Courses

Jeff Brown | 6W1 5/18/2026 - 6/26/2026 | ONLINE

Description:

Radhika Gajjala | 6W1 5/18/2026 - 6/26/2026 | ONLINE

Description: This graduate level seminar will glance back briefly at second-wave feminism and then move forward to more recent feminist theory and its applications in fields ranging from, but not necessarily limited to, language, literature, film, religion, philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, psychology, health, and politics. We will work to establish a clear understanding of contemporary feminist methodologies and theoretical approaches, and we will pay close attention to the ways in which feminist thinkers have critiqued and changed traditional academic disciplines, as well as the new bodies of thought (e.g., queer theory, feminist disability studies, affect studies, etc.) that have emerged from these critiques. Our primary focus will be on feminist thought since the 1990s, with a particular emphasis on work published in the last decade. Required for the Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate.

Kim Stanley | W 2:30-5:20PM | Shatzel Hall 242

Description: Theorizing Morrison is an interdisciplinary graduate seminar that centers Morrison as a theorist. Rather than reading Morrison only as a novelist, this course engages her as an essayist, playwright, critic, and public intellectual whose work fundamentally reshapes how we think about race, gender, history, memory, and the study of literature. Centering the experiences of Black Americans, we will read Morrison’s novels alongside her essays, lectures, and dramatic writing in conversation with scholarship in African American studies, Black feminist theory, cultural studies, and critical theory.

By approaching Morrison as both a subject of study and a producer of theory, the seminar asks students to consider how her work continues to inform academic fields, shape public discourse, political and cultural thought, and champion the complexities of Black personhood.

Radhika Gajjala | W 6:00-9:00PM | East 117

Description: The course is meant to give emerging scholars an introduction to the debates that have enlivened the field of Media Studies. It is also meant to provide an overview of the critical constructs central to contemporary media study. Since this is a very large task – I will be selecting particular themes with the help of students in this class. Therefore, during the first two weeks of class we will discuss themes and select and arrange the required readings list choosing from various anthologies and journals. Thus, the course will analyze theoretical positions on topics such as: media specificity; media and mass culture; the aesthetic and economic effects of technological change; representation and power; the cultural and economic dimensions of genre, star images, and media authorship; interactions between normative and alternative aesthetic practices; media practice and structures of power and so on. To understand the dynamic interplay between different positions, the course of study will examine theoretical developments over time and from different global perspectives. In Fall 2025 we will inevitably also think through critical cultural studies engagements with generative "AI."

The primary goal of the class is for seminar participants to reach an understanding of the development and range of critical/cultural theories of the media through the process of debate, discussion, critical analysis, and synthesis. Class activities and research projects will be interactive and based in Active learning strategies. By the end of the course, students will have a familiarity with key concepts, movements, and approaches to media and cultural studies.

Bill Albertini | ONLINE

Description: A certain story about the United States in the years after WWII tells of baby-boom nuclear families thriving in white picket fence suburbs, triumphant American industries, all-together-now patriotism, and a social fabric knit together by family-friendly television, technicolor movies, normative gender roles, and the pleasures of early rock n’ roll. In this narrative, the years between the end of WWII in 1945 and the early 1960s were an orderly, contented time before the (welcomed or regretted) turmoil of the later 1960s and 1970s.

In reality, the years following the end of WWII were already roiling with contradictions, anxieties, desperation, resentment, rebellion, and forbidden desires. In this course, we’ll look closely at those years—what we might call the “long 1950s”—examining the ways that writers and artists responded to the pleasures, demands, restrictions, injustices, and anxieties of the era in ways both overt and covert. Potential works include James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Lorraine Hansberry’s  A Raisin in the Sun, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Ann Bannon’s I Am a Woman, John Okada’s No-No Boy, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, along with poetry, short fiction, film (both Hollywood and avant-garde), television, and visual art.

The course will require regular reading and active engagement, including engaging in online tools for discussion and analysis with fellow students. Course projects will offer some flexibility, such as writing research essays and/or producing teaching-oriented projects addressing how one might approach this period and its literature in different present-day classrooms. Options will also exist for projects that are oriented towards more contemporary historical literature that invites us to rethink public memory of this period.

Lara Lengel | ONLINE

Josh Atkinson | TH 6:00-9:00PM | Kuhlin Center 208

Sandra Faulkner | MW 4:30-5:45PM | Eppler Complex N303

Jeff Brown | TH 2:30-5:20PM | Shatzel Hall 242

Description: This course will focus on the cultural practices of fan communities. It will address the historical development of media fandom from the early twentieth century up to current times. Musical cases like Beatlemania, The Kiss Army, and Swifties, cult film devotees like Rocky Horror Picture fans or young female fans of Frozen, and the activities of television fans for shows like Star Trek, Firefly, and Hannah Montanna will be key touchstones. We will look at fans producing their own subcultural texts, as well as conventions, pilgrimages, collecting and material culture. The class will also emphasize the ethnographic turn in media studies that facilitated a greater understanding of how the media influences people. This class will have modules specifically on race and gender as well. 

Becca Cragin | ONLINE

Description: This online course will explore the historical origins of contemporary U.S. feminist thought, which has been shaped by a variety of cultural forces around the world. We’ll use this historical perspective to understand how the development of theory is affected by the political and intellectual work preceding it and contemporaneously surrounding it. Because of the diversity of women’s experiences, feminists often disagree in their analyses of and tactics for countering inequality. A central question of the course, therefore, is whether feminists worldwide can or should have a unified women’s movement across national and cultural borders. [A background in feminist theory is not required for this course.]

Kim Stanley | W 2:30-5:20PM | Shatzel Hall 242

Description:

Rebecca Kinney | TU 2:30-5:20PM | Shatzel Hall 330

Description: In this course we will explore what it means to be “American” through the lens of food ways. We will engage interdisciplinary texts that focus on the history, production, and culture of food that scale from the personal act of eating to industrial agriculture. By focusing on what we eat, where we eat, and how we eat, the course will explore issues of labor, class, migration, and authenticity.

Tim Messer-Kruse | TU 6:00-9:00PM | SHAT 330