WMST 241 - Topics in the Construction of Gender

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

This course examines the construction of gender as a social category and introduces students to various methodologies of gender studies and feminist analysis. Particular attention is given to the connections between gender, class, race, sex, and sexual identity. Topics vary from year to year and may include the study of gender in the context of a particular historical period, medicine and science, or the arts and literature. May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

Topic for 2014/15b: Women and Power from Antiquity to the Present. Women’s relationship to power has been a complicated and changing one from the ancient to the contemporary world. Ancient narratives of Pandora, Eve, and Jezebel offer literary and historical antecedents for limitations placed on women’s roles in the public and political spheres with many of the ancient rhetorical tropes persisting across the centuries. This class begins with foundational mythological narratives of Ancient Greece, Rome, and the Near East, then moves to queens and empresses such as Cleopatra, Boudicca, Helena, and Elizabeth, and concludes with 20th and 21st century politicians such as Barbara Jordan, Margaret Thatcher, and Hillary Clinton, and women’s involvement in feminist, nationalist, religious, and justice movements. Throughout, the course examines the challenges facing women in the exercise of political, economic, and social power and how ancient and present tropes inform and challenge each other. Ms. Olsen.

Prerequisite: WMST 130 or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.