Caroline Light
Tuesday/Thursday 10:30 am - 11:45 am

This course provides an introduction (in no way exhaustively) to key concepts and texts in the study of women, gender, and sexuality. Together, we will develop a shared vocabulary to help prepare you for advanced study in the concentration. We will become adept in using foundational concepts such as essentialism, historical “waves” of feminism, intersectionality, homonationalism, neoliberalism, borderlands, mestiza consciousness, critical trans studies, and gender as a category of analysis. We will learn to distinguish among various forms of feminism. We will encounter queer theory and feminist approaches to science. Throughout the semester, we will practice applying these concepts to the analysis of primary texts and to events we see all around us and issues with which we grapple on a daily basis. Finally, this course encourages everyone to think and work collaboratively, to co-create productive conversations, and to integrate these theoretical explorations with a critical analysis of the politics of our own multiple locations.