College Catalog
Description and requirements Faculty Courses
Description:
Consisting of a variety of courses drawn from across the college, the program offers students the opportunity to study gender in a variety of historical periods and geographical areas using different academic, political, and feminist perspectives. The program equips students with reading, writing, research, and analytical skills that enable them to:
- identify and analyze the links among gender, sexuality, identity, power, and social justice
- identify and analyze intersections among gender and sexuality and other categories of difference, such as class, race, religion, nationality, and physical ability
- situate gender and sexuality in broader historical and geopolitical contexts
- write or otherwise present (depending on the field of study) analyses of gender and sexuality in specific visual, literary, and theoretical works
- design and execute a senior project that demonstrates these competencies within a theoretical framework of gender and sexuality
Requirements:
In addition to meeting General Education requirements, all gender studies majors must complete a minimum of seven courses with a grade of C or higher and an 8-credit senior project (31–36 credits total), as follows.
- GND 1200/Introduction to Gender and Sexuality: 4 credits
- Five electives in gender studies: 15–20 credits
- One theory course: 4 credits
- SPJ 4990/Senior Project I: 4 credits
- SPJ 4991/Senior Project II: 4 credits
Notes:
- All students majoring in gender studies who do not have a second major are required to declare a minor and enroll in the methods course or junior seminar offered in that minor’s discipline. Consult with your minor advisor about appropriate coursework.
- An internship is highly recommended.
School of Film and Media Studies:
- CIN 3540/Queer Cinema
- MSA 3160/Queer Media Convergence
MSA 4120/Drag Theory and Practice
School of Humanities:
- ARH 2885/Women Artists and Feminist Criticism
- ARH 3187/Women Artists in the 20th Century
- FRE 3230/The Island as Laboratory
- HIS 2490/Women in America
- HIS 3115/Sex Radicals in the 19th-Century U.S.
- HIS 3155/Religion, Heresy, and Witchcraft
- HIS 3165/War and Gender in 20th-Century Europe
- HIS 3375/“Aren’t I a Woman?”: The Construction of Womanhood in the U.S.
- HIS 3685/Sex and Gender in Latin America
- HIS 3695/History of Gender and Sexuality in the United States
- HIS 3727/History of Feminist Movements
- HIS 3730/Wives, Widows, Workers
JOU 3040/Race, Gender, and the Media
LIT2645/Gender, Revolution, Livelihood: Modern Chinese Women Writers - LIT 3004/Lesbian and Gay Poetry
LIT 3012/The Lives of James Baldwin (added Fall 2020)
LIT 3017/Eighteenth-Century British Women Writers - LIT 3025/Women and Film
- LIT 3043/Toni Morrison
- LIT 3575/Virginia Woolf
- LIT 3665/American Women Writers
- LIT 3673/Austen
- LIT 3845/Zora Neale Hurston
School of Natural and Social Sciences:
- ANT 2755/Global Sexualities
ECO 2355/Gender and Economics - POL 2040/Women and Politics
- POL 2105/Citizens Living Under Islamic Laws
- POL 2350/Free Speech, Heresy, and Gender in Islamic Societies
- POL 3045/Sex, Politics, and Health
- POL 3090/Race, Gender, and the Law
- POL 3095/Queer Politics in the U.S.
- POL 3245/Gender and Health: International Issues
- POL 3255/Islamic State, Gender, and Sexuality
- PSY 2860/Psychology of Women
- PSY 3845/Gender Development
- SOC 2020/Human Sexuality
- SOC 2210/Sociology of Gender
- SOC 3005/Feminism, Art, and Performance
- SOC 3035/Birth and Death
SOC 3415/Racial Inequalities - SOC 3705/Masculinities: Feminist Perspectives
- SOC 3755/Sexualities and Society
Conservatory of Theatre Arts:
- THP 3300/Women in Performance
- THP 3525/LGBTQ Theatre and Performance
THP 3530/Black and Gay in Performance - THP 3600/Women and Drama
THP 4170/Contemporary Queer Performance
- GND 3010/Transgender Studies
GND 3050/Sports Studies: Queer, Feminist and Trans Approaches - GND 3130/Feminist Theory
- MSA 3160/Queer Media Convergence
- PHI 2500/Gender and Power
- PHI 3725/Theories of Sexuality
- POL 3095/Queer Politics in the U.S.
- THP 3300/Women in Performance
Minor requirements:
Students majoring in any discipline may pursue a minor in gender studies, which offers a variety of courses drawn from across the college.
Students have the opportunity to study gender in a variety of historical periods and geographical areas using different academic, political, and feminist perspectives.
Students interested in this minor must submit a completed Application for a Program of Minor Study and should plan their program of study in consultation with the gender studies faculty in their major field or with the coordinator of the gender studies program.
Academic Requirements for the Minor in Gender Studies
Five courses, as follows:
- GND 1200/Introduction to Gender and Sexuality
- Four elective courses in gender studies, at least two of which must be upper-level (3000- or 4000-level)*
*Learning assistantships, internships, independent studies, and tutorials cannot be used to satisfy this requirement.
Faculty
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Associate Professor of History
- BA, University of Oxford (England)
- MA, University of Sussex (England)
- PhD, Yale University
-
Associate Professor of Literature
- AB, Harvard University
- MA, MPhil, PhD, Yale University
-
Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and HistoryDirector, School of Film and Media Studies
PhD, University of Maryland
-
Professor of Philosophy
- BA, Williams College
- MA, JD, Yale University
-
Professor of Sociology
- BA, MA, University of New Orleans
- PhD, New School for Social Research
-
Professor of Literature
- BA, Yale University
- MA, PhD, Rutgers University
- Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching
-
Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies
- BA, Tufts University
- MPH, University of California, Berkeley
- PhD, University of California, San Francisco
-
Lecturer in Gender Studies
- BA, Tufts University
- MA, PhD, New York University
-
Associate Professor of Philosophy
- BA, Swarthmore College
- PhD, University of Pennsylvania
-
Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance
- BA, Yale University
-
Professor of AnthropologyDirector of Natural and Social Sciences
- BA, Yale University
- MIA, Columbia University
- PhD, Stanford University
-
Visiting Instructor of Gender Studies2023-2025 SUNY-PRODiG Fellow
- BA, Montclair State University
- MA, Montclair State University
- PhD, Rutgers University
-
Professor of History
- BA, Vassar College
- PhD, University of Cambridge (England)
-
Professor of Art History
- BS, Wheelock College
- MDiv, Harvard University
- PhD, Emory University
-
Professor of Media StudiesJuanita and Joseph Leff Distinguished Professor 2023-2024
- BA, Grinnell College
- PhD, University of Texas, Austin
-
Associate Professor of Literature
- BA (Honors), University of Delhi (India)
- MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University
-
Professor of Theatre and Performance
- BA, Yale University
- PhD, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Contributing Faculty
-
Director, Neuberger Museum of ArtAssociate Professor of Art History (on leave)
- BA, Tufts University
- MA, George Washington University
- PhD, Rutgers University
-
Associate Professor of Philosophy
- BA, Swarthmore College
- PhD, University of Pennsylvania
- Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching
-
Assistant Professor of Political Science
- BA, Purchase College, SUNY
- MA, The University of Chicago
- PhD, The University of Chicago
Courses
Explores and compares the diverse ways in which sexuality and gender are practiced, experienced, and regulated in different communities around the world. Particular attention is paid to how sexual identities and practices have influenced, and been influenced by, global political, economic, and cultural movements, including colonialism, capitalism, feminism, queer activism, and the spread of world religions.
Credits: 3
Department: Gender StudiesAn introduction to women artists from the Renaissance era through the Enlightenment, including Anguissola, Gentileschi, Vigée-Lebrun, and Kauffmann. Topics include access to professions, constructions of sexuality and gender, and attitudes toward the body in representation.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesFocuses on women artists and their place within the art-historical narrative of the 20th century. Students examine both the diverse practices of women artists and the reception of their work by critics, dealers, and collectors.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesEmerging queer cinema is explored in its historical contexts and its relation to contemporary theories of gender, sexuality, and their intersection with race, class, and nationality. The course focuses on the “queering of the gaze,” interrogating conventional notions of representation, desire, identification, filmmaking, and spectatorship. Featured directors: Warhol, Fassbinder, Haynes, Von Trotta, Akerman, Rozema, La Bruce, Araki, Denis, Jarman.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesThis course covers three areas of gender economics. The first examines basic facts and trends regarding women’s distinct economic experiences, particularly the gender gap in education, wages, occupations, and labor supply. The second examines the impact of marriage market forces and reproductive constraints on women’s socio-economic choices. The third provides a historical and international overview of women’s rights.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn introductory and foundational course on the key concepts, themes, and theories of studies of gender and sexuality. Students engage with materials that are social, scientific, historical, literary, autobiographical, artistic, and/or philosophical in examinations of themes of human gender, sexual relationships, and the intersection of gender and sexual identity.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesThe RAD system incorporates physical self-defense options developed in response to realistic situations facing women. This course covers awareness and prevention techniques, personal protection tips, and reporting procedures. Students learn to develop a defensive mind-set, respond verbally to aggression, and adopt the optimal stance for self-defense. Concludes with an opportunity for students to test their skills in realistic simulations.
Credits: 2
Department: Gender StudiesSurvey of the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies. Students learn how trans embodiment is inflected by race, class, location, and ability. Course coverage includes: concepts and methods in transgender studies; major debates within the field; multiple meanings of “trans”; and the intersection between trans studies and other disciplines such as gender studies, black studies, latinx studies, history, and sociology.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesInterdisciplinary overview of sex and gender in sports. Students learn histories of women and gender nonconformity in sports; past and current LGBTQ activism; race and gender segregation; sex and gender testing; racial and gendered politics of “fairness;” and trans and intersex athletic embodiment.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesCovers the experience of American women from colonial times to the 20th century, from political, social, religious, cultural, and economic points of view.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn exploration of the relationships between orthodox religions and heretical sects in the medieval West and how heterodoxy evolved into the witch-craze of the early modern period. Questions of gender, spirituality, repression, and interpretation are examined in light of their effects on society and established religion. Focuses are on Islamic, Jewish, and Christian relations in medieval Europe; the development and perception of certain heretical sects; the discernment of saints and spirits; Protestant and Catholic Reformations; and the persecution of witches.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExamines how war changed gender relations in 20th-century Europe. For instance, how did mobilization reinforce or undermine masculine and feminine norms? How did total wars that blurred the line between fighting front and home front challenge notions of chivalry and turn noncombatants into warriors of sorts? Did new job opportunities outweigh the trauma and grief suffered by women during wartime?
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExamines the new historiography on gender and sexuality in Latin America. It is organized around the themes of changing gender roles and shifting constructions of masculinity, femininity, and honor, with particular attention to issues of sexuality, sexual preferences, constraints, and transgressions.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExplores the place of women in Western society, from ancient Greece to the 17th century. The roles covered range from the prescribed (wife and mother) to the actual (intellectual and worker). Lectures are supplemented by discussion of primary sources.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExamines the relationship between the media and social constructions of race, gender, and class, both in the U.S. and within a global context. Topics include biases and assumptions in print and visual media; representations of masculinity and femininity; and the media’s role in creating and reinforcing ideas, symbols, and ideologies within cultures. Text analysis includes newspapers, magazine articles, cartoons, television, movies, and advertising.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesThis course both surveys representative works of modern Chinese women writers and examines general problems such as equality and liberation, desire and subjectivity.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesA writing-intensive course in which students study the poetry of queer-identified writers through the lenses of sexuality, culture, identity, history, and poetic technique.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesWe will examine Baldwin’s moving fictional and nonfictional works to understand his enduring legacy up through our contemporary moment. Students read Baldwin’s work through the lens of literary history, civil rights, transnational black activism, the arts, and queer theory. Major texts include The Fire Next Time, Another Country, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Giovanni’s Room.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesConsiders the intersections of sexual difference and cinema. Topics include theories of enunciation and sexual difference, female authorship and the idea of “women’s cinema,” gender and genre, woman as spectacle, the female spectator, and feminist film theory. Representations of sexual difference in films by selected male directors are studied as a means of examining the institution(s) of cinematic expression. The bulk of the course is devoted to studying women directors as they attempt to work within and against that institution.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn investigation of the formation of the literary canon and the women who were written out of it. Students become familiar with the novel form as well as genres such as amatory fiction and the Jacobin novel, and read a selection of the most influential women writers of the long eighteenth century.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn exploration of Toni Morrison’s generous literary career as a playwright, fiction writer, and essayist. Students read a collection of Morrison’s most popular works (Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved) alongside her more recent publications (A Mercy, God Help the Child). Discussions place Morrison in conversation with her literary interlocutors (Hurston, Woolf, Faulkner) and some of her most cherished contemporaries (James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara).
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesStudy LGBTQ identities via novels, short fiction, and films, by queer-identified authors who interrogate heteropatriarchy within a postcolonial framework. Texts include Queer Africa (eds. Martin and Xaba), Leche by R. Zamora Linmark, Walking with Shadows by Jude Bidia, Fire (film by Deepa Mehta), Same-Sex Love in India (eds. Vanita and Kidwai), and Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesHow does embodiment reveal shifting notions of race, gender, sexuality, and ability? Students read performance theory and explore contemporary representations of bodies as sites of display, resistance, and re-construction in literature, performance, and everyday practices in transnational and intersectional contexts. Authors include Ntozake Shange, NourbeSe Philip, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Branden Jacob-Jenkins, and David Henry Hwang.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn examination of the novels, short stories, and essays of Virginia Woolf.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExamines several texts written by American women, including works by Radstreet, Wheatley, Rowson, Stowe, Dickinson, Jewett, Cather, Wharton, Hurston, Bishop, and Naylor. The question of whether there is a traceable female tradition during the past 350 years is addressed. Readings include feminist literary criticism and theory.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn examination of the novels of Jane Austen. Topics include gender and authorship; irony, sympathy, and point of view; the marriage plot; and filmic adaptation.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExamines Hurston’s novels, short stories, plays, and essays alongside archival recordings and visual media. Discussions cover Hurston’s influential role in shaping conversations around race, class, and gender in the 20th century and her impact on other writers, including Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesMedia convergence refers to large-scale changes in the ownership and production of media content, as well as the role that audiences and consumers have in its development. This course examines media convergence from the perspectives of queer theory and history, and asks how queer identities, sensibilities, styles, and practices both shape and are shaped by media convergence.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesFocuses the politics and aesthetics of drag. Engage classic and contemporary work in gender theory, and also learn how to do drag through a series of practice-based workshops.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: MSA1050
Department: Gender StudiesWhat is gender? What is power? What tools do we have for understanding and addressing gender injustice? This course employs philosophical, feminist, and queer theory to address these and related questions.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn investigation of classical, modern, and contemporary theories of desire and sexuality, with an emphasis on the relationship between familial and other social institutions and on the formation of individual identities. Readings include works by Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Foucault, and contemporary feminist and queer theorists.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesTheoretical, historical, and empirical analyses of the relationship between women’s private roles and socialization, and their integration into politics. Topics include changes in the laws affecting women, the impact of feminism on the quality of political discourse and political action, and the vexing problem of the “gender gap."
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesFocusing on South Asia and the Middle East, this course examines how postcolonial Islamic states currently use “Islamic laws” to negotiate power and control with their citizens. Examples include Hudood, Zina, and blasphemy laws, which result in fatwas (religious decrees) that sometimes lead to extrajudicial killings.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesIn Islamic societies, heresy charges against women and men are leveled for different reasons, including Islamists’ opposition to democracy, modernity, and women’s education and their employment. Instances of heresy leveled by Muslims against Muslims are studied.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAlthough health is typically treated as a biological issue, health, illness, and wellness are social and political conditions. The politics of health policy as it is experienced, administered, and made accessible to men, women, and gender non-conforming healthcare seekers, and the activism that leads to more equitable treatment from medical professionals, insurance providers, and government service providers, regulators, and legislators is examined. Access to the health care system, poverty, Medicaid/Medicare, managed care, breast cancer, reproductive justice, sexual assault, HIV/AIDS, transgender care, disability, and medical research are investigated from an intersectional feminist perspective that foregrounds issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesWomen make up roughly one half of the world’s population, yet globally despite the quest for equality; women’s experiences are fraught with the realities of patriarchy, domination, marginalization, and exclusion. This course will examine the complexity of forces that shape, maintain and challenge the role and place of women in societies around the world. It is designed to give students an understanding of the intricate interplay between the politics and culture that undergird Women’s experiences across borders. It introduces students to issues and research about women in different cultural and political context.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesThe legal and political dimensions of race and sex discrimination are examined beginning with the 14th (1868) and 19th (1920) amendments to the US Constitution, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), Brown v. the BOE (1954), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Rajender v. University of Minnesota (1982). The way law is shaped by the politics of race and gender is considered. Topics discussed include the intersection of white supremacy, misogyny, capitalism, and the law from perspectives offered by legal studies, critical race theory, and feminism.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn examination of how notions of gender and sexuality are defined in the postcolonial Islamic state. Laws, customs, and cultural practices that enforce control are investigated in South Asian and Middle Eastern contexts.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesA critical examination of social, psychological, and biological factors governing female behavior and experience. Within the context of a life-span model (infancy to old age), topics include gender development, puberty, school performance, sexuality, the body, depression, relationships, and communication styles.
Credits: 3
Department: Gender StudiesExamines the processes involved in the development of gender during childhood, emphasizing the interaction between biology, socialization, and cognition. Students read primary source articles that examine the influence of hormones, parenting, knowledge, friendships, and media on children’s beliefs about their gender and on sex differences.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: PSY1530
Department: Gender StudiesAn overview of biological, psychological, and sociological approaches to understanding human sexual behavior. Topics include values in sexuality, sexuality through the life span, sexual dysfunction and therapy, sex and disability, sexual preferences, atypical sexualities, and sex and the law.
Credits: 3
Department: Gender StudiesAn examination of the impact of feminist thinking on the visual and performing arts. Emphasis is placed on the historical absence of women in art worlds and the creation of work that critiques dominant modes of cultural production. A plurality of feminisms and attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality inform investigations of craft, performance, and collaboration.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesAn exploration of different sociological renderings of birth and death in contemporary societies. Understanding the concepts from a sociological perspective offers an opportunity to explore the intersections of race, class, gender, spirituality, and age. This course also focuses on recent biomedical technological innovations and their implications for birth and death representations. Students conduct an independent field trip and do extensive reading and writing.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500 Or ANT1500 Or GND1200
Department: Gender StudiesGiven the ethnic complexity of society, major social institutions—including education, criminal justice, health care, social services, and business—face many challenges. This course explores the past, present, and future of race and ethnicity in American society, and how immigration, culture, religion, education, and income play parts in prejudice, discrimination, and racial inequalities.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesPeople’s everyday lives are monitored on multiple levels through mechanisms they take for granted. Surveillance systems and technologies provide knowledge about people through identification, monitoring, and analysis of individuals, groups, data, or systems. These systems are examined as social entities that organize and shape cultural values and norms. Issues of identity, security, fear, control, and vulnerability are also explored.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Gender StudiesConsiders experiences and images of men in U.S. society. Recent feminist theory and research concerning men are studied, with attention to the various meanings of masculinity in American culture. This course provides a sociological understanding of gender and society, with attention to race, class, and other aspects of identity that shape men’s lives, including media representations of masculinity.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: SOC1500
Department: Gender StudiesSexuality is grounded in bodily experience, but meanings of both body and experience are socially constructed. This advanced seminar examines contemporary sexual constructions and their cultural and historical roots.
Credits: 4
PREREQ: GND1200 Or SOC2020 Or ANT3750 Or GND2020
Department: Gender StudiesThis course considers 20th- and 21st-century performance work by women in dance, theatre, and the visual art world (performance art) from a historical and theoretical perspective. Critical and theoretical feminist essays and other writings are assigned. Students read original texts, view documentation, and analyze contemporary works by women writers, choreographers, performance artists, and theatre directors.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesVirginia Woolf captures sensory detail and internal thought like few other writers. This dramatization of perception makes her work ripe for adaptation. Students will read selections of Woolf's essays, short stories, and novels, and study theatrical adaptations of her work. Students will explore translating Woolf’s iconic vision into theatrical shape by creating immersive stage adaptations of her work
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExplores how LGBTQ identities and issues are represented in diverse dramatic forms, performance styles, and cultural venues. Through discussions, presentations, and writing assignments, students analyze queer theatre in relation to production history, theories of sexuality, and cultural and political contexts (both past and present).
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesStudents analyze film, television and stage performances that depict Black gay men. Students synthesize historical and political context, artistic perspectives, and the unique intersectional realities of Black and gay identity towards a deeper understanding of these artistic and cultural perspectives. Works studied include both mainstream hits that permeate the zeitgeist, and niche, yet culturally significant works that shift the narrative.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesExamines queer performance beyond traditional drama and theatre including drag shows, stand-up comedy, and live music. Students critically analyze and explore the ways in which queer performance engages with current struggles surrounding issues of queer identity, community, and representation. Assignments include both creative and writing projects.
Credits: 4
Department: Gender StudiesOfficial Catalog: Published September 22, 2023
Course Frequencies
Since actual course offerings vary from semester to semester, students should consult the myHeliotrope course schedule to determine whether a particular course is offered in a given semester.
Information Changes
In preparing the College Catalog, every effort is made to provide pertinent and accurate information. However, information contained in the catalog is subject to change, and Purchase College assumes no liability for catalog errors or omissions. Updates and new academic policies or programs will appear in the college’s information notices and will be noted in the online catalog.
It is the responsibility of each student to ascertain current information (particularly degree and major requirements) through frequent reference to current materials and consultation with the student’s faculty advisor, chair or director, and related offices (e.g., enrollment services, advising center).
Notwithstanding anything contained in the catalog, Purchase College expressly reserves the right, whenever it deems advisable, to change or modify its schedule of tuition and fees; withdraw, cancel, reschedule, or modify any course, program of study, degree, or any requirement or policy in connection with the foregoing; and to change or modify any academic or other policy.