Women's & Gender Studies Courses
WGST110. Gender History & Social Issues
The course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of women, gender, and sexuality (WGSS) studies by exploring social and historical issues through a gender lens. Students will study scholarly essays and monographs in addition to primary texts to discern key questions, theories, and practices in WGSS. One of the primary objectives of the course is to instigate and develop independent, critical thinking about issues of gender, sexuality, and social action around gender and sexual inequity. Students will explore key roles that gender and sexuality play as both individual markers of identity and collective and systematic mechanisms of societies and cultures. In addition to studying historical and social issues to understand how women and men have acted as historical and social agents, how they have questioned their historical and social roles, and how they have contributed to historical and social change. In particular, we will consider how the intersectionality of class, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, and spirituality affect perceptions, experiences and socio-cultural practices. FHCI, WI.
WGST115. Gender, Representatio, Culture
The course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of women, gender, and sexuality (WGSS) studies through a detailed exploration of cultural representations of gender. One of the primary objectives of the course is to instigate and develop independent, critical thinking about issues of gender and social action around gender inequity. We will explore key roles that gender plays as both individual marker of identity and collective structuring mechanism of our culture. Gender is a notion that confounds and confuses us, in no small part because it seems naturalized to our body types of male and female. However, we have a multiplicity of bodies and genders at work in the world even as we try and understand them within the standard discourses of male and female, masculine and feminine. To understand how gender works, we will study a series of written and visual texts that demonstrate the breadth and depth of gender issues in representation. But we will also examine how artists across genres create depictions of gender through formal and aesthetic strategies. 3 credits. FAES, SI.
WGST295. Selected Topics
Selected topics in Women's and Gender Studies. The topics will vary from semester to semester. May be repeated for credit when topics change. 1-3 credits.
WGST373. Reproductive Justice
Students will explore the framework of “reproductive justice” (RJ), which combines “reproductive rights” with “social justice” to address the needs of marginalized groups, particularly women of color, indigenous people, and trans* persons. Students will use a variety of disciplinary lenses (socio-cultural, gender and sexuality, economic, political and legal, scientific and medical) in order to explore such RJ topics as sterilization abuse, population control, domestic violence, incarceration, childcare, poverty, welfare rights, and infant and maternal mortality. Pre-requisites: Completion of FHCI. 3 credits
WGST390. Directed or Independent Study
Must be approved by the head of the department. May be repeated as 391. 1-18 credits.
WGST395. Special Topics in WGST
Specialized courses on a variety of topics that may be offered periodically. 1-6 credits.
WGST489. Directed Study
Symposium in Women's Studies sponsored by the Washington Center. 40 to 60 hours of lectures, panel discussions, workshops, site visits, and bi-weekly discussion groups over a 2 to 3 week period in Washington, D.C. Prerequisites: two courses in Women's and Gender Studies, 2.5 GPA, and approval of the Director of Women's and Gender Studies. The work done in the Symposium will be evaluated by a faculty member designated by the Program Directors, and cannot be double-counted at Longwood to meet the requirements of other disciplines. 2-3 credits.
WGST490. Directed or Indpendent Study
Must be approved by the program directors. 1-18 credits.
WGST492. Internship Women's Study
Directed practice in a public, private, or community agency or organization which has as one of its goals the improvement of the status of women. Students work with an on-site supervisor who guides their internship in collaboration with a faculty liaison appointed by the Director of Women's and Gender Studies. Prerequisites: two courses in Women's and Gender Studies and 2.5 GPA. 1-6 credits.
WGST495. Special Topics
Selected topics in Women's and Gender Studies. The topics may vary from semester to semester. May be repeated for credit when topics change. 1-6 credits.
