This course explores the ways in which the body, as a reflection and construction of the self, is tied to social, cultural and political relations. Through this examination of the role that our bodies play in daily life we will delve into the study of gender, race, sexuality and power. We focus on several major areas: (1) after Roe and the medicalization of bodies (contraception, abortion, new reproductive technologies), (2) sex education and the Internet as sites of bodily learning (3) body work (nail salons, surrogacy) (4) the use of the body as a vehicle for performance, self-expression and identity (tattoos, getting dressed). Throughout the course we will discuss how ideas about bodies are transported across national borders and social, sexual and class hierarchies.

What is the carceral state? What do girls, women, and transgender individuals’ experiences of policing and punishment in 21st century America reveal about its shifting dimensions? Despite public concerns about mass incarceration in the United States and calls for criminal justice reform, mainstream commentators rarely account for the gendered, racialized, and class dimensions of punishment, nor address the growing ranks of girls, women, poor and gender nonconforming individuals that experience carceral control and oversight. Interdisciplinary in scope, this course critically examines how race, gender, sexuality and class intersect and shape people’s experience with systems of punishment and control. It further explores the economic, social, and political factors that have influenced the development of the contemporary American carceral state and scholarly, activist, and artistic responses to it.

This course will serve as an introduction to representations of Asian/American women in film beginning with silent classics and ending with contemporary social media. In the first half of the course, we examine the legacy of Orientalism, the politics of interracial romance, the phenomenon of "yellow face," and the different constructions of Asian American femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. In the second half of the course, we look at "Asian American cinema" where our focus will be on contemporary works, drawing upon critical materials from film theory, feminist studies, Asian American studies, history, and cultural studies.

Social understandings of the relationship between human health and the environment are visible and malleable in moments of crisis, from industrial disasters, weather-related catastrophes, and political conflict, as everyday events like childbirth and routine sickness. But these understandings vary dramatically across time and community. This course addresses the complex dynamics at work in the representations of and responses to health and the environment that emerge during moments of crisis. By studying the way these constructions are shaped by social, political, technological, and moral contexts, we will analyze the role of nature, knowledge, ethics and power in such contemporary problems as human migration, hunger, debility, and disease.

Within contemporary academia, students are introduced to bounded disciplines and disciplinary thinking. However the history of the sciences, and especially the biological studies of the body defy this easy categorization, particularly when considered in light of the Archives of the Body. Using archives at Wellesley, digital archives online, Special Collections at Wellesley, and the Davis Museum, this course will challenge students to re-define what we mean by the body and its biology.

Introduction to the interdisciplinary field of women's and gender studies with an emphasis on an understanding of the "common differences" that both unite and divide women. Beginning with an examination of how womanhood has been represented in myths, ads, and popular culture, the course explores how gender inequalities have been both explained and critiqued. The cultural meaning given to gender as it intersects with race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality will be studied. This course also exposes some of the critiques made by women's studies' scholars of the traditional academic disciplines and the new intellectual terrain currently being mapped.

This course explores love and intimacy from an interdisciplinary, humanistic social science, intersectional, data feminist, and queer studies perspective. In this course, we will examine the systems of meaning, politics, and infrastructures of feeling surrounding notions of love and intimacy. We will also explore the structural forces that constitutively shape and mediate love and intimacy today, focusing on how emerging technologies, shifting economic, political, and sociotechnical conditions, heightened border crossings, and reproductive and climate injustice are reconstituting the terms, practices, and meanings associated with love, intimacy, and intimate arrangements in real time.

Feminist scholarship demonstrates that American family life needs to be viewed through two lenses: one that highlights the embeddedness of family in class, race, heteronormativity, gender inequalities and another that draws our attention to historical developments – such as the aftermath of World War 2, technologies and government social policies. In 2015 same-sex marriage became U.S. federal law; but at the same time fewer people are marrying and parenthood is delayed. Moreover, new reproductive technologies coupled with the Internet and the wish for intimacy is creating unprecedented families. Topics covered vary yearly but include: inequalities around employment, the home front and childcare; intensive motherhood, social class and cultural capital; welfare to work programs; immigrant families and the American Dream. Finally, we will explore new developments from adoption to gamete donors by same-sex or single-parent families and how science and technologies are facilitating the creation of new kinds of kin. A special feature of this class is looking at the relationship of families and social policy.

This course will offer a critical introduction to queer theory, a major theoretical framework within women’s and gender studies that emerges from the study of sex and sexuality as a guiding force in social and political life. The course will start with an expansive background on the history and development of queer theory, before exploring some of the key debates that continue to animate the field. Specifically, we will consider the complicated relationships between queer theory, feminist theory, and queer of color critique. Finally, the course will consider the relationship between queer theory and forms of queer expression in literature and culture, such as in Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home and its musical adaptation.

This course examines Techno-Orientalism as a global science fiction genre in literature, film, and social media to understand the broad historical and social formations of Otherness, Aliens, Citizenship, and Immigration. We also study racial assumptions in popular culture, discourses of the human and human rights, science and technology industries, and anti-Asian violence during the global pandemic. Finally, we also interrogate the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and geopolitical divisions and interactions in Asian/American Studies and Postcolonial Studies from the past to the present.

The stories we tell about the world make certain futures possible, while foreclosing other imaginable ones. This course reveals how Western historical, theoretical, and scientific ways of knowing understood both women and nature as inferior and thus needing to be controlled. Pushing back against the ideas of any inherent binary separations between sex/gender and nature/culture, we will examine feminist ecological possibilities for planetary futures. Learning from the intertwined histories of environment, race, and gender, that have led to both personal and global inequity and disaster, we will also engage solutions that imagine different futures. Recognizing that solutions to environmental problems require a feminist attunement, we can start to understand the implications that our ethical commitments have to the future of life on the planet.