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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
In her groundbreaking book, The Tentative Pregnancy, Barbara Katz Rothman writes that "[t]he technological revolution in reproduction is forcing us to confront the very meaning of motherhood, to examine the nature and origins of the mother-child bond, and to replace--or to let us think we can replace--chance with choice." Taking this as our starting point, in this course we will examine a number of conceptual and ethical issues in the use and development of technologies related to human reproduction, drawing out their implications for such core concepts as "motherhood" and "parenthood," family and genetic relatedness, exploitation and commodification, and reproductive rights and society's interests in reproductive activities. Topics will range from consideration of "mundane" technologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), prenatal genetic screening and testing, and surrogacy, to the more extraordinary, including pre-implantation diagnosis (PID), post-menopausal reproduction, post-mortem gamete procurement, reproductive cloning and embryo splitting, and in utero medical interventions. Background readings include sources rooted in traditional modes of bioethical analysis as well as those incorporating feminist approaches.
Prerequisite:
But introductory-level course in Philosophy and/or Women's, Sexuality and Gender Studies highly recommended
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3.00 Credits
From the early twentieth century to the present day, the radical changes in the lives of Spanish women have clearly reflected the tug of war between progress and tradition in recent Spanish history. The dramatic upheavals in Spanish politics have marked and transformed the lives of women to such a great extent that one can often gauge the political and social climate of any given historical moment by considering how the role of women was defined by the law, the Catholic church, education, and other social and political institutions. Using literary and historical texts as well as films and graphic materials, this course will look at the transformations in the public and private lives of Spanish women during the following periods: the turn of the century, the Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War, the Franco years, and the transition to democracy.
Prerequisite:
Spanish 201, permission of the instructor, or acceptable results of the Williams College Placement Exam
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3.00 Credits
The global pandemic of HIV/AIDS is now entering into its fourth decade. Throughout this history sexuality, gender and race and inequality have played a central role in the spread of the virus, and its apparent entrenchment in certain communities. This class will use a gendered, interdisciplinary perspective to investigate the pandemic's social, economic and political causes, impact, and conundrums -- the problems it poses for scholarship, activism, public policy, and public health. Issues discussed will include the role of transaction sex and economic structures in both susceptibility to HIV and vulnerability to its impact; stigma and its challenges for HIV prevention, testing and treatment uptake; the role of positive youth in the next stages of the pandemic; and the evolving expressions of biopower in the global AIDS response. The class will look at examples of successful policies and activism as well as the failures, corruption and complacency that have characterized the global pandemic. There will be a particular geographical focus on experiences in the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa. The class is an EDI course because of its focus on diversity and difference, as they shape the different ways that the HI virus plays out on the bodies of people in different global locations, and its discussion of the ways that global and local contexts of colonialism. patriarchy, and heteronormativity have inevitably shaped relationships between policy makers, researchers, activists, and those living with HIV and ultimately the content of their policies and interventions.
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3.00 Credits
The celebration of "courtly love" by medieval and Renaissance writers institutionalized the notion of the desiring male subject and the desired female object that continues to reverberate in contemporary culture. But early writers do not always, or even usually, endorse these positions uncritically, and even works that celebrate heterosexual love devote surprisingly large spaces to other kinds of desire. The Lover in the Romance of the Rose seeks to win the Rose, but it is the male God of Love he kisses on the mouth. Shakespeare's As You Like It and Twelfth Night end in multiple marriages, but the plots revolve around cross-dressing and gender confusion. We will supplement literary readings with both medieval and contemporary theoretical texts. The aim of the course is to sharpen critical reading and writing skills across a broad range of literary forms and historical, cultural and aesthetic values. As part of the Exploring Diversity Initiative, this course focuses on varieties of sexual desire in major pre- and early-modern works, and the challenges they offer to our own contemporary values and assumptions.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level English course, or a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement examination in English Literature or a 6 or 7 on the International Baccalaureate
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3.00 Credits
This course examines debates in feminist theory about the relationship between science, gender and power in politics. On the one hand, shifting conceptions of gender have strongly influenced the development of the sciences in modernity: for example, feminists have argued that attempts to authorize science above other modes of knowing often implicitly or explicitly cast women as objects, not subjects, of knowledge. On the other hand, shifting conceptions of science have strongly influenced the development of feminist theory and practice: for example, debates about reproductive rights are often couched in terms of a conflict between reliable scientific knowledge of embryos, STDs, etc. and an unscientific, patriarchal worldview. Under what conditions can science and technology serve to transform, and under what conditions to reinforce, power imbalances based on gender, race, and sexuality? Should feminist theory embrace objectivity and model itself upon scientific procedures of knowledge production, or should feminists eschew objectivity as a myth told by the powerful about their own knowledge-claims and develop an alternative approach to knowledge? What is "objectivity" anyway, and how has this norm changed through history? Rather than treating science as a monolith, we will endeavor to understand the implications of various sciences--as enacted and imagined in various historically specific situations--for gender and politics. Readings may include texts by Rene Descartes, Andreas Vesalius, Londa Schiebinger, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Helen Longino, Nancy Harstock, Sandra Harding, bell hooks, Donna Haraway, Mary Hawkesworth, Octavia Butler, and more.
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3.00 Credits
The story of the gypsy femme fatale Carmen has endured for over 150 years. In Western culture she exemplifies the seductive, exotic, independent, and forbidden woman who drives an upstanding man to a life of crime and finally murder. This course explores a broad array of treatments of this archetypal narrative, starting with Prosper Merimee's 1845 novella on which Bizet based his beloved 1875 opera Carmen. We will consider various staged and film versions of the opera itself, including Francesco Rosi's stunning 1984 movie, and discuss various other film transformations of the story, from DeMille's 1915 silent film through Hammerstein's 1954 all-black musical Carmen Jones, to the MTV version A Hip Hopera of 2004. Comic approaches will also be assessed, from Charlie Chaplin's Carmen Burlesque of 1915 through Spike Jones' 1952 Carmen Murdered! and The Naked Carmen of 1970. We will explore remarkable dance interpretations ranging from Carlos Saura's 1983 flamenco version through David Bourne's choreography in his 2001 gay reading called The Car Man. This course satisfies the EDI requirement through a critical examination of the way in which the Carmen story has served as a stage on which multifaceted textual and musical constructions and conflicts of individual and group identities, encompassing gender and sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and class are played out.
Prerequisite:
Ability to read music useful but not necessary
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3.00 Credits
This course examines the relationship between body, gender, and religion or community in South Asia, using three countries--India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh--and three major religions--Induism, Buddhism, and Islam--as its focus. It begins by unpacking the critical theories in which the human body serves as map for society and vice versa. It then examines the South Asian discourses linking body with nation, population, or purity. It explores a South Asian sociology of the body that occasions solidarity as well as social suffering and structural violence. Along the way, it looks at a diverse set of practices that count or control bodies to produce social cohesion including yoga, sex selection, family planning, monasticism, and fundamentalism. The body emerges as a lens through which to view the production of a politics of identity as much as fragmentation or social hierarchy.
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3.00 Credits
A social history beginning with art of the pre-Revolutionary period and ending with realism. Major topics include changing definitions of neoclassicism and romanticism, the impact of the revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848, the Napoleonic Empire, the shift from history painting to scenes of everyday life, landscape painting as an autonomous art form and attitudes toward race and sexuality. The course stresses French artists such as Greuze, Vigee-Lebrun, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Gericault, Corot, and Courbet, but also includes Goya, Constable, Turner, and Friedrich.
Prerequisite:
ArtH 101-102 or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
A social history of French painting from 1860 to 1900, beginning with the origins of modernism in the work of Courbet and Manet. Among the topics to be discussed are the rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III; changing attitudes toward city and country in Impressionist and Symbolist art; the impact of imperialism and international trade; the gendering of public spaces, and the prominent place of women in representations of modern life. The course addresses vanguard movements such as Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and the styles of individual artists associated with them, as well as the work of academic painters.
Prerequisite:
ArtH 101-102
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3.00 Credits
In this tutorial, we will read four novels written between 1850 and 1900, all of which focus on the figure of the adulteress: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856), Lev Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1873-77), Leopoldo Alas y Ure?a's La Regenta (1884-85), and Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest (1894). For each week of class, students will read one of these primary texts, as well as a selection of secondary literature that will allow us to understand, over the course of the semester, how and why the adulteress played a key role in the cultural imagination of Europe during this time. All works will be read in English translation.
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