Upcoming Courses

Fulfill a requirement for the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor

Any of the classes below may be taken to fulfill a requirement for the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor. Email us or stop by our office (Campus Center Building 211) if you have questions.

**Indicates courses that require a substitution for the program of study before census.

Summer 2022

Full Session (06/06-08/12)

SOWK 4567.901 | Human Sexuality | McKinney
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
This survey course on human sexuality introduces students to sexual attitudes, sexual physiology and response, sexual techniques and behavior, reproduction and reproductive control, sexually transmitted diseases, and how sexual behavior is learned and developed, i.e., psychosocial development and cultural impact. It provides students with the opportunity for value clarification and exploration of personal and social attitudes toward varying forms of sexual behavior and orientations.

Session 1 (06/06-07/08)

WGSS 2010.910 | Intro to Women’s Studies | Marsh
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
We will take an intersectional approach to understanding how gender and sexuality are shaped by sociocultural dynamics and power relations embedded in everyday experiences. Course content includes histories of feminisms, reproductive justice, labor and the family, gender-based violence, and activism.

Session II (07/11-08/12)

WGSS 2010.950 | Intro to Women’s Studies | Martin
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
This course provides a broad interdisciplinary perspective of the academic field of women’s studies. This course is, for the most part, taught thematically and covers topics that include women’s history; gender, race, and class; women and family; women and religion; women and work; women and the arts; women and politics; and women’s health.

SOWK 1030.950 | Cultural Diversity | Brookstreet
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
The dual purpose of this course is to introduce the knowledge necessary for social work practice with disadvantaged, marginalized, and oppressed groups and to advance a philosophy that people come first and must be treated with dignity and respect. Issues of power, privilege, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, civil rights, historical and legal heritage, and contemporary news events are central course components.

HDAL 2340 | Understanding Cultural Diversity | Rogers
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
This course is designed for the student to develop competencies that allow her/ him to be more effective when relating and/or working with individuals of diverse groups in society. Students will have opportunities to develop awareness of their own cultural values and biases, to study prevalent beliefs and attitudes of different cultures, and to develop skills useful for appropriate interactions with particular groups.

Fall 2022

WGSS 2010.001 | Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Clark
TR 11:45-1:05 (3.00 hrs)
This course provides a broad interdisciplinary perspective of the academic field of women’s studies. You will learn to speak eloquently about gender and sexuality; examine your own preconceived notions about Gender; examine and deconstruct society’s underlying assumptions about Maleness and Femaleness; and laugh at the absurd notions we all carry around about Gender, Sex and Women’s roles in everyday life.

WGSS 2010.00 | Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Tolley
TR 11:45-1:05 (3.00 hrs)
Learn how current events, popular culture, and students’ personal experiences are useful starting points in discussing theories, concepts, and issues in women’s studies. Themes emphasized in this section are equity, identity, and social justice. As a writing intensive course, this section focuses on refining student composition. Further, this section encourages students to develop their voices (both written and oral) as a person and in expressing their perspective in a safe space.

WGSS 2010.003 | Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Buck
TR 1:20-2:40 (3.00 hrs)
Women's Studies examines how social structures and cultural heritage impact women in public life (e.g., work and politics), private life (e.g., family and relationships), and one's inner life (e.g., self-concept and gender identity). Students are expected to make connections between the scholarship they read and their own lived experiences. Assignments include reading responses, essays, quizzes, and reports on current events.

WGSS 2010.901 | Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Martin
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
This course provides a broad interdisciplinary perspective of the academic field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. This course is, for the most part, taught thematically and covers topics that include women’s history; gender, sexuality, race, and class; women and family; women and religion; women and work; women and the arts; women and politics; and women’s health.

WGSS 2010.902 | Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Clark
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
This course provides a broad interdisciplinary perspective of the academic field of women’s studies. You will learn to speak eloquently about gender and sexuality; examine your own preconceived notions about Gender; examine and deconstruct society’s underlying assumptions about Maleness and Femaleness; and laugh at the absurd notions we all carry around about Gender, Sex and Women’s roles in everyday life.

WGSS 2010.910 | Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Marsh
Last 7 weeks (10/17-12/08) ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
We will take an intersectional approach to understanding how gender and sexuality are shaped by sociocultural dynamics and power relations embedded in everyday experiences. Course content includes histories of feminisms, reproductive justice, labor and the family, gender-based violence, and media representation of gender and sexuality.

WGSS 2110.FE1 | Sex, Gender, & the Body | Novotny
Last 7 weeks (10/17-12/08) MW 1:40-4:30 (3.00 hrs)
This course examines the diverse and historically varying relationships forged between biological sex, cultural discourses of masculinity and femininity, and the sexed, gendered, and racialized body. Combining texts from the field of gender and sexuality studies with memoir, documentary, and visual art, we investigate how our diverse experiences of embodiment are historically and politically shaped.

WGSS 4957.001 |Special Topics: Where We Stand: Possibility and Practice in bell hooks| Wessels, Thompson, Carter | MW 1:40-3:00 (3.00 hrs)
This course introduces students to the range of work by bell hooks, a Black feminist scholar and activist. As a class, we will consider her writings on race, class, gender, sexuality, pedagogy, art, mass media, and more. Following hooks' belief in education as the practice of freedom, students will have opportunities to contribute to course design, undertake independent research, and participate in community focused reading groups throughout the semester.

COMM 4200.001 | Gender and Communication | Buerkle
MW 1:40-3:00 (3.00 hrs)
Men are not from Mars, nor are women from Venus. Often, however, we are asked to think of identifying as male to female in such polarizing ways. This course investigates how communication practices affect or ideas about and experiences of gender as well as how our gender may affect our own communication. You should leave the class more aware of the dynamics of gender on your journey to being a more effective and ethical communicator.

COMM 4317.923 | Rhetoric of Diversity & Identity | Buerkle
MWF 10:30-11:25 (3.00 hrs)
Offers historical study of rhetorical theory as applied to manuscripts, speakers, and media. Particular emphasis is placed on diversity and identity as public communication.

CJCR 4670.901 | Race, Gender, and Crime | Grubb
ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
Examines experiences of women and people of color with agencies of social control. Comparisons of crime rates, types of criminal offending, and victimization including discussion of sexual and racial harassment in the workplace are studied.

CJCR 4950.001 | Special Topics: Domestic Violence and the Justice System | TBA
TR 11:45-1:05 (3.00 hrs)
Description TBA

ENGL 3500.001 | Women Authors | Byington
MWF 9:20-10:15 (3.00 hrs)
This course will examine literature by women from the ancient world to the twenty-first century while implementing a dichotomy of what Eva C. Keuls calls the splitting of the feminine psyche, the housewife and the hetaera--essentially the Madonna and the prostitute. ENGL 3500 will cover major authors such as Sappho, Mary Shelley, and Sylvia Plath, as well as less-often read women like early modern martyr Anne Askew, Harlem Renaissance writer Angelina Weld Grimké, and trans woman author Casey Plett. Each week's assigned readings will also include a critical essay to further assist students in analyzing the course's literature.

ENGL 4507.001 | Film and Literature | Wessels
MW 3:10-4:30 (3.00 hrs)
Combining the study of adaptation, film and literary form, and feminist film theory, this course will consider women’s writing as it is adapted to a new medium and cultural moment. Issues of fidelity and authorship are critical to this shift, alongside film-specific understandings of agency, the gaze, and representations of gender and sexuality. Two key case studies are Jane Austen’s Emma and Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. Students will have the opportunity to work with additional texts of their choosing. Films screened may include: Emma. (Autumn de Wilde, 2020), Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995), Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015), Passing (Rebecca Hall, 2021), The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan, 2018), and Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001).

Required texts: Emma (Jane Austen), The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith), and one additional book to be selected in class.

HDAL 2340 | Understanding Cultural Diversity | 3 Sections
TR 9:45-11:05 / ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
This course is designed for the student to develop competencies that allow her/ him to be more effective when relating and/or working with individuals of diverse groups in society. Students will have opportunities to develop awareness of their own cultural values and biases, to study prevalent beliefs and attitudes of different cultures, and to develop skills useful for appropriate interactions with particular groups.

SOWK 1030.001 / 901 | Cultural Diversity | 2 Sections
TR 9:00-10:20 / ONLINE (3.00 hrs)
The dual purpose of this course is to introduce the knowledge necessary for social work practice with disadvantaged, marginalized, and oppressed groups and to advance a philosophy that people come first and must be treated with dignity and respect. Issues of power, privilege, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, civil rights, historical and legal heritage, and contemporary news events are central course components.