The Department of Women Studies offers a variety of courses designed to explore feminist issues. Please note that not all courses are offered every quarter.

To read about WOMEN 442, Native Voices, click here.

For a complete list of course offerings for Spring 2008, click here.

For a complete list of course offerings for Summer 2008, click here.

For a complete list of course offerings for Autumn 2008, click here.

Women 490 A The Politics of Genealogy: Researching Women and Family History (MW 1:30-3:20) Shirley Yee

This course introduces students to the politics, race, class, gender, sexuality and nation in the construction of genealogical narratives. Students will read several different approaches to the writing of family histories. In the process, they will analyze the meaning(s) of family, kinship, and community in specific social and political contexts and historical moments. Students will have the opportunity to research and write the histories of their own families, using a range of primary written documents as well as oral histories.

Women 490B Language and Gender (TTh 12:30-2:20) Gail Stygall

WS490B is both a survey of work in language and gender and an opportunity to conduct research on actual language in use. We'll start with a survey of readings moving from early second wave research and then take up sociolinguistic research on language and gender. We'll close with a look at more recent work in language and sexuality.

WOMEN 490C Popular Music, Gender Performance and Passing (5) (M 2:30 – 5:20) Rachel Devitt The culture of Western popular music has been dominated by various quests for authenticity and originality. We expect our favorite musicians to sing from their hearts and write their own songs, and we disparage those artists who are fakes and poseurs. But "faking it" and other strategies of theatrical inauthenticity have long provided a means of critique, and often survival, for peoples who are underrepresented in mainstream culture. This course will examine popular music through literature on gender performance and race, class, and gender passing, including Judith Butler's theory of performativity; José Muñoz's work on ethnicity, sexuality, and performance; and Lisa Walker's writings on queer gender identities and visibility. We will focus especially on music scholarship of gender and identity, which has been heavily impacted by Butler's work, as well as on artists (such as Billy Tipton and Elvis Presley) and performance practices (such as lip-syncing and drag) that transgress boundaries of identity and genre and trouble notions of musical authenticity.

WOMEN 590B Cultural Studies and Public Scholarship (TH 2:30 – 5:20) Michelle Habell-Pallan "Cultural Studies and Public Scholarship" explores the tensions and possibilities in projects that seek to merge these two paths of intellectual work.  "American Sabor: U.S. Latinos in Popular Music" (currently on display at the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum) will be used as a case study in collaborative cross-sector public scholarship.  Discussions of the collaborative work of the exhibit will serve as an entry point for examining how questions around equity and the categories of gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexuality and cultural citizenship problematize struggles for the power to represent when theory meets practice.  The seminar will also provide space for students to explore their own collaborative projects.

Arch 4980 Gender and Architecture (MW 10:30 - 11:50) Louisa Iarocci.  Are buildings masculine or feminine?  Does built space have a sexual identity in relation to society and culture?  This course examines the question of the role of gender in the everyday experience, built practice and theoretical understanding of architecture and urban space. The approach is interdisciplinary and draws on readings from architectural and art history and theory, design practice, comparative literature, film theory and queer theory. Topics addressing the links between power, gender and space will range from the city streets to the domestic interior and will include studies of the skyscraper and the suburban home, the convent and bachelor apartment, the boudoir and the closet; and such stereotypical figures as the flaneur and the prostitute, the playboy and femme fatale and the architect as male hero and designing woman.

WOMEN 435 Gender and Spirituality (5) I&S (MW 2:30-4:20) Kate Noble
Exploration of ways in which gender informs spiritual teachings and practices of different groups in ancient and contemporary times, with particular attention to the relationship between spiritual beliefs and the construction of social, psychological, and political realities.

Study Abroad in Roskilde, Denmark!

Race, Gender, and Nation: Immigration in Denmark and the United States. 

Program Dates: August 30, 2008 - December 15, 2008 - 24 Credits

Many students come to Women Studies because they want to:

1. learn how to critically evaluate the messages about gender, race, class and sexuality that shape our own and other's daily lives,

2. understand the inequalities with which these messages are caught up, and

3. work to change these messages and inequalities

Study abroad in Women Studies helps students achieve all three of these goals. 

As study abroad transports students from a familiar cultural environment to an unfamiliar one, it offers students the opportunity to recognize the ways in which constructions of gender, race, class and sexuality change in different locations.  This recognition offers students new critical perspectives, both on constructions of difference they have become accustomed to ‘at home' and on those they encounter abroad.

As study abroad in Women Studies moves students from one set of unequal social, political and economic relations to another, it also teaches them how to explore the local specificity of each set as it helps them recognize commonalities and transnational connections between them. 

And as students widen their understanding of social constructions of difference and inequalities on a transnational scale, they also encounter new modes of resisting these inequalities.  Together, these experiences deepen Women Studies students' potential for crafting new kinds of feminist thought and practice.

Come join the UW Women Studies Department for its first ever study abroad program this fall in Denmark!

More information can be found here: http://depts.washington.edu/chid/showprogram.php?id=63

For a dropdown list of Women Studies past course offerings by quarter, click here.

For a permanent list of Women Studies courses, click here.

To view the schedule and links to course pages, please select the appropriate Quarter and Year from this page.

To see the most up-to-date class times and locations, go the University of Washington Time Schedule.

See Women Studies Librarian Cass Hartnett or the Women Studies Library Resources page!