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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
Western society is rife with messages linking self-worth with physical appearance; this is a phenomenon encapsulated by Objectification Theory. Within a multicultural context, this course explores the process whereby sexual objectification occurs, as well as the resulting psychological consequences. By taking this course, students will increase understanding of all aspects of Objectification Theory, including original theory, primary research, and clinical practice.
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4.00 Credits
This course examines males' diverse experiences as boys/men and public discourses about men and masculinities. The major goal of this course is to examine how the gendered social order influences men's actions and the way men perceive themselves, other men, women, and social situations. We will also consider how masculinities are produced in various physical/social sites and will evaluate the prospects for social change in how men think, feel, and act. The course addresses issues such as: male socialization and boyhood/guyland culture, media representations of boys and men, male body image, male sexuality, male aggression and violence, men of color and their experiences, and the social construction of masculinities in different historical and cultural contexts.
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4.00 Credits
This course examines males' diverse experiences as boys/men and public discourses about men and masculinities. The major goal of this course is to examine how the gendered social order influences men's actions and the way men perceive themselves, other men, women, and social situations. We will also consider how masculinities are produced in various physical/social sites and will evaluate the prospects for social change in how men think, feel, and act. The course addresses issues such as: male socialization and boyhood/guyland culture, media representations of boys and men, male body image, male sexuality, male aggression and violence, men of color and their experiences, and the social construction of masculinities in different historical and cultural contexts.
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2.00 Credits
This course will provide cross-disciplinary understanding of different forms of slavery and their current prevalence in the United States and throughout the world (as sex-trafficking, forced labor, child soldiers, and similar). We will identify connections between historical slavery and modern-day practices of human trafficking, focusing on issues of economics, power, human rights, abolition, and legislation. Our readings will include first-person narratives, abolition materials, scholarly articles, case studies, and government reports and legislation. We will also watch several documentaries and follow prominent anti-slavery campaigns.
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4.00 Credits
This past October, in a South Carolina high school, a Black teenage girl was violently flipped out of her desk chair by the school resource officer while her Black male teacher passively looked on. The schoolteacher had called the officer because this Black teenage girl refused to put away her phone or some other typical teenage behavior. The video of this incident was captured on phones by other students in the class and spread like wild fire over social media. Quickly-too quickly-a cacophony of voices rose to justify the officer's excessive use of force, while others cried out in anger and pain at the violence enacted on this Black teenage girl. Why was the national outcry over this incident so mixed? This course sets out to investigate a set of complex question: does the U.S. deny Black women love? What is the relationship between love and citizenship? Why are Black women both vilified in the news media and sexually glorified in music videos? Through a variety of disciplinary perspectives-history, law sociology, cultural anthropology, visual art and literature-we will focus on the key issues of Black feminist theory that can help shed light on the longevity of public policies and laws put into place during slavery that allows for the systematic abuse of Black women and how this manifest today in law, education, culture and society. This course will begin by investigating Black female stereotypes-such as jezebel, sapphire and the mammy and their more recent manifestations such as welfare queen and baby mama-and how these manifest in the court of law, political speeches and in stand-up acts by popular Black comedians to understand how sexism, class oppression and racism deny Black women basic human rights.
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2.00 Credits
Focusing on cultural, social, and historical dimensions of romantic love, this course examines representations of romantic love in film, video, music, literature, and art. In what ways is romantic love culturally depicted and framed? How is it interpreted and internalized? Why are stories about romantic love so popular: the perfect soul mate, the consummate kiss, the happy ending? We'll explore romantic fantasies in all of their cultural forms to better understand how the centrality of romantic love in our culture and popular culture contributes to the centrality of romantic love in our lives. For all of you who love a good love story but are still confused about what love really is, and isn't, this course is for you.
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2.00 Credits
This class will explore the phenomenon of women warriors, or strong female characters in literature and (popular) culture. We will start with antiquity and skip along through the ages as our readings and whims dictate. We will interrogate the existence and persistence of the woman warrior and juxtapose her with the "traditional" male warrior. By the end of May Term, you will have an increased appreciation for and depth of understanding of women warriors across time and cultures; be able to articulate the role of women warriors in contemporary culture; and have a working definition of a "woman warrior."
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2.00 Credits
Can we be human without loving and being loved? Does our gender affect our needs in loving relationships? What are the ethical issues of desire? This course will examine issues of love, sex, sexuality and identity. To do this, we will draw on several different strains of western Philosophy as well as contemporary media in the form of films and images. The goal of this course is to encourage you not only to grapple with some great philosophical texts but also to engage in personal reflection and enriching class discussion over some key and often volatile issues in philosophy and culture.
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4.00 Credits
Video games have emerged in the 21st century as one of the most watched spectator sport. If you are not a gamer, this may not make sense to you, but with an annual revenue of $71 billion a year, watching people play video games is fast becoming the favorite go to sport for most U.S. Americans. Pro-gamers compete for hundred thousand dollar prizes and they receive sponsorships that can be worth millions. But to view the video game medium as only an economic force denies the complicated nature of gaming. In popular culture, gaming is the domain of nerdy teenagers, but video game conventions demonstrate that the average player is, well, everyone. Gamers are sweaty pimply teenagers, housewives, doctors-both the MD and PhD kind-women and men scantily dressed and hipsters to name a few. Video games appeal to folks across age, race, gender and social class. With shooter games like Call of Duty, fantasy role playing games like Dragon Age, successful indie games like Undertale, and literary gaming such as Firefly, Poems that go, video games are hybrid visual, digital, material that requires a methodology of its own. Academics have been studying video games and video game culture since the first Atari hit the market. Studying not only how it shapes other art forms, such as film, novels, poems, visual arts, but also how it codes humanity into the digital world. This course focuses on the critical analysis of social issues in video games. Class time will be split between playing across different video game genres (such as role-playing video games, action-adventure, life simulation games, strategy video games, sports games, music games, literary hypertexts, etc.) and participating in current academic debates around gaming and game studies. Class discussions will engage with the ludic and narrative elements of game theory from an interdisciplinary perspective that considers video games as cultural artifacts, an economic powerhouse, educational tools, as drivers of technical innovation and works of art.
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4.00 Credits
This course aims to study the evolution of sex in mainstream films through a selection of U.S. films from the late 1920s to our present time. We begin with the pre-code Hollywood era. These films were made between the introduction of sound and the adoption and enforcement of the Motion Picture Guidelines, better known as the Hayes Code, which censored overt depictions of sex, illegal drug use and extreme violence. The films chosen from this period explore strong female characters whose sexuality and violent behavior are seen as heroic. This course then moves on to the sexploitation films of the 1960s. Filled with gratuitous nudity and outrageous plots, these films both embrace and abuse the ideology of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Although emerging at around the same time as Sexploitation films, the Golden Age of Porn depicts non-simulated sex acts on film. These films were shown across the U.S. in regular movie theaters. Norman Mailer described this period in American film as "living in a world between crime and art." This brief, and some would argue, magical moment in the American film industry lasted from 1972 until 1975 when the US Supreme Court began to effectively crack down on "obscene films". With the law hot on their tracks and the mass-market effect of the VCR, non-simulated sex films went underground. This course ends with the recent turn towards non-simulated sex on films of the last ten years. The films selected for this section of the course bring together the fearless approach to sexuality of the pre-code era, the fun, and, in some cases, exploitative nature of Sexploitation and the graphic depiction of the Golden Age of Porn. One of the goals of this course is to explore what sex on film can teach us about social conventions in relationship to law, science, politics and religion. The pedagogical and theoretical approach of this course is through a feminist perspective and looks at how feminists discuss sex on film. Some feminists take a militant stance that sex on film-regardless of its artistic qualities-are always misogynistic. But there are other feminists who believe that there is value (and dare I say virtue) in depicting simulated and non-simulated sex on films. This point of conflict-what is the social/artistic/political worth/meaning of sex-will fuel many of our conversations. Please note that most of these films have been banned (at one time or another) and, in some cases, the filmmakers and actresses/actors arrested due to obscenity laws in the U.S. and abroad.
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