The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
Course Descriptions
Spring 2005
Womens Studies Certificate Program
Coordinator(Acting):
Catherine Silver, Room 5103 (817-8895, 817-8905)
The Certificate in Women’s Studies is available to
students matriculated in the Ph.D. programs at The Graduate Center. Women_s Studies is an interdisciplinary approach to research
and scholarship that draws on various disciplines, while challenging
disciplinary boundaries. The general aim
of the program is to offer critical reflection on the experiences of both women
and men in terms of differences of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity
and nation. Students are prepared to
teach courses and to do research in Women_s Studies and related critical approaches to the
disciplines, such as those developed in Queer Studies, Postcolonial Studies,
and Cultural Studies. Besides focused
course work and guidance in research, Women_s Studies offers participation in a wide range of graduate students and
faculty activities, including lecture series and forums. Students are also invited to participate in
the research programs and seminars at the Center for the Study of Women and
Society at the Graduate Center.
WSCP 81600 -Workshop in Women Studies: Critical
Methodologies/Research
GC W 2:00-4:00 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Profs.
Setha Low & Catherine Silver [66705 [Cross listed with PSYC 80103 and SOC 71100]
Covering the fields of Anthropology, Sociology,
Feminist Theories and Psychoanalysis, this seminar addresses critical issues:
how social reality is created and distorted; how personal anxieties and social
ideologies govern research questions and procedures; how unacknowledged power
and domination in the research setting and between racial, gender and class
groups in the society studied can distort a research agenda. The seminar
addresses ethical and moral issues regarding the boundaries between privacy and
public disclosure, between the “need to know” of the scientist and individuals
ambivalence about sharing personal feelings and ideas. The conflicts and
anxiety that both researchers and subjects face brings to light critical issues
about “objectivity” and the use of “reason” in social research and discloses
the underlying unconscious dynamics and agenda of research projects. The seminar
is organized around the critical discussion of key methodologies: language and
discourse analysis; in depth and clinical interviewing; psychoanalytic
approaches to the research process; ethnographic methods; Visual and media
methodologies, and feminist critical approaches to the intersection of class,
race and ethnicity. Rather than seeing
these methodologies as distinct approaches, the seminar encourages on going
dialogues between them.
We expect students to share their reactions to the
readings, engage in class presentations and write a final paper in the form of
a research paper, a dissertation proposal or a creative paper/essay based on
carrying out some experimental work.
WSCP 80802 -Contemporary Feminist Thought
GC W 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Susan Farrell [66706] [Cross listed with MALS 72200]
Contemporary Feminist Thought provides an introduction
to themes, issues and conflicts in contemporary feminist theory. The course pays particular attention to the
shift from the unifying themes in earlier feminist theorizing to the
destabilizing influences of recent social theory upon feminism. Readings and discussion address the conflicts
within feminism in debates about the category of woman, the politics of
difference, the basis of feminist knowledge, the conception of power, the body,
performances of gender, the stability of sexed and sexual identity and feminist
engagements with mainstream politics.
The course takes an interdisciplinary and transnational approach to
feminist thought and brings the theories to bear upon literature, film, and
scenes of everyday life.
WSCP 81000 -Drugs, Crime and the Criminal Justice System
JJ W 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Barry Spunt [66707] [Cross listed with CRJ 79602]
The main objectives of the course are: (1) to enhance
students' knowledge of the various aspects of the
relationship between specific drugs and crime. (2) to
familiarize students with the research literature on the drugs-crime
connection. (3) to examine the impact of the drug-crime connection on the
criminal
justice system, especially the police, courts, and
prisons. (4) to examine the theoretical and policy implications of drug-crime
connections. .
WSCP 81000 -America in the 1850s: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives
GC R 11:45-1:45 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Marc Dolan [66744] [Cross listed with Eng 75100, MALS 73100 & ASCP 82000]
Has there ever been a more central moment in U. S.
culture than the 1850s? Most obviously
viewed as the decade during which the nation moved toward civil war, the
importance of the 1850s looms large even when that period is viewed from
perspectives not exclusively related to sectionalism or slavery. This was the decade during which American
literature came into its own, not just in the widely noted works of the
“American Renaissance,” but also in the explosion of domestic and sentimental
writing, as well as in the turn from nonfiction to fiction by African American
authors. In performance rather than
print, it was the decade in which the minstrel show—arguably the first
indigenous form of U.S. entertainment—spread throughout the nation, bringing
with it the notable success of the first widely-known American songwriter,
Stephen Foster. American reform changed
forever in the 1850s, as did the nation’s political parties. In this decade, too, the heterogeneity of the
American national character became nearly undeniable, as the changes wrought
during the previous decade by immigration from the east and imperialism in the
west began to show a perceptible impact on the “face” of the United
States. Sectionalism and slavery were
the crucibles into which all these revolutions (and more) were poured, so that
even those phenomena not directly shaped by region or race could not help being
affected by them, and by each other.
Most of our work will be with primary rather than
secondary sources. These sources may
include Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854), John Rollin Ridge (Yellow
Bird)’s Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California
Bandit (1854), Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1855), The Life of P.T.
Barnum as Written by Himself (1855), Herman Melville’s The Piazza Tales
(1856), John Brown’s “Address to the Virginia Court” (1859), Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing (1859), Martin Delany’s Blake
(1859-62), and Abraham Lincoln’s "Address at Cooper Institute"
(1860), as well as selected congressional deliberations over the Compromise of
1850, anti-popery tracts, minstrel songs, and paintings of the Hudson River
School. We will probably also avail
ourselves of the online reconstruction of Barnum’s “Lost Museum.”
Course requirements include class participation, an
oral presentation of original scholarship on U. S. life during the period, and
a final paper that expands on the presentation.
WSCP 81000
-Readings in Afro-American Literacy and Cultural Theory
GC W 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Robert Reid-Pharr [66745] [Cross listed with Eng 85500 & ASCP 81500 ]
In
this course we will ask whether the now well established idea that Black
American literary theory and Black American cultural theory are distinct
(because they are among the only American intellectual traditions built upon
the need to prove the innate humanity of a people) continues to be a useful
point of departure for contemporary students. In particular, we will
pay attention to how the rather significant challenges posed by feminism and
queer theory, cultural studies, postmodern theory and psychoanalysis have
forced many Afro-Americanists to rethink some of their most sacrosanct notions
regarding what does and does not compose Afro-American literature and culture.
The readings will be chosen from a selection of key texts published over
the last two decades. In every case the focus will be on the rather self-conscious
manner in which Afro-Americanists have approached theory and
criticism. That is to say, we will examine in detail the mechanisms
utilized by scholars to announce and maintain Afro-American specificity even as
their efforts become increasingly complex and abstract. Among the authors
whom we will examine are Hazel Carby, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Brent Edwards,
Robert Reid-Pharr, Fred Moten, Samuel Delany, Claudia Tate, Hortense Spillers,
Houston Baker, Anthony Appiah, Manthia Diawara and Toni Morrison. Students
will write a series of short papers and prepare annotated bibliographies in
consultation with the instructor.
WSCP 81000 -Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Colonialism in
Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Behn
GC T 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Tom Hayes [66709] [Cross listed with Eng. 81100]
We will begin with an examination of anti-Semitism in
Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. We
will then discuss racism in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Othello
which will lead us to a discussion of colonialism and sexual difference in
Shakespeare’s Tempest and in Behn’s Orooknoo. We will try to
decide whether these works are inherently anti-Semitic, racist, and
colonialist. We will point out similarities and differences between
anti-Semitism, racism, and colonialism in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and today and we will discuss how we might teach these works in
undergraduate courses. As a coda we will read Coetzee’s Foe.
WSCP 81000 -Reading the Underread: Victorian Women’s
Noncanonical Novels
GC M 11:45-1:45 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Talia
Schaffer [66710] [Cross listed with Eng. 84300]
John Sutherland has pointed out that "the tiny
working areas of the 'canon.' the 'syllabus,' and the paperbacked 'classics'
are poor reflections of what the Victiorian novel actually meant to
Victorians." In spite of the fact that roughly 60,000 works of fiction
were published between 1837 and 1901, "generations of students have left
their academies thinking that this richest of literary fields comprises
half-a-shelf's length of works by Dickens, two Brontes, George Eliot and
Hardy." What happened to the rest, and what can we learn by re-examining a
few of them? This course interrogates the processes of canon formation and
canon revision, inquires about the politics and genres traditionally excluded
from the canon, investigates the potential problems of constructing of a
category called the 'noncanonical,' and monitors case studies of Victorian
women's novels with interestingly vexed relations to canonicity. We will start
with the fascinating case study of Jane Austen's reputation in the early
nineteenth century. We will then look at popular fiction, trying to figure out
what accounted for the enormous appeal of this work and how popularity might
mitigate against a work's survival as the literary marketplace altered and
academic needs developed in the early twentieth century (Corelli, Ouida,
Braddon). We will read domestic realism by Yonge, Craik, and Oliphant,
investigating feminist modes of recovery work and asking just how (and if)
feminism can read work whose politics are either reactionary or indecipherable.
Finally, we will end with two major novels by Malet and Ward, once considered
the two central novelists of the 1890s, now both forgotten, and we will try to
figure out what accounted for the radical decline of these novelists'
reputations by reading contemporary reviews, looking at changes in the
profession of authorship, and thinking about the literary criteria associated
with the advent of modernism. Criticism may include work by John Guillory,
Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, Francis O'Gorman, Gaye Tuchman and Nina Fortin, Peter
Keating, Kate Flint, Deirdre David, Elaine Showalter, Barbara Leah Harman and
Susan Meyers, Ann Ardis, Lyn Pykett. Students give a presentation and a final
paper of 20-25 pages. In that final essay, students will be encouraged to
investigate a case study of their own choosing, either writing about how a
canonical figure like George Eliot maintained her status or else exploring,
through period reviews and other primary documents, just why a given text
became obscure.
WSCP 81000 -Women’s Life-Writing: From Sand to Satrapi
GC R 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Nancy Miller [66711] [Cross listed with Eng.
88000 & Comp. Lit. 88500]
Reading autobiographical
works drawn from several national literatures, we will seek to identify the
“invisible presences” as Woolf termed them in Moments of Being, that
shape the subjects of life-writing and make them who they are. The seminar will
begin in the nineteenth century with George Sand’s Story of My Life and
end in the twenty-first with Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis.
Twentieth-century writers will include Mary Antin, Colette, Virginia Woolf,
Simone de Beauvoir, Natalia Ginzburg, Audre Lorde, Carolyn Steedman, Eva
Hoffman, Jo Spence and Annie Ernaux.
Work for the course, one short paper, one long paper,
and one in-class presentation. One of the presentations may be autobiographical
WSCP 81000 -Migration and
Memory:Invented Selves
GC R 11:45-1:45
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Meena Alexander [66712] [Cross listed with
Eng. 76300]
We will reflect on the metamorphic self the writer
creates, as she or he searches for home through migratory, multiple existences.
The works of fiction and poetry that we study will lead us into sustained
reflection on what Zygmunt Bauman speaks of as the `liquid culture’ of our
transnational era. As part of this task we will pay particular attention to
several complex, interrelated questions -- cultural translation and what it
means for the writer to fabricate a tradition; beauty and the role it
plays in the creation of form, in the aesthetic evocation of violence; trauma
and dislocation, the complexities of how time and the body are grasped and the
centrality, either hidden or overt, of gender, sexuality and race. Is it
possible to speak of a late, postcolonial poetics? What is the interface
between such an emergent poetics and what we think of as American ethnicity?
How to make sense of the fierce self-fashioning that often drives migrant
writing, and with it the yearning for a sometimes impossible home? These are
some of the questions we will attend to. There are three segments which will
come together in this course. A segment, where we read texts such as
Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth; Djebbar’s Women of Algiers in Their
Apartment; Bauman’s Identity; as well as selected essays by Agamben,
Anzaldua,Appadurai, Asad, Bhabha, Caruth, Clifford, Glissant, Seyhan, Soja,
Spivak. A segment on Asian American literature where we read Maxine Hong
Kingston’s Woman Warrior; Theresa Cha’s Dictee; Faye Ng’s Bone;
Li-Young Lee’s The City in Which I Love You; as well as selections from
David Mura, Marilyn Chin, Arthur Sze. A segment on Irish poetry where we read the
poems of Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Paul Muldoon and
Seamus Heaney’s long poem Station Island.
Course Requirements: this course will be conducted as a seminar and as
such will include weekly readings and presentations, one short mid term essay
and one final research paper. The texts will be on order at Labyrinth Books.
WSCP 81000 -Representations of Religious/Racial
Difference in Middle English Texts
GC W 11:45-1:45 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Steven Kruger [66713] [Cross listed with Eng. 70700]
This course is intended as a survey of medieval
English literature, providing students with a sense of the wide range of genres
and texts that characterized literature written in Britain from ca. 1100 – ca.
1500. The majority of texts will be read in the original Middle English (but
students need not have any prior experience with Middle English); we may also
read some Welsh, Irish, Anglo-Norman (French), and Latin texts in translation.
One subject taken up in many of these texts is religion and the differences
among religious traditions – Christianity, Christian heresies (“Lollardy”),
“paganism,” Islam, Judaism – and we will particularly focus on works in which
this subject is central. We will also consider whether religious difference as
represented in medieval texts shares anything with more modern constructions of
racial difference. Texts read for the course may include John Gower’s Confessio
Amantis (in part), William Langland’s Piers Plowman (in part), Cleanness,
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Corpus Christi drama, the Croxton Play
of the Sacrament, Lollard and anti-Lollard polemic, Middle English
romances like The Siege of Jerusalem and Sir Gowther, Thomas
Malory’s Morte Darthur (in part), Anglo-Norman romances, Latin texts
depicting disputations between Christians and Jews, poems by Scottish authors
like Dunbar, Henryson, Douglas, and Lindsay. Students will be expected to do at
least one in-class presentation and write a final essay for the course.
WSCP 81000 -Literature and History
GC T 2:00-4:00 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. David
Kazanjian [66714] [Cross listed with Eng. 80600]
What is the relationship between the historical and
the literary? How do we read literature historically and history literarily? In
this class, we will examine various theoretical paradigms for interpreting the
relationship between history and literature, including those deriving from
literary history, new historicism, historiography, pragmatism, genealogy, and
speech act theory. We will seek to consider literature not merely as a
verifiable object, and history not simply as the context for aesthetics, but
rather to generate a robust relationship between the allegorical and the
archival. We will read theoretical accounts of the relationship between history
and literature by such authors as Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Michel
Foucault, Hayden White, Teresa Brennan, Jacques Derrida, Catherine Gallagher
and Steven Greenblatt, as well as "case studies" of recent literary
and historical criticism that exemplify various ways of cross-reading history
and literature. Most of the case studies will be drawn from the burgeoning
field of transnational American Studies, but this class will be relevant to all
literary periods and fields.
WSCP 81000 -Jane Austin in
Context
GC R 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Rachel Brownstein [66715] [Cross listed with
Eng. 84000]
Since 1975, most scholars
and critics have studied the historical context of Jane Austen’s novels,
considering their relation to the author’s life and family, revolutionary
politics and ideas, Regency society, European wars, and, most notoriously, the
British empire and imperialism. Others have focused on such contexts as print
culture, the tradition of women novelists, and the theatre, or on Austen’s
place in the literary canon and her reception over the years. What has been the effect of these various
contextual emphases on the continuing strong tradition of formalist
readings? Do we read the texts
differently and/or more insightfully now?
We will consider this question, and glance, as well, at the more than
Shakespearean broad appeal and malleability of the novels, those mystifyingly
prolific adaptations and imitations, sequels and “prequels” generated by the
very idea of Jane Austen. (The brand-new Bollywood “Bride and Prejudice” will
be released in the U.S. in December, 2004).
For this seminar we will read or reread the six novels
and the minor works, focusing closely on the texts while sampling critical
approaches to Jane Austen. Students will write brief weekly response papers and
a term paper, and give at least one oral presentation.
I will count on everyone’s
having read Pride and Prejudice before the first meeting of the
seminar, when we will look together at scenes from the 1995 BBC miniseries, and
discuss translating the novel into film.
WSCP 81000 -Black
Postmodernism: African American Fiction since the 1970s
GC R 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Barbara Webb [66790] [Cross listed with Eng.
75700]
A
study of the poetics and politics of postmodernism in the fiction of African
American writers since the 1970s. Although the last three decades of the
twentieth century were undoubtedly the most productive and innovative period in
the development of African American literature and literary criticism, it was
also a period of extreme social and cultural fragmentation in African American
communities. In this course we will examine how African American writers have
addressed the problems of literary representation when faced with increased
commodification of culture and knowledge, the proliferation of new forms of
literacy and orality, and the break down of traditional forms of community. Our
readings will also include some selections not usually considered postmodernist
but that address similar concerns about identity, culture, writing and
possibilities for social change. We will read selected essays by postmodern theorists
such as Lyotard, Jameson, and Hutcheon as well as essays by literary critics
and cultural theorists who have been involved in ongoing discussions about the
relevance of postmodernism for African Americans at the turn of the 21st
century, such as bell hooks, Cornel West, Wahneema Lubiano, and most recently
Madhu Dubey. Primary texts: Ishmael Reed, “Neo-HooDoo Manifesto” and Mumbo Jumbo, Clarence Major, Reflex and Bone
Structure, Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters, John Edgar Wideman, Sent
for You Yesterday, Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pocket like Grains of
Sand, Charles Johnson, Middle Passage, Toni Morrison, Jazz,
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, Nathaniel Mackey, From a Broken
Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, Gayl Jones, The Healing. Requirements:
An oral presentation and a term paper (15-20 pages). The course will be
conducted as a seminar with class discussions of assigned readings and oral
presentations each week.
WSCP 81000 -Women and
Gender in Latin America
GC W 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Susan Besse [66716] [Cross listed with
Hist.76900]
This course will examine
the history of women and gender relations in Latin American and Caribbean
societies, particularly during moments of rapid change. We will draw on a
variety of methodological approaches and pay close attention to the
intersection of race, class, and gender discrimination. Readings and
discussions will center on four broad topics: colonial foundations of
patriarchal relations; gender ideology and nation building; impacts of
capitalist economic development on women and on gender relations; and Latin
American women’s and feminist movements. Within these broad topics fit numerous
themes, including (but not limited to): sexuality and homosexuality, constructions
of masculinity as well as femininity, religion, testimonial literature, and
impacts of revolutionary movements. Assigned readings include those written by
historians, anthropologists, social scientists, literary critics, and political
activists.
WSCP 81000 -Religion and
Modernity in the Middle East
GC W 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Samira Haj [66717] [Cross listed with
Hist.77900]
This seminar will explore
how Muslim thinkers and reformers from the 19th century on came to define an
Islamic modern that is not necessarily compatible with a “western” liberal
vision of modernity. We will discuss the ways in which this vision of an
Islamic modern came to challenge the fixed binaries of modern/traditional,
secular/religious defined by the “west.”
Through a close reading of Orientalist and post-Orientalists as well as
Muslim writings (primary sources), we will try and seek concepts that are
viable and perhaps analytically more useful to the study of modern Islamic
history. Since gender is an essential part of the debate, a special attention
will be given to the subject.
WSCP 81000 -Fashioning the
Self in Social and Cultural Spaces
GC R 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Profs. Joseph Glick & Eugenia Paulicelli
[66718] [Cross listed with IDS.81610]
The course aims to
enrich the dialogue among the disciplines in the social sciences and the
humanities that has characterized the study of fashion and dress. By nature and
definition interdisciplinary, fashion is a field that, more than others, calls
for collaboration and dialogue. Indeed, this course is a manifestation of such
theory and practice.
Scholarship in the
emerging fields of fashion and dress studies has contributed to the
re-conceptualization of the relationship between the public and private selves,
as well as between public and private spaces within modern and post-modern
discourses. In this way the very notions
of “personal” and “public” are redefined in a non-dichotomous and non-hierarchical
relationship, opening spaces for new explorations into psychic life, dreams,
fantasy and their conscious and unconscious manifestations through dress in
visual and cultural spaces. This leads
to one of the central themes of the course: namely, the critical analysis of
issues pertaining to identity formation (national/transnational), the
presentation of the self, the politics of the self’s performances and its
interrelations with race, the body, gender and class. Drawing on a wide range
of sources including critical theory, photography, film, video, art design, pop
music and literature, this course aims at giving a thorough understanding of
fashion as a form of communication and as an industry. The course will pay a
great deal of attention to the impact of fashion on economies and societies in
both the East and West. The class will feature several internationally renowned
guest speakers from the CUNY community and outside.
WSCP 81000 -American
Electoral Politics
GC W 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Frances Fox
Piven [66719] [Cross listed with
Pol. Sci.72901& Soc. 84600]
This course will examine the
interplay between the distinctive American party system, the issues and
cleavages which emerge at different periods in American politics, and the
changing shape of the American electorate, as well as shifting patterns of
electoral alignment. We will begin by considering some of the main perspectives
which purport to explain the behavior of voters, the role of parties, and the
origins of electoral systems. Then we will turn to a review of long term shifts
that have occurred in the United States in the scale of voter participation, in
the class, racial and gender skew of the electorate, and in the cleavages which
organize the electorate, paying particular attention to the character of the
party system that developed after the Civil War, and its persisting impact on
national electoral politics. Lastly, we will turn to developments in American
electoral politics in the past two decades, including the evidence of recent
realignment or dealignment, and changes in the character of the American
parties. Finally, we will consider the prospects for a democratic
reinvigoration of electoral politics in the United States.
WSCP 81000 -Federalism
& State Politics
GC T 4:15-6:15
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Marilyn Gittell [66720] [Cross listed with
Pol. Sci.82401]
The course will discuss
the constitutional, historical, and institutional evolution of American
federalism and the formation of an intergovernmental structure that defines
American politics in the 21st century. The role of centralization and
decentralization of governance structures and the role of civil society in
those communities will be an important part of the discussion. There will also
be an analysis of state politics, policies and institutions, and the ways in
which they are shaped by changes in federalism. Emphasis will be placed on different recent
practices of devolution, as well as on the effect of current factors and events
on state politics. Readings and research papers will compare historical
differences in the political culture of states, local governments, and regions,
including issues of race and gender and their impact on regime politics and the
policy process. There will be an extensive list of readings and a research
paper required.
WSCP 81000 -Women and
Gender in Western Political Thought
GC M 6:30-8:30
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Joan Tronto [66721] [Cross listed with Pol.
Sci.86401]
In
the last generation, feminist theorists have inspired one of the most important
reconsiderations of the canon in Western political theory. Political theorists
generally believed that women had no place in Western political thought and that
gender issues were irrelevant to the great tradition of political theory. . It
is now clear that a variety of important political ideas in the Western
intellectual tradition are constructed upon certain views of women and men,
gender, the family, and assumptions about the relationship of public and
private life. Rather than being peripheral to the study of political thought,
these ideas turn out to be fundamental in shaping the ways that theorists have
viewed political possibilities.This course focuses on selected political
theorists and how their views of women, of gender, of the family, and of the
relationship between public and private life, are integral to their political
theories. Students will learn about the evolving scholarship on these selected theorists,
about issues of interpretation, and about how changing questions transform the
study of political theory. Students will develop an expertise on one theorist.
A long research paper and class presentations will be expected.
WSCP 81000 -Consumer Society
& Consumer Culture
GC W 2:00-4:00
p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Sharon Zukin [66722] [Cross listed with Soc.
84000]
Through common readings, intensive discussions, and
collaborative research, this seminar develops a critical analysis of the “production
of consumption” in terms of institutional structures and cultural fields. We examine the social construction of both
products and desires through various spaces (stores, websites), stories
(autobiography, interviews, personal experience), and texts (consumer guides,
advertisements, reviews), with the view that consumption is a public sphere of
modernity coequal with production and politics, often constructed by and for
women. We will specifically examine these
processes historically across gender, ethnic, and age groups. Readings include Sharon Zukin, Point of
Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture; William Leach, Land of
Desire; and Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic. Students will do research projects of topics
of their choice, including fashion, branding, consumption in the home, and
group identity.
WSCP 81000 -Sociology of Bioethics
GC T 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Barbara Katz Rothman [66723] [Cross listed with Soc. 80201, MALS 74300 &
IDS 81620]
This course will be an introduction to
bioethical issues, exploring the connections and divergences between two
distinct perspectives: that of the sociology and that of philosophy.
While sociology takes as its unit of
analysis the social, the experiences and social arrangements of people,
philosophy attempts to provide principles for guiding individual action and for
the governance of society. In the medical context, sociology explores the
experiences and bodies of knowledge of both providers and recipients of care, while
philosophy provides accounts of professional responsibility and rules for the
ethical behavior of health care professionals and medical institutions.
It is our goal in this seminar to explore
the differences between the two perspectives and encourage a mutually advancing
dialogue between them, focusing our efforts and discussion on trying to span
the divide between the ‘is’ of human experience and the ‘ought’ of morality.
We will take as our substantive concern, the
beginning and end of life issues, the bioethical concerns around birth and
death. We will look at the many
interesting issues being raised by the new reproductive technologies, the work
in genetics, and the intersection of the two; and the changing technologies and
culture of end-of-life care.
WSCP 81000 -Issues in Contemporary Immigration
GC R 4:15-6:15 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Nancy
Foner [66724] [Cross listed with Soc. 85800]
The recent and massive immigration in the
past few decades is transforming the United States. It is also transforming the
study of immigration. By now, there is a substantial, and growing, scholarly
literature on immigration as sociologists, along with social scientists in
allied disciplines, grapple with the complexity of the subject. This course
will examine some of the key issues in the study of contemporary immigration.
Among the questions we will explore: What are the new conceptualizations of
assimilation that have been put forward and how do they advance the field? What
are the consequences of transnationalism and will it persist among the second
generation? Are ethnic enclaves a springboard for mobility or a mobility trap?
How is immigration changing the construction of race and ethnoracial relations
in the United States? What can we gain by comparing U.S. immigration to the
recent influx in western Europe? Students will read, write short papers on, and
critically discuss works in the immigration field, and there will be a series
of guest speakers from the New York metropolitan area who will present and
debate different approaches.
WSCP 81000 -Sociology of Bodies
GC W 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Victoria Pitts [66725] [Cross listed with Soc. 86800]
Once neglected within sociology, the body is now
considered within contemporary social theory, sociology, women’s and cultural
studies to be a social and cultural space of considerable theoretical and
political importance. In this course we
explore how the body can be viewed from social, cultural and political
perspectives. The human body is both material and symbolic, and is influenced
by, and influences, our understandings of race, class, gender, sexuality,
ability, and age, among other factors. We will explore the construction of
normative bodies (linked to medicine, technology, gender, race and other
institutions) as well as the social construction of ‘deviant’ bodies. We
consider the problems of the ‘natural’ body and the ‘technological’ body, and
think through body modifications as social practices. We will look at the
coding of bodies in racial and ethnic terms and consider how bodies ‘figure,’
so to speak, in current political controversies and crises. Using classical
social theory, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial and critical race
theory, we will work toward ‘mapping’ the social significance of the body in
contemporary Western and postcolonial cultures.
All students are required to attend class meetings and
take part actively in class discussions. Written work will require students to
analyze and synthesize material. Seminar participants must also be prepared to
discuss the readings each week, and be willing to present the material at least
once during the semester.
WSCP 81000 -Social Inequality in Latin America
GC W 6:30-8:30 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. Jack
Hammond [66726] [Cross listed with Soc.
85909]
Of all the world regions, Latin America has
the greatest degree of inequality. This course will examine the causes, manifestations, and
consequences of inequality by class, race and ethnicity, and gender in the
economic, social, and political spheres. The course will be organized around four main themes:1.
Macro-comparative studies of the historical roots of social inequality2. Models
of development: commodity export, import substitution, authoritarianism,
neoliberalism3. Empirical analysis of inequality in income, education, and
other social indicators4. Resistance to inequalityRecommended advance reading:
Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. This book is not about Latin America but
inspired much of the historical-comparative scholarship on Latin America n the
last three decades.
WSCP 81000 -Critical Issues in Contemporary Feminism
GC T 2:00-4:00 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof.
Hester Eisenstein [66725] [Cross listed with Soc. 80000]
This course will consider some approaches to
feminism in the contemporary context. We will pay attention to the relation of
the current streams of the women’s movement to the Western political tradition; and to the issues
of race, class, sexuality, nation, religion, and imperialism that have been
raised in recent years. What is the significance of global feminism? Can the historic conflicts between white
women and women of color be healed within a multicultural women’s movement?
Are the varieties of contemporary feminism still a radical force for
change?
Readings will include: Hester Eisenstein, Contemporary
Feminist Thought; Zillah Eisenstein,
Against Empire: Feminisms, Racism and ‘the’ West;
Nancy Holmstrom, ed., The Socialist Feminist Project: A Contemporary Reader
in Theory and Politics; Joy James, Shadowboxing: Representations of
Black Feminist Politics; Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female
Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society; Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism:
Reconnecting a Divided World; Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without
Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity; Linda Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism;
Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract; Alisa Solomon and Martin Duberman, eds., Queer Ideas:
The Kessler Lectures in Lesbian and Gay Studies
WSCP 81000 -Social Welfare Policy and
Planning II
H
T 2:00-4:00 p.m., Room TBA, 3 credits, Prof. S.J. Dodd [66727] [Cross
listed with SSW 71100] Permission of
the Instructor is required.
The course applies historical, ideological
and theoretical models (including feminism) to the study of social problems and
social welfare policies. In a seminar fashion, students critique various
definitions of
social problems; examine the impact of
race, class, gender and heterosexist power relationships on the definitional
process; and explore the implications of social problem definition for social
welfare policy
analysis and application. Using the
intellectual frameworks developed in class students study and analyze a social
problem of their choosing in class presentations and in a final paper.