Courses

Kim Coates | M 2:30PM-5:20PM | EAST406

Description: In this course we will investigate contemporary feminist thought from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and theoretical orientations. We will focus on key issues in feminist theory such as the sex/gender debate, the politics of location, trans and queer theories, black-feminist theories, global south feminisms, data feminism, implications of AI for gender, intersectionality and multicultural feminism among others. This course also aims to think through the ways in which these issues intersect with race, class, caste, colonialism, and the nation. We will discuss why we study “theory”, consider and debate if there is a “canon” of feminist theory that has developed over the last several decades and explore the relation between feminist theory and political economy of gender/sexuality. Required for the Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate.

Kristen Rudisill | M 6:00PM-0:00PM | SHAT 242

Description: 
This class takes an in-depth look at the popular literature genre of romance novels and their iterations around the world (including India, Bangladesh, Australia, Japan, and West Africa). Romance novels are associated with women and the authors and readers are primarily from that gender, a fact that when compounded with their formulaic nature as popular culture has led to their devaluing in the popular imagination. We will analyze the conventions of romance novels as a whole and those of specific sub-genres (including historical, captivity, evangelical, desi, and contemporary) to both analyze reader response and pleasure and also to see the books as literary objects in their own right. The scholarly field of romance is still small, but has developed rapidly in recent years, especially with the founding of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies in 2010, as scholars begin to take the books seriously not only as a popular phenomenon, but as worthy of study as literature. We start with the classic scholarship in the field from the early 1980s then move to the present day, seeing how the discourse has shifted over the years. 

Michaela Domiano | T 2:30PM-5:20PM | SHAT 242

Description:
This course explores the construction of the U.S./ Mexico border and the communities, peoples, and identities that have evolved on both sides of the international demarcation. A principal objective is to interrogate standard notions and ideology of the “border” and to explore new conceptualizations of the geo-political through a comparative and performance lens. This seminar integrates ethnographic portrayals and explanation of border folk and communities, film (popular and documentary), along with performance studies in relation to the border and the formation of transnational identity.

Kim Coates | W 2:30PM-5:20PM | EAST 206

Description: This graduate level seminar will take an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to aesthetic, social, historical, and political representations of female aggression, rage, volatility, anger, “hysteria,” and/or “madness” both pre and post the #MeToo Movement. Texts to be examined may include early classical renditions of the raging woman (i.e. Antigone, Medea, The Trojan Women), the activism and writings of the militant suffragettes, Freud’s Dora: A Case of Hysteria, memoirs like Roxanne Gay’s Hunger, revisions of the fairy tale/folklore genre by writers like Angela Carter, Carmen Machado, K-Ming Chang, female performance artists like Annie Sprinkle and Lizzo, second wave feminist texts like Valerie Solanas’ Scum Manifesto in conversation with the more recent trans scholar Andrea Long Chu’s Female (2019), novels/films/series like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, David Leitch’s film Atomic Blonde (based on the graphic novel The Coldest City), Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the recent spate of female PI series (i.e. Jessica Jones, Castle, Mare of Easttown, The Fall, Absentia) as well as female comedians and musical artists/activists/performers such as Female-Fronted Punk Bands (i.e. The Slits, Pussy Riot and Riot Grrrl). Using recently published studies that historicize and analyze women’s rage like Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage as well as contemporary feminist theories addressing anger, aggression, and negative affects—i.e. Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings, M. Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Theory, Rafia Zakaria’s Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption—the course will think through the relationship between earlier representations of and work by and about raging women and the contemporary moment in which we have seen an ever multiplying number of angry, physically aggressive, powerful, and sometimes destructive women depicted in popular media, film, and literature. As we examine the cultural anxieties circulating in these texts and explore various forms of female agency, oppression, revolt, and resistance, we will construct a genealogy of female rage, discussing both the specificity of that rage to any given social, political, and/or historical context while simultaneously examining the consistencies and inconsistencies we find between past and present representations. The course will think through women’s rage as a cultural trope, as the consequence of lived experience and/or trauma, and as an ongoing tool for political and social change.

Chris Frey | M 6:00PM-9:00PM | ED 201

Description: Queer Midwest History is a special topics course on the history of queer people – broadly defined as those deemed “social problems”, focusing on lesbians and gays, trans people, travelers, hobos, tramps, sex deviants,  juvenile delinquents—as well as focusing on queer historiographic quandaries and Out public history, in the US Midwest. Plans include focus on the pre-Stonewall Midwest, a panel on LGBTQ+ histories of Bowling Green and BGSU, and attention to archival materials from the 2010 ONE Bowling Green campaign. Students in the course will read a wide variety of primary texts and complete a book review, and a research paper, project, or equivalent related to the course topic. 

Sidra Lawrence | TH 5:30PM-8:20PM | Moore Musical Arts Center 2002

Description: This seminar will explore topics on sound and trauma, including: acoustic surveillance, music and torture, auditory trauma and sexual violence, interrogation and testimony, and the limits of audition. We will read literature drawn from sound studies, ethnomusicology, critical geography studies, trauma studies, and feminist theory, and will discuss global case studies that attend to traumatic sound productions and their consequences. We will also think about sound and music as modes through which to counter trauma and shape healing. We will explore global case studies related to the topics of the course, and from multidisciplinary perspectives. 

Students will embark upon independent creative projects that are informed by our topics. Students will also have the opportunity to present ideas, critically interrogate reading, viewing, and listening materials, and share perspectives on these topics. We will also engage in creative practices such as poetry writing, sound installation work, and multi-modal explorations of sound as a healing practice.

Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson| T 2:30PM-5:20PM | WOLFE 201

Michaela Domiano | T 2:30PM-5:20PM | SHAT 242

Description:

This course explores the construction of the U.S./ Mexico border and the communities, peoples, and identities that have evolved on both sides of the international demarcation. A principal objective is to interrogate standard notions and ideology of the “border” and to explore new conceptualizations of the geo-political through a comparative and performance lens. This seminar integrates ethnographic portrayals and explanation of border folk and communities, film (popular and documentary), along with performance studies in relation to the border and the formation of transnational identity.