WMST 375 - Seminar in Women’s Studies

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2020/21a: Feminist Disability Studies. (Same as ENGL 375) Why is disability a feminist issue? This course addresses that question by exploring the diverse meanings of disability, both in theory and in lived experience, focusing on intersections of disability with gender, race, class, and sexuality. Disability is defined broadly to include all the ways in which a person’s body or mind may be perceived as outside what Audre Lorde called “the mythical norm.” We examine the ways in which particular historical, social, and institutional structures have shaped the experiences of disabled people, and how cultural perceptions of disability create social inequality. In the spirit of the disability rights movement’s call for “nothing about us without us,” we also give special attention to the work of disabled writers, artists, performers, and activists.Topics may include gender, sexuality, and eugenics; engendering the disabled body; disability, biotechnology, and reproductive justice; the gendering of “madness;” invisible disabilities; disability and trauma; disability and incarceration; disability, dependency, and the feminist ethics of care; disability rights and disability justice. Students deepen their personal engagement with feminist disability studies through research, self-reflection, and a final critical or creative project. Leslie Dunn.

Topic for 2020/21b: Witchcraft and the Occult. This is a senior Women Studies seminar in which we examine witchcraft and the occult as global phenomena that both enrich and require an intersectional feminist perspective. We read a book a week that demonstrates witchy ways of doing theory. The final student project is a zine and accompanying essay on a subject of the student’s choice related to the course material. Elias Krell.

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS