How does the author’s gender inflect our understanding of both that particular text and romance conventions as such? What do Renaissance adaptations of romance as drama, science fiction, and travel narrative tell us about the relation between historical change and generic form? And, finally, how does the critical impulse to set generic boundaries complement or conflict with the attempt to study “women’s writing” as an aesthetic and historical category? A series of short writing and research assignments will culminate in a final 15+ page research paper.
GSOC-235-401 PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMEN
W 2-5 Olson (Olsonk@pobox.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: EDUC-235
Critical analyses of the psychological theories of female development, and introduction to feminist scholarship on gender development.
GSOC-242-401 SCIENCE OF SEX & SEXUALITY
TR 12-1:30 Miller (samiller@sas.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: HSOC/STSC-242
The author of a New York Times article entitled “On Being Male, Female, neither or both” concluded her comments with the following statement: “The definition of sex was (and is) still up for grabs.” In our post-modern world, we have become accustomed to the malleability of gender identity and sexuality. We are also aware that individuals undergo sex reassignment surgeries but by large we assume that transgender people are transitioning from one discrete category to another. Queer activists certainly challenge this assumption, preferring to envision sex, gender, and sexuality on a continuum, but these days even scientists don’t concur about a definitive definition of sex. Should sex be defined chiefly by anatomy? Chromosomes? The body’s ability to produce and respond to hormones? If the boundaries of biological categories can be contested, what are the implications for culturally constructed ideas about gender identity and sexuality.
GSOC-270-401 FOLKLORE AND SEXUALITY
TR 3-4:30 Azzolina (azzolina@pobox.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: FOLK-270
Sexuality is not only a biological act or fact, it also has a creative and aesthetic element. This course examines the folklore elements of sexuality and includes historical readings such as the Bible and the Decameron as well as a contemporary look at topics such as body art and clothing choice. A field-based paper will be required and a final examination will be given on class discussions and readings.
GSOC-275-401 IMMIGRATION IN DRAMA & CINEMA
MW 2-3:30 Lafferty (tmlaffer@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: CINE-225/THAR-275/ASAM-275
We will explore representations of immigration, from “West Side Story” to “Millennium Approaches” to what's new on you tube and more.
GSOC-279-601 DANGEROUS WOMEN
M 6-9 Malague (rmalague@english.upenn.edu)
Cross Listed: THAR-279
Theatre began as a form that excluded women entirely. The plays of ancient Greece and Elizabethan England were written and performed only by men, beginning a long tradition of theatre that represented women only from male perspectives. Has that tradition been so dominant for so long that women's voices on stage are still a novelty? This course focuses on a wide range of plays and performances by and about women; the work we read (and view) will
evidence artistic attempts to represent women's lives, experiences and perspectives on the stage. Among the issues encountered and examined in these works are the roles of love, sexuality, friendship, career, community, marriage, motherhood, family, and feminism in women's lives - as well as the economic and political position(s) of women in society. The course will also
offer contextual background on feminist theatre history, theory, and literature, the diverse (and divergent) creative efforts of female artists to use live performance as a means of creating social and political change.
GSOC-290-401 MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE WOMEN WRITERS
TR 9-10:30 Higginbotham (higginbj@dept.english.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: ENGL/THAR-290
Distribution: Arts & Letters
Chaste, silent, and obedient? Not likely! Although contemporary perceptions of the past often assume that women were passive and universally oppressed prior to the birth of the women's liberation movement, many historical women found ways to negotiate positions of power in a patriarchal society. In this class we'll examine some of the eloquent and defiant literature produced by medieval and Renaissance women about gender and literary authority. At a time when writing was considered the privilege of men, how did women lay claim to the right to write? How did they reshape literary conventions, and what strategies did they use for self-authorization? Well consider the relationships of women to writing from the early thirteenth century text Ancrene Wisse, written for enclosed religious women, to Margaret Cavendish's play The Convent of Pleasure, written for enclosed but secular aristocratic women. Our focus will be mostly on 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. In the process, we'll question traditional divisions between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and consider the differences between women's relationships to literature before and after the Reformation. We will also be considering what makes a woman a writer and what counts as a woman's text. Should we study the poems and speeches of Queen Elizabeth I, for example, alongside the embroideries of Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, and what happens when we read the Trotula texts (female-authored gynaecological manuals) alongside the Ancrene Wisse, a manual for female recluses with no known author? Other may include Julian of Norwich, Annew Askew, Isabella Whitney (fl.1567-1573), Mary Herbert (1562-1621), Elizabeth Cary (1585-1639), and Rachel Speght (c. 1597). Their writings will help us explore the way that literature opened up imaginative spaces for women.
GSOC-295-401 WOMEN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN
AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN
TR 4:30-6 Shaikh
Cross Listed: SAST-295/SAST-595/GSOC-595
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-310-401 THE MEDIEVAL READER
TR 12-1:30 Kirkham (Vkirkham@sas.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: COML-310/ITAL-310
Distribution: Arts & Letters
Benjamin Franklin Scholars
Through a range of authors including Augustine, Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, and Umberto Eco, this course will explore the world of the book in the manuscript era. We shall consider 1) readers in fiction-male and female, good and bad; 2) books as material objects produced in monasteries and their subsequent role in the rise of the universities; 3) medieval women readers and writers; 4) medieval ideas of the book as a symbol (e.g., the notion of the world as God's book; 5) changes in book culture brought about by printing and electronic media. Lectures with discussion in English, to be supplemented by slide presentations and a visit to the Rare Book Room in Van Pelt Library. No prerequisites. Satisfies General Requirement in Arts and Letters.
GSOC-320-301 CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THOUGHT
W 2-5 Lundeen (bshannon@sas.upenn.edu )
Distribution: Society
Prereq: one other GSOC course
In this course, which will be organized as a seminar, we will read contemporary feminist works examining feminist approaches to explaining women's experiences, their representations, and their relative positions in society. We will examine critically the theoretical assumptions of various schools of thought, and pay particular attention to the theoretical contributions women of color have brought to feminist thought. Finally, we will also analyze selected contemporary social issues from the vantage point of different feminist perspectives.
GSOC-344-401 PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL GROWTH
M 5-8 TBA
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: CINE-308/HIST-347
Screenings held on W 6-8
More than any other medium, 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.
GSOC-430-401 LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER REPRESENTATION IN POPULAR MEDIA
M 2-5 Sender (ksender@asc.upenn.edu )
Cross Listed: CINE-492/COMM-430
This class investigates the history of LGBT representation in a range of popular media since the 1960s—in film, television, music, pornography, the internet, video games, and so on. We will consider on-going debates about queer images, including stereotypes, camp, and the value and limits of “positive images.” The class includes a strong emphasis on independent research: students will learn how to develop and carry out an original qualitative research project throughout the semester.
GSOC-400-301 SENIOR THESIS F 2-5 Kurz (dkurz@sas)
WATU Program - Fulfills 1/2 College Writing
This seminar is for senior undergraduate Women's Studies majors who are writing their theses.
GSOC-499 INDEPENDENT STUDY (SENIOR LEVEL)
Arranged TBA
Permission Needed From Department
