The course will adopt an intersectional perspective which illustrates how relationships between systems of oppression surrounding race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, ability, age, and citizenship are interconnected and historically bound. As an introductory course, it is designed to offer a range of interdisciplinary tools and methods for understanding and analyzing issues at stake.

The course will consider a wide variety of texts—from personal narratives and historical documents to films and cultural criticism across a range of disciplines. Students will develop tools to critically analyze the ways in which social and cultural forces shape us as gendered individuals in the context of the world in which we live. 

At the end of the course, students should achieve the following:

• Demonstrate an introductory understanding of the field of gender studies, and apply interdisciplinary methodologies for understanding and analyzing sex, gender, and sexuality in culture.

• Develop a critical understanding of feminist, transfeminist and queer approaches to the social and cultural construction of gender and sexuality, and their complex intersections with other social, cultural, and biological categories, including but not limited to sex, race, ethnicity, class, nation, sexuality, ability, and age. 

• Cultivate a language framework for thoughtfully articulating the critical vocabulary in the field of gender studies.

• Develop critical thinking skills towards a deepened understanding of how social, cultural, and biological categories shape our lives, and our understandings of the world.

Absences should be rare and reserved for unforeseen circumstances. You cannot make up a midterm or final without the permission of the Dean’s Office. The Associate Dean’s office should not be involved in correspondence regarding any other type of routine absence. This means that if you need to return home for a funeral, if you need to go to the dentist, if you have a fingerprinting appointment, if you are ill, or for any other reason that I have not listed, you simply do not come to class that day and you contact a colleague to find out what went on in class. Let us all agree that if you need to be absent, I believe you and I trust that you will find out what you missed from a colleague. Let’s create a world in which we believe each other and trust that we would be in class every session if we could. Let us focus on building skills of direct student-professor communication rather than asking others to intervene on routine absence matters on our behalf.  It should go without saying that frequent absences will mean you are less prepared to meet the learning objectives of the course. Your grade will suffer because, simply put, you are unfamiliar with what we have done in class.

There are always one or two obvious common sense extreme exceptions to this aspiration, but generally it is best to avoid triggering institutional responses for routine short-term absences. The bottom line is that every student, including you, is a treasured resource for each class. We need you as much as you need us. Without you, it's just not the same.

At the 5th absence (5 is a lot!) you will be asked to withdraw from the course. A failure to attend 70% of the class meetings will result in an F. If you are unsure of what a superior level of classroom engagement looks like, please consult the Class Engagement Rubric posted to Moodle.

Late assignments will be capped at 75%. It is the student's responsibility to approach the instructor to schedule a makeup for any missed work (assignments as well as in-class work). Late assignments should be done within one week of the missed work.

ACADEMIC HONESTY

The very point of why we are all here is that we want to develop ourselves into well-rounded life-long learners. Cutting corners with paper-writing services and AI, or recycling older papers cheapens everyone’s experience of the course and professors tend to take it personally. A good rule is that if you have to ask, “Is this okay to do?”, it probably is not. If you are unsure, it can't hurt to ask.

SCHEDULE

(The most updated version is on Moodle)

A note on readings and assignments – Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field; one cannot possibly read the entire canon in one introductory course. This means that assignments will make use of representative sources and consider some contributions that drove the various movements forward to get us to where we are today.

Week 1 (Jan 20 & 22): What Is Gender Studies?

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 1 - Gender; Suggested others: Butler, Connell, Fausto-Sterling, Stryker, Oyěwùmí

In-Class: Our class mojo; What to expect; Brief diagnostic reflection on prior understandings of gender

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Week 2 (Jan 27 & 29): Feminisms

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 2 - Feminisms; Suggested others: Lorde, Davis, Gay, Mohanty, Ahmen, Abu-Lughod

In-Class: Short comparative response to two feminist approaches

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Week 3 (Feb 3 & 5): Intersectionality

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 3 - Intersectionality; Suggested others: Crenshaw, Hill Collins, Smith, Bailey, Spade, Piepzna-Samarasinha

In-Class: Guided application of intersectionality to a real-life scenario

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Week 4 (Feb 10 & 12): Gender Equity

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 4 - Equity; Suggested others: Anzaldùa, Kimmel, Solnit, Young, Bilge, Willis

In-Class: Evidence-based equity vs. equality

The Feb 27 activity

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Week 5 (Feb 17 & 19): Gender & the World

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 5 - Gender & the World; Suggested others: El Saadawi, Roy, Ngozi Adichie, Tamale, Lughod, Thiong’o

In-Class: Connecting global examples to our own contexts

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Week 6 (Feb 24, 26 & 27): Gender Inequity Through History

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 6 - Gender Inequity Throughout History; Suggested others de Beauvoir, Truth, hooks, Lerner, Hartman, Mies

In-Class: Feb 27 event planning, Planning for Essay #1

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Week 7 (Mar 3 & 5): Contemporary Gender Issues

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 7 - Gender Today; Suggested others: Gay, Mock, DuVernay, Vaid-Menon, Serano, McMillan Cottom

In-Class: Essay #1

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Spring Break (Mar 9-13)

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Week 8 (Mar 17 & 19): Gender Gaps

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 8 - Gender Gaps; Suggested others: Woolf, Wollstonecraft, The Guerilla Girls, Gadsby, Reeves

In-Class: Normalization of gender gaps

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Week 9 (Mar 24 & 26): Pathways to Gender Equity

Readings: Clemens, Chapter 9 - Pathways to Gender Equity, Suggested others: Goldin, Sen, Criado Perez, Muholi, Mama, Ross, Sassen

In-Class: Connecting theory to institutional change

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Week 10 (Mar 31 & Apr 2): Supporting Gender Equity

Reading: Clemens, Chapter 10 - Supporting Gender Equity - Suggested Authors/Creative Figures: Davis, Klein, Mock, Spade, Kendall

In-Class: Project-focused analysis connecting course concepts to Signature Project 

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Week 11 (Apr 7 & 9): Feminist Methodology and Ways of Knowing

Suggested Authors/Creative Figures: Clemens - appendices, Hill Collins, hooks, Ahmed, Haraway, Harding, Tuhiwai Smith

In-Class: Feminist methodology and positionality 

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Week 12 (Apr 14 & 16): Gender, Media, and Representation

Suggested Authors/Creative Figures: Clemens - appendices, hooks, Hall, Serano, Mulvey, Neshat, DuVernay

 In-Class Essay #2  media analysis 

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Week 13 (Apr 21 & 23): Activism, Public Scholarship, and Change

Suggested Authors/Creative thinkers: Clemens - appendices, Burke, Ai-jen Poo, Kaba, Ross, Revenioti

In-Class: Pre-writing notes for Reflective Methodological Essay 
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Week 14 (Apr 28 & 30): Synthesis and Reflection

Suggested Authors/Creative Figures: Clemens - appendices, Lorde, Adichie, Kahlo, Anzaldúa, Nelson, Vuong

In-Class:  Reflective Methodological Essay  on project

Week 15 - Final exam - Final synthesis reflection and presentation.

Students might find this basic limited bibliography resource helpful for the projects. All are accessible through the Frohring library discovery tool. Those available in print are specified:

Brief overview of recent trends

Connell, R. (2024). Growth and Struggle: Thirty Years of Gender Studies Worldwide. Revista de Estudios de Género, La Ventana, 7, 46–55. Frohring library.

Gender Studies in General

Fixmer-Oraiz, N., & Wood, J. T. (2019). Gendered Lives (13th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage. Frohring Library in print. (note there are two books with this title!)

Kimmel, Michael and Amy Aronson (2017). The Gendered Society Reader, 6th Edition, Oxford University Press. Frohring Library in print.

Kang, Miliann (2012). Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies. University of Massachusetts Amherst . Open Source and Online.

Rajunove and Duane, Nonbinary, Columbia University Press, 2019. Frohring Library.

Foundational Frameworks

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. Frohring library in print.

Baker, P., & Brookes, G. (2025). Masculinities and language. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003352006. Frohring library.

 Collins, P. H. (2022). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment Routledge. Frohring library in print.

 Davis, A. Y. (2019). Women, race & class. Penguin. Frohring library in print.

Contemporary Feminist & Intersectional Thought

 Bilge, S. (2013). INTERSECTIONALITY UNDONE Saving Intersectionality from Feminist Intersectionality Studies. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 10(2), 405–424. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X13000283

 Burke, P. J., Coffey, J., Gill, R., & Kanai, A. (2022). Gender in an era of post-truth populism : pedagogies, challenges and strategies. Bloomsbury Academic. Forhring library.

Gill, R., & Orgad, S. (2015). The Confidence Cult(ure). Australian Feminist Studies, 30(86), 324–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2016.1148001

 Nash, J. C. (2017). Intersectionality and Its Discontents. American Quarterly, 69(1), 117–129. Frohring library.

Miriam, K. (2012). Feminism, Neoliberalism, and SlutWalk. Feminist Studies, 38(1), 262–266. Frohring library.

Queer, Trans, and Gender Diversity Studies

 Bailey, M. (2021). Misogynoir transformed : black women’s digital resistance. New York University Press. Frohring library.

 Snorton, C. R. (2017). Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. University of Minnesota Press. Frohring library.

 Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender history. Seal Press. Frohring library in print.

Disability, Embodiment, and Justice

 Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press. Frohring library.

 Schalk, S. (2022). Black disability politics. Duke University Press. Frohring library.

Decolonial & Global Feminisms

DiPietro, P., McWeeny, J., & Roshanravan, S. (2019). Speaking face to face : the visionary philosophy of María Lugones. State University of New York Press. Frohring library.

Graness, A., & Kopf , M. (2024). Changing the Frame: New Epistemic Frameworks and Social Transformation in African Feminist Theory. The Monist, 107(3), 279–293. Frohring library.

Cultural Criticism & Media

hooks, b. (2015). Ain’t I a woman : Black women and feminism. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. Frohring library.

 Banet-Weiser, S. (2018). Empowered: Popular feminism and popular misogyny. Duke University Press. Frohring library in print.

Other important voices

Beauvoir, S. D. (2015). Feminist writings. University of Illinois Press. Sections: Ch. 4, 10 - Short Feminist Texts Frohring Library. And Iseult Gillespie: The meaning of life according to Simone de Beauvoir | TED Talk

Butler, J. (Dec., 1988) "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" .Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 519-531. Frohring Library.

Butler, J. (2024), Who's Afraid of Gender? Allen Lane. Frohring Library.

Crenshaw, K. "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics", in Feminism and Politics, edited by Anne Phillips, Oxford University Press, 1998. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.jcu.idm.oclc.org/lib/johncabot/detail.action?docID=1173598. Frohring Library.

hooks, bell. (2015). Feminism is for Everybody. Routledge. And bell hooks on interlocking systems of domination

 Le Guin, Ursula. “Is Gender Necessary? Redux,”  In The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Susan Wood. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. 160.; Frohring Library.

Mohanty, C. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses" , in Boundaries, Vol. 12, no. 3 - Vol. 13, no. 1, On Humanism and the University I: The Discourse of Humanism. Duke University Press, 1984, Frohring Library.

Rodrigues, Laís. “Decolonial Feminism: María Lugones’ influences and contributions”. Revista Estudos Feministas, Florianópolis, v. 30, n. 1, e84278, 2022. Frohring Library.

Segato, R.L. "A Manifesto in Four Themes" Critical Times, Vol.1, 2018, Frohring Library.

Srinivasa, Amia. (2021) "Who Lost the Sex Wars?"  The New Yorker.

Wolfe, Cary. "Introduction," and Haraway, Donna J.."A Cyborg Manifesto" in Manifestly Haraway, University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Frohring Library.