Representing Women and Gender in Literature, Art and Popular Cultures

Catalog description

Interdisciplinary consideration of primary works and scholarship pertaining to women in the humanities and the arts. WMNST 106N Representing Women and Gender in Literature, Art and Popular Cultures (3) (GA;GH;US;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This is an introductory survey course that fulfills General Education Integrative Studies requirements in humanities and arts, and also fulfills United States and International Cultures requirements. The course is a prerequisite for upper level women's studies courses. WMNST 106N is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, with an emphasis on the experiences, achievements, and status of women in the arts and humanities in the U.S. and global context. While providing a broad overview of scholarly research and theory pertaining to women and gender, students will also see many examples of contemporary women's creative practice through the visual arts, media, and popular culture. Students will learn about the challenges women artists have faced in making their way in a male-dominated arts and media industry; they will learn how these artists sought and continue to seek new languages and forms, whether in paint, words, film, music, crafts, to reassess and re-imagine notions of sex and sexuality, gender, race and ethnicity that underlie many forms of social injustice. Depending on the location where the course is taught, class meetings may be a mixture of lectures, group discussions, individual and group exercises, films, and guest speakers. Assigned readings and class meetings may be designed to help students reassess predominant modes of thought and to give students tools to appreciate the creative work of highly diverse women. Depending again upon location, evaluation methods will include a balanced selection from among short papers, longer research papers, journals, book reviews, quizzes, exams, group assignments and other creative activities.