Juliet Davis - WST 383 Advanced Women's Studies

WST 383 Advanced Women's Studies

Woman Course Description | Syllabus | Assignments

An overview of women’s studies that examines the pervasive and often unacknowledged ways that gender shapes our social institutions, individual knowledge and inter-personal relationships. Includes history, literature and film by and about women. May be used to satisfy general curriculum distribution in social science. This is a writing-intensive class.

NOTE: This is a themed section of WST 383, in which we will focus on the female body, particularly in relationship to constructs of gender and sexuality.

PowerPoints & Media

NOTE: Some of these PowerPoint presentations have graphic images and strong language. I suggest that students view them after they are discussed in class, rather than before, so that they may be read in the context of those lessons. Also, not all lessons are accompanied by PowerPoints.

Introduction: Women's Bodies Over History

UNIT 1: Sex & Consent
History of Sex (DVD's) - The following are on YouTube (we show Vol. 1&4)
Vol. 3 The Middle Ages: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Vol. 4 Don Juan to Queen Victoria: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Interesting Sex Stats | Sexual Violence Stats
"Imagining Ourselves: A Global Generation of Women" (IMOW)

UNIT 2: Cultural Constructions of the Body
"Medical Metaphors" and "Naked and Nude: (1 | 2 | 3 )
Cultural Practices: Women's Bodies
Cosmetic Surgery | Orlan
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

UNIT 4: Sexuality and Gender
Terminology: Gender and Sexuality
Homosexuality, Women, & The Bible
Lesbian Bodies
If These Walls Could Talk 2

Handouts & Articles

NOTE: Many of these articles are assigned for discursive discussion. In other words, I have purposefully selected readings that will spawn varying responses and digressions, so that each student can share unique experiences and develop her or his own philosophies (and ways to articulate them).

Pamela R. Fletcher
“Whose Body is It Anyway?
Transforming Ourselves to Change a Rape Culture”

Catharine MacKinnon
"Rape: Coercion and Consent"
(first 6 pages only)

Mary Gaitskill
"The Girl on the Plane"

CNN: Anderson Cooper
Sex Consent Forms: Interview with Sexologist
Create Your Own Sex Consent Form

John Berger
Naked and Nude (Ways of Seeing)

Emily Martin
"Medical Metaphors of Women's Bodies:
Menstruation and Menopause "

Sojourner Truth
"Ain't I a Woman?"

Old Testament Story of Bathsheba and David
II Samual 12:1-27 and 13:1-31
Rembrandt: Bathsheba Taking a Bath

bell hooks
“Selling Hot Pussy: Representation of Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace” (pp. 113-116 only)

Anne Balsamo
"On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery
and the Technological Production of the Gendered Body"

Faith Wilding
"Vulvas with a Difference"

Kathy Davis
“My Body is my Art: Cosmetic Surgery as Feminist Utopia?”
(pp. 454-455 only)

Artel and Wengraf
“Positive Images: Screening Women’s Films” (for discursion)

Barbara Creed
“Lesbian Bodies: Tribades, Tomboys and Tarts”

Judith Butler
Excerpt from Undoing Gender, "Introduction: Acting in Concert" (pp. 1-2 only)

Kim Surkan
“More Gender, Less Presumption:
Cybersex as an Alternative to A Culture of Violent Sexuality”