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WST 130I: Introduction to Women and Gender Studies
21841: Portland Monday
4:10 - 6:40pm Prof. Tamara Szfranski -- tamarasz@usm.maine.edu
21843: Portland Monday/Wednesday
2:45 - 4:00pm Prof. Jim Messerschmidt -- mschmidt@usm.maine.edu
27476: Portland Tuesday/Thursday
1:15 - 2:30am Prof. Desi Larson -- dlarson@usm.maine.edu
This course explores from a variety of perspectives the following inter-related themes and topics: the economic, political, and social status of women as a group and in discrete cultural contexts; the politics of representation, or how ideas about femininity and feminism are promoted throughout the media and other vehicles of culture; the construction of “consciousness,” both through the media and through feminist tactics; women and collective action in the past, present, and future. Students are expected to practice their writing skills through formal essays. 3 credits
21845: WST 280W: Women, Knowledge & Power
Prof. Sarah Lockridge -- sarah.lockridge@maine.edu
Portland Monday/Wednesday 11:45 - 1:00pm
This course examines the ways in which feminist theory has reconceptualized not only the definition of “women” but the relations among gender, assumptions about the nature and sources of truth, and the implications of both for the ways we experience the world. Who speaks and the ways in which they speak are inseparable from authority and power in private and public realms. We will discuss both kinds of feminist thought and specific examples in religion; the connections of gender, race, class, and culture; and the function of writing and author/ing. We will also engage in creating knowledge and realizing the joy of discovery. Prerequisites: WST 130I or permission of instructor. 3 credits
21877: WST 345: Women Writers Since 1900: Lesbian Fiction
Professor Lisa Walker -- lwalker@usm.maine.edu
Tuesday/Thursday 2:45 - 4:00pm
This course will survey twentieth-century British and American novels by lesbians, exploring how reading and writing have helped to shape lesbian consciousness, community, and culture. Course materials will include texts that have become classics within the lesbian literary tradition, popular texts, and postmodern fiction, as well as critical essays about lesbian literature, identity, and culture. Throughout the course, we will develop and maintain a focus on issues of identity, race, class, and sexuality by discussing topics such as lesbian visibility, feminism, lesbian subcultures, and literary style. Texts May include: Anne Bannon, Beebo Brinker; Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness; Audre Lorde, Zami; Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body; Virginia Woolf, Orlando; Jackie Kay, Trumpet. Prerequisites: ENG 245 or Permission of Instructor- This class is open to those new to the subject and to those of any gender/sexual (non)identity. If you are interested in joining, please contact me by email! 3 credits
21847: WST 355: Maine Women’s Lives
Professor Polly Kaufman -- kaufmain@gwi.net
Portland Tuesday 4:10 - 6:40pm
The course will emphasize two basic themes: first, students will try to identify characteristics of women's lives that appear to be special to Maine; and second, students will place the history of women in Maine in the context of the history of women in the United States. The readings will be from the voices of the women themselves. Each student will also share the story of another Maine women with the class, chosen from the bibliography or through an interview, setting her life story in the context of the themes of the course. 3 credits
27469: WST 390W: Contemporary Feminist Theories
Prof. Susan Feiner – sffein@usm.maine.edu
Portland Wednesday 4:10 - 6:40pm
This course will provide a survey of several contemporary feminist frameworks for thinking about sex, gender, and sexuality. Most of our readings will focus on “second” and “third” wave feminist theories dating from 1963 to the present; this is the period in which contemporary feminist theory emerges. In the beginning of the course, we will put these readings in historical context with reference to early and “first wave” feminism. As the course progresses, we will ask how various social institutions, such as law and government, the family, and education, are constructed through gender. We will connect gender to race, sexuality, and class, and consider how activist movements have imaged and effected change in the ways institutions are shaped around these categories. The specific strands of feminism we will study may include Marxist feminist theory, Black feminist theory, French feminist theory, feminist film theory, and “post-feminist” theory. Prerequisites: WST 280 or permission of instructor. 3 credits
27475: WST 455 /ANE 599 American Contexts of Witchcraft
***Fulfills Pre-1800 requirement for WST majors***
Professor Lorrayne Carroll -- lorrayne@usm.maine.edu
Monday 4:10-6:40pm
This course focuses on the figure of the witch and on representations of witchcraft in American contexts, ranging from the seventeenth century to the present. Course materials include legal documents, fiction, poetry, plays, visual artifacts, film, and essays. Central questions in the seminar address the ways in which witchcraft and witches serve as outsider images, reinforcing, extending, or resisting powerful social and cultural discourses, particularly those of gender, race and class. The course will also examine how witchcraft poses epistemological problems for those who seek to shape the narrative of the witch: witch hunters, prosecutors, apologists, and historians. The readings offer complex constructions of the witch as threat, enigma, healer – a nexus of unknowable powers. As well the course materials provide a range of institutional, public, private and personal responses to witch figures. The witch, considered in these ways, serves as a lens through which we might view some historical and contemporary ways of making knowledge. 3 credits
21869: WST 470: Independent Study
This course provides junior and senior students with the opportunity to pursue a project independently, concentrate on a particular subject of concern, or conduct individually arranged reading or research studies under the advice and direction of a faculty member. Prerequisite: junior or senior standing and permission of the director. 3 credits
23923: WST 485: Internship
Professor Wendy Chapkis -- chapkis@usm.maine.edu
Students will have the opportunity to do an internship or a thesis. The internship requires students to work closely with a group, business, or organization for one semester, after which they will report to the Women's Studies Council. Prerequisites: senior standing and Women's Studies major or minor. 4-6 credits
21873: WST 486: Thesis
Professor Wendy Chapkis -- chapkis@usm.maine.edu
Students will have the opportunity to do a thesis or an internship. The thesis allows students to pursue guided research on a topic of their choosing. The minimum length for a thesis is 30 pages, and it should include a substantial bibliography. Thesis students should choose three readers, including an advisor whose interests and scholarship are in line with their own. Prerequisites: senior standing and Women's Studies major or minor. 4 credits
21875: WST 490: Capstone Experience in Women & Gender Studies
Professor Wendy Chapkis -- chapkis@usm.maine.edu
Friday 9:30 - 11:30am
All majors are required to select a capstone experience, with the guidance of their advisor, from the following two options: WST 485 or WST 486. Students enrolled in either option are required to participate in a bi-weekly seminar. Students are expected to co-enroll in WST 490 and WST 485 or 486. Offered in the spring semester only. 2 credits
WOMEN & GENDER STUDIES RELATED ELECTIVE COURSES
xxxxx: ARH 311: Gender Identity and Modern Art
Professor Donna Cassidy -- cassidy@maine.edu
Gorham Monday 4:10 - 6:40pm
This course examines the construction of gender and sexuality in Western visual arts from the late eighteenth century to the present. Students will analyze both the art and art criticism of the period, focusing on the work of female, feminist, and gay artists. 3 credits
xxxxx: CMS 486: Women in Film
Professor Rebecca Lockridge -- lockridg@maine.edu
Gorham Tuesday 4:10 - 6:40pm
This course will explore the depiction of women in film. Films will be analyzed in the context of the political and ideological subtexts they contain. The purpose of the analysis is to understand a film and to be able to relate it to the society that it reflects and sometimes affects. Prerequisite: COM 102J and junior or senior standing/ instructor permission. 3 credits
xxxxx: SOC 365: Sociology of the Body
Professor Wendy Chapkis -- chapkis@usm.maine.edu
Portland Tuesday 7:00 - 9:30pm
This course examines the body as a text marked by, and rendered meaningful through, such social categories as race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and disease. Course materials include social theory, autobiography and fiction to explore how hierarchical distinctions are written on the body and, in turn, how such ?natural? differences are then used to explain and to justify social inequality. Students will learn to assess social constructionist and biological determinist explanations for such differences and inequalities. Prerequisites: SOC 21E/W or permission of instructor. 3 credits.
xxxxx: SOC 365H: Sociology of Women’s Work
Professor Cheryl Laz -- cherlaz@usm.maine.edu
Portland Tuesday 1:15 – 3:45pm
This course will introduce students to theoretical and empirical literature on women’s work in the aid labor force, on their unpaid labor in the home, and on the relationship between these two kinds of “women’s work.” The course emphasizes the diversity of women’s work and the interconnections among race-ethnicity, class, and gender through a detailed examination of professional women, blue-collar women, and “pink-collar” employees. Additional topics include occupational segregation, earnings differentials, poverty, law and public policy, and labor militancy. Prerequisite: SOC 210E/W with C or better or permission of instructor. 3 credits
PHI 112E/W: Introduction to Philosophy: Feminist Perspectives
Portland Professor Julien Murphy -- jmurphy@usm.maine.edu
19993: Online: 8:45 - 10:00am
xxxxx: Monday/Wednesday 8:45 - 10:00am
To what extent do cultural assumptions about gender shape a society's notion of rationality and justice? The course explores this question by examining feminist critiques of Western philosophy along with a selection of contemporary anti-sexist and anti-racist theories of social life. Prerequisite: ENG 100C or concurrent. Writing intensive course. 3 credits
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