Representing Women and Gender in Literature, Art and Popular Cultures

Catalog description

This course is an interdisciplinary consideration of primary works and scholarship pertaining to women in the humanities and the arts. This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements in Arts and Humanities and fulfills General Education Integrative Studies requirements in both Arts and Humanities, as well as U.S. and International Cultures requirements. It is a prerequisite for upper level courses in the department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This course 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. Class meetings will be a mixture of lectures, group discussions, individual and group exercises, films, and guest speakers. Assigned readings and class meetings are designed to help students reassess predominant modes of thought and to give students tools to appreciate the creative work of highly diverse women. Given that this is an honors section, assignments will be geared towards taking advantage of small class sizes and fully engaged learners to generate dynamic classroom discussions and creative innovation.