Courses

Becca Cragin | ONLINE (Asynchronous)

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. A background in feminist theory is not required.

Vikki Krane | TuTh 1:00-2:15PM | Eppler Complex N 108

Description: A critical examination of how gender, sex, and sexuality, and social expectations surrounding femininity and masculinity, influence experiences in sport and physical activity.

This course is cross listed with HMSL 6410 5001 (76927)  

Becca Cragin | W 2:30-5:20PM | Remote Online (Synchronous)

Description: This course will provide an introduction to critical television studies, exploring foundational and contemporary methods and concepts of the field. These will be used to examine the representation of gender, race, and class in a variety of genres. We’ll look at how television’s changing technological, cultural, and aesthetic forms enable or constrain critique of social inequality.

This course is cross listed with POPC 6800 5001 (76963)  

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

Sandra Faulkner | MoWe 4:30PM-5:45PM | Eppler Complex N 302

Description: The purpose of this course is to introduce you to qualitative humanistic communication research methods, the logic and philosophy of such methods, and innovations/controversies in these methods. We will examine general qualitative research and feminist methods and analysis used by communication (and those in related fields) scholars, specifically interviews, observations, narrative analysis, ethnography, autoethnography, grounded theory, arts-based research, media criticism, and content coding. In addition, we will discuss the ethical considerations in conducting human participant research.

Kathy Meizel | MW 2:30-3:20PM | Moore Musical Arts Center 3010

Description: Voice is integral to how we understand ourselves and others. Vocalities—vocal practices, aesthetics, and timbres, grounded in cultural context—function as perceptual markers for constructions of gender, race and ethnicity, ability and disability, nation, age, class, musical genre, even our emotional lives. And in the 2020s, we play with voice and identity more than ever; ubiquitous technologies allow us to "try on" and manipulate different voices through social media and sampling libraries, and there are reality TV competitions that center on disguising voices or the bodies they come from. In this course, all of these topics will help us investigate how the voice in music serves as an embodied site for the negotiation of identity.

Heidi Nees-Carver | Tu 2:30-5:20PM | Wolfe Center 201

Description: This course explores the theoretical and practical considerations that shape Native American drama and performance in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will consider the ways in which Native artists and theatre companies create works that are informed by the political, social, and intellectual forces within particular cultural and historical contexts and we will examine ways in which Native artists use theatre and performance to subvert colonial structures, challenge previous representations produced by non-natives, employ humor as a means of resistance, create spaces for healing, raise awareness, and instigate change. Furthermore, we will consider the ways in which indigenous performances are influenced by indigenous epistemologies. In our explorations, we will critically engage with play scripts, videos, audio recordings, images, interviews, articles, and other primary and secondary texts.

Sarah Rainey-Smithback | 6W1 5/13/2024 - 6/21/2024 | ONLINE
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, 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.

Tom Edge | 6W2 6/24/2024 - 8/02/2024 | ONLINE
Description: This course analyzes the modern debates over how to incorporate themes around race, gender, and sexuality into the curriculum at all levels of teaching. Particular emphasis will be placed upon student demands for separate programs and departments in the 1960s and 1970s, the debates over multicultural education in the 1990s, and current efforts to restrict teaching around questions of identity or systemic oppression.

Heath Diehl | 6W2 6/24/2024 - 8/02/2024 | ONLINE
Description: When Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen in December 1879, the play sent shock waves through audiences for its blunt critique, if not outright rejection, of the bourgeoise values of domesticity, female subservience, and heteronormative matrimony. Over one hundred fifty years after the premiere of Ibsen’s play, the story of Nora Helmer and her “door slam heard round the world” retains a strong foothold in the Western imaginary. Just within the last decade, the world stage has witnessed a marked revitalization of interest in the story, both with notable adaptations by contemporary playwrights and with a 2023 revival starring Jessica Chastain and directed by Jamie Lloyd. Of “re-vision,” Adrienne Rich has written that it constitutes “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction”; Rich goes on to suggest that the act of re-vision is, for women, “more than a chapter in cultural history; it is an act of survival.” In this seminar, we will begin with an intensive study of the Ibsen source text, and then examine four recent adaptations of that text from four contemporary world dramatists, including: Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House: Part 2 (2017); Samuel Adamson’s Wife (2019); Heather Raffo’s Noura (2019); and Stef Smith’s Nora: A Doll’s House (2019). Through careful readings of these texts in relation both to the Ibsen source text and their own, original historical moments, we will grapple with the following guiding questions: Why does Ibsen’s story retain such a strong foothold in the Western cultural imaginary over a century and one-half following its inaugural production? What does the staying power of this story reveal about some of the subjects/concerns at the center of Ibsen’s play, like patriarchy, marriage, female subservience, and matrimonial duty? How do contemporary playwrights re-vision Ibsen’s story or/and characters to speak to contemporary issues? That is, how do contemporary playwrights “enter an old text” with “fresh eyes” and “from a new critical direction”? For whom do those gestures constitute an act of survival? (And what does “survival” mean in those contexts?) And, finally, what do those fresh eyes and new critical directions reveal about the source text?