Women Leading New Orleans

Catalog description

From non-profit organizations to government, from social movements to Mardi Gras, from restaurants to boardrooms, women have led New Orleans. Using an intersectional feminist lens, this course will explore how the personal, the organizational, and the institutional intersect to shape how women practice leadership. Students will be introduced to theories and research that address gender and leadership while focusing on historical and contemporary examples of women practicing leadership in New Orleans. The course will begin with a brief introduction to a sociological perspective on gender and intersectionality - foundational concepts of the course - and move into discussions of how and why women lead, as well as barriers they encounter to leadership. Guest speakers, field trips, and writing assignments will ask students to think broadly, but also analytically, about what leadership means, as well as about how identities and institutions shape the experience of leadership.