Lecture and discussion. Introduction to the ways in which femininity and masculinity have been represented in literature and constructed in culture. The new interdisciplinary scholarship on gender analyses is presented in works of literature, film, social science, and contemporary theory.

An introduction to women's health across the life span; course emphasizes the scientific basis of present knowledge. Instructors integrate biology with sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, medicine, and women's studies to explore the diverse influences on women's health.

Enrollmet limited to 20. Prerequisite: the instructor's permission. The important contributions to feminist thought in the West, evaluated through critical discussion. Analysis of works by Mary Wollstonecraft, Emma Goldman, Anna Cooper, Radclyffe Hall, C. P. Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, and others in an attempt to discover the roots of the contemporary feminist movement.

Enrollmet limited to 20. Prerequisite: the instructor's permission. Contemporary issues in feminist thought. A review of the theoretical debates on sex roles, feminism and socialism, psychoanalysis, language, and cultural representations. Authors include Simone de Beauvoir, J. S. Mill, A. Kollantai, Zora Neale Hurston, and others.

An examination of the experiences of African American women from slavery through the present. Emphasis will be on the history and historiography of these experiences, as well as on critical issues facing African-American women today.

A seminar investigating the significance of social, political, and cultural conflict centered on issues concerning women's lives.

Explores selected texts written by Asian American women from diverse backgrounds, focusing on issues such as identity, gender, generation, race, class, region, and language.

Prerequisites: WMST V1001 and the instructor's permission. A survey of research methods from the social sciences and interpretive models from the humanities, inviting students to examine the tension between the production and interpretation of data. Students receive firsthand experience practicing various research methods and interpretive strategies, while considering larger questions about how we know what we know.

These seminars are directed toward students with previous work in feminist scholarship but are open to all majors. Topics vary with the instructor and students should therefore check with the department each term. For more info, please visit http://www.columbia.edu/cu/irwag/crs/main/introduction/index.html

Spring 2010 Black Feminism: Theory, Politics, Activism Sec. 001, Call #87529, J. Nash, T 2:10p-4:00p, 754 Schermerhorn Ext. Patricia Hill Collins described black feminism as a kind of �critical social theory.� This course is a rigorous examination of the kinds of theory-making, practice, and political activism that has constituted black feminist thought in the last fifty years. By studying black feminist approaches to identity, cultural production, sexuality, and the politics of representation, we will learn about the variety of ways that black feminists have staked out their own analytic terrain. Our approach will be marked by an understanding that black feminism is a contested, vibrant, shifting set of ideas, practices, and politics, not a static set of doctrines. As we trace black feminism's evolution from the Civil Rights era to an ostensibly post-Civil Rights era, we will learn about black feminisms, and we will analyze the panoply of ways that black feminist frameworks have been deployed to imagine a more egalitarian social world.

Spring 2010 Chinese Feminisms in a Global World Sec. 002, Call #98448, D. Ko, L. Liu, and R. Karl, T 4:10-6pm, 754 Schermerhorn Ext. This seminar examines the entanglements between discourses of feminism and modernity in China. In the Post-Mao or Reform period in the PRC (1979-present), Chinese scholars and activists have been engaging in vigorous debates about the roots of female oppression, the nature of femininity, the definitions of �woman� and �human,� the proper relationship between the state and feminism, as well as the role of �the West� in �Chinese� articulations.

The course will cover a range of (mostly U.S. and mostly 20th-Century) materials that thematize gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender experience and identity. We will study fiction and autobiographical texts, historical, psychoanalytic, and sociological materials, queer theory, and films, focusing on modes of representing sexuality and on the intersections between sexuality and race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nationality. We will also investigate connections between the history of LGBT activism and current events. Authors will include Foucault, Freud, Butler, Sedgwick, Anzaldua, Moraga, Smith. Students will present, and then write up, research projects of their own choosing. Enrollment limited to 20 students.

Enrollmet limited to 20. Prerequisite: the instructor's permission. The important contributions to feminist thought in the West, evaluated through critical discussion. Analysis of works by Mary Wollstonecraft, Emma Goldman, Anna Cooper, Radclyffe Hall, C. P. Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, and others in an attempt to discover the roots of the contemporary feminist movement.

Enrollmet limited to 20. Prerequisite: the instructor's permission. Contemporary issues in feminist thought. A review of the theoretical debates on sex roles, feminism and socialism, psychoanalysis, language, and cultural representations. Authors include Simone de Beauvoir, J. S. Mill, A. Kollantai, Zora Neale Hurston, and others.

A critical interpretation of film from a feminist perspective and explanation of the relationship of gender to the language of film.

An examination of the experiences of African American women from slavery through the present. Emphasis will be on the history and historiography of these experiences, as well as on critical issues facing African-American women today.

Discussion of the methods necessary to analyze visual images of women in their historical, racial, and class contexts, and to understand the status of women as producers, patrons, and audiences of art and architecture.

Who or what constitutes the subject of gay and lesbian studies? Explores historical, methodological, and epistemological crisis points of essentialism/constructionism; sexuality across cultures; gender versus sexuality; bisexuality and the binary regimes of hetero/homo and male/female; community; identity; the politics of liberation; the place of feminism in les/bi/gay studies.

Themes include the politics of the canon in Africa, the problems of language, postcolonial counter-discourse, the African-American continuum, and Third World and Western feminism. Readings include novels, short stories, poetry, and drama by Elora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Miriam Tlali, Bessie Head, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Tess Onwueme.

Prerequisites: WMST V1001 and the instructor's permission. A survey of research methods from the social sciences and interpretive models from the humanities, inviting students to examine the tension between the production and interpretation of data. Students receive firsthand experience practicing various research methods and interpretive strategies, while considering larger questions about how we know what we know.

These seminars are directed toward students with previous work in feminist scholarship but are open to all majors. Topics vary with the instructor and students should therefore check with the department each term. For more info, please visit http://www.columbia.edu/cu/irwag/crs/main/introduction/index.html

Spring 2010 Black Feminism: Theory, Politics, Activism Sec. 001, Call #87529, J. Nash, T 2:10p-4:00p, 754 Schermerhorn Ext. Patricia Hill Collins described black feminism as a kind of �critical social theory.� This course is a rigorous examination of the kinds of theory-making, practice, and political activism that has constituted black feminist thought in the last fifty years. By studying black feminist approaches to identity, cultural production, sexuality, and the politics of representation, we will learn about the variety of ways that black feminists have staked out their own analytic terrain. Our approach will be marked by an understanding that black feminism is a contested, vibrant, shifting set of ideas, practices, and politics, not a static set of doctrines. As we trace black feminism's evolution from the Civil Rights era to an ostensibly post-Civil Rights era, we will learn about black feminisms, and we will analyze the panoply of ways that black feminist frameworks have been deployed to imagine a more egalitarian social world.

Spring 2010 Chinese Feminisms in a Global World Sec. 002, Call #98448, D. Ko, L. Liu, and R. Karl, T 4:10-6pm, 754 Schermerhorn Ext. This seminar examines the entanglements between discourses of feminism and modernity in China. In the Post-Mao or Reform period in the PRC (1979-present), Chinese scholars and activists have been engaging in vigorous debates about the roots of female oppression, the nature of femininity, the definitions of �woman� and �human,� the proper relationship between the state and feminism, as well as the role of �the West� in �Chinese� articulations.

The course will cover a range of (mostly U.S. and mostly 20th-Century) materials that thematize gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender experience and identity. We will study fiction and autobiographical texts, historical, psychoanalytic, and sociological materials, queer theory, and films, focusing on modes of representing sexuality and on the intersections between sexuality and race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nationality. We will also investigate connections between the history of LGBT activism and current events. Authors will include Foucault, Freud, Butler, Sedgwick, Anzaldua, Moraga, Smith. Students will present, and then write up, research projects of their own choosing. Enrollment limited to 20 students.