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Gender Course Guide 2011-2012

The Arts and Gender

Literature and Gender

DRAM E-55 Sex Wars: Betrayal and Infidelity in the Theater
Robert Scanlan | Extension Spring 
From Euripides (Medea) to Harold Pinter (Betrayal), with many stops in between, the drama has perennially taken up the theme of troubled couples. Ibsen (Hedda Gabler) and Strindberg (The Father, Playing with Fire), Wedekind (Earth Spirit) and Schnitzler (La Ronde), are discussed in the light of older plays: Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Machiavelli's The Mandrake, for instance, alongside contemporary American plays like Mamet's The Cryptogram and Paula Vogel's How I Learned To Drive. This seminar explores the larger theme of the drama's ability (or inability) to reflect currents of thoughts and social norms in various ages. Attention is paid to the drama's long and unique history on this theme.

ENGL E-154a Literature and Sexuality
Matthew Kaiser |Extension Fall
Over the last 300 years, the concept of sexuality has gradually displaced soul, mind, and character as the most essential and salient ingredient in modern subjectivity, as the truth of the self. How has Western literature grappled with, embraced, or stubbornly resisted the sexualization of subjectivity? From Freud to Foucault, Venus in Furs to Story of O, D.H. Lawrence to Dennis Cooper, we map the uneasy alliance between and intertwining histories of literature and sexuality.

GSAS 1338: French 157 The Hermaphroditic Imagination
Janet Beizer | FAS Spring
While official scientific and social positions in the nineteenth century uphold rigid distinctions between women and men, the imaginary life of the period is haunted by the hermaphrodite and other figures that play on the margins of sexual division, challenging the separation of the spheres. We’ll read and discuss hermaphroditic fictions chosen from Balzac, George Sand, Gautier, Flaubert, Zola, and Rachilde.

GSAS 2181: Japanese Literature 124 The Tale of Genji in Word and Image
Melissa McCormick | FAS Spring
Introduces students to The Tale of Genji, often called the world’s first novel, authored by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu around the year 1000 CE. In addition to a close reading of the tale, topics for examination include Japanese court culture, women’s writing, and the tale’s afterlife in painting, prints, drama, manga, and film.

GSAS 31395: Slavic 171 Writing Women in Post-1989 Poland
Joanna Nizynska | FAS Spring
Post-communist Polish literature has been dominated by female writers engaging in examinations and reconfigurations of female identity in a culture searching for self-definition. Their representations of gender and sexuality in Polish-style patriarchy offer an important test case of "globalization"--or the adaptation of Western theory for local needs. From the cult novels of Maslowska to the groundbreaking essays of Brach-Czajna to the controversial poetry of Keff, this course investigates women writers’ shifting self-portraits.

GSAS 36014: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1422 Literatures of Perversion in the Modern West
Bradley Epps | FAS Spring
We examine the development, complication, and critique of the concept and category "perversion" as articulated in literary and filmic texts from the "dark side" of the Enlightenment through romanticism, naturalism, decadence, and the avant-garde to the present. Subjects may include sadism, masochism, fetishism, paraphilia, necrophilia, coprophilia, pedophilia, incest, onanism, transvestism, gender bending and queering. Authors may include Sade, Sacher-Masoch, Rachilde, Huysmans, Bataille, Dalí, Djuna Barnes, Mann, Musil, Genet, Nabokov, Gombrowicz, Pasolini, Goytisolo, Angela Carter, Wittig.

GSAS 4566: French 180 "The Words to Say It": Women Writing in French from Colette to Satrapi
Alice Jardine | FAS Fall
Motherhood, romantic love, independence, sexuality, citizenship, fantasy, death: these are just some of the themes explored in women’s novels, written in French, in the twentieth century. We will read eight novels together, exploring how they have finally become classics, even given what they say about life and what it means for women to write about it.

GSAS 52908: English 170aw American Women Writers
Joanne van der Woude | FAS Fall
This class considers American women’s writing from its origins to now. We will look at the flourishing of a female literary tradition despite male (dis)approval, and consider gendered perspectives on religion, race, and class. How did certain genres (like the seduction novel) develop from risqué to mainstream and how do women continue to upset the male-dominated canon? Authors include Bradstreet, Wheatley, Alcott, Dickinson, Chopin, Larsen, Plath, Morrison.

GSAS 5928: English 154 Literature and Sexuality
Matthew Kaiser | FAS Fall
Over the last 300 years, "sexuality" has gradually displaced "soul," "mind," and "character" as the most essential and salient ingredient in modern subjectivity, as the "truth" of the self. How has Western literature grappled with, embraced, or stubbornly resisted the sexualization of subjectivity? From Freud to Foucault, Venus in Furs to Story of O, D. H. Lawrence to Dennis Cooper, we will map the uneasy alliance between--and intertwining histories of--literature and sexuality.

GSAS 70134: FRSemr 38u Sex and Decadence in Fin-de-Siècle Literature
Francois Proulx | FAS Spring
Examines themes of decadence and transgression in works from the end of the last three centuries in France, Germany, Britain, and the United States. Questions include the history of sexuality and concepts of "deviance"; the aesthetics of shock and obscenity; and the roles of scandal. Readings by Laclos, Sade, Huysmans, Wilde, Wedekind, and others; opera and films by Strauss, Greenaway, Araki.

GSAS 7569: Chinese Literature 115 Gender and Power in Chinese Literature: Seminar
Wai-yee Li | FAS Spring
Uses conceptions of gender and representations of women to examine shifting paradigms of virtues and vices, notions of rhetoric and agency, ideas about politics, power and historical explanations, and boundaries of supernatural realms and religious transcendence.

GSAS 7766: Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding 47 Forbidden Romance in Modern China
David Der-wei Wang | FAS Spring
This course introduces a unique dimension of Chinese modernity: amorous engagement in fiction and lived experience, its discursive and visual representations, and its institutional implementation (gender, marriage, family, law, nation/state, etc.), censorship, and transgression. It examines how the modern lure of free will and emancipated subjectivity drove Chinese to redefine terms of affect, such as love, feeling, desire, passion, sexuality, loyalty, dedication, revolution and sacrifice. It also looks into how the moral, legal and political consequences of affect were evoked in such a way as to traverse or fortify consensual boundaries and their manifestations.

GSAS 8181: Culture and Belief 37 The Romance: From Jane Austen to Chick Lit
Schlossberg | FAS Fall
A critical investigation of the genre's enduring popularity, beginning with Austen's satirical Northanger Abbey and three novels credited with providing narrative templates for contemporary romances (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights). We will then read twentieth-century revisions of these works (Rebecca, Wide Sargasso Sea, Bridget Jones's Diary). Topics: the female writer and reader/consumer of literature; moral warnings against romance, "sensation," and titillation; the commodification of desire; Harlequins; the relationship between high culture and low.

HDS 3616 Religion, Gender, Identity - Readings in 20th Century Arab and Muslim Autobiography: Conference
Leila Ahmed | HDS Spring
We will read autobiographical works mainly by 20th Century Arab and/or Muslim writers, paying particular attention to issues of identity, religion and gender, and exploring how these are at play in the text and in authorial constructions of self.

HDS 3900 Writing Lives: Women Writing Religion
Leila Ahmed | HDS Fall
An exploratory seminar on issues of writing, gender and religion. We will read a variety of texts - narrative, fictional, autobiographical, and theoretical - and explore issues of gender, genres, the construction of knowledge and visibility/invisibility of women's experience.

Visual Arts and Gender

ENGL E-212 The Vampire in Literature and Film
Sue Weaver Schopf | Extension Fall
The vampire is everywhere in popular culture—in novels such as the Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse series, young adult literature like The Twilight Saga, television series such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Ultraviolet, and The Vampire Diaries, as well as short fiction, comic books, graphic novels, and films. Although this mythic creature has existed for thousands of years, at no other time has it been more prevalent or represented in such an intriguing variety of ways. How can we account for the popularity, adaptability, and unique appeal of the vampire figure? With what fears and fantasies in the human psyche does it connect? And in terms of literary genre, how do we classify these increasingly diverse works? In addition to their place in the horror genre, vampire stories have been used as "code" to address a host of provocative topics, including sexuality, death and immortality, gender roles, HIV-AIDS, addiction, immigration, religious doubt, power and economic exploitation. Most surprising, the vampire has morphed from a terrifying figure of pure evil to a handsome, self-hating outsider who longs for community with humans. The course explores the many aspects of this evolution, from its origins in the gothic tradition to its recent incarnation as hip urban fantasy and paranormal romance. We also consider the implications of the vampire myth from anthropological, psychoanalytical, and socio-political perspectives.

GSAS 10829: African and African American Studies 117x Of Mean Streets and Jungle Fevers: Race, Gender and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee
Biodun Jeyifo | FAS Fall
Against the background of radical theories of racial formation and identity politics in America, this course will comparatively explore controversial images of African Americans and Italian Americans in selected films of two of the most important contemporary American filmmakers, Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee. On their road to becoming iconic figures in America’s contemporary cinematic and artistic avant-garde, Scorsese and Lee radically transformed received or conventional perceptions of Italian Americans and African Americans in mainstream American film. In this course, we will explore both similar and contrastive styles and approaches by the two filmmakers. Special attention will be paid to popular and scholarly discourses that the selected films of Scorsese and Lee have generated.

GSAS 1312: Music 190r Topics in World Music: Proseminar: Music, Dance, Gender and Sexuality
David Kaminsky | FAS Fall
This course will explore the network of relationships between music, dance, gender, and sexuality in lead-follow partner dancing. The semester project will be an ethnographic study of a couple dance tradition of the student’s choice.

GSAS 22792: African and African American Studies 111 Spectral Fictions, Savage Phantasms: Race and Gender in Anti-Racist South African and African American Drama, Fiction and Film
Biodun Jeyifo | FAS Spring
Why have social orders like Apartheid South Africa and White Supremacy in segregated America that are based on extreme racial, gender and national oppression always generated often violent, hallucinatory fictions of the racial and gender identities of the oppressed? And why have the oppressed in turn often internalized these sorts of fictions and also produced counter-fictions that more or less conform to the same violent, phantasmic logic? In this course, we will explore how these fictions and counter-fictions are reproduced and challenged in some of the most powerful, canonical works of drama, fiction and cinema by South African and African American authors and filmmakers. As the Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe once famously remarked: "where one thing stands, another thing will stand beside it." To this end, we will pay special attention in the course to how, both in form and in content, race and gender always seem, constitutively, to intersect in these fictions and counter-fictions. The course is thus a study in the dark, violent but generative cultural unconscious of modern racialized and gendered identities.

GSAS 26366: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1245 Virgins, Vamps, and Camp: Gender and Sexuality in Classical Hollywood Cinema
Maria San Filippo | FAS Fall
From the 1930s-1960s, the Hollywood studio system dominated cinema worldwide and with it images of sex, gender, and sexuality. Through critical analysis of classics such as Gilda, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, It Happened One Night, Mildred Pierce, Pillow Talk, and Vertigo, we will investigate Hollywood’s role in constructing, negotiating, and occasionally transgressing norms of identity, behavior, and desire. Taught from a cinema/cultural studies perspective, and incorporating topics and texts integral to feminist and queer film theory.

GSAS 42391: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1433 Topics in Advanced Performance Studies: Gender and Sexuality
Robin Bernstein | FAS Fall
In this seminar, we will listen to and participate in current conversations in Performance Studies about gender and sexuality, especially as both these categories intersect with race. Topics include affect, time, and material culture; reading includes works by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, E. Patrick Johnson, Judith Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz, Heather Love, Elizabeth Freeman, Susan Leigh Foster, and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes. This is an advanced course intended for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Prerequisite: Prerequisite for undergraduates: "Gender and Performance" (General Education/Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding 26), WGS sophomore tutorial, or permission of the instructor.

GSAS 8829: Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding 26 Race, Gender, and Performance
Robin Bernstein | FAS Fall
Introduction to performance studies as it intersects with studies of gender, sexuality, and race. What does it mean to say gender is "performed"? How does performance - both on- and offstage - construct and deconstruct power? Topics include transgressive and normative gender, feminist and queer theatre, athletics, gender in everyday life, drag, AIDS, and weddings. Texts include Eve Ensler, Ntozake Shange, Judith Butler, Anna Deavere Smith, Cherrie Moraga, David Henry Hwang, Bertolt Brecht, Guillermo Gomez-Pena.

Business, Law, Public Policy and Gender

Business and Gender

HBS 2020 Leading Teams
Robin Ely | HBS Winter
Soon after graduation, many students take responsibility for leading a small group of people. If you are in charge of such a group, your effectiveness will depend on your ability to 1) enhance the performance of each individual group member, and 2) foster the appropriate amount and type of coordination among all members. Effective group leaders leverage the skills, talents, and insights of group members, guiding the group to accomplish far more than members could achieve by working independently. Unfortunately, many dysfunctional groups do the opposite, wasting or even undercutting members' contributions. This course will help you identify the common problems that groups encounter along with the actions that group leaders (or members) can take to avoid or remedy these problems. In doing so, the course will sort through the widespread myths and misconceptions about teams that often stand in the way of effective teamwork, even as teams become a way of life in many organizations. The course consists of three modules. Module III: Bridging Differences in Teams.

MGMT E-4140 Gender, Leadership, and Management
Patricia H. Deyton | Extension Spring
This course, which is equally important for women and men, examines leadership and management from a gender-based perspective. Issues covered include leadership styles and their impact, understanding of power, conflict management, ethical decision making, workplace stereotypes, impact on policy making, differences in communication, and approaches to teamwork.

MLD-324M Women and Leadership
Barbara Kellerman | HKS Fall Mod2
This course provides students who have a general interest in leadership with ideas, information, and insights that pertain to women and leadership in particular. It does not intend, directly, to train women to become leaders, or even to become better leaders than they already are. Rather it assumes that knowing about women and leadership -- about power, authority, and influence as they apply to women especially -- will impact how wisely and well leadership is exercised by women and men alike. The course assumes: that historically women have had far less access to leadership roles than have men; that the reasons for this diminished access are as varied as they are complex; that as a matter of equity women should have greater access to leadership roles in the future than they did in the past; and that so far as leadership is concerned, women have challenges that are uniquely theirs.

Human Rights and Gender

IGA-345 Forced Migration and Human Rights
Jacqueline Bhabha | HKS Fall
Migration is a critical survival strategy for millions in today’s world. Yet the ability to migrate legally and safely is unequally distributed, a luxury for many of the populations who need it most. This course explores differing types of contemporary forced migration, including refugee flight, asylum seeking, internal displacement, trafficking, and responses to these migrations, including “safe havens”, temporary and humanitarian protection, refugee camps, detention, interception on the high seas, and deportation. It analyzes the role of UNHCR as protector and gatekeeper, and the institution of asylum, as a migration control tool for states and a human rights protection for individuals. It questions whether effective refugee protection can survive in an international order dominated by security concerns and advance warning systems and explores human rights protections (including under the Convention against Torture) available to threatened individuals and populations. Comparative materials, including case law and human rights reports, from the United States, Europe, Australia, and Africa are used to explore implementation of international refugee law through domestic courts and to examine policy developments related to forced migration. Other issues covered include gender and child persecution (including on the basis of sexual orientation), asylum eligibility for victims of non-state persecutors (husbands, rapists, circumcisers, guerrilla forces) and for perpetrators (“terrorists”, genocidaires).

IGA-351M Human Rights, Human Trafficking, and International Norms
Siddharth Kara, Charlie Clements | HKS Spring Mod3
This course will examine the various typologies of human trafficking - sexual exploitation, bonded labor, and forced labor – which has been described as the fastest growing business enterprise in the world. It will examine the commonalities in recruitment, transit, and exploitation of the three issues as well as examine patterns and trends in countries of origin, transit, and destination. It will explore the business model upon which these types of exploitation exist with the purpose of understanding vulnerabilities for effective intervention. It will also examine the Palermo Protocol at age 10 and the U.N. Global Initiative to Fight International Human Trafficking. National strategies and best practices, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, will be examined for effectiveness for designing policy interventions. This course will be particularly relevant for students, who may work in situations, where humanitarian protections are necessary for the most vulnerable populations – refugee camps, conflict and post-conflict settings, natural disasters, and settings of extreme poverty.

GSAS 57322: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1260 Key Debates in Sex Work
Chaitanya Lakkimsetti | FAS Fall
Seminar examines key debates about sex work: How have modern states regulated sexual commerce? What assumptions around gender and sexuality shape the regulation of paid sex? How do local and international feminist movements and human rights organizations shape these regulations in various regions of the world? We pay specific attention to the ways in which female, male, and transgender sex workers define their work, make meaning of paid sexual transactions, and mobilize for their rights.

LAW-38230A Forced Migration and Human Rights
Jacqueline Bhabha | HLS Fall
Migration is a critical survival strategy for millions in today's world. Yet the ability to migrate legally and safely is unequally distributed, a luxury for many of the populations who need it most. This course explores differing types of contemporary forced migration, including refugee flight, asylum seeking, internal displacement, trafficking, and responses to these migrations, including "safe havens", temporary and humanitarian protection, refugee camps, detention, interception on the high seas, and deportation. It analyses the role of UNHCR as protector and gatekeeper, and the institution of asylum, as a migration control tool for states and an human rights protection for individuals. It questions whether effective refugee protection can survive in an international order dominated by security concerns and advance warming systems and explores human rights protections (including under the Convention against Torture) available to threatened individuals and populations. Comparative materials, including case law and human rights reports, from the United States, Europe, Australia, and Africa are used to explore implementation of international refugee law through domestic courts and to examine policy developments related to forced migration. Other issues covered include gender and child persecution (including on the basis of sexual orientation), asylum eligibility for victims of non-state persecutors (husbands, rapists, circumcisors, guerrilla forces) and for perpetrators ("terrorists", genocidaires).

Law and Gender

HDS 2108 Women, Justice, and Sharia in Nigeria
Hauwa Ibrahim | HDS Fall
This course will address the practical as well as theoretical challenges of protecting women's rights under Shariah Law as it is practiced in Nigeria. The course will explore the tensions between Rule of Law and Rule of the Law in Shariah States; the question as to whether basic human rights, as defined by international standards, are protected. The outcomes of this course will be a 'white paper' by students on the dialectics of justice and Shariah.

LAW-35330A Employment Discrimination A
Elizabeth Bartholet | HLS Fall
This course addresses developments in civil rights law in the important context of the workplace. We will look at the growing body of law designed to protect against discrimination based on race, gender, age, or disability. We will examine the ongoing debate in the Supreme Court, Congress, and the nation as to the appropriate meaning of the anti-discrimination norm, a debate that involves questions as to intent as compared to impact theories, individual as compared to group theories, affirmative action, and mandatory arbitration. At issue in this debate is the future of much of the law governing discrimination developed in the 1960s - 70s.

LAW-35330B Employment Discrimination B
Martha Chamallas | HLS Spring
This course addresses developments in civil rights law in the context of the workplace. We will look at the growing body of law designed to protect against discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, religion, age, disability and sexual orientation. The main focus of the course will be on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended. Throughout the course, we will examine the ongoing debate in the Supreme Court, Congress, and the nation as to the appropriate meaning of the anti-discrimination norm, a debate that involves questions as to intent as compared to impact theories and individual as compared to group theories of discrimination.

LAW-3615A Family, Domestic Violence and LGBT Law: Litigating in the Family Courts Clinical Seminar
Nnena Odim | HLS Fall
The Family, Domestic Violence, and LGBT Law: Litigating in the Family Courts Clinical Seminar provides students who are enrolled in the WilmerHale Legal Services Center's Family, Domestic Violence, or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Law Clinic with the practical skills and substantive knowledge necessary to effectively advocate for their clients in and out of the courtroom. Objectives of the course include: developing practical lawyering skills to be applied in the clinical component and beyond; understanding the statutory and case law applicable in family law litigation; enhancing student understanding of the professional roles, values and ethics involved in the practice of law; gaining insight into the unique challenges of low-income clients, victims of domestic violence and the LGBT community; and analyzing and proposing legal advocacy approaches to contemporary family law issues. The course emphasizes a collaborative "health-law" approach to advocating for our client populations.

LAW-36600A Family Law
Janet Halley | HLS Fall
We will study the increasingly complex "marriage system," in which new forms of adult relationship join marriage in the legal order; the rules making marriage a significant distributive institution both in the larger political economy and amongst family members; and the rise of a body of constitutional law relating to family relationships. Throughout we will compare marriage with the alternative forms and with informal relationships, and will seek to understand how the family law system complements market labor and public welfare provision in distributing social welfare. The course closes with a comparison of the operation of family law among middle class and poor families using contemporary sociological writings. Students will engage in a divorce negotiation exercise involving short writing assignments; and may elect between a last-day take-home exam or (with the instructor's permission) a research paper.

LAW-37163A Feminist Legal Theory
Martha Chamallas | HLS Spring
This seminar will examine the various and evolving strands of feminist legal theory, including liberal, dominance, cultural, intersectional, sex-positive and postmodern feminist scholarship. In addition to surveying the theoretical literature, we will study selected topics addressed in applied feminist scholarship, including rape, domestic violence, same-sex marriage, and reproductive rights. There will be a special emphasis on the intersection between gender and race and gender and sexual orientation. Students will prepare and present research papers on topics of their choice.

LAW-37634A Gender Violence Clinical Workshop
Diane Rosenfeld | HLS Fall, Spring
Taken in conjunction with Gender Violence clinical and seminar. Students enrolled in the Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice clinical (LAW-94020C) may do their work in either the fall or spring semester, and must enroll in this clinical workshop for the semester in which they are doing their clinical work. In this clinical workshop, students have the opportunity to collaborate, innovate and brainstorm about legal policy issues they encounter in their work. No previous experience is necessary to enroll in the clinical or its workshop. Students enrolled in the Gender Violence Fall clinical (LAW-94020C) will also be automatically enrolled in the Gender Violence Spring seminar (LAW-94020A), and this Fall clinical workshop (LAW-37634A).

LAW-39371A International Reproductive/Sexual Health Rights: Reading Group
Mindy Jane Roseman | HLS Spring
Sex and reproduction are deeply personal activities, yet infused with public purpose. As such, they help constitute as well as undermine the public/private divide that legal and rights discourses often police. Internationally and nationally, individuals and civil society have staked out rights claims along this territory; courts and international human rights bodies, and until very recently main stream human rights organizations, have rejected as well as recognized these claims. Some of these institutions still continue to do so. This reading course will examine how these claims have been formulated, and critically assess the "value added" of human rights in the areas of sex and reproduction We will pay attention to gender and other categories of social analysis, as well as the orientation towards "health." The objective of the reading group is to lay a foundational basis for thinking about and practicing in this broad and protean field. Course Requirements: A reasonable amount of reading will be assigned for each session; you will be expected to read have closely read the material and actively participate in discussion. For each session (except the first) two students will be assigned an extra reading for presentation to the class, as well as provide some questions to frame our discussions.

LAW-46315A Sex Equality

Catharine MacKinnon | HLS Fall
The relation between sex equality under law and sex inequality in society is interrogated in theory and practice in the context of relevant social science, history, and international and comparative law. Mainstream equality doctrine is probed on its own terms and through an alternative. Cases on concrete issues--including work, family, rape, sexual harassment, lesbian and gay rights, abortion, prostitution, pornography--structure the inquiry. Race, economic class, and transsexuality are considered throughout. The purpose of the course is to understand, criticize, and expand the law toward equality between women and men. No prerequisites.

LAW-47271A Theories of Sexual Coercion
Diane Rosenfeld | HLS Spring
Where does interpersonal violence come from? Is it learned? Is it innate? Is it malleable? What are we to make of the gendered difference in the use of violence? What does the study of sexual violence in primates offer to our understanding of its prevalence among humans? In this course, we will examine evolutionary perspectives on male sexual coercion in primates and in humans to search for insights into sexual violence among humans. The review of this body of literature offers different analytical methods for questioning the use of sexual violence in our society, helping us identify new ways of preventing its occurrence.

LAW-47275A Title IX: Clinical Workshop
Diane Rosenfeld | HLS Fall
Students who pursue clinical opportunities associated with the Title IX seminar are required to enroll in the Clinical Workshop. In this workshop, students have the opportunity to discuss their cases or policy work, collaborate, innovate and brainstorm about strategies to help actualize Title IX's promise of equal access to educational opportunities. The clinical placements may involve direct representation of students pursuing a school adjudication involving a sexual assault, policy work with schools to improve prevention efforts on sexual misconduct, and work with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, on strategies to improve campus sexual assault prevention and response efforts by schools. Other placement opportunities may include the National Women's Law Center and the Victim Rights Law Center. Students often get the opportunity to work on a range of issues as they arise rather than a single placement throughout the semester.

LAW-93355A Evolution of Gender Crimes: Seminar
Catharine MacKinnon | HLS Fall
This seminar in international law traces the development of what are now called "gender crimes," meaning sexual or gender-based crimes of violence including rape, sexual slavery, sex trafficking, and akin atrocities. Materials explore conceptual origins in civil and human rights law, factual roots in international humanitarian law and criminal law, recognition in regional human rights systems and international ad hoc tribunals (ICTY, ICTR, SCSL), and their apex form in the Rome Statute (2000) of the International Criminal Court (ICC), where they are entrenched in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The first half of the seminar will investigate historical settings, including the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials. The second half will focus on issues and breaking developments in contemporary cases, including several currently being prosecuted before the ICC. Special attention will be paid to the evolution of the concept of gender in this body of law: how it is obscured or mainstreamed or exposed, what difference it makes to include it within other rubrics such as torture or slavery versus separately, and how confronting gendered realities in law affects technical areas such as liability, charging, and witness preparation.

LAW-93971A Future of the Family: Adoption, Reproduction and Child Welfare: Seminar
Elizabeth Bartholet | HLS Spring
This seminar is for students interested in writing a research paper on any issue related to the above range of topics, as well as for students interested in doing papers on ideas explored in connection with any Child Advocacy Program (CAP) course (Child, Family & State, The Art of Social Change, CAP Clinic). Initial class sessions will focus on readings related to general substantive area and also research and writing issues, and later sessions will focus on student work. Students will receive extensive guidance and feedback on their writing. Students must attend scheduled meetings with the Professor prior to the start of the Spring term to discuss potential paper topics. Possible issue areas include but are not limited to: parenting and procreation; child abuse and neglect; family preservation policy; high-tech infertility treatment; the commercialization of reproduction (sale of eggs, sperm, embryos and pregnancy services); non-traditional family forms (single parenting, gay/lesbian parenting, same-sex unions and marriage, transracial and international adoption); and fetal abuse, sex selection, cloning, stem cell research and the new eugenics options.

LAW-94020A Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice: Seminar
Diane Rosenfeld | HLS Spring
This course offers an in-depth examination of the phenomenon of gender-motivated violence. Following a consideration of the prevalence and variation of types of sexual violence and coercion around the world, we consider questions such as: How, if at all, is violence against women different from other types of violence? How effective have legal strategies to address violence against women been, and what shifts in thinking about gender-motivated violence would be necessary finally to eradicate it? How does the toleration of sexual violence shape people's expectations and sense of entitlements? What are the implications of gender-based violence for the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws? Does equal protection itself have a gendered meaning and reality? Among the types of violence against women we will consider are: intimate-partner violence; domestic homicide; prostitution; rape; sex trafficking of women and children; and violence against women facilitated by the Internet. The readings consist of primary and secondary materials drawn from several disciplines: law, social science, political science, psychology, evolutionary biology and women's studies. There is no prerequisite for this class.

LAW-99095A Trafficking and Labor Migration: Seminar
Janet Halley | HLS Fall
A new, rapidly evolving body of international and domestic law focuses on human trafficking and human smuggling. This Seminar will focus on understanding the legal mechanisms of this new legal order, the ideological and policy impulses that produced and sustain it, and the distributive effects it is producing both in the developed and the developing worlds. Guest speakers doing cutting-edge legal and ethnographic work in the field will bring us their new work for discussion. Students may satisfy the writing requirement of this Seminar with research papers, prospectuses for field work, and/or critical syntheses of existing writing in the field.

LAW-99420A Title IX: Seminar
Diane Rosenfeld | HLS Fall
Title IX of the Civil Rights Act promises "equal access to educational opportunities." This seminar considers how Title IX has impacted educational opportunities in relation to gender equality on campus. After a brief look at the history of Title IX and its provisions on athletics, we consider its less well-known, but equally important requirements regarding schools' obligations to address campus sexual assault. Among the themes of the course are the social and political meaning of sports in society and women's roles in this regard. Students will participate in the drafting of a model policy on campus sexual assault that is responsive to cultural concerns pertaining to sexual respect, autonomy, and citizenship in the campus community. Readings include cases, articles, and decisions by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Public Policy and Gender

API-901 Doctoral Research Seminar
Hannah Riley Bowles | HKS Fall
The purpose of the course is to facilitate the development of students’ dissertation research ideas and to build community among Harvard Kennedy School doctoral students and faculty. Invited speakers from the Harvard Kennedy School faculty will engage students in conversations about the stages of research development (e.g., generating ideas, choosing research methods, building a research agenda). Students will generate research proposals and present them at a day-long retreat at the end of the semester.

DPI-216 Democratic Theory
Jane Mansbridge | HKS Spring
This course traces the evolution of Western democratic theory from the ancient Greeks to the present, with particular emphasis on the institutions that influenced and were in turn influenced by these evolving theories. Readings from Aristotle and Hobbes through Habermas and Foucault, with one foray into Islamic thought. The course has two aims: to give an appreciation of the history behind the ideas that shaped today’s democracies and to pose critical normative questions for today.

GOVT E-1062 Theories of Citizenship
Jan L. Feldman | Extension Fall
Citizenship is one of the few devices for countering the centrifugal forces of pluralism. Can it succeed in the face of competing demands on our loyalty and competing sources of identity? This course explores the concept of citizenship, traces its historical evolution, and discusses the special challenges of citizenship in the face of multiculturalism, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, and globalization. Professor Feldman lectures from Burlington, Vermont using videoconferencing technology. This approach allows for a real-time interactive discussion between the instructor and the students.

GSAS 2053: Government 98oa Inequality and American Democracy
Theda Skocpol | FAS Fall
The “rights revolutions” of the 1960s and 1970s removed barriers to full citizenship for African Americans, women, and other formerly marginalized groups. But inequalities of wealth and income have grown since the 1970s. How do changing social and economic inequalities influence American democracy? This seminar explores empirical research and normative debates about political participation, about government responsiveness to citizen preferences, and about the impact of public policies on social opportunity and citizen participation.

GSAS 5590: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1210 ft Theory as Critique
Afsaneh Najmabadi | FAS Spring
Course examines feminist critical engagements with other theories and practices (Marxism, psychoanalysis, Foucault, deconstruction), as well as the debates and discussions within feminism, including intersections of feminist theory with other theories (queer theory, sexualities studies, post-colonial studies, science studies, transgender studies). Course closely examines relationships between feminism, theory, and politics. Research focuses on critical revisiting of one question central to the development of feminist theory and activism. Spring 2012 focus is "Governance Feminism."

IGA-150Y Seminar: International and Global Affairs
Monica Toft | HKS Year
This year-long seminar focuses on the process of generating, assessing and advancing innovative ideas in the arena of international and global affairs. Students will work to develop new thinking which offers leaders new roadmaps for action in international and global contexts, addresses the challenge of implementing change and strives to improve policy and organizational effectiveness. The initial part of the seminar will profile women and men from around the world who have successfully advanced ideas that had an impact on social, political, and economic problems. The latter part will focus on real-world strategies for transforming analysis about policy problems into action. The seminar structures students’ thinking and efforts around the Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE). The seminar strives to hone the professional skills students developed during their first year as MPPs, including writing memos, drafting op-eds, delivering crisp oral presentations and mapping political networks.

IGA-218M Inclusive Security
Swanee Hunt | HKS January
Here is an unusual opportunity to break open the traditional concept of security and tackle an array of leadership skills while examining the little understood structure of women's critical role in preventing or stopping violent conflict. Working in groups, you'll formulate concrete policy recommendations for women's full inclusion in formal and informal peace processes. The course bridges theory and practice, providing students close interaction with inspiring women leaders from conflicts worldwide. In addition, you'll receive individual classroom coaching to develop nuanced presentation skills that have a big impact on leadership. Grades are heavily based on an analytical briefing paper for a policy-maker, as well as class participation. Role-play, debate, video clips, films, a mock policy briefing, and small group work enrich learning beyond readings, lectures, and classroom discussion. Many students describe this course as not only iconoclastic, but also transformational. They also say it is a relief to hear gender acknowledged as a significant factor in the field of international security.

IGA-227 Civil Wars: Theory and Policy
Monica Toft | HKS Spring
Introduces students to the analytical and comparative study of civil wars. The origins, course, and termination of historical and contemporary civil wars will be analyzed from a variety of perspectives and literatures, and prominent cases will be analyzed and discussed in depth. The course aims to provide students with a solid theoretical and historical foundation and to highlight the difficult policy dilemmas associated with civil wars, such as the tension between states’ rights and human rights and whether and how to intervene.

IGA-345 Forced Migration and Human Rights
Jacqueline Bhabha | HKS Fall
Migration is a critical survival strategy for millions in today’s world. Yet the ability to migrate legally and safely is unequally distributed, a luxury for many of the populations who need it most. This course explores differing types of contemporary forced migration, including refugee flight, asylum seeking, internal displacement, trafficking, and responses to these migrations, including “safe havens”, temporary and humanitarian protection, refugee camps, detention, interception on the high seas, and deportation. It analyzes the role of UNHCR as protector and gatekeeper, and the institution of asylum, as a migration control tool for states and a human rights protection for individuals. It questions whether effective refugee protection can survive in an international order dominated by security concerns and advance warning systems and explores human rights protections (including under the Convention against Torture) available to threatened individuals and populations. Comparative materials, including case law and human rights reports, from the United States, Europe, Australia, and Africa are used to explore implementation of international refugee law through domestic courts and to examine policy developments related to forced migration. Other issues covered include gender and child persecution (including on the basis of sexual orientation), asylum eligibility for victims of non-state persecutors (husbands, rapists, circumcisers, guerrilla forces) and for perpetrators (“terrorists”, genocidaires).

IGA-351M Human Rights, Human Trafficking, and International Norms
Siddharth Kara, Charlie Clements | HKS Spring Mod3
This course will examine the various typologies of human trafficking - sexual exploitation, bonded labor, and forced labor – which has been described as the fastest growing business enterprise in the world. It will examine the commonalities in recruitment, transit, and exploitation of the three issues as well as examine patterns and trends in countries of origin, transit, and destination. It will explore the business model upon which these types of exploitation exist with the purpose of understanding vulnerabilities for effective intervention. It will also examine the Palermo Protocol at age 10 and the U.N. Global Initiative to Fight International Human Trafficking. National strategies and best practices, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, will be examined for effectiveness for designing policy interventions. This course will be particularly relevant for students, who may work in situations, where humanitarian protections are necessary for the most vulnerable populations – refugee camps, conflict and post-conflict settings, natural disasters, and settings of extreme poverty.

MLD-324M Women and Leadership
Barbara Kellerman | HKS Fall 2
This course provides students who have a general interest in leadership with ideas, information, and insights that pertain to women and leadership in particular. It does not intend, directly, to train women to become leaders, or even to become better leaders than they already are. Rather it assumes that knowing about women and leadership - - about power, authority, and influence as they apply to women especially - - will impact how wisely and well leadership is exercised by women and men alike. The course assumes: that historically women have had far less access to leadership roles than have men; that the reasons for this diminished access are as varied as they are complex; that as a matter of equity women should have greater access to leadership roles in the future than they did in the past; and that so far as leadership is concerned, women have challenges that are uniquely theirs.

PED-101 Economic Development: Theory, Policy, and Evidence
Rohini Pande, Dani Rodrik | HKS Spring
Provides a graduate-level overview of the theory of and evidence on economic development from a policy-oriented perspective. The main goal is to allow students to analyze policy debates surrounding economic growth and development from a broad and rigorous analytical base. Topics covered include: economic convergence and patterns of development; factor markets and productivity; macro- and micro-level analyses of institutions; poverty and inequality; health and education; political economy of development; industrialization; international integration; recent economic history; and country evidence.

PED-317Y Closing the Global Gender Gap
Iris Bohnet, Rohini Pande | HKS Not offered
Understanding the role of gender in shaping the political, economic and social opportunities available to individuals can help us evaluate how societies may close gender gaps in economic participation, education, health and political opportunity. Building on insights from Behavioral Decision Making and Development Economics, it provides a framework to understand to what degree public policy and management can close these gaps. Using program evaluation techniques, the course trains students on how to combine analysis and data to design and test specific interventions. The format of this course differs from the norm to maximize student learning, interaction with faculty and guest experts, and opportunities to share insights with decision makers in the field. The course is co-taught and conceived as a year-long course with a period of intense training and interaction in January. Students are welcome to use this course to further develop material useful for their PAEs, SYPAs or other papers. Prerequisite:Statistical knowledge at the level of an advanced statistics/econometrics course (e.g., API-202 or API-210) presumed.

SUP-201 Poverty and Social Policy
Kathryn Edin | HKS Fall
Examines the causes and consequences of poverty and explores strategies for addressing it. Begins with the major theoretical explanations scholars have advanced to explain the persistence of poverty including family structure, urban labor markets, residential segregation, welfare policy, the criminal justice system, and other topics. The focus then shifts to the consequences of poverty, especially for children. Throughout the course, students are introduced to current policy approaches to alleviating poverty.

SUP-582 Health Policy Reform: Comparative Approaches to Reducing Inequalities
Mary Ruggie | HKS Fall
The United States spends more than any other country on health care, yet ranks low among developed countries in terms of equality in access and health outcomes. At the same time, inequalities in health care abound across the states in the US. This course asks how and why some policies and programs are more successful than others in reducing inequalities based on SES, race/ethnicity, age and gender. We compare efforts in the US with those in Canada, Britain, and Germany, as well as efforts at decentralized levels, including across the states in the US, in a search for transferrable lessons and best practices. Our main focus is new developments in financing, paying physicians and other providers, and delivering primary and integrative health care. We examine the roles of public and private sector actors, the distribution of responsibilities for provision and outcomes, the construction of regulatory frameworks, forms of rationing, and the relationship between health and social policy.

SUP-921 Proseminar on Inequality and Social Policy I
Kathryn Edin, Torben Iversen | HKS Fall
The first doctoral seminar in the Inequality & Social Policy three-course sequence, this course considers the effects of policies and institutions in creating or reducing inequality in the U.S. and other advanced democracies, we well as the reciprocal effects of inequality on political activity and policy choices.

Gender-Focused Research

HDS 2698/ GSAS 8016: Religion 3005hf Doctoral Colloquium in Religion, Gender, and Culture
Amy Hollywood | FAS/HDS Fall
The colloquium will explore key-topics and works in women’s/gender/feminist studies in religion.

GSAS 4429: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1300 Approaches to Research and Writing in WGS
Sarah Richardson | FAS Fall
The objective of the course is to provide a feminist analysis of methods and methodologies as intellectual frameworks within the social sciences, sciences, and humanities. We will focus on how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge, engage feminist epistemologies, and employ feminist methodologies in working on a research project over the course of the semester in each student’s area of interest.

GSAS 5008: Human Evolutionary Biology 1312 Human Sexuality: Research and Presentation Seminar
Judith Chapman | FAS Spring
An examination of human sexuality from a scientific perspective. Students will read and present primary scientific literature that highlights current research on a variety of topics including: sexual development, gender identity, sexual orientation, cross cultural variations in mating systems, promiscuity, the evolution of monogamy, sexual attraction, sexual communication, including an exploration of the existence of human pheromones, libido and sexual dysfunction.

GSAS 9620: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 2000 Introduction to WGS: Graduate Proseminar
Brad Epps | FAS Fall
An overview of major questions raised by the interdisciplinary study of women, gender, and sexuality and the challenges thus raised to traditional divisions of knowledge. We will privilege dialogue and process while assessing trends in the often tense, but overlapping, areas of feminist, lgbt and queer inquiry. Special attention given to intersectional and international issues across a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, sexology, critical theory, economics, law, cultural studies, literature, art, and film.

WGH300 Women, Gender & Health Independent Study
Any WGH faculty | HSPH Fall, Spring
An opportunity for independent study is offered for interested and qualified students or small groups of students. Arrangements must be made with individual faculty members and are limited by the amount of faculty time available. These programs are open to all students who wish to go beyond the content of regular courses.

Health and Gender

Health, Medicine, Science and Gender

GSAS 2265: Human Evolutionary Biology 1310 Hormones and Behavior
Carole Hooven | FAS Spring
An introduction to the interaction between hormones and behavior, emphasizing research in humans. General principles of endocrine physiology are presented. The course then focuses on how hormones affect the brain and body in early development and later in adulthood, and the relationship of hormones to sex and gender. We will explore human reproduction, energy metabolism, mating and sexuality, parental behavior, learning and memory, stress, and dominance interactions.

GSAS 24149: FRSemr 46y Bodies for Sale: Global Traffic in Human Beings, from Forced Labor to Stolen Cells
Keridwen Luis | FAS Fall
The course introduces students to the wide range of cultural and ethical questions surrounding the trade in humans. We will consider issues ranging from the traffic in women and children to the trade in human organs. We will especially explore the cultural, racial, class, and gender issues inherent in transactions in human beings and their flesh. Who is selling their organs on the international market and why? Whose babies go to whom in international adoption, and who decides what the best interests of the children are? Whose bones are sold to museums, and what do such transactions mean?

GSAS 30321: History of Science 138 Sex, Gender, and Evolution
Sarah Richardson | FAS Fall
Evolutionary theories of sex and gender and central controversies in human evolutionary biology from Darwin to the present. Topics include debates over the theory of sexual selection and the evolutionary basis of monogamy, sexual preference, physical attraction, rape, maternal instinct, and sex differences in cognition. Readings: primary texts and historical, philosophical, and feminist analyses.

GSAS 5008: Human Evolutionary Biology 1312 Human Sexuality: Research and Presentation Seminar
Judith Chapman | FAS Spring
An examination of human sexuality from a scientific perspective. Students will read and present primary scientific literature that highlights current research on a variety of topics including: sexual development, gender identity, sexual orientation, cross cultural variations in mating systems, promiscuity, the evolution of monogamy, sexual attraction, sexual communication, including an exploration of the existence of human pheromones, libido and sexual dysfunction. 

GSAS 51121: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 2010 Science, Nature, and Gender
Sarah Richardson | FAS Spring
A survey of central texts, theories, and methods in scholarship on gender and science. Science has helped to construct and enforce cultural gender norms. Gender also valences scientific language, inflects science’s status as an authoritative social institution, and stratifies scientific communities. This seminar examines historical, philosophical, and social dimensions of science through the lens of gender. Students will pursue independent research and explore methods in interdisciplinary and feminist pedagogy. The seminar will design and develop a General Education course on these themes for undergraduates.

GSAS 81052: History of Science 108 Bodies, Sexualities, and Medicine in the Medieval Middle East
Ahmed Ragab | FAS Fall
This course will examine the ways in which medical, religious, cultural, and political discourses and practices interacted in the medieval and early modern Middle East to create and reflect multiple understandings of human bodies and sexualities. Special attention to debates on health, sexuality, and gender and racial identities.

ME552M.3 Women's Health Elective
Olga J.M. Smulders-Meyer | HMS Fall, Spring
The course will cover common primary care problems in women, including contraception, office gynecology, endocrine disorders, eating disorders, issues around menopause, breast cancer screening, medical problems in pregnancy, and common dermatoses seen in women. Students will see patients under the close supervision of the preceptor in our offices at Women's Health Associates. They also have an opportunity to rotate through the breast clinic, colposcopy clinic, and other specialties of their particular interest. The student will also learn how to incorporate the history and physical examination into a concise and comprehensive note that reflects the visit.

MG722.0 Social Issues in Biology
Jonathan Roger Beckwith | HMS Spring
Readings, discussion of social/ethical aspects of biology: history, philosophy of science; evolution vs. creationism; genetics and race; women and science; genetic testing; stem cell research; science journalism; genetics and the law; scientists and social responsibility.

SHH210 Women, Health, and Development: Reconciling Science and Policy
Ms. N. Swenson | HSPH Spring
Many state, local, and national governments now have Women's Health programs. The course surveys selected contemporary women and health issues in a global and historical context. Because women - and their children - worldwide are the majority of the poor, we will focus on a common framework: the impact of economic development alongside the impact of laws, customs, and medical systems that affect the human development and health of women and their families. We also analyze key roles women play in caregiving and in health and medical care services. Through written and oral testimonies, and policy letters, students will be able to develop advocacy and policy analysis skills, using epidemiological review, gender analysis, media monitoring, and an introduction to Evidence Based Medicine in medical technologies for healthy women. A critical framework derived from a variety of social science disciplines, and including human rights research, also illuminates the worldwide activism of the women's health movement.

SM720.0 Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Health

Patricia Leigh Case, Elizabeth Miller | HMS TBA
This seminar examines broadly the construction of gender and sexuality in relation to health care inequalities, distribution of disease, illness experiences and health policy. The course will draw on readings from the history of medicine, feminist anthropology, gay/lesbian studies, epidemiology and health policy. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which race/ethnicity, social class and poverty intersect with gender differences in health. Specific areas to be discussed include the history of women's health and homosexuality in the discourses of madness, domestic violence, eating disorders, HIV/AIDS in the US and abroad, politics of reproduction and reproductive technologies, and other related topics. Students are strongly encouraged to also enroll in Human Sexuality, ME735.0.

SU503M.12 Breast Diseases
Mary Jane Houlihan | HMS Fall, Spring
This course is multidisciplinary in nature, designed to help the fourth year student develop an understanding of both benign and malignant breast disease, and the problems encountered by women suffering from them. The experience will focus on honing basic clinical and surgical skills, as well as developing an understanding of and appreciation for the psychosocial aspects of breast disease. As such, this course is aimed at the generalist student, not just students considering surgery as a career. Students will spend 25 hours a week in clinical activities in the Breast Care Center at BIDMC. Students will be assigned their own patients, and be responsible for taking histories, performing physical examinations, reviewing mammograms and ultrasounds, and evaluating the patient's problem and developing therapeutic options. In cases where surgery is indicated, the student will follow his/her patient, actively assist in the surgery, and meet during surgery with the pathologist diagnosing the surgical specimen.

WGH207 Advanced Topics in WGH
Dr. H. Corliss, Dr. S. Austin | HSPH Spring 2
This interdepartmental, interdisciplinary seminar will offer the chance to analyze ways by which diverse constructs of gender influence public health research and practice. Using different examples each week, the core WGH faculty and students will focus on how gender contributes to classifying, surveying, understanding and intervening on population distributions of health, disease, and well-being. Discussion of these examples will draw on different disciplines, conceptual frameworks, and methodological approaches (both quantitative and qualitative). For example, traditional epidemiological and biostatistical methods, along with multilevel, ecosocial, and health and human rights frameworks will be applied, as appropriate, in the assessment of gender-based health related disorders.

WGH211 Gender and Health: Introductory Perspectives
Stacey Missmer | HSPH Fall 1
This course will introduce students to gender as a theoretical concept and a category of analysis in public health-that is, the way gender has contributed to differentially structuring women and men's experiences of health. The course aims to answer such questions as: How has gender influenced the construction of public health in diverse societies? How do our social frameworks and structures, such as gender, affect people's experiences and expectations of health? This course is designed for students who wish to enhance their understanding of, and skills to address, the social and cultural factors that have influenced the development of individual's and societal health. The interfaces among gender, class, race/ethnicity and sexuality will also be emphasized. The course will cover a broad range of health issues for which gender has been of special importance. Topics to be covered include: reproductive health, sexual health and sexuality; violence; occupational health and work; chronic and communicable disease. Issues relating to the distribution of health, disease and well-being, including policy, will be addressed across sessions. Additionally, sessions will include international, domestic, and historical perspectives, with attention paid to both epidemiologic research and policy dimensions.

WGH220 Sexuality and Public Health
Dr. S. Austin | HSPH Fall 2
This course provides an introduction to the breadth of research and research methods in the study of sexuality and sexual health promotion in diverse contexts and populations. Students will develop skills needed to carry out epidemiologic research and community-based interventions related to sexual health promotion. Students will be introduced to ways to integrate conceptual models, methodologies, and perspectives from a variety of fields to inform a unique transdisciplinary, holistic approach to public health promotion of sexual health. Class session format includes lectures, discussions, case studies, individual and group presentations, and in-class writing assignments.

Mental Health and Gender

GSAS 96979: FRSemr 48e Gender, Health, and Mental Health
Mary Ruggie | FAS Spring
This course adopts interdisciplinary perspectives toward understanding how gender differences and similarities in health and mental health are manifest, if and how common patterns are changing, and what circumstances and context impact outcomes. We also examine differences within genders based on race/ethnicity and other personal and social characteristics. Topics include depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, sexual activity and gender-based violence. Throughout, we traverse the boundary between health and illness in order to explore the role of individuals, their social support networks, and health care professionals in developing and guiding strategies for coping and healing.

WGH210 WGH: Critical Issues in Mental Health
Dr. B. Gottlieb | HSPH Fall 2
This course explores issues relevant to mental illness, mental health from a gender perspective. Course themes include illness constructs, life cycle and transitions, collective and individual trauma, role and relationship and embodiment. Topics include eating disorders, pain, hormonally mediated mood disorders, and PTSD. Examples highlight US and international experience. Readings are multidisciplinary, including public health and medicine, social sciences, history and literature.

WGH304 WGH: Issues in Mental Health, Independent Study
Dr. B. Gottlieb | HSPH Fall 2
This independent study course is offered to students who are enrolled in WGH 210 Fall 2. The course will supplement the themes and topics of WGH 210, including illness constructs, trauma, embodiment, pain and eating disorders with a mentored field and service learning experience. Students will be required to provide 20 hours of service to one of several local sites selected for their relevance to course themes (for example, a shelter, an psychiatric in-patient unit, a school-based clinic), maintain a structured portfolio of reflections and commentary based on field experiences and readings, and attend 2 mentoring sessions.

Reproductive Health and Gender

AE502M.1 Pain Relief in Childbirth
Philip E. Hess HMS Fall, Spring
This course covers the theory and practice of pain relief during childbirth and the medical management of high risk obstetrical patients. Special attention will be focused on the interaction between obstetric anesthetic techniques and maternal/fetal physiology. The student will work closely with the obstetric anesthesia team (residents, fellow, and attendings) in the daily activities including providing analgesia for labor and anesthesia for cesarean delivery. Students will be expected to perform medical assessments, play an active role in the anesthetic care, and round on their patients the following day. In addition, the students will be assigned to follow particular high risk patients and will be expected to research and discuss the anesthetic implications of their diseases.

EPI269 Epidemiologic Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology
Dr. K. Terry, Dr. D. Cramer, Dr. K. Michels | HSPH Fall 2
This course will provide an overview of the current research in reproductive epidemiology. The course will cover epidemiologic research in the areas of contraception, infertility, pregnancy, menopause, and both benign and malignant gynecological conditions. Students will be introduced to methods used in reproductive epidemiology and learn how to critically evaluate results from epidemiologic studies in obstetrics and gynecology. An overview of the clinical and physiological underpinnings of particular topical areas will be provided.

EPI270 Advanced Topics in Reproductive Epidemiology
Dr. J. Rich Edwards, Dr. M. Hacker | HSPH Spring 2
This course is an advanced seminar in reproductive epidemiologic methods. It is intended for graduate students who have a research focus, or a strong interest, in reproductive epidemiology. The course will cover methodological challenges in analyzing and interpreting epidemiologic data on reproductive outcomes including fertility, fetal development, complications of pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, the controversial role of birthweight and perinatal status in determining short-term and long-term health outcomes of offspring, and the implications of reproductive health status for chronic disease in women. The course will be led by Drs. Rich-Edwards and Hacker, with faculty joining to present methodological cases. Students must read the case materials before class and be prepared for active class discussion. Pass/fail grading will be based on class participation.

GHP231 Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Global Perspective
Ana Maria Langer | HSPH Spring 1, 2
This course is designed to provide an overview of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) from a global perspective with a focus on the most disadvantaged populations. The course will cover the most critical topics in this field from diverse perspectives, i.e. historic, conceptual, research, methodological, policy, programmatic, rights, and advocacy. The topics will include the role of the global community in shaping the sexual and reproductive health agenda, maternal health quality of care and critical interventions, unsafe abortion, contraception, cancer and reproductive health, integration of reproductive healthcare, and the Women and Health Initiative. Gender will be an underpinning dimension along the entire course. Students will be introduced to the core SRH literature and the specific topics, and learn about the outstanding debates in this field, the most pressing knowledge gaps, effective evidence-based interventions, progress so far, current challenges and the most promising public health approaches to overcome them.

GSAS 53113: Human Evolutionary Biology 1377 Birth
Meredith Reiches | FAS Fall
Birth, the passage from intra- to extra-uterine life, represents both an acute locus for the action of selection and a process with derived anatomical, endocrine, and social characteristics in humans. Topical foci of the course will include physiology: late pregnancy and fetal development, the endocrine profile of parturition, placental function; evolution: phylogenetic and comparative approaches to pelvic anatomy, bipedalism and compromise morphology, obligate midwifery; the interaction of social context and physiology: the doula effect, comparative physiology of ungulates with reverse contractions, cortisol and early miscarriages, C-sections and other interventions; and media perspectives and the culture of birth: critical examination of contemporary television, books, and popular journalism dealing with birth.

HT070.0 Human Reproductive Biology
Henry Klapholz | HMS Fall
This course is designed to give the student a clear understanding of the pathophysiology of the menstrual cycle, fertilization, implantation, ovum growth development, differentiation and associated abnormalities. Disorders of fetal development including the principles of teratology and the mechanism of normal and abnormal parturition will be covered, as well as ethical issues in reproductive science and significant medical issues affecting pregnant women such as pre-eclampsia and diabetes. Fetal asphyxia and its consequences will be reviewed with emphasis on the technology currently available for its detection. In addition the conclusion of the reproductive cycle, menopause, and the use of hormonal replacement will be covered. Emphasis on quantitative techniques, when applicable, including modern approaches to fetal surveillance and in vitro fertilization as well as prenatal diagnosis will be employed.

LAW-39371A International Reproductive/Sexual Health Rights: Reading Group
Mindy Jane Roseman | HLS Spring
Sex and reproduction are deeply personal activities, yet infused with public purpose. As such, they help constitute as well as undermine the public/private divide that legal and rights discourses often police. Internationally and nationally, individuals and civil society have staked out rights claims along this territory; courts and international human rights bodies, and until very recently main stream human rights organizations, have rejected as well as recognized these claims. Some of these institutions still continue to do so. This reading course will examine how these claims have been formulated, and critically assess the "value added" of human rights in the areas of sex and reproduction We will pay attention to gender and other categories of social analysis, as well as the orientation towards "health." The objective of the reading group is to lay a foundational basis for thinking about and practicing in this broad and protean field. Course Requirements: A reasonable amount of reading will be assigned for each session; you will be expected to read have closely read the material and actively participate in discussion. For each session (except the first) two students will be assigned an extra reading for presentation to the class, as well as provide some questions to frame our discussions.

ME552M.3 Women's Health Elective
Olga J.M. Smulders-Meyer | HMS Fall, Spring
The course will cover common primary care problems in women, including contraception, office gynecology, endocrine disorders, eating disorders, issues around menopause, breast cancer screening, medical problems in pregnancy, and common dermatoses seen in women. Students will see patients under the close supervision of the preceptor in our offices at Women's Health Associates. They also have an opportunity to rotate through the breast clinic, colposcopy clinic, and other specialties of their particular interest. The student will also learn how to incorporate the history and physical examination into a concise and comprehensive note that reflects the visit.

OB503M.1 OB/GYN and Women's Health in Urban Community Settings
Lucy Yen-Chai Chie | HMS Fall, Spring
This course is offered to provide students greater exposure to the health issues of underserved urban women and their care at community health centers. BIDMC is affiliated with several of Boston’s community health centers: South Cove Community Health Center in Chinatown and North Quincy, Dimock Health Center in Roxbury, Bowdoin Street Health Center in Dorchester, Fenway Health Center, and BIDMC Chelsea. Students may rotate through several or all sites. Students will evaluate patients in the outpatient clinical setting and will be supervised primarily by attending faculty. While most of the rotation will be in the health centers, students also will longitudinally follow several patients into the hospital setting. Night call is optional. Student evaluation will be based on clinical performance, completion of a community health center project, as well as a final paper/oral presentation on a topic of interest. Spanish or Chinese language skills are a plus.

OB506M.23 Fertility and Reproductive Endocrinology
Janis Heid Fox | HMS Fall, Spring
The course is designed to acquaint students with current concepts of infertility and management of interrelated reproductive endocrine problems and to familiarize them with laboratory techniques used in evaluating patients with such problems. Students will observe the workup and care of fertility and endocrinology patients as well as patients with recurrent miscarriage. There is extensive exposure to surgical management of such patients, including minimally invasive surgery and robotic cases. They will attend conferences and seminars related to these subjects. Students will also have exposure to laboratory techniques used in the work up and treatment of such patients. Exposure to assisted reproductive technologies in clinics and laboratories, and pediatric gynecology and endocrinology is also available and encouraged.

OB510M.23 Maternal Fetal Medicine
Thomas Frederick McElrath | HMS Fall, Spring
During their rotation as subinterns on the MFM inpatient service, students actively admit and follow patients, participating in their procedures and deliveries. The students are expected to be the physicians for their panel of patients under the supervision of the MFM fellows, a third year obstetrics resident and the attending perinatologist. Formal structured teaching occurs during Wednesday didactic sessions, after morning rounds and during weekly perinatal conferences.

OB510M.3 Maternal Fetal Medicine
Laura Riley | HMS Fall, Spring
The student will function as a sub intern on the maternal-fetal medicine service at MGH as part of a three person team which includes the maternal fetal medicine(MFM) specialist, the MFM fellow and the sub intern.

SHH246 Issues in Maternal and Child Health Programs and Policies
Dr. M. McCormick | HSPH Spring 1
Components of health care programs for mothers and children are discussed in the context of historical and legislative background, and social policies. Health programs appropriate to prenatal, early and late childhood, adolescence, and youth are presented in terms of the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary action required to improve the health status of populations. Includes discussion of factors that shape current and future maternal and child health policies. Topics include infant mortality and low birthweight, maternal health and mortality services for children with special health care needs and financing of health care for mothers and children.

SHH360-65 Maternal Child Health/Children Youth Communities Seminar
Dr. E. Lieberman | HSPH Fall/Spring
Weekly seminar on research topics in Maternal and Child Health. Required for SHDH doctoral students majoring or minoring in Maternal and Child Health, and all SHDH masters and MPH/FCH students who are concentrating in Maternal and Child Health for the duration of their program.

SM720.0 Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Health
Patricia Leigh Case, Elizabeth Miller | HMS TBA
This seminar examines broadly the construction of gender and sexuality in relation to health care inequalities, distribution of disease, illness experiences and health policy. The course will draw on readings from the history of medicine, feminist anthropology, gay/lesbian studies, epidemiology and health policy. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which race/ethnicity, social class and poverty intersect with gender differences in health. Specific areas to be discussed include the history of women's health and homosexuality in the discourses of madness, domestic violence, eating disorders, HIV/AIDS in the US and abroad, politics of reproduction and reproductive technologies, and other related topics. Students are strongly encouraged to also enroll in Human Sexuality, ME735.0.

Religion and Gender

GSAS 0352: Culture and Belief 41 Gender, Islam, and Nation in the Middle East and North Africa
Najmabadi | FAS Spring
This course will focus on how concepts of woman and gender have defined meanings of religious and national communities in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa. It will survey changes in these concepts historically through reading a variety of sources-religious texts and commentaries, literary and political writings, books of advice, women's writings, and films-and will look at how contemporary thinkers and activists ground themselves differently in this historical heritage to constitute contesting positions regarding gender and national politics today.

GSAS 7365: Medieval Studies 227 Hildegard of Bingen and the Gospels: Seminar
Beverly Kienzle | FAS Fall
Reading of Hildegard of Bingen’s Expositiones evangeliorum with attention to genre, exegetical and homiletic tradition, intertextuality, questions of gender and authority. Scholarship on Hildegard’s works, medieval exegesis, monastic culture, medieval religious women.

GSAS 90515: Religion 1082 Writing Lives: Women Writing Religion
Leila Ahmed | FAS Fall
An exploratory seminar on issues of writing, gender and religion. We will read a variety of texts -narrative, fictional, autobiographical, and theoretical - and explore issues of gender, genres, the construction of knowledge and visibility/invisibility of women’s experience.

GSAS 4518: Religion 1842 Religion, Gender, Identity: Readings in Arab and Muslim Autobiography
Leila Ahmed | FAS Fall
We will read autobiographical works mainly by contemporary Arab and/or Muslim writers, paying particular attention to issues of identity, religion, and gender, and exploring how these are at play in the text and in authorial constructions of self.

GSAS 7788: Religion 2490 Diversity and Domination in Theory, Scripture and Society: Seminar
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza | FAS Fall
Topic: Diversity and domination in terms of an intersectional analytic. Focus: not only on theoretical questions with respect to diversity and/or domination but also how they are negotiated in religious/theological studies, society, and religious communities. Note: Seminar participants will be able to choose either as their method of inquiry critical race, feminist, postcolonial or queer theory or as their area of inquiry scripture, public discourse, education, or religious leadership and ministry.

HDS 1504 Feminist Biblical Interpretation
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza | HDS Fall
This course is an introduction to the emerging field of feminist biblical studies. We will discuss different biblical texts, hermeneutical approaches, methods of interpretation, and theoretical perspectives. Special attention will be given to the ethics of interpretation, and the significance of feminist hermeneutics for contemporary theological reflection and religious leadership. Lectures, group discussions, and presentations seek to foster a participatory, democratic style of learning.

HDS 1544 The Letters of Paul: Ethnicity, Sex, Ethics, and the End of the World
Laura Salah Nasrallah | HDS Fall
This introductory course focuses on 1) the Pauline epistles in their first-century sociopolitical context, and their earliest interpretations; 2) what "work" Paul's letters do today in debates regarding homosexuality, women's leadership, Jewish-Christian relations, and ideas of universalism (e.g., how has Paul become a new hero for some European philosophers and cultural critics, such as Badiou and Zizek?). Special attention will be given to what the Pauline letters say about women and slaves, ethnicity in antiquity (Romans, Greeks, Jews, those "in Christ"), as well as their arguments about ethics and the formation of the self, especially in view of the impending eschaton. Note: Course has additional hour to be arranged.

HDS 1847 Jewish Feminist Ethics
Julia Watts Belser | HDS Fall
This course examines key concepts in Jewish feminist ethics, including tensions between feminist hermeneutics and Jewish law; problems of power, silence, and memory in Jewish history; and feminist methods for engagement with Jewish texts. The course will read the Babylonian Talmud in conversation with feminist literature, theory, and cultural criticism to engage questions of sex, violence, poverty, and environmental crisis.

HDS 1848 Women and Deceit in the Hebrew Bible
Rachel Adelman | HDS Spring
From Eve in Genesis to Judith in the Apocrypha, women have been characterized as a subversive force in biblical literature. This course will engage in close readings of biblical texts in which women's deceptions advance divine goals. Reading biblical texts in light of gender discourse, we will explore how feminist hermeneutics engages with or disengages from traditional exegetical approaches.

HDS 2101 Transnational Gender Issues in Contemporary Islam
Azza Basarudin | HDS Spring
This course addresses the intersection of religion, gender and feminist ideals in the lives of Muslim women across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on ethnographic studies from these regions and focusing on Sunni, Shi'i, and Sufi traditions, topics include human rights, political participation, nationalism, legal status, sexuality, and masculinity and femininity.

HDS 2108 Women, Justice, and Sharia in Nigeria
Hauwa Ibrahim | HDS Fall
This course will address the practical as well as theoretical challenges of protecting women's rights under Shariah Law as it is practiced in Nigeria. The course will explore the tensions between Rule of Law and Rule of the Law in Shariah States; the question as to whether basic human rights, as defined by international standards, are protected. The outcomes of this course will be a 'white paper' by students on the dialectics of justice and Shariah.

HDS 2224 Readings in Christian Latin: Hildegard of Bingen and the Gospels
Beverly M. Kienzle | HDS Fall
Reading and analysis of Hildegard of Bingen's Expositions evangeliorum with attention to genre, exegetical and homiletic tradition, intertextuality, and questions of gender and authority. Requirements include: secondary readings on Hildegard's works, medieval exegesis, monastic culture, medieval religious women; a research project based on the homilies' sources. Prerequisite: completion of an intermediate Latin course or the equivalent. Note: Course has additional hour to be arranged.

HDS 2236 The Literature of Medieval Celtic Christianity: the Hagiographical Tradition
Catherine McKenna | HDS Spring
A study of selected texts associated with medieval saints' cults in Ireland, Wales, Brittany and Scotland, including saints' lives, voyage and vision narratives, hymns, prayers and poetry, in the context of the history of Christianity in the Celtic lands.

HDS 2241 Reformation Masculinities and Confessional Sexualities, 1450-1700
Michelle Wolfe | HDS Fall
In Europe and the emerging Atlantic World, the Catholic and Protestant Reformations demanded reconfigurations of sexual theology, sexual discipline and sexual relationships. In this course, we will use the analytical concepts of historical masculinities and sexualities to explore a critical period of religious change.

HDS 2698 Doctoral Colloquium in Religion, Gender, and Culture
Amy Hollywood | HDS Year
The RGC Colloquium explores the intersections of feminist theory with feminist theologies and gender studies in religion. Required for doctoral students in Religion, Gender, and Culture. Interested ThM, MTS, and MDiv students please contact the instructor. May be taken on a Sat/Unsat basis only. The first meeting will be Wednesday, August 31. Please take a look the special issue of *differences* 21: 1 Spring 2010 available online before the first session, especially the essay by Elizabeth Castelli. If you aren't able to come on the first day, please be in touch with the instructor as soon as possible. Note: Instructor permission required.

HDS 2752 Diversity and Domination in Theory, Scripture, and Society: Seminar
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza | HDS Fall
The seminar will explore the topic of diversity and domination in terms of an intersectional analytic. We will focus not only on theoretical questions with respect to diversity and/or domination but also how they are negotiated in religious/theological studies, society, and religious communities. Seminar participants will be able to choose either as their method of inquiry critical race, feminist, postcolonial or queer theory or as their area of inquiry scripture, public discourse, education, or religious leadership and ministry.

HDS 3587 Bodies and Sexualities in the Medieval Middle East: Medical, Cultural, and Religious Views
Ahmed Ragab | HDS Fall
The body has been always an object of imagination, literature, science, philosophy and religion. It is the object of health and disease, birth and death, reward and punishment, science, philosophy and religion, and is the vehicle of both the divine and the profane. It is at the center of debates on sexuality, gender identities, race and politics. In this course, we will look at how different views on the body and on sexuality developed and changed in the Middle East throughout the medieval period and early modern period and how they influenced and were influenced by the religious doctrines, the medical theories, the Islamic law and the intellectual environment of the Islamic Middle Ages. The course will address these different views and perceptions as manifested in the religious, philosophical, legal, scientific and literary production of the period. Note: Course has additional hour to be arranged.

HDS 3604 Themes in Feminism and Islam: From Late 19th Century Middle East to 21st Century America
Leila Ahmed | HDS Fall
This course follows out the history of feminist themes and debates in Islam from their first emergence in the Middle East in the late 19th century to their ongoing development in America in the 21st century.

HDS 3616 Religion, Gender, Identity - Readings in 20th Century Arab and Muslim Autobiography: Conference
Leila Ahmed | HDS Spring
We will read autobiographical works mainly by 20th Century Arab and/or Muslim writers, paying particular attention to issues of identity, religion and gender, and exploring how these are at play in the text and in authorial constructions of self.

HDS 3900 Writing Lives: Women Writing Religion
Leila Ahmed | HDS Fall
An exploratory seminar on issues of writing, gender and religion. We will read a variety of texts - narrative, fictional, autobiographical, and theoretical - and explore issues of gender, genres, the construction of knowledge and visibility/invisibility of women's experience.

HDS 3917 Feminist Cross Cultural Perspectives on Beliefs and Practices
Susan Abraham | HDS Spring
This course examines feminist practical theological critiques of the relationship between beliefs and practices in the context of global imperial logics of masculinist dominance. Feminist theologies advancing plural and intersecting liberation perspectives on race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, culture and rhetorical positioning will be investigated. A primary outcome of this course is to develop an awareness of polarized strategies influencing identity construction, ethical inclusivity and the usefulness of theologically saturated languages to counter imperial logics.

Society, Culture and Gender

Education and Gender

GSAS 72986: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1168 Education, Race, and Gender in the US
Chiwen Bao | FAS Spring
Education in the United States often appears as democratizing and a means of upward mobility, an idea complicated by issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality, all of which shape students’ and teachers’ experiences. This class examines theoretical and empirical studies on various schooling spaces and practices and explores how intersecting constructs of identity — such as girl, boy, black, Latino/a, Asian, white — become meaningful in schools and bear implications for individuals and society.

H236 Adolescent Development
Nancy E. Hill | HGSE Spring
Adolescence marks change on multiple levels—biologically, cognitively, socially—and in multiple contexts—family, school, community, peers, and friendships. Adolescence marks the single largest growth period in human development outside of infancy. Development during adolescence is not simply more of the processes and development of childhood, but is functionally and qualitatively different. Adolescents’ struggle between marking their autonomy and independence and their need for guidance and dependence influence family relationships, social and educational practices, and the ways we engage with them in our day to day lives. As they are shaping and developing their identities, our interactions with them become part of who they are becoming. The purpose of this course is to explore adolescent development through various developmental lenses, using multiple teaching tools, contemporary film and literature. This course is especially designed to provide educators with a practical understanding of the developmental trajectories of adolescent thinking and reasoning and to prepare those interested in applied research on adolescence. Beginning with classic conceptions of adolescence and its hallmark, identity development, the course builds toward more complex understanding of the roles of relationships and cultural contexts in shaping and reflecting development, multiple identities (racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, and sexual), and the adolescent experience during the middle and high school years. We will consider a broad range of adolescent experiences from the developmental opportunities and challenges of everyday life to risk behavior.

T-313 Gender and Sexuality in Schools: School Climate and the Hidden Curriculum
Sherry Deckman | HGSE Spring
This course explores both the role of gender and sexuality in shaping young people's schooling experiences, opportunities, and outcomes, and the role of schooling experiences in shaping young people's notions of gender and sexuality. In many ways, the course is about the "hidden curriculum" of heteronormativity, or the subtle practices in schools that privilege heterosexual, gendered identities and ways of being. As such, students in the course will apply the concept of the hidden curriculum to the study of gender and schooling in order to understand why and how boys and girls experience schooling differently, and also why and how heteronormative schooling detrimentally impacts not only LGBTQ students but all students as well. The course will draw on a variety of literature, including theoretical works; qualitative and quantitative empirical research; applied, practical texts; and instructional materials for K-12 educators such as young adult novels. Class members will have the opportunity to build the knowledge and skills necessary to addressing gender- and sexuality-related inequity in schools of various levels. The course incorporates whole-class and small-group discussion.

History and Gender

GSAS 1090: History 74c Bodily Functions: Histories of Bare Life and Bio-Power
Walter Johnson | FAS Spring
This course will expose students to challenging and influential scholarship on the history of human being. The reading combines an emphasis on social theory - Marxism, Cultural Anthropology, Post-modernism, Feminism, etc. - and on historical topics of central importance - the history of the senses, labor, torture, starvation, racism, colonialism, sexuality, etc. The class will meet once a week for two hours.

GSAS 24862: History and Literature 90an God Save the Queen! Ruling Women from Rome to the Renaissance
Sean Gilsdorf | FAS Fall
This seminar will explore female rulership in Europe from the late Roman empire to the age of Elizabeth I. Discussion of varied texts and images (most of them primary sources in translation) will reveal the role of queens within their societies, their relationship to broader social and cultural institutions such as the Christian Church, and the ways in which queens were celebrated, criticized, and imagined by writers and artists of their time.

GSAS 38329: History and Literature 90s Cloak and Swagger: Fashioning the Body in Early Modern Europe and the New World
Nenita Ponce de Leon Elphick | FAS Fall
Using visual, historical, and literary sources, this course explores how clothing functioned in the construction of social status, gender, and race in early modern Europe and the New World. It will examine Judeo-Christian beliefs about clothing; how the elite manipulated clothing to increase their power and prestige; the importance of textiles, dyestuffs, and fur in New World exploration and trade; and how the cloth industry became a crucial site of revolt during eighteenth-century Independence movements.

GSAS 4182: United States in the World 16 Men and Women in Public and Private: the US in the 20th Century
Nancy Cott | FAS Fall
This course offers historical perspective on the social relations and relative power of the sexes, tracing changes and continuities over the past century in family lives, work, popular culture and politics. We will look at sexuality, masculinity, and femininity, centering these in US social, cultural and political history in the context of a wider world.

GSAS 65457: Japanese History 145 Lady Samurai in Medieval Japan
Tomoko Kitagawa | FAS Spring
This course will offer a look at gender representation found in original historical records such as letters and diaries, and examine women’s roles in society, ways of life, and sexuality in Japan from the 8th century to the end of 16th century with a comparison to their male contemporaries – the Samurai.

GSAS 69929: English 90n Gender, Sex, and Marriage in the Age of Enlightenment: Seminar
Melissa Ganz | FAS Spring
A study of changing representations of gender roles and sexual relations in literature of the long eighteenth century. We examine questions concerning love and marriage, seduction and consent; property and self-ownership, female friendship, gender and politics, and cross-racial ties. Authors include Behn, Finch, Astell, Congreve, Pope, Defoe, Hawyood, Sarah Scott, Burney, Sheridan, Wollstonecraft, Amelia Opie, and Austen.

GSAS 81052: History of Science 108 Bodies, Sexualities, and Medicine in the Medieval Middle East
Ahmed Ragab | FAS Fall
This course will examine the ways in which medical, religious, cultural, and political discourses and practices interacted in the medieval and early modern Middle East to create and reflect multiple understandings of human bodies and sexualities. Special attention to debates on health, sexuality, and gender and racial identities.

GSAS 9664: History 72e The Life and Reign of Catherine the Great
Kelly A. O’Neill-Uzgiris | FAS Spring
Examines the private and public worlds of one of Russia’s most famous rulers. Introduces students to the political, social, and cultural transformation of the eighteenth-century empire, as well as to longstanding debates about Catherine’s reign and the conflicting images of the empress herself. Topics include gender and authority, the Russian Enlightenment, architecture and urban planning, cultural life, religious and ethnic diversity.

HDS 2241 Reformation Masculinities and Confessional Sexualities, 1450-1700
Michelle L. Wolfe | HDS Fall
In Europe and the emerging Atlantic World, the Catholic and Protestant Reformations demanded reconfigurations of sexual theology, sexual discipline and sexual relationships. In this course, we will use the analytical concepts of historical masculinities and sexualities to explore a critical period of religious change.

Race, Ethnicity and Gender

GSAS 10829: African and African American Studies 117x Of Mean Streets and Jungle Fevers: Race, Gender and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee
Biodun Jeyifo | FAS Fall
Against the background of radical theories of racial formation and identity politics in America, this course will comparatively explore controversial images of African Americans and Italian Americans in selected films of two of the most important contemporary American filmmakers, Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee. On their road to becoming iconic figures in America’s contemporary cinematic and artistic avant-garde, Scorsese and Lee radically transformed received or conventional perceptions of Italian Americans and African Americans in mainstream American film. In this course, we will explore both similar and contrastive styles and approaches by the two filmmakers. Special attention will be paid to popular and scholarly discourses that the selected films of Scorsese and Lee have generated.

GSAS 22792: African and African American Studies 111 Spectral Fictions, Savage Phantasms: Race and Gender in Anti-Racist South African and African American Drama, Fiction and Film
Biodun Jeyifo | FAS Spring
Why have social orders like Apartheid South Africa and White Supremacy in segregated America that are based on extreme racial, gender and national oppression always generated often violent, hallucinatory fictions of the racial and gender identities of the oppressed? And why have the oppressed in turn often internalized these sorts of fictions and also produced counter-fictions that more or less conform to the same violent, phantasmic logic? In this course, we will explore how these fictions and counter-fictions are reproduced and challenged in some of the most powerful, canonical works of drama, fiction and cinema by South African and African American authors and filmmakers. As the Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe once famously remarked: "where one thing stands, another thing will stand beside it." To this end, we will pay special attention in the course to how, both in form and in content, race and gender always seem, constitutively, to intersect in these fictions and counter-fictions. The course is thus a study in the dark, violent but generative cultural unconscious of modern racialized and gendered identities.

GSAS 30477: African and African American Studies 154 Language and Discourse: Race, Class and Gender
Marcyliena Morgan | FAS Fall
Our purpose is to study, analyze, and critique theories concerning the discursive construction of identity(s) and forms of representation of cultures. We explore the relationship between power and powerful speech through reviews and critiques of theories of language, culture, and identity as they relate to ethnicity, race, and social class. Our focus is on language, ideology, and analysis of discourse styles used in the construction of regional, national, and global communities. 

GSAS 4121: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1233 Gender, Sexual Violence, and Empire
Katherine Stanton | FAS Spring
Making the case for what Deepika Bahri identifies as the "prominent and constitutive" role of gender-and sexuality-in colonial formations, this course will examine how gendered and sexed ideas and practices were critical to signifying racial difference, naturalizing exploitation, symbolizing the colonial mission, and managing colonial economies. We will ask, with Ann Laura Stoler, was sexual domination a metaphor for colonial power, or the very "substance" of imperial policy?

GSAS 94655: FRSemr 43s Gender, Race, and Ethics in the 21st Century
Gina Helfrich | FAS Fall
What does it mean to be a "good" person? Do women and men have different moral beliefs? Does our race or ethnicity change the way that we perceive social problems? This course will ask how it is possible to develop an ethics that takes account of human difference, especially difference in identity. We will discuss contemporary American social problems, including: Gay marriage, racial segregation and school reform, multiculturalism, and the gender wage gap and discrimination in hiring.

MG722.0 Social Issues in Biology

Jonathan Roger Beckwith | HMS Spring
Readings, discussion of social/ethical aspects of biology: history, philosophy of science; evolution vs. creationism; genetics and race; women and science; genetic testing; stem cell research; science journalism; genetics and the law; scientists and social responsibility.

Sexuality

GSAS 20907: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1265 Gender and Sexuality in South Asia
Chaitanya Lakkimsetti | FAS Spring
Seminar examines political and social movements related to issues of gender and sexuality in the subcontinent, as well as the responses of state and legal institutions to the demands raised by these movements. Topics include: colonialism, nationalism, family, violence against women, caste & gender, development, population and health policies, human rights, and migration.

GSAS 4121: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1233 Gender, Sexual Violence, and Empire
Katherine Stanton | FAS Spring
Making the case for what Deepika Bahri identifies as the "prominent and constitutive" role of gender-and sexuality-in colonial formations, this course will examine how gendered and sexed ideas and practices were critical to signifying racial difference, naturalizing exploitation, symbolizing the colonial mission, and managing colonial economies. We will ask, with Ann Laura Stoler, was sexual domination a metaphor for colonial power, or the very "substance" of imperial policy?

GSAS 5928: English 154 Literature and Sexuality
Matthew Kaiser FAS Fall
Over the last 300 years, "sexuality" has gradually displaced "soul," "mind," and "character" as the most essential and salient ingredient in modern subjectivity, as the "truth" of the self. How has Western literature grappled with, embraced, or stubbornly resisted the sexualization of subjectivity? From Freud to Foucault, Venus in Furs to Story of O, D. H. Lawrence to Dennis Cooper, we will map the uneasy alliance between--and intertwining histories of--literature and sexuality.

GSAS 7683: Psychology 1703 Human Sexuality 
Justin Lehmiller | FAS Spring
This course examines the development and expression of sexual behavior as a complex psychological, socio-cultural, and biological phenomenon. Students explore topics including: historical perspectives on sexuality; sexology research methods; biological bases of sexual behavior; sexual arousal and response; gender identity and gender roles; sexual orientation; romantic attraction and love; sexual dysfunctions and sex therapy; safer sex and STD prevention; typical and atypical sexual behaviors; and pornography and prostitution.

SM720.0 Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Health
Patricia Leigh Case, Elizabeth Miller | HMS TBA
This seminar examines broadly the construction of gender and sexuality in relation to health care inequalities, distribution of disease, illness experiences and health policy. The course will draw on readings from the history of medicine, feminist anthropology, gay/lesbian studies, epidemiology and health policy. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which race/ethnicity, social class and poverty intersect with gender differences in health. Specific areas to be discussed include the history of women's health and homosexuality in the discourses of madness, domestic violence, eating disorders, HIV/AIDS in the US and abroad, politics of reproduction and reproductive technologies, and other related topics. Students are strongly encouraged to also enroll in Human Sexuality, ME735.0.

T-313 Gender and Sexuality in Schools: School Climate and the Hidden Curriculum
Sherry Deckman HGSE Spring
This course explores both the role of gender and sexuality in shaping young people's schooling experiences, opportunities, and outcomes, and the role of schooling experiences in shaping young people's notions of gender and sexuality. In many ways, the course is about the "hidden curriculum" of heteronormativity, or the subtle practices in schools that privilege heterosexual, gendered identities and ways of being. As such, students in the course will apply the concept of the hidden curriculum to the study of gender and schooling in order to understand why and how boys and girls experience schooling differently, and also why and how heteronormative schooling detrimentally impacts not only LGBTQ students but all students as well. The course will draw on a variety of literature, including theoretical works; qualitative and quantitative empirical research; applied, practical texts; and instructional materials for K-12 educators such as young adult novels. Class members will have the opportunity to build the knowledge and skills necessary to addressing gender- and sexuality-related inequity in schools of various levels. The course incorporates whole-class and small-group discussion.

WGH220 Sexuality and Public Health
Dr. S. Austin | HSPH Fall 2
This course provides an introduction to the breadth of research and research methods in the study of sexuality and sexual health promotion in diverse contexts and populations. Students will develop skills needed to carry out epidemiologic research and community-based interventions related to sexual health promotion. Students will be introduced to ways to integrate conceptual models, methodologies, and perspectives from a variety of fields to inform a unique transdisciplinary, holistic approach to public health promotion of sexual health. Class session format includes lectures, discussions, case studies, individual and group presentations, and in-class writing assignments. Course Note: Enrollment limited. No auditors.

Society and Anthropology

GSAS 12001: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1258 Friends with Benefits?
Afsaneh Najmabadi | FAS Fall
In Friends, friendships are continuously reconfigured through sexual relationships. In Sex and the City, four friendships are lived through episodes of sexual experiences. What could we make about the meanings and inter-relationship of friendship and sex, in contemporary American culture? We ask similar questions about other times and places and consider what Facebook and other social virtual worlds are doing to/for friends. Readings include Plato, Jewish and Islamic philosophy and ethics, Montaigne, Bacon, Bray, Marcus, Foucault, Derrida.

GSAS 17685: Economics 1356 Economics of Work and Family
Claudia Goldin | FAS Fall
How are the most personal choices and life transitions decided? When and whom do you marry, how many children do you have, how much education should you obtain, and which careers or jobs will you pursue? Much will be explored in terms of change over time, particularly concerning the economic emergence of women and the growing role of government. Readings draw on economic theory, empirical analyses, history, and literature from the 19th century to the present.

GSAS 2276: Social Studies 98kb Gender in Developing
Nations Meghan Healy | FAS Fall
This course examines the history of development in the colonial and postcolonial world from a gendered perspective. We examine how the idea of development attained international influence amidst movements of nationalism and decolonization. We trace how gendered concerns have become central to the developmental agendas of state and non-state actors over the past half-century, even as these actors disagreed over women’s rights. Ultimately, we consider how developmental ideologies and institutions might yet enable women’s empowerment.

GSAS 25321: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1231 American Social Body
Keridwen Luis | FAS Spring
This course explores the ways in which the body is shaped in American culture. What social and cultural meanings do we attach to certain bodies? How do social systems of inequality, such as racism, sexism, ableism and classism influence how we see bodies? Topics to include dieting and fitness, body image and "the beauty myth," body modification, and the moralization of health.

GSAS 3042: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1200fh Our Mothers, Ourselves: Postwar American Feminist Thought
Alice Jardine | FAS Fall
The classics of American postwar, mainstream feminist thought are sometimes assumed, sometimes reviled, but rarely re-read. In this seminar, we will read critically across four decades of widely-read, influential feminist books, keeping constantly in view the philosophical and political, psychological and historical, legal and ethical questions at the heart of women, gender, and sexuality studies today.

GSAS 44637: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1242 Masculinities
Cameron Partridge | FAS Spring
From politics, to professional sports, to action films, ideas of "what makes a man" are ever-present. This course introduces students to ideas of masculinity in relation to issues of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, socio-economic class, and religion. Questions include: Why are certain mannerisms, activities, professions, and even objects considered masculine? How have ideas of masculinity changed over time and in relation to various debates around health, morality, and the family?

GSAS 4743: FRSemr 34i Girl Talk: Reflections on Gender and Youth in America
Laura Johnson | FAS Fall
This seminar explores what women have to say about growing up female in contemporary America. Sources analyzed include memoirs, documentary films, photographs, and diaries. These sources both depict individual experiences and reflect more broadly on the role gender plays in American society. Topics considered include the various ways gender impacts the experience of athletics, academic achievement, illness, self-esteem, body image, and family dynamics.

GSAS 48494: Italian 151 Women of Modern Italy
Maria Grazia Lolla | FAS Fall
Women in Italy during the Risorgimento and Fascism. The course will look at how women were represented in melodrama, literature, the figurative arts, the social sciences, manuals of conduct, and legal texts, as well as how women imagined and shaped their world as writers, artists, workers, entrepreneurs, cultural agents, and political activists.

GSAS 5590: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1210 ft Theory as Critique
Afsaneh Najmabadi | FAS Spring
Course examines feminist critical engagements with other theories and practices (Marxism, psychoanalysis, Foucault, deconstruction), as well as the debates and discussions within feminism, including intersections of feminist theory with other theories (queer theory, sexualities studies, post-colonial studies, science studies, transgender studies). Course closely examines relationships between feminism, theory, and politics. Research focuses on critical revisiting of one question central to the development of feminist theory and activism. Spring 2012 focus is "Governance Feminism."

GSAS 57322: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1260 Key Debates in Sex Work
Chaitanya Lakkimsetti | FAS Fall
Seminar examines key debates about sex work: How have modern states regulated sexual commerce? What assumptions around gender and sexuality shape the regulation of paid sex? How do local and international feminist movements and human rights organizations shape these regulations in various regions of the world? We pay specific attention to the ways in which female, male, and transgender sex workers define their work, make meaning of paid sexual transactions, and mobilize for their rights.

GSAS 57498: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1411 Native American Cultures: Studies in Gender, Sex, and Sexuality
Keridwen Luis FAS Fall
This course examines issues of gender, sex, and sexuality in various Native American cultures in a historical, anthropological, and political context, using a variety of scholarly, fictional, and personal texts. We will explore sex roles, marriage and the family, and gender variant identities, as well as the massive impact of colonialization, racism, and missionarism on gendered understandings in present-day American cultures.

GSAS 60105: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 1266 Gender and Sports
Laura Johnson | FAS Spring
This course explores the relationship between gender and sports in the U.S. We will consider the ways in which deeply held beliefs about masculinity and femininity, as well as sexuality and race, affect the practice of sports, as well as how sports shape identity. While we will situate our exploration within its historical context, our focus will be on the contemporary scene, including youth, collegiate, and professional sports.

GSAS 76892: Japanese Literature 271 Topics in Gender and Culture in Japan: Seminar 
Tomiko Yoda | FAS Spring
A seminar course that studies the constructions of gender and gender relations in Japan through the examination of various forms of expressive culture (visual, textual, sonic) in their historical contexts.

GSAS 9124: Sociology 107 The American Family 
Marin Whyte | FAS Fall
The American family is often thought to be changing in ways considered unfortunate for children and society. At the same time, the family continues to occupy a central place in people’s lives. We examine how and why American families have changed and explore the consequences of these changes. Aspects of family life considered include premarital sex, mate choice, marriage relations, work and family, gender roles, childrearing, family violence, divorce, and intergenerational relations.

GSAS 94655: FRSemr 43s Gender, Race, and Ethics in the 21st Century
Gina Helfrich | FAS Fall
What does it mean to be a "good" person? Do women and men have different moral beliefs? Does our race or ethnicity change the way that we perceive social problems? This course will ask how it is possible to develop an ethics that takes account of human difference, especially difference in identity. We will discuss contemporary American social problems, including: Gay marriage, racial segregation and school reform, multiculturalism, and the gender wage gap and discrimination in hiring.

HDS 2101 Transnational Gender Issues in Contemporary Islam
Azza Basarudin | HDS Spring
This course addresses the intersection of religion, gender and feminist ideals in the lives of Muslim women across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on ethnographic studies from these regions and focusing on Sunni, Shi'i, and Sufi traditions, topics include human rights, political participation, nationalism, legal status, sexuality, and masculinity and femininity.

HDS 2380 Bodies in Urban Spaces
Steven Jungkeit | HDS Spring
According to some estimates, one half of the world's population now lives in an urban setting. While some North American cities have undergone massive decline, urban zones in Asia, South America and Africa have seen explosive and unprecedented growth. This seminar is an exploration of the ethical and social issues that have arisen as a result of that decline and growth. In particular, we shall concentrate our attention on the movements, performances, choreographies, and disciplines of bodies (human and otherwise) as they navigate those various urban environments. Seminar sessions shall be devoted to a number of urban "sites," noting the bodily performances or rituals called forth within those sites. Among those sites are industrial spaces, impoverished streetscapes, theatrical/utopian spaces, medical spaces, ritual or sacred spaces, and finally the body itself as a kind of construction site. Readings will draw from Marxist and Frankfurt School theorists, as well as queer, posthuman, and religious studies texts. In addition, different forms of expression and creativity such as films, novels, and performance art shall be considered throughout the course as we account for the complex ways urban systems work on bodies.