Contemporary Feminist Analysis: The Capstone Senior Seminar

Catalog description

Applied critical analysis of any aspect of society and/or culture from a contemporary feminist perspective. WMNST 492W Current Feminist Issues This course is the capstone course for the Women's Studies major. We keep the course small (15-20 students) and offer it every spring. It is constructed to provide you the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills you have developed in Women's Studies to some of the major topics being addressed in current academic feminist discourse. The first goal of the course is for each student to become familiar with the major arguments and evidence regarding some of the current major topics in feminism. The second goal is for each student to learn more about the multidisciplinary perspectives of women's studies. The third goal of the course is for each student to develop and demonstrate her skill at carrying out feminist scholarship.There are two core elements of the course. The first is class discussion of readings addressing some of the major current feminist issues. Each year a new set of these topics is put together by the instructor, drawing upon the suggestions of other Women's Studies faculty and majors. The second core element of the course is each individual student doing a term paper. Work on these papers will take place both publicly and privately, so that everyone in the course will learn something about how feminist projects are constructed in the various disciplines represented by the students' choices of topics for their papers.Because this is a W course, 2/3 of your grade will be based on writing assignments. Throughout the course, you will write short (2 page) papers on the readings that we will be discussing in our seminars. You will also write a term paper and some preliminary assignments related to it, including a topic justification paper, an annotated bibliography accompanied by a text description of the major themes identified in the bibliography, a class presentation on your paper topic, and the final 10-15 page paper. The other third of your grade will be based on your participation in seminar discussions.