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.

Health is a powerful manifestation of the economic, political and cultural substructures of society. This course uses a public health approach, a focus on health at the population level and attention in the distribution of disease, to explore the strategies related to and the power of health activism. Focusing on examples throughout U.S. history and in the present day, we will apply an intersectional lens to understand how inequalities (e.g. race, class, gender and sexual identity) are embodied via health and impact individuals and communities. Using a case study approach we will examine social movements (eg, AIDS activism, reproductive justice, workers’ rights), as well as structural efforts (eg, healthcare reform and legal challenges) to discuss collective struggles and successful strategies for transformation. 

A quarter century ago the Institute of Medicine defined the work of public health as "what we as a society do collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy." Historically rooted in a commitment to social justice, U.S. public health is now renewing this commitment through 1) an epidemiological shift to examine the social, economic, and political inequities that create disparate health and disease patterns by gender, class, race, sexual identity, citizenship, etc., and 2) a corresponding health equity movement in public health practice. This broad-ranging course examines the debates shaping the above as well as the moral and legal groundings of public health, basic epidemiology, and the roles of public and private actors. Highlighted health topics vary year to year.

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.

AIDS changed how we live our lives, and this course looks at writings tracing the complex, sweeping ramifications of the biggest sexual-health crisis in world history. This course looks at diverse depictions and genres of H.I.V./AIDS writing, including Pulitzer Prize-winning plays like Angels In America and bestselling popular-science "contagion narratives" like And the Band Played On; independent films like Greg Araki's The Living End and Oscar-winning features and documentaries like Philadelphia, Precious, and How to Survive a Plague. We will read about past controversies and ongoing developments in AIDS history and historiography. These include unyielding stigma and bio-political indifference, met with activism, service, and advocacy; transforming biomedical research to increase access to better treatments, revolutionizing AIDS from death sentence to chronic condition; proliferating "moral panics" about public sex, "barebacking," and "PrEP" (pre-exposure prevention), invoking problematic constructs like "Patient Zero," "being on the Down Low," "party and play" subculture, and the "Truvada whore"; and constructing a global bio-political apparatus ("AIDS Inc.") to control and protect populations. We will look at journal articles, scholarly and popular-science books (excerpts), as well as literary and cinematic texts. Also some archival materials from ACT UP Boston, the activist group. Fulfills the Diversity of Literatures in English requirement.

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.

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.

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.

Health is a powerful manifestation of the economic, political and cultural substructures of society. This course uses a public health approach, a focus on health at the population level and attention in the distribution of disease, to explore the strategies related to and the power of health activism. Focusing on examples throughout U.S. history and in the present day, we will apply an intersectional lens to understand how inequalities (e.g. race, class, gender and sexual identity) are embodied via health and impact individuals and communities. Using a case study approach we will examine social movements (eg, AIDS activism, reproductive justice, workers’ rights), as well as structural efforts (eg, healthcare reform and legal challenges) to discuss collective struggles and successful strategies for transformation. 

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. The class will together consider the meaning of crisis and how it is shaped by social systems such as gender, sexuality, ability, class, and race.

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.

Feminist scholars, activists, and community organizers have been at the forefront of the US and transnational abolitionist movement to address structural violence, including but not limited to violence that occurs in jails, prisons, and immigration detention facilities. Anti-carceral feminists share a broad commitment to divesting in carceral systems and resisting racist ideologies and carceral feminist projects fueling the “global prison industrial complex.” Anti-carceral feminist efforts have culminated in a rich yet understudied body of work animated by intersectional and transnational insights. Interdisciplinary in scope, this seminar explores anti-carceral feminist research and activism in the United States and transnationally. In addition to engaging with anti-carceral feminist research, this seminar will explore abolitionist feminist methods and organizing strategies to facilitate safety, accountability, and transformative justice.