This course serves as an introduction to Gender, Queer and Feminist Studies. It surveys the history of feminism, and then explores the rise and trajectories of gender studies and queer studies. The course engages with the ways in which gender, sexuality, race, class, ability/disability, and other facets of identity intersect with each other. Students will consider the implications of activism as well as the academic development of these disciplines, and they will engage with the ways that the readings touch upon their own lives.
What has been the role of religion in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBQT) politics? This course challenges the dominant picture of entrenched opposition between queer lives and religious traditions, and it investigates the complexity and variety of queer and religious engagement during the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. This course covers the historical emergence of sexual and gender identity communities in the United States and the attendant formations of established religious teachings as backdrop and critical context for both opposing and supportive religious involvement LGBT politics. The course examines anti-queer religious responses but also spends significant time covering queer-inclusive religious advocacy, including liberal religious involvement in gay liberation, the formation of queer inclusive churches and synagogues and new spiritual communities such as the Radical Faeries, and religious involvement in political causes from AIDS/HIV activism, hate crimes legislation, and same-sex marriage.
This course explores "queer" as an open question rather than a stable set of identities, asking: what kinds of bodies, desires, histories, and politics does queer describe? Students consider the complexity of queer identities and investigate the social and historical processes of identity construction. The class asks, with insights from queer theory: What governs the formation of legible social identities? What dynamics of erasure and illegibility accompany these formations? This course takes up these questions with attention to "queer self-fashioning," asking: How have "queer" identities and communities defined themselves--and been defined--in and through clothing and style? While clothing and fashion might seem to typify personal and a-political work, our inquiry explores the politics of self-fashioning: How is the fashioned body governed by laws, policies, and social norms? How has style played an important role in collective movements of dissent and social change? Students also explore these questions through a guided, hands-on project: each student will sew a wearable garment as a process of tactile meditation on the material, time, labor, and creativity involved in queer self-fashioning.
Gender Studies Publication is an activity credit for participation in a campus publication of literary and artistic materials related to questions of gender and sexuality.
What does it mean to study sexuality? Does one's sexual identity change over time? The course first covers some critical readings from feminist, queer, and scientific perspectives in relation to sexuality. Then, armed with these tools, students address key topics in the field around science and sexology, histories of sexuality, reproductive politics, queer theory and pedagogy, health, hook-up culture, body modification, sexual harassment and #MeToo, and global issues in sexuality.
This course is organized around a set of interlocking questions: Who tells the story of scientific knowledge? Through what lens? Who does the work of producing scientific knowledge? To what end? While "the sciences" are often figured as disciplines and practices that both value and produce objectivity and facts -- categories imagined to exist independent of the identities of the people making scientific inquiry or serving as the object of that inquiry -- this course seeks to situate scientific knowledge within the matrix of gender, race, and sexuality that is inextricable from the human experience. We ask: How would a more diverse scientific community change the lives of those working in the sciences? And how would it change science?
This course surveys the history/ies and development of feminist, gender and/or queer theories, with an emphasis on theories produced in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The course familiarizes students with key feminist, gender and queer theoretical debates and concepts, requires them to read, think, speak, and write critically about these theories; and encourages them to employ these feminist and queer theories and concepts in critical analyses of contemporary institutions and practices, as well as in their own lives. Topics examined include power, privilege, domination, identity, difference, intersectionality, post/colonialism, trans/nationalism, (standpoint) epistemology, anti/essentialism, discourse, performativity, gender, femininity, masculinity, sexuality, embodiment, and cyborgs.
For fifty years the decision in Roe prevented states from criminalizing or outlawing abortion, though restrictions placed upon a person seeking to terminate a pregnancy varied widely from state to state. Now, in a post-Roe world, abortion bans are proliferating across the country. This course draws upon the expertise of faculty members from across our campus as we seek to understand the deep history of abortion, abortion restrictions, coerced reproduction, and other state interventions in people's sexual and reproductive lives. We will tackle the past, present, and future of reproductive freedom and how it has and will be imbricated in other fights for justice.
In this course students examine the differences between traditional scholarship and a feminist approach to knowing. Participants engage in an independent research project of their choosing, sharing process and findings with other members throughout the semester. Completion of the class includes participation in the Lewis & Clark Undergraduate Gender Studies Conference in March of each year.
Research under the close supervision of a faculty member on a topic agreed upon. Application and proposal to be submitted to the program director with support from the faculty research advisor. Recommended for majors prior to the senior research semester.
Research under the close supervision of a faculty member on a topic agreed upon. Application and proposal to be submitted to the program director with support from the faculty research advisor. Recommended for majors prior to the senior research semester.
One of the four learning objectives for GQS students is to to integrate feminist, gender and queer analysis into educational and activist practices, both in (a) students' research, writing and classroom interactions and in (b) public scholarship, activism, and everyday life. This internship fulfills (b) of this learning objective. Students will identify an internship with a community or government agency dealing with issues relevant to gender, feminism, or sexuality, such as the Rainbow Center of Tacoma. Students will take fieldnotes, write five reflection papers (one every other week), and complete a polished reflection paper at the conclusion of the internship. Students will create an e-portfolio to document their learning experience, including the following: learning objectives, weekly fieldnotes, internship responsibilities, work products, and their takeaways from the experience. Students must meet every other week with their supervisor (a member of the GQS Advisory Board and/or the Director of GQS). Students must participate in a minimum of 120 internship hours and attend the course. Taken during the junior or senior year. Internships may be self-determined or located through Career and Employment Services or Experiential Learning. All students must complete and file a learning agreement in the Department of Experiential Learning.