New Mexico State University

 

 

This course introduces students to key concepts, debates, and analytical tools informing Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. As an interdisciplinary field of study, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies employs academic perspectives from a range of disciplines and theoretical approaches. It also incorporates lived experience and social location into its object of analysis. Though content will vary according to the expertise and focus of the instructor, this course will develop tools through readings and assignments that critically analyze how gender and sexuality are shaped by different networks of power and social relations and demonstrate how the intersections of race, class, disability, national status, and other categories of identity and difference are central to their understanding and deployment. In addition to feminist thought, areas of focus might include gender and sexuality in relation to social, cultural, political, creative, economic, or scientific discourses. This class is recommended for those with a general interest in the topic area as well as for those seeking a foundational course for further study. This class fulfills Gen Ed Area 4 requirement.

 

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This course explores fundamental concepts in the interdisciplinary field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and feminist theory, especially as they relate to aspects of identity beyond sex and gender. We will critically examine concepts of power, privilege, and inequality in conjunction with intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. We will read and view texts that allow us to gain familiarity with the roles women occupy in diverse societies, and the social institutions that shape our perceptions of gender, race, and class. This class fulfills Gen Ed Area 4 requirement.

 

 

What is masculinity? Who possesses it? Who shapes it? Who benefits from it? Who defines it? Is there more than one form of masculinity? Who, in this society, is rewarded for exhibiting masculine traits? Who is ridiculed, even punished, for their masculinity? Are all men created equal in the United States? How about all masculine people? How are such questions mediated through a complex set of factors that include one’s race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other significant aspects of a person’s identity?

 

This online asynchronous course will tackle these questions and more as it explores how contemporary U.S. culture constructs our ideas about men, masculinity, and masculine identities. We will use academic readings, multimedia, art, film, graphic narrative, and learner-driven assignments to query ideas about and expressions of masculinity, especially as they interconnect with difference and social power in the United States. This course forms part of the inter- and multidisciplinary field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This class is recommended for those with a general interest in the topic as well as for those seeking a more focused topic for further study. Questions? Contact Dr. M. C. Jonet at mjonet@nmsu.edu.

 

 

This course addresses women’s contributions to literature, and, crucially, their ways of doing so, as they work within a strikingly diverse number of literary forms, styles, and genres. We will explore what it means to approach and attempt to understand a course subject as broad as “women writers.”

 

Our course readings further address diversity among women writers and often focus on representations of issues international in scope, a focus that seeks to enable an understanding of the various factors that, within the 20th and 21st centuries, have worked to create the world we live in: social movements and institutions; historical changes and trends; religious, sexual, domestic, racial, gender, ethnic, and international complexities and conflicts. More generally, this course and its texts address the issue of women’s roles within movements of social change. What does it mean when women, as writers and active agents within their own cultures, contribute commentary on and artistic representations of their societies and the events and changes within them?

 

A focus on the unique issues and problems that confront women today and how they affect the health of women.

 

This course explores historical and contemporary immigration processes in/to the U.S. that are shaped by gendered dynamics, societal structures, and the socio-economic conditions that impact immigrant women. The class will examine how immigrant women use their agency and resistance to overcome exploitative circumstances, and the restraints of immigration laws and policies that impact individual, communal and societal change.

This course centers on the idea of “women’s rights as human rights” and offers several examples using human rights’ international conventions and protocols that, in theory, protect human rights. We will discuss individual rights verses collective rights, and how both impact women/womxn and girls, and the conditions that facilitate forms of violence against women/womxn and girls- both structurally and interpersonally. “Women’s rights as human rights” discourse demands that governments, communities and societies, overall, address several issues: the marginalization of women/womxn and girls and the invisibility of violence against them within societies; governments’ overt negligence and impunity in addressing conditions of structural violence and interpersonal violence against women/womxn and girls; and the sexual violence women/womxn and girls endure through human trafficking, femicide/feminicide and MMIW-Missing Murdered and Indigenous Women in the U.S. and Canada.

 

Key concepts include: femicide/feminicide, MMIW, feminized poverty and marginalization, sexual violence, economic survival through illicit economies, and other forms of injustices including structural violence and racialized violence, access to cultural rights, social rights, political rights and economic rights, as well as human rights’ protections. We will explore the international, political, legal, economic and socio-cultural implications of this violence that targets- directly or indirectly- women/womxn and girls. This course crosses multiple academic legal fields and disciplines, and we will discuss several countries, and how those countries have or have not addressed specific human rights issues impacting women/womxn and girls. We will explore these issues together and when an answer is unclear, we will work together to find a resolution.

This course provides analysis of gender, sexuality, and intersecting identities through the lens of both US and global cinema. Studying influential cinematic works, we unpack representations of women, LGBTQ+ communities, and other identities, placing them at the narrative forefront.

 

Drawing inspiration from innovative directors, performances, and film techniques, students will examine how editing, mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, and narrative techniques converge to shape perceptions. We will engage with critical questions surrounding feminist filmography, representation of same-sex desire, considering: What makes a film feminist? How has the film industry represented same-sex relationships and different gender identities over time? We'll look at how different film techniques form our understanding and views on these topics.

 

This course provides an avenue for both theoretical exploration and community engagement. Not only will we practice critical film analysis in women's, gender, and LGBTQ+ studies, but we'll also have a hands-on opportunity to review films and participate in the preparation for the 2024 Feminist Border Arts Film and Media Festival and Exhibition. bridging theory with real-world arts administration and media production.

 

This course will explore the interplay between feminist and queer theories and media practices as tools for social change. Drawing from pivotal texts such as Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Cyberfeminism Index edited by Mindy Seu, Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, and Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble, learners will gain both a theoretical foundation and a hands-on approach through D.I.Y. media studies methodologies and the broader context of public humanities.

 

Learners will gain the skills to critically assess and create digital media artifacts, ranging from memes and digital narratives, and will actively shape a social media campaign, in a series of coordinated actions with a specific goal on digital platforms, for the 2024 Feminist Border Arts Film and Media Festival and Exhibition (FBA24). Through a blend of academic inquiry and practical application, learners will be evaluated based on a combination of hands-on projects, reflective discussions, and analysis of various media texts. No prior media production experience required. This course unfolds online and operates asynchronously.                                                                  

 

This split-level undergraduate/graduate course is designed to be a critical introduction to conducting feminist research. We’ll engage questions such as: What makes research feminist? What counts as evidence? How do we gather information for our scholarly-activist work? Who does our work benefit or omit? You will learn about different methods for gathering information needed to conduct your work and how your research can be guided by feminist methodologies. We will focus on qualitative research methods such as archival research, ethnography, oral history, surveys, discourse analysis, and visual analysis, to examine how feminist scholarship challenges dominant modes of knowledge production. We will meet in person a few times over the course of the semester, but the large majority of our interactions will take place online via synchronous meetings or asynchronous course activities and discussions. If you are an online-only student who is interested in the class, please join and reach out to let me know (dmb1@nmsu.edu). I am happy to accommodate a hybrid online/in-person structure for our in-person meetings.