ºìÐÓÖ±²¥app

2024-2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024

WGSS 101 Disorderly Women
"Disorderly Women" is a term used by labor historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall to describe the collectivity of working-class women in southern Appalachia. We will begin our course by reading Hall's 1986 article before rapidly expanding our scope to emphasize the enormous energy created by the feminist movement in the United States. We will think about race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and more to provide various angles on the opportunities and problems posed through the questions of feminism(s). We will look at activist work, academic scholarship, art, music, fiction-writing, editing, and the many avenues by and through which women fought for civil rights, freedom, and autonomy at all scales and sites (domestic, local, state, national, regional, international, global). Especially with the recent political repression around the overturning of Roe V. Wade, we will treat this course as an intervention in the present by way of the past. Our central guiding texts will be from Black Feminist activist-intellectuals such as Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Toni Cade Bambara, first published in the 1980s.

AMST 200 Disorderly Women
"Disorderly Women" is a term used by labor historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall to describe the collectivity of working-class women in southern Appalachia. We will begin our course by reading Hall's 1986 article before rapidly expanding our scope to emphasize the enormous energy created by the feminist movement in the United States. We will think about race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and more to provide various angles on the opportunities and problems posed through the questions of feminism(s). We will look at activist work, academic scholarship, art, music, fiction-writing, editing, and the many avenues by and through which women fought for civil rights, freedom, and autonomy at all scales and sites (domestic, local, state, national, regional, international, global). Especially with the recent political repression around the overturning of Roe V. Wade, we will treat this course as an intervention in the present by way of the past. Our central guiding texts will be from Black Feminist activist-intellectuals such as Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Toni Cade Bambara, first published in the 1980s.

AMST 200 Queer Communities
This course investigates how queer communities (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, 2-Spirit, and more...) have survived and thrived across 20th century and into the 21st. This course will interrogate an interdisciplinary mix of historical, ethnographic, and cultural texts to chart the emergence of queer community spaces and activism from the early 20th century to Stonewall to the AIDS crisis to gay marriage debates to contemporary concerns. A major focus of this course will be the examination of how queerness and transness intersect with race, indigeneity, religion, and more. A primary question guiding the class is: How do people marginalized in multiple and intersecting ways carve out livable lives, find moments of pleasure, and build community?

WGSS 200 Feminist Pract, Writing & Rsrc
Building upon the key concepts and modes of inquire introduced in the WGSS Introductory course, WGSS 200 deepens students’ understanding of how feminist perspectives on power, experience, and inequality uniquely shape how scholars approach research questions, writing practices, methods and knowledge production. Approaches may include feminist approaches to memoir, oral histories, grassroots and online activism, blogging, visual culture, ethnography, archival research, space, art, literary analysis, and policy studies.Prerequisite: 100 or 208, which can be taken concurrently.

WGSS 202 Queer Communities
This course investigates how queer communities (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, 2-Spirit, and more...) have survived and thrived across 20th century and into the 21st. This course will interrogate an interdisciplinary mix of historical, ethnographic, and cultural texts to chart the emergence of queer community spaces and activism from the early 20th century to Stonewall to the AIDS crisis to gay marriage debates to contemporary concerns. A major focus of this course will be the examination of how queerness and transness intersect with race, indigeneity, religion, and more. A primary question guiding the class is: How do people marginalized in multiple and intersecting ways carve out livable lives, find moments of pleasure, and build community?

AMST 401 Research and Methods in Am St
This integrative seminar focuses on the theory and methods of cultural analysis and interdisciplinary study. Students examine the origins, history, and current state of American studies, discuss relevant questions, and, in research projects, apply techniques of interdisciplinary study to a topic of their choosing. Prerequisite: 303, Senior American studies major, or permission of the instructor.

Spring 2025

AMST 101 American Childhood
Cross-listed with WGSS 202-01. Drawing from history, literature and art, this course will explore the changing meanings of childhood in the United States, from the 19th century through the present. We will pay particular attention to the ways that concepts of the "child" and "childhood innocence" change dramatically dependent upon time period, gender, race, and class.

AMST 200 Fat Studies
Cross-listed with WGSS 206-01. This course introduces students to an emerging academic field, Fat Studies. By drawing from historical, cultural, and social texts, Fat Studies explores the meaning of fatness within the U.S. and also from comparative global perspectives. Students will examine the development of fat stigma and the ways it intersects with gendered, racial, ethnic and class constructions. Not a biomedical study of the "obesity epidemic," this course instead will interrogate the very vocabulary used to describe our current "crisis." Finally, students will become familiar with the wide range of activists whose work has challenged fat stigma and developed alternative models of health and beauty.

WGSS 202 American Childhood
Cross-listed with AMST 101-01. Drawing from history, literature and art, this course will explore the changing meanings of childhood in the United States, from the 19th century through the present. We will pay particular attention to the ways that concepts of the "child" and "childhood innocence" change dramatically dependent upon time period, gender, race, and class.

WGSS 206 Fat Studies
Cross-listed with AMST 200-01.