[bioundgrd] Fwd: GCWS SP18 Courses: Still accepting applications

[Janice Chang]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Stacey Lantz <slantz at mit.edu<mailto:slantz at mit.edu>>
Subject: GCWS SP18 Courses: Still accepting applications
Date: January 9, 2018 at 3:53:56 PM EST
To: gradadmins <gradadmins at mit.edu<mailto:gradadmins at mit.edu>>

Hello and Happy New Year!

The GCWS is still accepting applications for its upcoming Spring 2018 courses. Please send the course descriptions and flyers to students who you think may be interested in the courses. They may contact me with any questions or submit an application here: http://mit.edu/GCWS/courses/how-to-apply.html

Thank you in advance for your assistance! We are very excited about our upcoming courses and want to include as many students as possible.

WGS.645 Women in Contemporary U.S. Science
Tuesdays 5:00-8:00PM
January 30 - May 8, 2018
Gerhard Sonnert, Harvard University & Kathrin Zippel, Northeastern University

Using a variety of disciplinary lenses (history, psychology, sociology), this course explores the factors that impede women from successful participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers in the United States. A look into history will reveal that in different times and places, science, or at least certain branches of science, has been considered an entirely appropriate arena for women and that the advancement of women in the sciences does not follow a linear progressive trend. The course will also cover a variety of sociological and psychological mechanisms (including critical mass, accumulation of disadvantages, stereotype threat, implicit association, and attribution theory) that currently tend to distance women from scientific pursuits. Our investigation will range from what happens in the educational system to the situation of women scientists in the workplace. Furthermore, we will examine programs and interventions that are designed to support and promote women in STEM. Particular attention will be paid to how gender intersects with other powerful mechanisms of stratification, such as sexuality, race/ethnicity, and class.

WGS.615 Feminist Inquiry
Tuesdays 1:30-4:30PM
January 30 - May 8, 2018
Linda Blum, Northeastern University & Karl Surkan, MIT

This course investigates theories and practices of feminist inquiry across a range of disciplines by studying a series of pairings of humanist and social science works by feminist scholars. It is not intended as a survey course on feminist theory, although students will recognize many pivotal thinkers included in our reading list. As an interdisciplinary course, Feminist Inquiry also cannot offer a strict "how-to" approach to research, but instead will engage students in questioning disciplinary assumptions and methodologies, seeking new ways to frame scholarly questions, and reconsidering the relationship between subjects and objects of study. Feminist Inquiry is simultaneously challenging and creative, as disciplines are revised by the analysis of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation, both embedded within and shaping particular historical, national, and cultural contexts. Students will also have the opportunity to engage in two "hands on" research inquiries of their own. This course will proceed, after a brief framing of the issues, by closely analyzing pairings of humanist and social science "case studies" of feminist scholars and their work. Several of these feminist scholars will visit the class or speak with us remotely during the semester. Our aim is to allow seminar participants to think deeply about specific theoretical and methodological choices as these are evidenced in practice. We will also reflect on the ways that feminist inquiry/ies transform knowledge and inform varied forms of activism.

WGS. 700 Resistance in Feminist Queer Theater / Theory
Wednesdays 5:00-8:00PM
January 31, 2018 - May 9, 2018
Andrés Fabián Henao Castro, UMass Boston and Jennifer Row, BU

There is something “spectacular” about revolutions: the drama of barriers being broken, the emotion of the crowd. And for feminist and queer activism in particular, the nature of visibility, spectacle and protest has been integral to gains made by groups such as ACT UP! or the Combahee Women’s Collective. This course, however, moves beyond the relationship between social movements and theater to hone in on a critical theory of performance: why and how is theater so important to feminist and queer thought? From Judith Butler’s sense of “performatively” constructed gender to José Estaban Munoz’ theory of “disidentification” in queer of color critique, theatricality and performance studies have lent robust paradigms to queer and feminist theory. In other words, one aspect of this course will examine what theater and queer theory share: troubling the nature of representation, investigating mimesis and secondariness, spectacle and masochism. However, another aspect of this course will look at how queer and feminist thought can put pressure on the theater (and vice-versa); how do the theater’s exigencies of action (drama) oppose theories of neutral or passive (minimal, bored) resistance? What type of spectatorship does queer and feminist theater elicit? Can the theater stand as realm of change, or is there a sense in which the “revolution can not be televised?”—that is to say, when the powerful sentiments of the disgruntled, disenfranchised, or dispossessed are captured in aesthetic form, does it lend legibility, or does it domesticate such affects? The course presents a genealogy of performativity and performance and its relationship to feminist theories and queer critique. Interweaving political philosophy, theater studies, and literary analysis, the course asks students to think speculatively and creatively about the poetics and politics of theatricality, sex, race, and gender.


Best regards,
Stacey

Best regards,
Stacey

Stacey Lantz
Program Manager
GCWS
(617) 324-2085
Building 14N Room 211, MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139

Pronouns: she, her, hers

http://web.mit.edu/gcws
<http://web.mit.edu/gcws/>

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