Past Courses (Scroll down for course listings)2008-2009Women's Activism: Gender, Literacy and Human RightsWednesdays, 5:30 - 8:30 PM / 9.10.08 – 12.10.08 This course explores education, literacy, and human rights as sites of women’s activism. It seeks to build deepened understandings of gender and intersectionality as we use different lenses to focus on these sites; we will consider how gender, race, class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, age, location, literacy, and ideologies impact upon activism. Women throughout the world have engaged in collective and individual actions both to resist oppression but also sometimes to further their own privileges. This activism has taken place in formal educational institutions, at the community and grassroots level, and through national and international organizations and movements. This course will examine the meaning of women’s activism around education and human rights both globally and locally. FACULTY Lorna Rivera is Associate Professor of Sociology and Community Planning at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She is also a Research Associate at the Mauricio Gaston Institute for Latino Public Policy at UMass-Boston. Dr. Rivera’s work focuses on women’s literacy, Latino Studies, and social inequalities in public education. Kathleen Weiler is Professor of Education at Tufts University. She is the author of a number of works on women and education exploring the possibilities and parameters of education for women, including ethnographic studies of classroom teaching, feminist theory and pedagogy, and historical studies of women educators in the American West. A sociologist and activist, Loretta J. Williams directs the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, a 24 year old national network with a hub office at Simmons College, that, among other things, publishes /Multidiversity: Myers Book Commentary/ and the annual /Sheroes Womyn Warriors/ Calendar series. She consults locally and nationally on multicultural organizational development with particular attention to anti-oppression strategies.  Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender StudiesFALL & SPRING, Tuesdays, 1:00 - 4:00 PM / 9.9.08 - 5.5.09 A writing workshop for dissertation writers. Classes will include presentation and discussion of students’ work-in-progress. Discussion will move back and forth between theoretical considerations and practical ones as we address three subjects central to dissertation work: the archive, methodology, and rhetoric. Each student will be asked to reflect on ways that feminism and gender studies affected her discipline’s views of its appropriate archive and on the question of what archive of materials is best suited to answer the questions raised in her dissertation. We will also consider general issues of scholarly method, methodological issues that feminism and gender studies have raised, and methodological issues prominent within the disciplines of participants’ different disciplinary fields. The inquiry into rhetoric will ask how a dissertation writer convinces various audiences that her work is significant. Each student will also give an oral presentation to the group that has been self-consciously adapted for an interdisciplinary audience. Enrollment is limited to ten students FACULTY Susan Staves is Paul Proswimmer Professor Emerita of Brandeis University. Her scholarly interests have centered on English literature and history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She is the author of /Player’s Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration/, /Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660-1833/, /A Literary History of Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660-1789/, and articles and essays on literary, legal, historical, medical, and musical subjects.
Gender, Race, and the Complexities of Science and Technology: A Problem-Based Learning ExperimentThursdays, 5:00 - 8:00 PM / 1.29.09 – 5.14.09 Science and technology are relatively insulated from wider public deliberation-art and literary criticism is familiar, but not "science criticism." Yet there is a large body of social interpretation of science and technology, to which feminist, anti-racist, and other critical analysts and activists have made significant contributions. Building on this work, this course sets out to challenge the barriers of expertise, gender, race, class, and place that restrict wider access to and understanding of the production of scientific knowledge and technologies. In this spirit, students participate in an innovative, problem-based learning approach that allows them to shape their own directions of inquiry and develop critical faculties as investigators and skills as prospective teachers. In these inquiries students are guided by individualized bibliographies co-constructed with the instructors and by the projects of the other students. Students from all fields and levels of preparation are encouraged to join and learn about gender, race, and the complexities of science and technology. FACULTY Anne Fausto-Sterling is Professor of Biology and Gender Studies in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown University and is a visiting professor at the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at MIT in 2009. Author of scientific publications in developmental genetics and developmental ecology, she has achieved recognition for works that challenge entrenched scientific beliefs while engaging with the general public. Peter Taylor is a Professor at the UMass Boston, where he directs the Programs in Science, Technology and Values and Critical & Creative Thinking. His teaching spans biomedical and environmental sciences, science and technology studies, critical pedagogy and reflective practice. He is author of Unruly Complexity: Ecology, Interpretation, Engagement and co-editor of Changing Life: Genomes, Ecologies, Bodies, Commodities.
Gender, Armed Conflict, and PeacemakingWednesdays, 6:00 - 9:00 PM / 1.28.09 – 5.13.09 Peace Keeping operations involving both military and civilian personnel have been deployed in a number of countries such as Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan. These interventions have come about following intense levels of violence, breakdown in law and order, systems of governance and social systems as well as violations of human rights. This course is designed to review the phenomena of conflict, forced migration and militarization from a gender perspective to highlight the policy and operational implications that arise from this analysis. The gendered nature of conflict and intervention will be explored from a multi-disciplinary framework involving anthropology, sociology, policy analysis, philosophy and the arts. Presenters will utilize literature, poetry, film, witness testimonies from the field, ethnographic narratives and other resources to explore the complex ways in which women and men experience, FACULTY Carol Cohn is the Director of the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights. Her research and writing has focused on gender and international security, ranging from work on discourse of civilian defense intellectuals, gender integration issues in the US military, and, most extensively, weapons of mass destruction. Gordana Rabrenovic is Associate Professor of Sociology and Education and Associate Director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University. Her substantive specialties include community studies, urban education and inter group conflict and violence. Lisa Rivera is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her areas of specialization are moral and political theory, feminist philosophy and ethics in international affairs. Feminist InquiryThursdays, 5:30 - 8:30 PM / 1.31.08 – 5.8.09 This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines. Doing feminist research involves rethinking disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, developing new understandings of what counts as knowledge, seeking alternative ways of understanding the origins of problems/issues, formulating new ways of positing questions and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study. All research grows out of complex connections between epistemologies, methodologies and research methods. We shall explore how these connections are formed in the traditional disciplines and raise questions about why the traditional disciplines are inadequate and/or problematic for feminist inquiry. What, specifically, are the feminist critiques of these disciplines? The course will consider methodology, i.e., the theory and analysis of how research should proceed. We shall be especially attentive to epistemological issues—pre-suppositions about the nature of knowledge. We shall examine the theoretical positions our authors take, and evaluate the usefulness of their methodological approaches. As feminist inquiry has developed over the last thirty-some years, it has become increasingly clear that its practice is inherently interdisciplinary. Our aim is to promote the development of feminist theory and methods by providing a forum for sharing, assessing, discussing and debating strategies used by feminist scholars in an array of fields such as literary and cultural studies, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, political science, religion, and international studies. We will also explore in what specific ways feminist inquiry is, or can be, interdisciplinary. What topics are especially illuminated by an interdisciplinary gendered approach to the world? We will examine how feminist theorists may create the wider interdisciplinary spaces with which to explore problems that cut across, and expose as arbitrary, traditional disciplinary boundaries. FACULTY Renee Bergland is Professor of English and Gender/Cultural Studies at Simmons College. She teaches courses in American literature and culture, gender studies, and literary and cultural theory. Her books include The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects and Computer of Venus: Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science. Frinde Maher is Professor Emerita of Education at Wheaton College, where she directed the Secondary Education Program. She has taught Women's Studies courses for many years, including, for the past decade, Feminist Theory. She has published widely in the fields of feminist pedagogy and women in education, and is co-author, with Mary Kay Tetreault, of two books: The Feminist Classroom (1994: second edition 2001) and Privilege and Diversity in the Academy (2007) Read how to apply Contact 617.324.2085 for more information or write gcws@mit.edu Fall 2008 application deadline: August 29, 2008 2007-2008Interrogating Marriage Tuesdays, 6 – 9 PM / 9.4.07 – 12.11.07 Is Marriage a patriarchal institution? Much feminist scholarship has characterized it that way, but now in the context of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, the meaning of marriage itself demands serious re-examination. This course will discuss history, literature, film, and legal evolution, making use of cross-cultural, sociological, anthropological and many other theoretical approaches to the marriage question from 1630 to the present. As it turns out, sex, marriage, and the family have never been stable institutions; to the contrary, they have continued to function as flash points for the very social and cultural questions that are central to gender studies scholarship. Committee, looking toward eventual publication, and writing with an eye to a professional position. Enrollment is limited to ten* students. FACULTY Renée Bergland is Professor of English and Gender/Cultural Studies at Simmons College. She teaches courses in American literature and culture, gender studies, and literary and cultural theory. Her first book, The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects, focuses on the Native American figures that haunt US cultural narratives. More recently, she wrote Computer of Venus: Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science, forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2007. Other current projects are an essay collection on the recently discovered Nineteenth-Century American novel The Hermaphrodite, and a monograph on the global Emily Dickinson. Leonard Buckle is Associate Professor of Law, Policy and Society and served from 1985 to 2003 as Co-Director of the LPS program. He teaches negotiation and research methods and supervises dissertations in humanistic and social scientific approaches to the study of law and law-like institutions. He has done research in tobacco control, community-based dispute resolution and informal uses of the legal system. Before joining the Northeastern University faculty, he taught and conducted research at MIT's department of urban studies and planning, Tufts' department of political science and the Kennedy School of Government. Suzann Thomas-Buckle is Associate Professor of Law, Policy and Society and served from 1985 to 2003 as Co-Director of the LPS program. She teaches interdisciplinary research methods and dispute resolution and supervises dissertations in the field of informal justice and the ad hoc construction of social control. Her academic interests include indigenous legal systems, conflict resolution and the construction of law through formal legislation and litigation and through informal processes in organizations and communities. Before joining the Northeastern University faculty, she taught and conducted research at MIT's department of urban studies and planning, Tufts' department of political science and the Kennedy School of Government. “I hope to do more work on writing of the west, to explore concepts of the west in future papers, etc.” Representing Gender: Global Perspectives on Art, Media, and Popular CultureThursdays, 6 – 9 PM / 9.6.07 – 12.13.07 This course explores and interrogates the ways in which social and cultural conventions construct sexuality, gender, race, class, ethnicity and nationality across a broad range of representations in art, popular culture and the communications media. Utilizing a global feminist perspective and drawing on examples from the US, China, India, Mexico, Japan, and South Africa, we will focus on thematic intersections and patterns of representation. We examine the ways in which cultural, ideological, and generic conventions converge in a wide range of contemporary representational practices and how feminist theoretical and analytical approaches have attempted to account for a diverse range of influences and impulses. FACULTY Pamela Allara is Associate Professor Emerita at Brandeis University. An art historian, she teaches courses the history of women’s art, contemporary art, film, photography and visual culture. The author of a monograph on the American painter Alice Neel, (Pictures of People: Alice Neel’s American Portrait Gallery, [1998/2000]), her recent research has been on activist art in South Africa. In 2003, she organized the exhibition, “Co-existence: Contemporary Cultural Production in South Africa” for the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis and the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. During the 2005-6 academic year, she organized two exhibitions: “Geobodies: A Question of Boundaries” for the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, and “Cross-Current In Recent Video Installation: Water as Metaphor for Identity” for the Tufts University Art Gallery. Lisa Cuklanz is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Boston College. She is author of Rape on Trial: How the Mass Media Construct Legal Reform and Social Change (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996) and Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). Her research interests focus on mass media representations of gendered violence. Her work has been published in journals including Critical Studies in Media Communication, Women's Studies in Communication, Communication Quarterly, and Journal of Gender Studies. Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender StudiesWednesdays, 4 - 7 PM, Fall & Spring Semesters A writing workshop for dissertation writers at all levels, beginning with preparation of the proposal. Class will include rotating discussion in each meeting of pre-circulated material by one or two students. In addition to a constructive critique of your writing, we will focus on: theoretical and methodological concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies cross disciplines; research, argumentation, and writing; practical matters such as: the Dissertation Committee, looking toward eventual publication, and writing with an eye to a professional position. Enrollment is limited to ten students. FACULTY Erica Harth is Professor Emerita (as of 2006) of Humanities and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. Her original scholarly field is early modern French literature and culture. Among her several published books in this field is Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); and she is the author of numerous articles and essays. Her most recent book is an edited collection of original essays, which she commissioned, on the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans (New York: St. Martins/Palgrave, 2001 and 2003). Transsexuality, Transgenderism, and the Rest...Thursdays, 4 – 7 PM / 1.31.08 – 5.8.08 This course will cover narrative, anthropological, historical, and theoretical texts (including films) about transsexuality and transgenderism. We begin with transsexuality before and beyond identity politics and its transformation in the light/shadow of identity politics and theories of gender. While the course will remain located in the Americas and Europe, we will consider how trans-subjectivities produced in other socio-cultural formations inform histories and politics of transsexuality and transgenderism in so-called western contexts. FACULTY Claudia Castañeda teaches feminist science and technology studies in Boston area universities, and works as a writing coach for academics at all stages of the research/writing process. She is the author of Figurations: Child, Bodies, Worlds (Duke University Press, 2002), and other articles that focus on scientific and technological materialization of bodily differences including race, class, gender, and sexuality in broader circuits of power and exchange. Afsaneh Najmabadi teaches History and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her last book, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), received the 2005 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association. She is an associate editor of the six-volume Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2004-2008), and is currently working on Sex in Change: Configurations of Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Iran. Jyoti Puri writes and teaches in the areas of sexualities, states, nationalisms, and transnational feminisms. Her book, Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India (Routledge 1999), addresses how constructs of gender and sexuality are shaped across national and transnational contexts. Encountering Nationalism, (Blackwell Publishers 2004), is a feminist sociological exploration of nationalism and the state. A number of related articles and chapters are published in journals and edited volumes on sexuality and gender. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants, including a Rockefeller Research Fellowship and a Fulbright Senior Research award. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Sexualizing the State: Biopolitics and Sodomy Law in India.
2006 - 2007Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender StudiesWednesdays, 4:00 - 7:00 pm ~ September 6, 2006 - May 9, 2007 *bi-weekly*; MIT campus, building and room TBA A writing workshop for dissertation writers at all levels, beginning with preparation of the proposal. Class will include rotating discussion in each meeting of pre-circulated material by one or two students. In addition to a constructive critique of your writing, we will focus on: theoretical and methodological concepts in Women's and Gender Studies across disciplines; research, argumentation, and writing; practical matters such as: the Dissertation Committee, looking toward eventual publication, and writing with an eye to a professional position. Enrollment is limited to ten* students. FACULTY ERICA HARTH is Professor Emerita (as of 2006) of Humanities and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. Her original scholarly field is early modern French literature and culture. Among her several published books in this field is Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); and she is the author of numerous articles and essays. Her most recent book is an edited collection of original essays, which she commissioned, on the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans (New York: St. Martins/Palgrave, 2001 and 2003). Note: This workshop meets thirteen times over two semesters. Dates for each class time will be determined by class consensus. Feminist Inquiry: Strategies for Effective ScholarshipFall: Wednesdays, 5:30 - 8:30 pm ~ September 6 - December 13, 2006 MIT campus, building and room TBA This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines. Doing feminist research involves rethinking disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, developing new understandings of what counts as knowledge, seeking alternative ways of understanding the origins of problems/issues, formulating new ways of asking questions and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study. The course will focus on methodology, i.e., the theory and analysis of how research should proceed. We shall be especially attentive to epistemological issues--pre-suppositions about the nature of knowledge. What makes research distinctively feminist lies in the complex connections between epistemologies, methodologies and research methods? We shall explore how these connections are formed in the traditional disciplines and raise questions about why they are inadequate and/or problematic for feminist inquiry and what, specifically, are the feminist critiques of these intersections. FACULTY MODHUMITA ROY is associate professor of English and Director of the undergraduate Women's Studies program at Tufts University. JILL McLEAN TAYLOR, Ed.D. is associate professor of Education and Women's Studies at Simmons College, and chair of Women's Studies. She is also the project coordinator of GEAR UP, a six-year partnership between Simmons, Suffolk, and the English High School. She is co-author with Carol Gilligan and Amy Sullivan of Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship , and co-editor with Carol Gilligan and Janie Ward of Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women's Thinking to Psychological theory and Education . Gender, Politics, and NationalismSpring: Thursdays, 5:30 - 8:30 pm ~ February 1 - May 10, 2007 Building 4 Room 253, MIT campus This course will investigate the myriad ways that religion, race, and color affect women's lives within national and transnational contexts. Specifically, this course explores the contested relationship between women and nationalist, religious, and racial/color politics in the context of South Asia and the Caribbean. It will investigate ways in which gender, religious and racial identities intersect with ethnic and national ones in the emergence of social movements. Further, the course will examine the multiple ways religiosity, nationality, feminism, and political perspective are constructed, experienced, and practiced, and highlight the complex ways in which they inform one another. It seeks to examine ways in which nationalist politics has created opportunities for women's activism while simultaneously undermining their autonomy, and to complicate and explore how nation-states define and use women and how these citizens/agents negotiate these definitions and uses. Specific topics addressed include: the relationship of gender to nationalism and formation of nation-states, and nationalist movements, women's participation in national movements and anti-colonial struggles, effects of globalization, development, and transnational institutions; and the interrelation of race, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and religion in national identity constructions. FACULTY ELORA H. CHOWDHURY is an Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her areas of interest include critical development studies, Third World/transnational feminisms, gender and social movements in South Asia, and feminist ethnography. RHONDA FREDERICK (Associate Professor, English) teaches Caribbean and African American literatures at Boston College. She is also interested in American literatures, particularly 20th Century women's fiction, science fiction and fantasy, detective/mystery fiction, and literatures of the African Diaspora. Her research interests include Caribbean and Post-colonial Studies, Cultural Studies, and narratives of migration. Through a research fellowship funded by the NEH/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Harlem, New York), she completed a manuscript that examines Caribbean literature's recurrent figure of the Panamá Canal worker, entitled "Colón Man a Come": Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Gender, Armed Conflict, and PeacemakingSpring: Wednesdays, 6:00 - 9:00 pm ~ January 31 - May 9, 2007 Building 4, Room 253, MIT campus Peace Keeping operations involving both military and civilian personnel have been deployed in a number of countries such as Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan. These interventions have come about following intense levels of violence, breakdown in law and order, systems of governance and social systems as well as violations of human rights. This course is designed to review the phenomena of conflict, forced migration and militarization from a gender perspective to highlight the policy and operational implications that arise from this analysis. The gendered nature of conflict and intervention will be explored from a multi-disciplinary framework involving anthropology, sociology, policy analysis, philosophy and the arts. Presenters will utilize literature, poetry, film, witness testimonies from the field, ethnographic narratives and other resources to explore the complex ways in which women and men experience, manage and respond to violence and situations of protracted crisis. FACULTY CAROL COHN is the Director of the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights. Her research and writing has focused on gender and international security, ranging from work on discourse of civilian defense intellectuals, gender integration issues in the US military, and, most extensively, weapons of mass destruction. Her most recent research examines gender mainstreaming in international peace and security institutions; a central focus is the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, and the on-going efforts to ensure its implementation at the international and grassroots levels. GORDANA RABRENOVIC is Associate Professor of Sociology and Education and Associate Director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University. Her substantive specialties include community studies, urban education and inter group conflict and violence. Her most recent book is Why We Hate (2004) co-authored with Jack Levin. LISA RIVERA is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her areas of specialization are moral and political theory, feminist philosophy and ethics in international affairs. Her recent work defends transnational rights to subsistence and considers moral responsibility in war. Gender, Race, and the Construction of the American West, 1880 - 1945Spring: Thursdays, 5:30 - 8:30 pm ~ February 1 - May 10, 2007 Building 32, Room 124, MIT campus This course explores the historical experiences and cultural productions of women in the North American West during the time it was being explored, settled, and imagined. Challenging the myths of western expansion as an exclusively male endeavor, and the formation of western myth and enterprise as exclusively male domains, the course pays particular attention to the roles of women in promoting, resisting, transforming, and constructing the trans-Mississippi West as reality and imaginary. The North American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a fascinating case study of the shifting meanings of gender, race, citizenship, and power in border societies. As the site of migration, settlement, and displacement, it spawned contests over land, labor disputes, inter-ethnic conflicts and peaceful relations, and many kinds of cultural productions. FACULTY KAREN V. HANSEN is Professor of Sociology & Women's and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. She teaches courses on feminist theory, historical methods, and families. Her research on the upper Great Plains analyzes the relationships between Scandinavian immigrants and the Dakota people at the turn of the twentieth century. She has published Not-So-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care for Children and A Very Social Time: Crafting Community in Antebellum New England , and co-edited two anthologies, Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics and Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination . MARILYNN S. JOHNSON is Professor of History at Boston College where she teaches modern U.S. social history and the history of the American West. She is the author of The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II and Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City . In 2002 she was co-curator of "Cowboys, Indians and the Big Picture," an exhibition of western art at the McMullen Museum at Boston College. She is currently completing an edited collection entitled Violence in the American West: The Mining and Range Wars . LOIS RUDNICK is Professor of English and American Studies, and director of the American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches courses on Immigration and Multi-Ethnic History and Literature, and on Modern American Literature and Culture. She has published widely on modern American culture, on the literature and arts of New Mexico, and on American Studies pedagogy. Her books include American Identities: An Introductory Textbook ; Ma bel Dodge Luhan: New Woman New Worlds ; Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture , and 1915, the Cultural Moment: the New Politics, the New Woman, the New Psychology, the New Art, and the New Theatre in America , edited with Adele Heller. 2005-2006Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender Studies Fall/Spring: Mondays, 4–6 p.m., September 19, 2005–March 20, 2006 This workshop is designed to address the main challenges faced by dissertation writers: isolation, getting on a regular writing schedule, and formulating clear arguments. In addition, it addresses the unique challenges of research and writing in women's and gender studies. This workshop provides an opportunity for members to exchange ideas and experiences with others working in women's studies, to learn general principles of academic argument, and to receive feedback on their work. Open to graduate students in the early, middle, or late phases of dissertation writing. Enrollment is limited to ten students. Mary Ballou is a full professor of counseling psychology at Northeastern University, where she has been deeply involved with developing both the masters and doctoral programs to include multiple levels of influence on individuals. She has published widely in feminist psychology and is a national leader in the development of feminist therapy. She has published five books and numerous chapters and articles. Her current scholarly intrigue addresses ethics and epistemology in multiple methods in questions of knowledge generation and validation. In addition to teaching and scholarship, Ballou practices feminist psychology in counseling and consulting. Dr. Ballou is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and holds an American Board of Professional Psychology Diplomate in Counseling Psychology. Note: This workshop meets thirteen times over two semesters. Dates for each class time will be determined by class consensus. Interrogating Gender and Globalization
This course will investigate interactions between gender and economic globalization, considering ways in which economic globalization is at play in constructions of masculinity and femininity, along with ways in which “gender” has shaped and inflected globalization. We will begin by considering alternative approaches to theorizing “economic globalization” and “gender” so as to establish a set of common terms and frames of reference. We will then look at their interplay by exploring the impact of gendered assumptions on global capital and by thinking about the link between conventions of masculinity and the behavior of global decision-makers. From there, we will consider work that addresses the “feminization of labor” in transnational production, with a focus on the differential impact of this form of globalization on women, men, and on gender equity. We will explore studies that examine the movement of capital, export-processing, domestic labor, sex work, and deindustrialization in “the north.” In each instance, we will be alert to the uneven, unequal, and occasionally surprising impact of these processes on women and men and the potential for feminist transformations. Carole Biewener is a professor of economics and women’s studies at Simmons College and coordinator for the interdisciplinary minor in social justice. She teaches courses in economic development, gender in development, women and work, feminist economics, and organizing for social change. Building on her previous work on the French Socialist government’s monetary and financial policies in the 1980s, her current work is focused on community development in the United States and Canada with an emphasis on progressive finance initiatives. Leslie Salzinger is an ethnographer, specializing in the study of gender, feminist theory, globalization, and economic sociology. Within those fields, her primary research interests lie in the cultural constitution of economic processes and in the creation of subjectivities within political economies. Her 2003 book, Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global Factories, focuses on the formation and consequences of gendered subjectivities in transnational production on Mexico ‘s northern border. Her current research investigates the social constitution of markets and value among peso/dollar traders in banks located in New York and Mexico City. She teaches courses in the sociology of gender and feminist theory, epistemology and ethnographic methods, globalization, and economic sociology. Women, Representation, and Music in Selected Folk Traditions of the British Isles and North AmericaThis is a sample course syllabus from the fall 2003 of Women, Representation and Music. The upcoming course syllabus will be posted soon. This course investigates the special relation of women to several musical folk traditions in the British Isles and North America. We will examine the gendered dimensions of the music—the song texts, the performance styles—as well as the processes of dissemination (collection, literary representation) and issues of historiography to analyze the specific contribution of women to this tradition. In addition to telling stories about women’s musical lives, and studying elements of female identity and subjectivity in song texts and music, we will investigate the ways in which women’s work and women’s cultural roles have affected the folk traditions of these several countries. We will begin with the earliest eighteenth-century collectors of folk music in the British Isles, focus on Anglo-American and African-American repertories, and end with the most recent folk revival of the 1960s. Ruth Perry is a professor of literature at MIT. Past president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, founding director of the MIT women’s studies program as well as the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies, she has also been a folksinger for most of her life. Her work has been about eighteenth-century English literature and culture and about the effects of gender on the production of art. In addition to five books, she has published essays on canonical figures such as Pope, Sterne, Richardson, Austen, and Hawthorne, as well as contemporary women writers such as Grace Paley and Mary Gordon. Her most recent book is a study of families in eighteenth-century English fiction called Novel Relations: The Transformations of Kinship in England 1748–1818. Judith Tick is a music historian who specializes in American music and women’s history. A Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, she co-edited the pioneering anthology Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition 1150–1950 (University of Illinois Press, 1986), now regarded as a classic in the field. Other publications include the prize-winning biography, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music (Oxford University Press, 1997); Aaron Copland’s America: A Cultural Perspective (Watson-Guptill, 2000), co-authored with art historian Gail Levin; and the entry “women and music” for the revised New Grove Dictionary of American Music . She currently serves as an associate editor for the scholarly journal Musical Quarterly. Feminist Inquiry: Strategies of Effective ScholarshipSpring: Tuesdays, 5:30–8:30 p.m., February 1– May 2, 2006 This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines. Doing feminist research involves rethinking disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, developing new understandings of what counts as knowledge, seeking alternative ways of understanding the origins of problems/issues, and redefining the relationship between subjects and objects of study. Discussions in this course will focus on how to identify and listen to the silences within traditional analyses and how to correct the partial and distorted accounts that such silencing has allowed. As feminist scholarship has developed over the last thirty-odd years, it has become increasingly clear that the practice of feminist inquiry is inherently interdisciplinary. We aim to promote the development of feminist theory and methods by providing a forum for sharing and assessing strategies used by feminist scholars in an array of fields from history and philosophy to political science and evolutionary biology. Debra Renee Kaufman is director of Jewish studies, professor of sociology and Matthews Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University. She is the author of Achievement and Women (with Barbara Richardson, The Free Press), Rachel’s Daughters (Rutgers University Press), and special editor of Women, Research and the Holocaust (Contemporary Jewry). Her current writing, research, and interest are on post-Holocaust Jewish identity. Caroline Bicks, professor of English at Boston College specializing in the study of early modern literature and culture, and the history of medicine. Her research interests include women and performance, midwifery, and the construction of sex and gender. Women’s Health and the Body: A Cross-Cultural Perspective Linking Personal and Social Change
This course employs a gendered lens to discuss social meanings and personal experiences of health, illness, and the body, with an emphasis on linkages between personal embodiment and methods of activism facilitating personal and social change. We apply theoretical understandings from the psychological and social sciences to situate discussions in the context of health, activism, and human rights. Through diverse comparisons across cultures, the course explores the relationship between individual agency, social change, institutional power, medical technology, and social constructions of gender related to health. We discuss how social constructions of femininity (and masculinity) are relevant to experiences of health, illness, and the body, to health behaviors and to access to healthcare in diverse socio-cultural settings. We focus on women's health, illness, and the body in diverse social and cultural contexts and the meanings of major life transitions and disruptions. We aim to understand meanings in a variety of “local worlds” and reflect on the importance of these to practice. Particularly, we ask if constructions can be detrimental to health and can be implicated in gender differences in health outcomes. We draw on illustrative examples from the following topics: the international women's health movement, social change in Eastern Europe and implications for women's health; reproductive health, including birth and infertility in contrasting global contexts, including Eastern Europe and Asia. Students will select an area of their interest in women's health and social change to explore and present to the class. Catherine Kohler Riessman is research professor in the department of sociology at Boston College, where she teaches post-graduate courses on "Health, Gender, and the Body" and "Narrative Methods in the Social Sciences." She is professor emerita at Boston University School of Social Work and taught for many years at Smith College. She has authored three books, including Narrative Analysis (Sage 1993) and Divorce Talk (Rutgers Univ. Press 1990), and numerous book chapters and articles on narrative research. She completed fieldwork in South India supported by a Fulbright in 1993–1994 on the meaning and management of infertility by women and families. Her current research examines the performance of identity in narrative accounts of disruptive life events, such as infertility, divorce, and chronic illness. Professor Riessman received her PhD in 1977 from Columbia University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She was chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association in 1998. Ester R. Shapiro, PhD (a.k.a. Ester Rebeca Shapiro Rok) is associate professor of clinical psychology and Latino studies at University of Massachusetts at Boston and research associate at the Mauricio Gaston Institute, where she has initiated a project in gender, culture and health promoting transnational collaborations supporting health promotion for social change. Her teaching, clinical practice, and work in culturally informed health promotion in the US and internationally applies a strengths-based family development model to support innovation, resilience and gender-equitable growth for children, parents, families, and social systems. She wrote Grief as a Family Process: A Cultural and Developmental Approach to Integrative Practice (Guilford, 1994; 2nd edition forthcoming 2006); and was co-author and coordinating editor of Nuestros Cuerpos Nuestras Vidas (2000), the Spanish language cultural adaptation of Our Bodies, Ourselves for use in Latin America and by US Latinas. She has also published personal narratives about the impact of multiple immigrations on her own Cuban Jewish family, co-produced an award-winning domestic violence documentary with Cuban film maker Lizette Vila, and collaborated on community arts projects linking personal narrative/testimonial and community development. Irina L.G. Todorova works on issues related to psychosocial aspects of health and well-being, social change and health, and health disparities. She has received her degrees from Sofia University and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and has been a post-doctoral scholar at the department of human development and psychology, Harvard University. She is the director of the Health Psychology Research Center in Sofia, Bulgaria, and she is collaborating with immigration studies at NYU and the department of psychology at Clark University—working on cultural conceptualizations of health, illness, and self; gender and health; migration and health. Her research interests also cover the topics of social change in Eastern Europe and implications for health. Todorova is board member and newsletter editor of the European Health Psychology Society (EHPS). She has taught courses at Sofia University, Harvard University, and the University of New Hampshire. Several grants for research in psychology and cultural aspects of health and well-being have been awarded to her, including the “Studying Diverse Lives Award” from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and grants from the Global Fund for Women, EngenderHealth, the Soros Foundation, and others. Her current and upcoming research projects include: women's experiences of living with infertility; cultural meanings in women's reproductive health decisions in Bulgaria, Estonia, and Romania; and psychosocial and health systems determinants of cervical cancer screening in Bulgaria and Romania.
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Spring: Thursdays, 5:30–8:30 p.m., February 2– May 4, 2006 
