Course Criteria

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  • 3.00 Credits

    Society Sector. All classes. Leidner. The assignment of gender roles and the creation of gender identities has profound consequences for women and men at every level of society: from their intimate relations, how they manage and participate in the institutions of society, their place in society's stratification systems. This course examines four aspects of gender relations: historical and cross-cultural examples of gender roles; gender relations in contemporary American institutions; theories of sex differences and gender inequality; and movements and policies for gender equality. Some specific topics to be covered are: Women and the economy, women and the professions, working class women, minority women, violence against women, changing male identities, the nature of male power, and women's liberation movement.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes. Platt. All readings and lectures in English. The object of the course is to analyze a series of 19C and 20C novels (and a few short stories) about adultery. Our reading will teach us about novelistic traditions of the period in question and about the relationship of Russian literature to the European models to which it responded. The course begins with a novel not about families falling apart, but about families coming together - Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. We then will turn to what is arguably the most well-known adultery novel ever written, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Following this, we investigate a series of Russian revisions of the same thematic territory that range from "great literature" to pulp fiction, including Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and other works by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Leskov, and Nagrodskaia. As something of an epilogue to the course, we will read Milan Kundera's backward glance at this same tradition in nineteenth-century writing, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In our coursework we will apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic institution, Freudian/Psychoanalytic interpretations of family life and transgressive sexuality, Feminist work on the construction of gender.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Brown. From the sixteenth century, when Native American populations flourished on the North American continent, to the Civil War, when North and South collided over the question of slavery, women have played a critical role in American society. This course traces the history of women and gender in America during this period with special emphasis on the importance of women's reproductive and economic roles to the emergence of ethnic, racial, regional, and socioeconomic categories in the United States. Slides, lectures, and readings drawn from primary documents introduce students to the conditions of women's lives during the colonial and revolutionary periods and to the rise of women's activism in the nineteenth century. In addition, we will consider how dramatic changes in housework, wage labor, female access to public forms of power, and ideas about female sexuality make it difficult to generalize about what is commonly thought of as women's "traditional" or "natural" role.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Distribution Course in Hist & Tradition. Class of 2009 & prior only. Peiss. This course explores how immigration, industrialization, racial segregation, and the growing authority of science transformed the fundamental conditions of women's lives in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Building on previous effforts by female reformers to perfect society, women at the turn of the century organized large social movements dedicated to improving the lives of women and children and gaining public access to political power. We will examine the fruits of this activism as well as the consequences of subsequent events for the rise of several important social movements in the latter half of the century -- including civil rights, women's liberation, and gay rights -- in which women played a vital role. The course concludes with an assessment of feminism in the present day, with special emphasis on the responses of younger women to its legacy.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Distribution Course in Society. Class of 2009 & prior only. Sanday. Diversity is a fact of life, characteristic not only of the US national culture but of the global culture as well. This course introduces anthropological theories of culture and multiculturalism and the method of ethnography. Students will read and report on selected classic readings. After learning the basic concepts, students will be introduced to the method of ethnography. The core of the course will revolve around "doing ethnography" by writing ethnographic fieldnotes on participant/observation of multiculturalism. Students can use their life experience, home communities, or Penn as their field of observation. The goal of the course is to introduce beginning students to public interest anthropology. No background in anthropology is required.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Tracy. This course will examine how statutory law, court decisions and other forms of social policy encourage or discourage various forms of sexuality, reproduction and parenting. Such issues as contraception, abortion, gay and lesbian rights, reproductive technology, family violence, and welfare and family policies will be covered.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes. Hellerstein. This course will introduce Penn students of literature, women's studies, and Jewish studies -- both undergraduates and graduates -- to the long tradition of women as readers, writers, and subjects in Jewish literature (in translation from Yiddish, Hebrew, and in English). By examining the interaction of culture, gender, and religion in a variety of literary works by Jewish authors, from the seventeenth century to the present, the course will argue for the importance of Jewish women's writing. Authors include Glikl of Hameln, Cynthia Ozick, Anzia Yezierska, Kadya Molodowsky, Esther Raab, Anne Frank, and others. "Jewish woman, who knows your life In darkness you have come, in darkness do you go." J. L. Gordon (1890)
  • 3.00 Credits

    Distribution Course in Hist & Tradition. Class of 2009 & prior only. Houser. This class will examine the many roles played by women in ancient Egypt. From goddesses and queens, to wives and mothers, women were a visible presence in ancient Egypt. We will study the lives of famous ancient Egyptian women such as Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Cleopatra. More independent than many of their contemporaries in neighboring areas, Egyptian women enjoyed greater freedoms in matters of economy and law. By examining the evidence left to us in the literature (including literary texts and non-literary texts such as legal documents, administrative texts and letters), the art, and the archaeological record, we will come away with a better understanding of the position of women in this ancient culture.
  • 3.00 Credits

    History & Tradition Sector. All classes. Staff. Southern culture and history from 1607-1860, from Jamestown to seccession. Traces the rise of slavery and plantation society, the growth of Southern sectionalism and its explosion into Civil War. Midterm, short paper (5-7 pages) and final.
  • 3.00 Credits

    Distribution Course in Society. Class of 2009 & prior only. Kano. This seminar deals with issues which such as the cultural and historical constructions of femininity and masculinity; gendered division of education and labor; representation of gender and sexuality in literature, theater, and popular culture; and forms of activism for the rights of women and sexual minorities. This course will use films, videos, and manga, as well as readings from anthropological, historical, literary, and theoretical texts. All readings will be in English, but Japanese materials will be available to those interested.
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