This activity guides students through an interactive article from the Pew Research Center, which presents data from a study on gender attitudes in a novel and interesting way. This was designed to be completed at home before an early class on gender attitudes and gender socialization. It should be paired with an in-class discussion about students' impressions of the research findings. 

Examines in detail the works of several American authors. Through close readings of poetry, novels, or plays, subject addresses such issues as literary influence, cultural diversity, and the writer's career. Topic: American Women Authors. This subject, crosslisted in Literature and Women's Studies, examines a range of American women authors from the seventeenth century to the present. It aims to introduce a number of literary genres and styles- the captivity narrative, slave novel, sensational, sentimental, realistic, and postmodern fiction- and also to address significant historical events in American women's history: Puritanism, the American Revolution, industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century, the Harlem Renaissance, World War II, the 60s civil rights movements. A primary focus will be themes studied and understood through the lens of gender: war, violence, and sexual exploitation (Keller, Rowlandson, Rowson); the relationship between women and religion (Rowlandson, Rowson, Stowe); labor, poverty, and working conditions for women (Fern, Davis, Wharton); captivity and slavery (Rowlandson, Jacobs); class struggle (Fern, Davis, Wharton, Larsen); race and identity (Keller, Jacobs, Larsen, Morrison); feminist revisions of history (Stowe, Morrison, Keller); and the myth of the fallen woman (take your pick). Essays and inclass reports will focus more particularly on specific writers and themes and will stress the skills of close reading, annotation, research, and uses of multimedia where appropriate. A classroom electronic archive has been developed for this course and will be available as a resource for images and other media materials.

This course will cover literature from Spanish Antilles and will be conducted in English. We will include a study of foundational texts in translation, from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as contemporary works by Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican authors.

Studies the relation between imaginative texts and the culture surrounding them. Emphasizes ways in which imaginative works absorb, reflect, and conflict with reigning attitudes and world views. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Ethical Interpretation. Topic for Spring: Women Reading, Women Writing. The course examines the earliest emergence of stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the context of the first wave of British Imperialism and the expanded powers of the Catholic Church during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The morphology of Arthurian romance will be set off against original historical documents and chronicle sources for the English conquests in Brittany, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland to understand the ways in which these new attitudes towards Empire were being mythologized. Authors will include Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, ChrĚŠtien de Troyes, Marie de France, Gerald of Wales, together with some lesser known works like the Perilous Graveyard, the Knight with the Sword, and Perlesvaus, or the High History of the Holy Graal. Special attention will be paid to how the narrative material of the story gets transformed according to the particular religious and political agendas of each new author.

Course Description: This course examines the foundations, ideas, concerns, and implications of Black feminism within the context of the Black Atlantic. A major goal of this class is to foster dialogue and critical discussion about Black feminism as a site of theory and practice emphasizing social, political, and personal transformation.

CLDV100 (Liberal Arts) Introduction to Multicultural Studies in the 21st Century: 3 hrs. 3 crs.
A study of what culture is; how it influences the choices we make; how to deal positively with conflicts that inevitably arise in working/living situations with people of diverse cultures. It is a course structured to raise multicultural awareness and fortify students' social skills in dealing with cultural differences. It includes an ethnographic study of cultural groups in the U.S.A. Through the study of cultural concepts, this course develops skills in critical thinking, writing, and scholarly documentation. Not open to students with credit in CLDV 101 or Core 101. Prereq: ENG 125. Coreq: ENG 125. This is a Writing Intensive course. [Flexible Core: Individual and Society].

The role of the family in human evolution, and as a symbol in our own social and political lives. Topics include: sex, marriage, and parenting; the labor market; class, race, and ethnicity; and the family's probable future. We begin by considering briefly the evolution of the family, its cross-cultural variability, and its history in the West. We next examine how the family is currently defined in the U.S., discussing different views about what families should look like. Class and ethnic variability and the effects of changing gender roles are discussed in this section. We next look at sexuality, traditional and non-traditional marriage, parenting, divorce, family violence, family economics, poverty, and family policy. Controversial issues dealt with include day care, welfare policy, and the "Family Values" debate.

Originally published in 1797 and reprinted eight times between 1824 and 1828. An American best-seller, it didn't appear with the author's name until 1856.

Haunted spaces are occupied spaces, inhabited by some force or trace of the past. In this course we will explore the various ways in which authors have employed hauntings to understand our relation to place and to the past, to issues of time, memory, knowledge, culture, history, and mortality. How do ghosts function both as objects to fear and as historical subjects with ethical and political potential? Why does literature insist on keeping the dead (and the Gothic) alive? In focusing our course on haunted spaces we will consider the text itself as a haunted site, asking questions about how and why we read , and what happens when we do. Both real and phantasmatic, texts hover between life and death, operating as conduits through which authors communicate, through which characters and events appear, again and again and again. We believe in ghosts.
English 162 is a course for non-English majors that uses literature to deepen the understanding of the rich, complex, and varied engagement between human beings and the places they inhabit and imagine. We will examine how places, with their history, traditions, myths, customs, tensions, social structures, and physical form interact with people's daily lives. In this course, we will read texts from various literary genres--novels, short stories, essays, memoir, poetry, and drama--to think about the myriad functions of place in a rich, complex, and varied engagement between human beings and the places they inhabit and imagine. Throughout the semester students will develop their skills of literary analysis, building arguments, and making connections among various texts, and communicating ideas effectively. Students will have the opportunity to practice and share these developing skills by participating in our class discussions, informal writing responses to readings online and in class, as well as in a formal academic essay, a midterm and final.
This is a general education course that satisfies the Literature requirement for the Queens Core under the CUNY General Education structure called Pathways. The course also satisfies the Reading Literature requirement under the Perspectives curriculum that was in effect at Queens

Equality Archive is a reliable source for the history of sex and gender equality in the United States. It is a theater for history and social justice with the goal to provide a forum for curious people.

Information is power. Equality Archive provides open access to the information that can ripple to become a new wave of knowledge and action in the service of social good. We know feminism is intersectional: as you explore one entry, you will find connections–intersections–with others. You can follow issues, people, and history by browsing images, or you can search information by using the key words located in Equality Archive’s tag cloud.

Every entry is peer-reviewed, and each entry contains references, links to film, video, speeches, or music relevant to its topic. Every entry also connects with an opportunity to get involved—to volunteer or donate to an established organization already working toward a social good that must include empowered women. The archive contains unique assets—brief, accessible, fact-based, archival entries on a range of topics written by over 25 feminists who are professors, artists, and authors. And the archive is ongoing, it will continue to grow with more content, more information.

An introduction to the cross-cultural study of ethnic and national identity. We examine the concept of social identity, and consider the ways in which gendered, linguistic, religious, and ethno-racial identity components interact. We explore the history of nationalism, including the emergence of the idea of the nation-state, as well as ethnic conflict, globalization, identity politics, and human rights.

The "Flipping the Script: Challenging Our Perceptions about Race”  Lesson Plan provides a step by step plan on how to conduct this workshop. Also, the Lesson Plan provides a link to an After Event Toolbox that was designed to allow participants to continue the conversation after the workshop is completed. 

" This course explores the foundations of policy making in developing countries. The goal is to spell out various policy options and to quantify the trade-offs between them. We will study the different facets of human development: education, health, gender, the family, land relations, risk, informal and formal norms and institutions. This is an empirical class. For each topic, we will study several concrete examples chosen from around the world. While studying each of these topics, we will ask: What determines the decisions of poor households in developing countries? What constraints are they subject to? Is there a scope for policy (by government, international organizations, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs))? What policies have been tried out? Have they been successful?"

This course draws on different disciplines, conceptual frameworks, and methodological approaches to examine gender in relation to health, including public health practice, epidemiologic research, health policy, and clinical application. It discusses a variety of health-related issues that illustrate global, international, domestic, and historical perspectives, while considering other social determinants of health as well, including social class and race.

Does it matter in education whether or not you've got a Y chromosome? You bet it does. In this discussion-based seminar, we will explore why males vastly outrank females in math and science and career advancements (particularly in academia), and why girls get better grades and go to college more often than boys. Do the sexes have different learning styles? Are women denied advanced opportunities in academia and the workforce? How do family life and family decisions affect careers for both men and women?

The course will focus primarily on contemporary discourses concerning gender inequality. Most of the readings assigned will be recent articles published in U.S. and British media capturing the latest thinking and research on gender inequality in the workplace. The class will be highly interactive combining case studies, videos, debates, guest speakers, and in-class simulations.

This course includes an introduction to the anthropological study of human sexuality, gender constructs, and the sociocultural systems that these are embedded in. Examines current critiques of Western philosophical and psychological traditions, and cross-cultural variability and universals of gender and sexuality.

This course explores stereotypes associated with Asian women in colonial, nationalist, state-authoritarian, and global/diasporic narratives about gender and power. Students will read ethnography, cultural studies, and history, and view films to examine the politics and circumstances that create and perpetuate the representation of Asian women as dragon ladies, lotus blossoms, despotic tyrants, desexualized servants, and docile subordinates. Students are introduced to the debates about Orientalism, gender, and power.

This subject explores the legal history of the United States as a gendered system. It examines how women have shaped the meanings of American citizenship through pursuit of political rights such as suffrage, jury duty, and military service, how those political struggles have varied for across race, religion, and class, as well as how the legal system has shaped gender relations for both women and men through regulation of such issues as marriage, divorce, work, reproduction, and the family. The course readings will draw from primary and secondary materials in American history, as well as some court cases. However, the focus of the class is on the broader relationship between law and society, and no technical legal knowledge is required or assumed.

This course will discuss the challenge that the multifaceted Latino/a-Hispanic reality poses to the anglo-european and monocultural conception of the United States. For the most part, mainstream approaches to the study of Latino and Latina populations in the United States tend to focus on Latinos/as as a problem group, somehow outside and distinct from society. In our approach, we will shift perspectives to the myriad identities that in fact constitute the U.S. We will read and discuss texts on the socio-economic and political origins of migration from Latin America and the Spanish speaking Caribbean to the United States, as well as the historic Latino/a-Hispanic presence pre-dating expansion of U.S. territories. The course will discuss key concepts such as a multi-racial latinidad, first and 2nd-3rd generation Latinos/as, the politics of gender, homophobia, imperialism, neoliberalism, militarization, circular migration, illegality, borderlands, ethnic enclaves, and the immigrant consciousness. In our study, we will incorporate the term Latinx as a signifier of people, heritage, and culture.

This course explores how identities, whether of individuals or groups, are produced, maintained, and transformed. Students will be introduced to various theoretical perspectives that deal with identity formation, including constructions of "the normal." We will explore the utility of these perspectives for understanding identity components such as gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, language, social class, and bodily difference. By semester's end students will understand better how an individual can be at once cause and consequence of society, a unique agent of social action as well as a social product.

International Women's Voices has several objectives. It introduces students to a variety of works by contemporary women writers from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. The emphasis is on non-western writers. The readings are chosen to encourage students to think about how each author's work reflects a distinct cultural heritage and to what extent, if any, we can identify a female voice that transcends national cultures. In lectures and readings distributed in class, students learn about the history and culture of each of the countries these authors represent. The way in which colonialism, religion, nation formation and language influence each writer is a major concern of this course. In addition, students examine the patterns of socialization of women in patriarchal cultures, and how, in the imaginary world, authors resolve or understand the relationship of the characters to love, work, identity, sex roles, marriage and politics.This class is a communication intensive course. In addition to becoming more thoughtful readers, students are expected to become a more able and more confident writers. Assignments are designed to allow for revision of each paper. The class will also offer opportunities for speaking and debating so that students can build oral presentation skills that are essential for success once they leave MIT. The class is limited to 25 students and there is substantial classroom discussion.

This course offers an introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, an interdisciplinary field that asks critical questions about the meanings of sex and gender in society. The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and debates in Women's and Gender Studies, both historical and contemporary. Gender studies scholarship critically analyzes themes of gendered performance and power in a range of social spheres, such as education, law, culture, work, medicine and the family. WGS. 101 draws on multiple disciplines--such as literature, history, economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, political science, anthropology and media studies-- to examine cultural assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality. This course integrates analysis of current events through student presentations, aiming to increase awareness of contemporary and historical experiences of women, and of the multiple ways that sex and gender interact with race, class, nationality and other social identities.

In the decades following the Second World War, a cluster of extraordinary French thinkers were widely translated and read in American universities. Their works were soon labeled as "French Theory." Why would sharing the same nationality make authors such as Lacan, Cixous, Derrida, Foucault or Debord, ambassadors of a specifically "French" theory? The course will explore the maze of transatlantic intellectual debates since 1945 and the heyday of French existentialism. We will study the debates on communism, decolonization, neo_liberalism, gender, youth culture and mass media. This course is taught in English.

This subject investigates the special relation of women to several musical folk traditions in the British Isles and North America. Throughout, we will be examining the implications of gender in the creation, transmission, and performance of music. Because virtually all societies operate to some extent on a gendered division of labor (and of expressive roles) the music of these societies is marked by the gendering of musical repertoires, traditions of instrumentation, performance settings, and styles. This seminar will examine the gendered dimensions of the music -- the song texts, the performance styles, processes of dissemination (collection, literary representation) and issues of historiography -- with respect to selected traditions within the folk musics of North America and the British Isles, with the aim of analyzing the special contributions of women to these traditions. In addition to telling stories about women's musical lives, and studying elements of female identity and subjectivity in song texts and music, we will investigate the ways in which women's work and women's cultural roles have affected the folk traditions of these several countries.

This course will study the contributions of Latina writers to the field of Latinx Studies in the United States. Through their literary and scholarly work, we will explore the historical roots of Latino/a culture in this country and how the politics of race, gender, and class have defined the field of Latinx Studies, with Latinas at the forefront of the struggle.

This course studies the interaction between law, courts, and social movements in shaping domestic and global public policy. Examines how groups mobilize to use law to affect change and why they succeed and fail. The class uses case studies to explore the interplay between law, social movements, and public policy in current areas such as gender, race, labor, trade, environment, and human rights. Finally, it introduces the theories of public policy, social movements, law and society, and transnational studies.

Graduate Women at MIT (GWAMIT) is an institute-wide, student-led group founded in 2009. Its mission is to promote the personal and professional development of MIT's graduate women. GWAMIT welcomes all members of the MIT community, including men. This OCW site features selected videos from the two conferences GWAMIT runs each academic year: a Leadership Conference in the fall and an Empowerment Conference in the spring. It also provides a list of related readings and other resources.

Introduces practice and theory of literary criticism. Seminar focuses on topics such as the history of critical methods and techniques, and the continuity of certain subjects in literary history. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic: Theory and Use of Figurative Language. How does one writer use another writer's work? Does it matter if one author has been dead 300 years? What difference does it make if she's a groundbreaking twentieth-century feminist and the writer she values has come to epitomize the English literary tradition? How can a novelist borrow from plays and poems? By reading Virginia Woolf's major novels and essays in juxtaposition with some of the Shakespeare plays that (depending on one's interpretation) haunt, enrich, and/or shape her writing, we will try to answer these questions and raise others. Readings in literary criticism, women's studies, and other literary texts will complement our focus on the relationship--across time, media, and gender--between Shakespeare and Woolf. As a seminar, we will work to become more astute readers of literature within its historical, artistic, and political contexts, and consider how literature both reflects and contributes to these societal frameworks. Central texts will include Shakespeare's Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale, and Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Between the Acts. This subject is an advanced seminar in both the Literature and the Women's Studies Program.

Louisa May Alcott's classic story of the March sisters was originally published in 1868 and 1869 by Roberts Brothers, Boston. This text was prepared for Project Gutenberg in 2008 with last updates in 2010.

This seminar provides intensive study of exciting texts by four influential American authors. In studying paired works, we can enrich our sense of each author's distinctive methods, get a deeper sense of the development of their careers, and shake up our preconceptions about what makes an author or a work "great." Students will get an opportunity to research an author in depth, as well as making broader comparisons across the syllabus.

Close study of a limited group of writers. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Willa Cather. Topic for Spring: Oscar Wilde and the 90s. From Course Home Page: This seminar provides intensive study of texts by two American authors (Herman Melville, 1819-1891, and Toni Morrison, 1931-) who, using lyrical, radically innovative prose, explore in different ways epic notions of American identity. Focusing on Melville's Typee (1846), Moby-Dick (1851), and The Confidence-Man (1857) and Morrison's Sula (1973), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and Paradise (1998), the class will address their common concerns with issues of gender, race, language, and nationhood. Be prepared to read deeply (i.e. a small number of texts with considerable care), to draw on a variety of sources in different media, and to employ them in creative research, writing, and multimedia projects.

Examines cultural developments within European literature from different societies at different time-periods throughout the Middle Ages (500-1500). Considers--from a variety of political, historical, and anthropological perspectives--the growth of institutions (civic, religious, educational, and economic) which shaped the personal experiences of individuals in ways that remain quite distinct from those of modern Western societies. Texts mostly taught in translation. Topics vary and include: Courtly Literature of the High and Late Middle Ages, Medieval Women Writers, Chaucer and the 14th Century, and the Crusades.

Exploration of contemporary politics in the Middle East, examining the salient geographical, historical, and religious features of the area. Analyzes the role of political elites, the Arab-Israeli conflict, gender politics, and factors that have inhibited the growth of democracy.

This course addresses the place of contemporary queer identities in French discourse and discusses the new generation of queer authors and their principal concerns. Class discussions and readings will introduce students to the main classical references of queer subcultures, from Proust and Vivien to Hocquenghem and Wittig. Throughout the course, students will examines current debates on post-colonial and globalized queer identities through essays, songs, movies, and novels. Authors covered include Didier Eribon, Anne GarrŽta, Abdellah Ta•a, Anne Scott, and Nina Bouraoui. This class is taught in French.

This website serves as an online platform for my course SOCY 2600 / WGST 3420 "Gender and Society."
The site provides students with free access to the course material. In unit I, we (attempt to) define gender and sex. In unit II, we study landmark feminist struggles in the United States. In unit III, we zoom-in into lived experiences of oppression and resistance.

An introduction to the field of gender studies as it is approached in the discipline of sociology. We will examine how sociologists have come to theorize about gender and how gender effects both social institutions and our everyday lives. Gender, as a social category and its consequences are so pervasive in the world around us that it is often taken for granted. In this course, you will be introduced to concepts, theories and facts which will enable you to render gender visible as it operates in society and in your lives. Because gender is an organizing principle in society, a sociological examination of gender necessitates that our primary concerns remain inequalities and power relations in our undertaking of this discussion. Therefore, an intersectional perspective will be taken in the class wherein the intersection of gender will race, ethnicity, social class, sexuality, and nationality will be examined.

The purpose of this course is to acquaint the student with the sociological field of the Welfare State. We will review a number of important contributions and debates in the topic with the goal of providing students with the tools to critically analyze social policy and learn theoretical frameworks that explain the emergence and development of different welfare regimes.

American welfare policies are particularly meager in comparison to any other industrialized country. We will review theoretical and historical explanations for the present state of U.S. welfare, zooming in on the neoliberal rollback since the late 1970s. We will allot special time to discuss current issues in welfare policy and bold policy proposals that are gaining traction among the population, such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

The welfare state can be thought of as a set of a set of social policies that transform the relationship among three actors: individuals, their families and the state. In this sense, social policies have a strong impact on family relations and gender oppression. We will review some of the most important discussions around welfare and women’s liberation.

This assignment was created by Professor Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol Banoum, Ph.D., who is Chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Lehman College. The blog that follows is by Mariama Khan, and also can be found here.

This course will explore the rich diversity of women's voices and experiences as reflected in writings and films by and about Latina writers, filmmakers, and artists. Through close readings, class discussions and independently researched student presentations related to each text, we will explore not only the unique, individual voice of the writer, but also the cultural, social and political contexts which inform their narratives. We will also examine the roles that gender, familial ties and social and political preoccupations play in shaping the values of the writers and the nature of the characters encountered in the texts and films.

Unlike film, theater in America does not have a ratings board that censors content. So plays have had more freedom to explore and to transgress normative culture. Yet censorship of the theater has been part of American culture from the beginning, and continues today. How and why does this happen, and who decides whether a play is too dangerous to see or to teach? Are plays dangerous? Sinful? Even demonic? In our seminar, we will study plays that have been censored, either legally or extra-legally (i.e. refused production, closed down during production, denied funding, or taken off school reading lists). We'll look at laws, both national and local, relating to the "obscene", as well as unofficial practices, and think about the way censorship operates in American life now. And of course we will study the offending texts, themselves, to find what is really dangerous about them, for ourselves.

This course provides students with an introductory understanding of identity, focusing specifically on the concepts of gender and sexuality as they intersect with race, class, ethnicity, and other aspects of social location and identification. The course also includes an analysis of the appearance of gender and sexuality as integrated social concepts by reading and discussing contemporary American texts across multiple genres and media. This open educational resource was created specifically for English 2180 (Studies in Identity and Orientation) at New York City College of Technology, CUNY. If you have been assigned to teach this course or one like it, feel free to use and adapt the materials posted here. I have suggested a reading schedule under “Required Readings,” but you will find additional readings under “Recommended Readings” that you may use to replace or supplement the required readings. If you find any errors or broken links or if you have any suggestions for additional readings to add to this resource, please contact me at lwestengard@citytech.cuny.edu.

Extensive reading of works by a few major poets. Emphasizes the evolution of each poet's work and the questions of poetic influence and literary tradition. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Fall: Does Poetry Matter? Topic for Spring: Gender and Lyric Poetry. The core of this seminar will be the great sequences of English love sonnets written by William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and Mary Wroth. These poems cover an enormous amount of aesthetic and psychological ground: ranging from the utterly subjective to the entirely public or conventional, from licit to forbidden desires, they might also serve as a manual of experimentation with the resources of sound, rhythm, and figuration in poetry. Around these sequences, we will develop several other contexts, using both Renaissance texts and modern accounts: the Petrarchan literary tradition (poems by Francis Petrarch and Sir Thomas Wyatt); the social, political, and ethical uses of love poetry (seduction, getting famous, influencing policy, elevating morals, compensating for failure); other accounts of ideal masculinity and femininity (conduct manuals, theories of gender and anatomy); and the other limits of the late sixteenth century vogue for love poetry: narrative poems, pornographic poems, poems that don't work.

Is marriage a patriarchal institution? Much feminist scholarship has characterized it that way, but now in the context of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, the meaning of marriage itself demands serious re-examination. This course will discuss history, literature, film, and legal scholarship, making use of cross-cultural, sociological, anthropological, and many other theoretical approaches to the marriage question from 1630 to the present. As it turns out, sex, marriage, and the family have never been stable institutions; to the contrary, they have continued to function as flash points for the very social and cultural questions that are central to gender studies scholarship.

The United in Anger Study Guide facilitates classroom and activist engagement with Jim Hubbard‰Ûªs 2012 documentary, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. The Study Guide contains discussion sections, projects and exercises, and resources for further research about the activism of the New York chapter of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The Study Guide is a free, interactive, multimedia resource for understanding the legacy of ACT UP, the film‰Ûªs role in preserving that legacy, and its meaning for viewers' lives.

This is a syllabus for a mixed MA/PhD level course, "Equity, Elitism, and Public Higher Education," taught in Spring 2021 at the Graduate Center by Matt Brim and Katina Rogers.
Higher education can be a powerful engine of equity and social mobility. Yet many of the structures of colleges and universities—including admissions offices, faculty hiring committees, disciplinary formations, institutional rankings, and even classroom pedagogies and practices of collegiality—rely on tacit values of meritocracy and an economy of prestige. For public universities like CUNY this tension can be especially problematic, as structurally-embedded inequities undermine the institution’s democratizing mission and values. It is no surprise that normative institutional structures correspond with normative formulations of sexuality, class, race, and gender such that sociocultural biases are built into the academy. This correspondence governs what counts as valuable intellectual work, and in doing so, it also overdetermines where and how and to whom resources accrue in the university. In other words, many academic structures actually undermine the values that we associate with possibilities for the most challenging and productive and diverse academic life.
In this course, we examine the purposes and principles of universities, especially public universities; consider whether various structures advance or undermine those goals; and imagine new possibilities for educational systems that weave equity into the fabric of all they do.

In her Introduction to Women in Theatre: Compassion and Hope, Karen Malpede quotes Barbara Ann Teer as saying: “My ancestors say there is something within—it banishes all pain. That energy—that life force—that’s inside us is there. It’s given, and it’s in everybody. Everybody wants to experience themselves as able to generate their power and to experience the validation of that power.” The purpose of this course is to explore the rich and myriad ways that women and gender non-conforming artists have expressed that “life force” throughout the history of theater. We will draw on a diverse cross-section of materials to foster discussion about gender, race, identity, sex and performance, and to celebrate, and gain a deeper knowledge and appreciation of women’s role in the development of theater.

The premise of this series of classes is that the work of poet and essayist Audre Lorde has myriad lessons to teach us not only about current social issues and problems, but also about our individual and collective processes of dealing with them.  The key question becomes: how can we use our feelings to negotiate our way through these issues? How can we use our selves—our experiences, our intuitions and the insights born of our differences--as resources? Lorde was adamant that all of our most difficult emotions and experiences could be *used* for our collective progress toward creating an equal, just and healthy society.  

Gender is facing an identity crisis: queer identities in the new era of gender and genre are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways. Queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics: the shift from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on queer embodiment, trans and non-binary narrative, and speculative writing about other worlds & possibilities, which offer us as readers new opportunities for storytelling and thinking about writing. These forms also make space for other identities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural narrative spaces, and we‰Ûªre witnessing the emergence of queerness as digital, hybrid, and ephemeral. This course will center the expanding lexicon offered by queer writers, and ground students through including some of the queer studies canon.

Gender is facing an identity crisis: queer identities in the new era of gender and genre are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways. Queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics: the shift from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on queer embodiment, trans and non-binary narrative, and speculative writing about other worlds & possibilities, which offer us as readers new opportunities for storytelling and thinking about writing. These forms also make space for other identities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural narrative spaces, and we‰Ûªre witnessing the emergence of queerness as digital, hybrid, and ephemeral. This course will center the expanding lexicon offered by queer writers, and ground students through including some of the queer studies canon.

We will doggedly ask two questions in this class: "What is history?" and "How do you do it in 2010?" In pursuit of the answers, we will survey a variety of approaches to the past used by historians writing in the last several decades. We will examine how these historians conceive of their object of study, how they use primary sources as a basis for their accounts, how they structure the narrative and analytical discussion of their topic, and the advantages and limitations of their approaches.

This playlist and handout include works by (and various quotations and media related to) Toni Cade Bambara.

WGST 3550 Special Topics in Social Science: As mass uprisings against state violence have continued unabated since the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks, bipartisan consensus has coalesced around the need to end mass incarceration and reform prisons and policing. Simultaneously, the revolutionary movement to abolish prisons and policing entirely has gained momentum (again), drawing on a lineage of Black freedom struggles, from the movement to abolish slavery to Black Lives Matter. Yet, many are unfamiliar with prison abolition or concerned about its impacts on their safety. In this course, students will engage with the contemporary prison abolition movement as both a vision for the future and a concrete set of strategies to create safety and undo incarceration in the present. With New York City experiencing a resurgence in brutal broken windows policing while the city is poised to build four new jails over the next six years (and maybe shut down the notorious Rikers Island jail complex), this course will provide Black feminist insight into a contemporary political fight with profound consequences for the lives of working class communities of color in NYC.

This advanced seminar for seniors majoring in WGST (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) is designed to guide and facilitate a research paper related to women, gender, and sexuality studies.

The course WST 220: Introduction to Women’s Studies is an examination of the forces that shape women’s lives from the perspective of various disciplines such as psychology, sociology, masculinity theory, and history. It also explores ways in which gender intersects with ethnicity, race, and socio-economic class to form social constructs. We will use theoretical, historical and cross-cultural frameworks to explore cultural representations of women, various aspects of women’s experiences, both with public institutions and personal relationships, as well as ways in which their lives have been shaped by structures of gender inequality. Special attention will be placed on feminism and women as agents of local and global social change.

This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural course will foster students’ understanding of women’s studies as an academic discipline in light of concepts and theories proposed by feminist, gender and women’s studies scholars. We will examine their applicability across cultures within the US and among selected societies in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. The course is also designed to empower young women and men and allow them to become agents of positive social change.

This course is an examination of the forces that shape women's lives from the perspective of various disciplines such as psychology, sociology, masculinity theory, and history. It also explores ways in which gender intersects with ethnicity, race, and socio-economic class to form social constructs. We will use theoretical, historical and cross-cultural frameworks to explore cultural representations of women, various aspects of women‰Ûªs experiences, both with public institutions and personal relationships, as well as ways in which their lives have been shaped by structures of gender inequality. Special attention will be placed on feminism and women as agents of local and global social change.
The full course site is available at https://wst220.commons.gc.cuny.edu/.

This handout was developed for the WikiWomen's Edit-a-thon at Queens College held on March 29, 2017. Attendees created and edit articles about women, women of color, and particularly women in dance, literature, visual arts and music.
The event was co-sponsored by Wikimedia New York City, Queens College's Center for Teaching and Learning, Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance, Godwin-Ternback Museum, Queens College Music Library, Rosenthal Library, and Writing at Queens College.