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Introduction to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS 1101)
Total Credits:
3
Lecture Credits:
3
Description:
This class uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine some of the core themes, questions, and findings of “Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies” scholarship. You will use readings, digital resources, and class discussion to explore the significance of gender and sexuality across a range of human experiences. You will consider women and LGBTQIA+ populations, in particular, and how their lives have been shaped by gender and sex inequities. Focusing on women and LGBTQIA+ populations as a force in social change, you will also explore how persons whose lives are shaped by injustice are also profoundly resilient.
Topical Outline:
1. Overview of the key theoretical and political movements that give rise to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as a Discipline
2. Systems of power, privilege, and inequity
3. Social construction of gender, sex, and sexuality
4. Intersectionality of gender, sexuality, race, class, dis/ability, nationality, and other markers of identity and experience
5. Social institutions and gender (might include analyses of the family, law and politics, the prison, media, etc.)
6. A brief outline of feminist and LGBTQ activism
Learning Outcomes:
1. Examine theories, debates and issues that are central to the field of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and evaluate their applicability to real-life situations.
2. Understand the ways in which gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, and nationality, etc., are linked and how such intersections shift across time and space
3. Analyze how meanings of gender and sexuality vary across human experiences and are at work within their own lives
4. Describe how narratives of gender and sexuality are related to broader socioeconomic, political, and cultural forces
5. Recognize the critical value in centering the experiences, perspectives, and issues of women and gender outsiders.
Prerequisites:
Placement into
READ 0200 or
ESOL 0052 or completion of
READ 0100 or
ESOL 0042
MnTC: