Gender Studies
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Leora Auslander,
J 422, 702-9936
Program Assistant: Julia Nitti, J 422, 702-9936
Program of Study
Gender Studies at the University of Chicago encompasses diverse disciplines, modes of inquiry, and objects of knowledge. In 1997, the University of Chicago began offering a concentration in Gender Studies that allows undergraduates the opportunity to shape a disciplinary or interdisciplinary plan of study focused on gender and gender-related issues. The plan of study, designed with the assistance of a Gender Studies Concentration Adviser, can take the form of a gender-track in a traditional academic discipline, interdisciplinary work on a gender-related topic, or a combination thereof. Thus, students can create a cluster of courses linked by their attention to gender as an object of study, or by their use of gender categories to investigate topics in sexuality, social life, science, politics and culture, literature and the arts, or systems of thought.
The concentration requires twelve courses and a B.A. research project or paper, which will count as a thirteenth course. The course work is divided into (1) five Gender Studies courses in a major field, (2) five supporting field courses, and (3) two Gender Studies theory courses. NOTE: No more than two of these courses may be reading courses (Gender Studies 297). A Gender Studies Concentration Adviser is responsible for the approval of any relevant proposal.
Major Field. Students must take five Gender Studies courses that they choose in consultation with a faculty member who is serving as their Gender Studies Concentration Adviser (George Chauncey, Department of History; Lisa Ruddick, Department of English Language and Literature). Some students may take these courses in a single discipline, or in closely related disciplines, to develop a gender-track within a discipline. Other students might take gender-focused courses in more than one region of inquiry.
Supporting Field. In consultation with their Gender Studies Concentration Adviser, students must choose five additional courses that together provide training in the methodological, technical, or scholarly skills needed to pursue research in their major field.
Theory Course Sequence. In their second or third year, students concentrating in Gender Studies are required to take a two-quarter theory course sequence: Problems in Gender Studies (Gender Studies 101-102).
Research Project or Senior Paper. In their fourth year, students must complete a senior paper or a substantial project in their major field of interest under the supervision of a member of the Gender Studies Core Faculty. The final version is due by May 1 of their senior year, or the fifth week of the quarter in which they plan to graduate.
|
5 |
gender studies courses in a major field |
|
2 |
Problems in Gender Studies (GendSt 101-102) |
|
5 |
supporting field courses |
|
1 |
B.A. Paper Preparation Course (GendSt 299) |
|
13 |
Advising. A list follows of the Gender Studies Core Faculty. Each student will work with a Gender Studies Concentration Adviser who is a member of this group. By the beginning of their third year, all students are expected to have designed their program of study with the assistance of their Gender Studies Concentration Adviser. Students may also consult the Undergraduate Program Chair for advice in designing their program.
Students in concentrations other than Gender Studies are encouraged to use this listing of faculty and course offerings as a resource for the purpose of designing programs within disciplines, as an aid for the allocation of electives, or for the pursuit of a B.A. project. For further work in gender studies, students are encouraged to investigate other courses taught by resource faculty. For more information about Gender Studies, consult Julia Nitti (702-9936).
Faculty
JEANNE ALTMANN, Professor, Department of Ecology & Evolution and the College
LEORA AUSLANDER, Associate Professor, Department of History and the College
MARY E. BECKER, Professor, the Law School
LAUREN BERLANT, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College
JACQUELINE BHABHA, Lecturer, the Law School
JAMES E. BOWMAN, Professor, Departments of Medicine and Pathology, Committees on African & African-American Studies and Genetics, and the College
CAROL BRECKENRIDGE, Senior Lecturer, Division of the Humanities and the College
MARY BRINTON, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and the College
BILL BROWN, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature
GEORGE CHAUNCEY, Associate Professor, Department of History and the College
BERTRAM COHLER, William Rainey Harper Professor in the Social Sciences, Departments of Psychology (Human Development), Education, Psychiatry, Divinity School, the Committee for General Studies in the Humanities and the College
JEAN COMAROFF, Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Anthropology; Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science & Medicine, and the College
WENDY DONIGER, Mircea Eliade Professor, the Divinity School, Department of South Asian Languages & Civilizations, Committee on Social Thought, and the College
KATHRYN DUYS, Assistant Professor, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and the College
MARTHA FELDMAN, Associate Professor, Department of Music and the College
NORMA M. FIELD, Professor, Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations
SHEILA FITZPATRICK, Professor, Department of History and the College
RACHEL FULTON, Assistant Professor, Department of History and the College
SUSAN GAL, Professor, Department of Anthropology and the College
JAN E. GOLDSTEIN, Professor, Department of History and the College
ELAINE HADLEY, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College
MIRIAM HANSEN, Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, Department of English Language & Literature, Committee on the Visual Arts, and the College
ELIZABETH HELSINGER, Professor, Departments of English Language & Literature and Art History, and the College
RONALD INDEN, Professor, Departments of History and South Asian Languages & Civilizations and the College
JANET JOHNSON, Professor, Oriental Institute and Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
ROBERT KENDRICK, Professor, Department of Music and the College
JANICE KNIGHT, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and the College
LAURA LETINSKY, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Committee on the Visual Arts
MARY MAHOWALD, Professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology
MARTHA MCCLINTOCK, Professor, Department of Psychology and the College
TRACEY MEARES, Assistant Professor, Law School
FRANÇOISE MELTZER, Professor, Departments of Romance Languages & Literatures and Comparative Literature and the College
MALKA MOSCONA, Professor Emerita, Department of Biological Sciences and the College
JANEL M. MUELLER, William Rainey Harper Professor in the Humanities; Professor, Department of English Language & Literature
DEBORAH NELSON, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, and the College
MARTHA NUSSBAUM, Professor of Law and Ethics, Law School, Philosophy, Divinity School and the College
PATRICK O'CONNOR, Assistant Professor, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and the College
ELIZABETH POVINELLI, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and the College
MELISSA RODERICK, Professor, Social Service Administration
LISA RUDDICK, Associate Professor, Department of English Language & Literature, Committee on General Studies in the Humanities, and the College
LESLIE SALZINGER, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and the College
LYNN SANDERS, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and the College
JULIE SAVILLE, Assistant Professor, Department of History and the College
R. BARTON SCHULTZ, Lecturer, Department of Political Science and the College
LINDA SEIDEL, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Committee on General Studies in the Humanities, and the College
MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN, Samuel N. Harper Professor, Departments of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Psychology (Cognition & Communication), and Committee on Analysis of Ideas & Study of Methods
WILLIAM SITES, Assistant Professor, School of Social Service Administration
LAURA SLATKIN, Associate Professor, Department of Classical Languages & Literatures, Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, and the College
AMY STANLEY, Assistant Professor, Department of History and the College
KATIE TRUMPENER, Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Studies and the College
WILLIAM VEEDER, Professor, Department of English Language & Literature and Committee on General Studies in the Humanities
CANDACE VOGLER, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and the College
MARTHA WARD, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Committee on the Visual Arts, and the College
ELISSA WEAVER, Professor, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and the College
LISA WEDEEN, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and the College
REBECCA WEST, Professor, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures and the College
JUDITH T. ZEITLIN, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations
Courses
101-102. Problems in Gender Studies (=Eng 102-103, GendSt 101-102, GS Hum 228-229, Hum 228-229, SocSci 282-283). PQ: Second- or third-year standing and completion of a Common Core social science or humanities course or the equivalent. This two-quarter interdisciplinary sequence is designed as an introduction to theories and critical practices in the study of feminism, gender, and sexuality. Both classic texts and recent reconceptualizations of these contested fields are examined. Problems and cases from a variety of cultures and historical periods are considered, and the course pursues their differing implications for local, national, and global politics. Topics might include the politics of reproduction; gender and postcolonialism; women, sexual scandal, and the law; race and sexual paranoia; and sexual subcultures. D. Nelson, Staff, Autumn; E. Povinelli, Staff, Winter.
112. Gender Conditions. Gender roles and relations condition us and are transformed by us. Literatures throughout cultures and ages reflect these basic dimensions of our experience, communities, and nations. In diverse traditions and varied genres, we explore how female and male genders create power relations and self-knowledge through political, social, ethnic, sexual or racial themes. These multiple "masculine" and "feminine" identities are generated in diction, imagery, and point of view; and in conflict, dynamics, and resolution (which we examine as conventional or universal components of gender systems). M. Browning. Spring.
169. Gender and Politics in the English Renaissance (=Eng 169, GendSt 169). This course focuses on some major texts of the English Renaissance in the context of ideas about the rediscovery of ancient classical literatures, the changing role of women, political conflict under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, perceptions of the New World in an age of discovery, a growing sense of national identity, encounters with the Other in the form of new cultures and ideologies, the battle between Catholic and Protestant, and still more. Authors include Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare's sonnets (the plays we leave out, though their presence is continually felt), Lady Mary Wroth, other sonneteers, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, George Herbert, Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, John Webster, and John Milton. Discussion section required. D. Bevington. Autumn.
205. Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Social Movements (=GendSt 205, PolSci 205). The study of social movements brings us face to face with many fundamental concerns of the social sciences, including questions of human agency, power, social change, identity, and the production of meaning. With those concerns as the ever-present backdrop, we introduce central questions, theoretical perspectives, and conceptual issues that animate the study of social movements. Focusing primarily on the American civil rights, women's, lesbian/gay, and AIDS movements, the course is intended to provide students with alternative theoretical approaches to questions of movement emergence, development, and decline. D. Gould. Winter.
208/308. Sexual Identity, Life-Course and Life-Story (=GendSt 208/308, GS Hum 359, HumDev 346, Psych 246, SocSci 259). Beginning with the study of the concept of sexual identity, this course explores what is known of biological factors presumed relevant to emergence of same-gender sexual orientation, social circumstances and aspects of personal development salient among those persons whose self-identity is or becomes gay, lesbian, or bisexual. We focus on such issues as gender atypical interests, the contribution of familial circumstances, and the role of the "coming-out" story. We also explore such issues as intimacy, partnership, parenthood, and aging among bisexual men and women, lesbians, and gay men. The course concludes with considerations and limitations of "queer theory" to our understanding of sexual identity and life story. B. Cohler. Spring.
215/315. Sociology of Work (=GendSt 215/315, Sociol 215/314). This course explores central aspects of the sociology of work. We look at conceptions of "work"; at struggles over money, meaning, and control in the workplace; and at the relationship between the gender and race of those who do particular jobs and how those jobs are understood. Readings include theory, as well as historical and ethnographic studies. L. Salzinger. Winter.
220. Le lyrisme française au Moyen Âge (=French 220/320, GendSt 220, GS Hum 208/315). PQ: Knowledge of French. Through their songs, we examine the lives of medieval poets, asking how a culture of performance required goliards, minstrels, and starving scholars to invent poetic identities and assert their authority before patrons and public. We also explore how the archetypal lady of medieval poetry compares with what we know of women's lives as poets, patrons, and objects of desire. Finally, we consider how the poet's identity in the late Middle Ages became both more idealized and realistic and evolved into a poetic construct in itself. Classes conducted in French; with prior consent of the instructor, nonconcentrators may write in English. K. Duys. Winter.
221/321. Maidens and Martyrs (=ArtH 220/320, GendSt 221/321). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or COVA course, or consent of instructor. Painted stories of misfortune and misogyny in late medieval and early modern art. L. Seidel. Autumn.
222. Anglo-American Gothic Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (=Eng 222, GendSt 222). In the nineteenth century, gothic fiction in English is an Anglo-American phenomenon. America's first internationally recognized literary masterpiece, Rip Van Winkle, is written in England and appears the same year as Frankenstein. Our course studies the transatlantic aspect of the gothic tradition, while we also give full attention to the particular qualities of individual texts. Attention to textual intricacies leads to questions about gender and psychology, as well as culture. Our authors include Washington Irving, Mary Shelley, James Hogg, Poe, Hawthorne, Emily Bronte, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Thomas Hardy. W. Veeder. Spring.
243/403. Medicine and Culture (=Anthro 243/403, GendSt 243/403, HiPSS 273). Class limited to fifty students. This course examines diverse systems of thought and practice concerning health, illness, and the management of the body and person in everyday and ritual contexts. We seek to develop a framework for studying the cultural and historical constitution of healing practices, especially the evolution of Western biomedicine. J. Comaroff. Winter.
267. Whitman (=Eng 267, GendSt 267). Beginning with a historical context for understanding Whitman, and closing with current literary-critical contexts for rereading him, we pose basic questions about the relation of literature and history, pleasure and politics, and cultural production and reception. We begin by situating Whitman's poetics of incorporation with other modes of collection, organization, and display (from Thoreau's work as a naturalist to the 1850 U.S. census, from daguerreotype parlors to medical museums). Though we encounter some of Whitman's prose, we concentrate on his major poems and on the place they have occupied in cultural and political imaginations. B. Brown. Winter.
268/368. Weimar Bodies: Fantasies about the Sexualized Body in Weimar Art, Literature, Science, and Medicine (=ArtH 268, COVA 257, GendSt 268/368, German 282, HiPSS 301). PQ: Advanced standing. Knowledge of German helpful but not required. This class concentrates on defining the relationship between "high" art images of the sexualized human body in avant garde German culture from 1919 to 1933 and parallel or contradictory representations of the body in the scientific (anthropological, sociological, and biological), as well as the medical illustration of the same period. The core ideas of the class are drawn from an exhibition of the same name that will be on view at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art during the length of the course. S. Gilman. Autumn.
269. Postwar U.S. Literature (=Eng 269, GendSt 269). This survey of postwar U.S. literature begins with Arthur Miller's The Crucible and concludes with Tony Kushner's Angels in America. These works, haunted by the Rosenberg and McCarthy trials, frame a course that considers a variety of genres and experiments in poetic language in terms of the political and cultural upheavals of the cold war. In addition to the two plays, we are likely to read prose works by Jack Kerouac, Malcolm X, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, Ismail Reed, E. L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, and Toni Morrison, and poetry by Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath. D. Nelson. Spring.
270. Fiction of Three Americas (=Eng 270, GendSt 270). What constitutes "American Fiction?" This question has become prominent in recent years as readers have begun to take seriously a fact we've always "known:" that three "Americas" (North, Central, and South) compose our hemisphere, and that each realm has contributed significantly to the literary compositions of post-modernism. Close reading is supplemented by attention to issues of gender, psychology, and society, as we explore the private and social sources of the pain so evident in our texts. Authors include Borges, Rosario Ferre, Carlos Fuetes, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Andre Dubus, and Bharati Mukherjee. W. Veeder. Winter.
272. Utilitarianism, Idealism, and Socialism (=GendSt 272, PolSci 272, SocSci 284). This course critically examines some of the most fascinating developments in nineteenth-century English political and philosophical theory. The Victorian age was the age not only of prudery and imperialism, but also of liberal reform, Darwinian science, democratic expansion, "The Woman Question," and socialist agitation. Readings of texts by such figures as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, T. H. Green, Harriet Taylor, Frances Power Cobbe, Edward Carpenter, and William Morris place these figures in their historical context, bring out the tensions inherent in the growth of modern democratic liberalism, and point up the enduring significance of the utilitarian, idealist, and socialist perspectives. R. B. Schultz. Autumn.
274. U.S. Women and Gender (=GendSt 274, Hist 474). PQ: Advanced standing and consent of instructor. This course examines the experience of women in the United States within the context of changing relations and rules of gender. Key topics include citizenship and politics; slavery and emancipation; race, class, and ethnic difference; and sexuality. A. Stanley. Autumn.
277. John Dewey, Pragmatism, and the Problems of Democracy (=GendSt 277, PolSci 277, SocSci 285). Pragmatism is widely regarded as the single most important contribution that America has made to philosophical and political thought, and none of the pragmatists was more important than John Dewey. This course provides a general introduction to the philosophical, political and educational work of Dewey. We also consider how his criticisms of American plutocracy and educational ideology remain useful, and engage with the most provocative recent interpretations of his views, particularly those of Cornell West, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Robert Westbrook. Field trips to institutions associated with Dewey's reform efforts are scheduled in addition to class time. R. B. Schultz. Winter.
282/382. African-American Women: Lives and Symbols (=GendSt 282/382, Hist 282/382). This course explores the historical experiences and symbolic representations of African-American women in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their negotiations of personal and collective identity are viewed from the vantage of household and community relations, work, intellectual and spiritual strivings, political mobilization, and play. J. Saville. Spring.
285/385. Mastroianni and Keitel: Comparative Masculinities and Ethnicities (=CMS 236, GendSt 285/385, Ital 285/385). PQ: Ital 203 or consent of instructor. Using films in which Mastroianni and Keitel star, we study the diverse concepts of masculinity and ethnicity that these actors have embodied. Theoretical approaches to filmic representations of maleness and ethnic "types," to comparative cultural assumptions and stereotypes regarding men, and to Italian and American styles of filmmaking are employed in the analysis of these stars. All work in English; Italian majors read critical materials and write a final paper and a book review in Italian. R. West. Spring.
289/389. Fetishism, Gender, Sexuality, and Capitalism (=GendSt 289/389, Hist 289/389, Japan 285/385). PQ: Open to students with third- or fourth year standing and consent of instructor. This course analyzes transformations in the cultural construction of gendered and sexed identities in Japan, Europe, and the United States in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Starting with readings from Marx and Freud on the commodity form and fetish, we read critiques and re-uses of these concepts from feminist and queer theory. We then analyze a series of case studies from our three geographic areas. Possible cases include advertising and display strategies; kleptomania as a diagnosis and theft as a political gesture; style and political mobilization in feminist and gay/lesbian/queer politics. Questions of the relation of structure and agency and the possibilities for emancipatory politics are considered throughout. N. Field, L. Auslander. Autumn.
292. Modernity and the Sense of Things (=CMS 274, Eng 292/692, GendSt 292). This course engages the discourse of modernity as an account of the subject/object relation that foregrounds, on the one hand, the history of the senses, and, on the other, the fate of "things." The course begins with classic sociological accounts of modernity in work by Simmel, Weber, Veblen, and Lukács. We then track some key problems through accounts of the material, cultural, and sensory manifestations of modernity, with a particular focus on how the cinema was seen to crystallize the changed experience of things and people. This includes work by Giedion, Kracauer, Benjamin, Mumford, Stein, Gorky, Epstein, Woolf, Barnes, and Heidegger. M. Hansen, B. Brown. Spring.
294/394. "Feminine Space" in Traditional Chinese Art (=ArtH 294/394, Chin 251/351, GendSt 294/394). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or COVA course, or consent of instructor. "Feminine space" denotes an architectural or pictorial space that is perceived, imagined, and represented as a woman. Unlike an isolated female portrait or an individual female symbol, a "feminine space" is a spatial entity: an artificial world composed of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, color, fragrance, light, and sound, as well as selected human occupants and their activities. This course traces the construction of this space in traditional Chinese art (from the second to the eighteenth centuries) and the social/political implications of this constructive process. H. Wu .Winter.
297. Reading and Research Course. PQ: Consent of faculty supervisor and undergraduate program coordinator. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
299. B.A. Paper Preparation Course. PQ: Consent of faculty supervisor and undergraduate program coordinator. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
319. Human Rights and Natural Law (=GendSt 319, GS Hum 301, Philos 319). PQ: Prior course in ethics, political or social philosophy, or philosophy of law; or consent of instructor. Crimes by peoples against peoples form some of the most urgent cases of human rights abuses in the twentieth century. But this sort of human rights abuse and many of the remedies proposed in response to it are notoriously hard to theorize from a liberal perspective. In this course, we turn to the natural law tradition, concentrating on work by Aquinas and by contemporary Thomistic thinkers, to consider whether or not natural law provides the theoretical resources needed to think about and address human rights abuses involving whole peoples. C. Vogler. Autumn.
349. Feminist Theories of Gender (=GendSt 349, Sociol 349). PQ: Consent of instructor. This course discusses the ways in which feminists have conceptualized and explained gender. It looks at gender as a structure of power, a lived experience, and a contested field of cultural meanings. It also explores the way in which an individual comes to gendered subjectivity from varied locations, marked by differences in race, class, and desire. L. Salzinger. Winter.
364. Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. PQ: For Consent of instructor call JoAnn Baum 773-702-7092. Arnold Goldberg. Autumn.