This course explores aspects of women’s reproductive health from biomedical, social, cultural, public health, political and health policy perspectives. Topics include reproductive physiology, sexual health, contraception and family planning, sexually transmitted infections, infertility and reproductive technologies, pregnancy loss, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. The course aims to teach the biomedical knowledge essential to understanding these topics, and in addition offers students the tools to critically evaluate this knowledge from a feminist perspective. Race and racial disparities in reproductive health and health care are also considered. While the initial focus of the course is on U.S. frameworks for health care, reproductive health in transnational and global contexts is also considered.

This course is focused on global reproductive and maternity health policy and how it shapes the local provision of women’s health care services in developing countries, with an emphasis on Latin America. The first portion is focused on theoretical underpinnings of economic development, human rights and authoritative knowledge as they relate to the provision of health care services and the experience of health within a post-colonial context. We will then build upon our current biomedical understanding of major conditions affecting women’s reproductive health (pregnancy, reproductive control, assisted reproduction and sexually transmitted infections) and will raise challenges from a feminist perspective to address the complex intersections that shape individual women's reproductive health. This will include considerations of access to health care personnel, resources and services as a background to opportunities to improve women’s health status locally. The final portion of the course will take these expanded discussions from a global policy perspective to a local focus on the implementation of the World Health Organization’s Millennium Development Goals related to women’s reproductive health and Safe Motherhood policy initiatives. For those students who are interested and who have Spanish language speaking skills, there is a service learning study abroad component to this course where one week (over Spring Break) is spent in a rural Honduras community focused on providing reproductive and maternity health care education and services. This would add one additional credit for the field study portion of the course either in the Winter term for this experience.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the analysis of group work and facilitation using a multicultural perspective/context. Attention will be given throughout the course to the influence of the intersections between gender, race, attractional orientation, and other identities that can affect group process and facilitation. Theory, research, and cultural, personal, and life experiences of individuals and groups will be explored for the purposes of developing a fuller understanding and appreciation of varying populations that group facilitators may encounter. This course is designed as an experiential process in which what is learned is also experienced and using these experiences for the foundation for learning the concepts and principles presented. Upon completion of this course, you are expected to have built skills for effective analysis of and participation in group work in a multicultural context.

Through experiential learning and theoretical analysis, we will examine the impact and consequences of social norms, practices, inequities, personal experiences, and psychosocial stressors of those who have been historically stigmatized in American society such as women of color, gay men/lesbians, etc., in order to better understand and appreciate the psychological and emotional struggles they might bring with them into the group process. How best to effectively work with groups regardless of their composition is a goal of this course for each student. Focus will be on the experience of short term groups that are generally formed out of the need for support, education, and consciousness-raising.

This course is designed as a training course for students intending to facilitate small groups through WOMENSTD 420 (Group Facilitation in Women’s Studies). It may also be used as supplementary training for other types of facilitation experiences (i.e., Intergroup Relations and Conflict, Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, Project Community, or Lesbian Gay Bi Affairs Office). As a student in WOMENSTD 419, you are encouraged to apply to participate as a facilitator in WOMENSTD 420 which is a direct application of the WOMENSTD 419 curriculum.

Students apply knowledge and expertise with core concepts of the Women's Studies curriculum while facilitating small groups of 8-10 students in WOMENSTD 100, Gendered Lives in U.S. Society. Students will develop skills in group facilitation, feminist pedagogy, group problem-solving and program-planning. Supervision and group facilitation training is provided by faculty and in peer supervision groups throughout the academic term.

In a lecture format, this course will address social and psychological aspects of sexuality, including sexual orientations, sexual adjustment and satisfaction, alternative sexualities, sexually transmitted infections, sexual disorders, sex work and the social construction of sexuality. Sections will meet once per week to enrich the lecture with small group activities and discussions.

This course will examine geographies of contemporary sexual diversity, particularly sex work, gay and lesbian populations, and transgendered concentrations. The shifting spatial distribution of sexual populations in urban areas will be situated in terms of the larger dynamics of urban life. Topics will include the early literatures on sex and cities, the relationships between urban size and sexual specialization, and the impact of de-industrialization and redevelopment on the texture of urban neighborhoods.

This course is an exploration of select cultural texts (film, literature, essay, performance, cartoons) from the insular Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico) and its U.S. diaspora that present issues of lesbianism, homosexuality, bisexuality, transvestism, and transgender identities and practices. We will also look at some social science research (especially on sexuality and migration) to understand varied cultural productions. Some of the main issues explored will be:

• How do Hispanic Caribbean paradigms of sexuality differ from those dominant in the U.S.?
• What is the role and effect of migration on sexual expression?
• How does homophobia manifest itself in Hispanic Caribbean communities?
• What has been the impact of the Cuban Revolution on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community?
• How do gender, class, and race affect this framework?
• How has activism affected this situation?
• How are these issues explored in cultural productions?
• What aesthetic strategies do artists employ in their representations of this issue?

Readings will include works by Rey Emmanuel Andújar, Reinaldo Arenas, Rane Arroyo, Junot Díaz, Magali García Ramis, Rita Indiana Hernández, Erika López, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Achy Obejas, Juanita Ramos, Manuel Ramos Otero, Sonia Rivera-Valdés, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Mayra Santos-Febres, Carmelita Tropicana, and Luz María Umpierre. We will also see a number of documentary and narrative (fiction) films.

Class will be taught in Spanish, with readings in English and Spanish.

This section is suitable to be taken in conjunction with SPANISH 308.

Important gender differences in health, health care access, and use of medical services have been recorded in the United States. Women and men differ considerably in the type and extent of certain health conditions. Although women in general are less likely than men to report lack of insurance coverage, women are more likely than men to experience cost barriers to medical care. Moreover, many of these gender differences evolve across the lifespan.

This course will examine how gender influences health status, health care, and health policy from a feminist and sociopolitical context.

Specifically, we will review the history of the major public health and welfare policies and programs in the United States and discuss the identified differences in the ways that women and men fare within the health care policy arena. In addition to reviewing the main historic, legislative, organizational, and financing bases for programs, we will address the limitations of the current health care infrastructure and programs serving both men and women. To that end, we will explore how an individual’s health care needs, access, and utilization change over their life course. Lastly, we’ll assess the effectiveness of existing programs in meeting the public needs of specific populations.

Sex and gender are largely dichotomized into a nature/nurture dichotomy, with sex representing biology and gender representing culture. Are the two really so separable? And, if they are one of the primary ways we categorize ourselves, what do these categories really mean according to empirical research in psychology and neuroscience? In this course, we will cover biopsychological research in gender/sex, and we will also discuss critiques of these approaches. Topics include sexual differentiation and development, behavioral neuroendocrinology, sexuality, clinical conditions and health, evolution, social behaviors, differences/similarities, neuroanatomy, and behavioral genetics. Prereqs for the class are one of the following: PSYCH 111, 112, 114 or 115; and PSYCH 230 or 240, and the course is department permission only. Students who have the necessary prerequisites and would like to take the class should e-mail wsp.advising@umich.edu.

Although this class is designed to prepare the student for their work in South Africa, students who are interested in this class are also encouraged to participate. Readings and discussions about the issues, ideas, culture and politics of the young American student engaged in communities abroad will be rigorously addressed. What and where is South Africa? What are the myths and perceptions of this African country? Is Africa a place to be exoticised or to take seriously this place as a site of cultural significance, a place of ideas and learning? What does it mean to be an American in the world today? How do South Africans see Americans? What kind of American do you want to be and present to the world. This semester an evaluation component will be added. The purpose of this is to prepare students with the skills to conduct on site assessment of the efficacy of their work, particularly in the areas of activist projects and service projects. Learning how to conduct focus groups, developing assessment sheets for short term feedback on teaching and learning interventions, and developing simple interview guides to conduct individual interviews with recipients of these interventions will become an important addition to this class. Readings relevant to this component will also be added. The idea is to find ways to document the impact of activism in a manner that is accessible to students doing qualitative work. The purpose of this class is to prepare students both for work and assessment in the field. Developing evaluation skills for participatory and activist project is one of the important goals of this class. The text that will be used for this is Qualitative Research methods: A Data Collector’s field Guide. This reading will be used as a manual for developing interviewing skills and expertise in conducting focused group discussions. The development of assessment tools for documenting program success will also be a major objective.

This interdisciplinary seminar is required for all senior Women's Studies concentrators. The theme for WOMENSTD 440 in Winter '09 will be Gender Studies across the Disciplines and Occupations, with a special emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to science and medicine. We will explore this and many other topics through relevant readings, discussions, writing assignments, and a series of guest speakers from the U-M and larger community.

Speakers may represent such disciplines as disability studies, English, history, medicine, music studies, and psychology, and such occupations as community organizing, counseling, and midwifery. The seminar is designed to help graduating seniors look back, synthesizing what they have learned in Women's Studies, and look ahead, envisioning how they might apply their knowledge and experience in post-graduate lives and careers.

The Pedagogy of Empowerment will explore race, gender, health and activism in the context of HIV/AIDS in United States Black communities. Through this two-tiered course, students will cultivate strong background knowledge of HIV in Black communities, and explore issues of accountability, apathy, and activism as they pertain to HIV prevention. The course will explore the multifaceted dimensions of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Black communities including: its history and epidemiology; gendered dynamics of HIV prevention; intersectionality, HIV infection, and stigma; homophobia and the politics of inclusion and exclusion; and various community responses. Students will use what they learn about the context of the epidemic to critically analyze chosen HIV prevention interventions, and explore the intersection of academia and activism. All students will learn an HIV education module designed by Professor Nesha Haniff. As an exercise in praxis, each student will be required to use and experience this HIV prevention module in a community of her or his choice. Be warned that the community of preference should be outside the University of Michigan. The theoretical text for this class will be Paulo Freiere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

This course is an introduction to the sociological study of gender that focuses on how gender is embedded in social life. At the individual level, gender is an essential aspect of personhood and personal experience; at the institutional level, gender is a cultural and structural system that differentiates members of society. At both the individual and institutional levels, gender intersects with race, class, and sexuality to structure identities, rights, privileges, and opportunities. Organized around investigation of the socially produced North American binary gender order, specific topics of study include gender identity, how children and adults "become" gendered and "do" their gender(s), gender and sport, gender and desire, trans, and intersexuality. Throughout, attention is directed to the intertwining of gender with sexuality, race, and class.

Credit Exclusions: A maximum of 7 credits of WOMENSTD 482 and 483 may be counted toward graduation.

This mini-course will explore the ways in which controlled substances (drugs) are used and abused in the United States. Using a feminist lens, we will focus on the use, misuse and abuse of two controlled medication classes — stimulants (e.g., Ritalin^®, Adderall^®, etc.) and pain (e.g., Vicodin^®, OxyContin^®). This course aims to address the following questions:

• Who is being prescribed controlled substances?
• How do these medications work and how do users become addicted?
• And what are the sex and gender differences among users?

We will also examine the reasons for misusing stimulants and painkillers and the risk factors associated with their misuse. Readings will focus on reports and research summaries from social scientists, treatment experts and the National Institutes of Health. A final exam (essay/short answer) with be given. There are no prereqs for this class.

Credit Exclusions: A maximum of 7 credits of WOMENSTD 482 and 483 may be counted toward graduation.

This mini-course will analyze narratives of addiction and of recovery, the stories that women and men tell about themselves, their addiction (to alcohol, drugs, behaviors), and their recovery. Indeed, many addicts and therapists insist that telling one's story is the key to recovery. We will examine published narratives from 12-Step programs (where creating and sharing a testimony is considered a fundamental part of the recovery process), autobiographies and memoirs written by addicts, fictional narratives, and depictions of addiction and recovery in selected films. We will analyze these narratives for their significance within a particular historical and cultural context; for their literary conventions; and for their purported therapeutic value.

In turn, we will consider how these narrative forms, which often became highly stylized and even formulaic, have influenced beliefs about addiction in the wider society. Assignments include short writing exercises and an exam.

This course explores the theoretical and methodological issues involved in studying women. The course starts with an introduction to the existing paradigms on women's position in sociology, women's studies, and Near Eastern Studies. After a lecture on the position of women in Islamic history, it proceeds to study women in contemporary contexts such as in Iran and Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, North Africa, Central Asia and the Balkans, and contemporary U.S. society.

This course explores important trends and debates in feminist theory over the last four decades. We will approach this vibrant period in feminist thought as an ongoing conversation among scholars in various disciplines and between scholars and activists about how best to understand and challenge the operation of power, power that constitutes differences between women and men and, as importantly, differences among women--those, for instance, of race, class, sexuality, and nation. We will also explore the relationship of particular theories to political practice and changing historical circumstances. Although our readings will focus on theoretical works, seminar discussion and writing assignments will encourage exploration of how feminist theories might enrich and illuminate participants? own research and scholarship.

A high-level introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer Studies, along with its various sub-fields. The seminar is designed for graduate students in all schools and disciplines and does not assume previous knowledge. Required for the graduate certificate in LGBTQ Studies.

Directed readings or research in consultation with a member of the department faculty.

This course charts various feminist approaches to scholarship in the social sciences. It is designed to familiarize graduate students with the methodologies that are used to research questions of gender, as well as to understand the linkages between core theoretical movements (such as poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism) that have influenced feminist scholarship, and the challenges that they pose for the practice of feminist inquiry in the social sciences. We will be engaged with learning how feminists have responded to questions such as: How do we Know? Who are the (assumed) Knower and the Known in canonical constructions of the disciplines? What difference does it make when the Object and Subject of research are women? What is the object of feminist knowledge and how do feminist politics affect the production of knowledge? How does ‘experience’ work as ‘evidence’ in feminist epistemological frameworks? What happens when the Knower/Subject of knowledge is not assumed to be ‘Woman’ but is geographically sited and historically located as a classed, raced, and sexualized woman from a specific nation? What happens to our notions of Objectivity, Truth, and Politics in feminist social science after postmodernism? This is not a course in methods, i.e. it is not a “how to” course. However, through a reading of the methodological and epistemological issues that have animated feminists across the disciplines, you will develop a sense of the different methods that are used in the social sciences, and their strengths and weaknesses. The common readings for this seminar will be interdisciplinary, while the research papers that students write for the course will delve more deeply into disciplinary-based methods and scholarship.

In this seminar, students and faculty from different disciplines and professional schools study a number of approaches to feminist, anti-racist, and multiculturalist praxis, the systematic examination of the inter-relationships of theory and practice, through cycles of action and reflection. Participants review the ways in which (1) feminist knowledge, principles, and practices have been applied in different disciplines, professions and practice settings; and (2) feminist perspectives and/or feminist practice skills can incorporate class, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, religion, age, differently abled, and other factors often associated with societal oppression. Each students will briefly present theoretical material that illustrates foundational ideas from their disciplines/professional schools and a dilemma from practice and/or research for discussion and problem-solving with seminar participants.

This course brings "women of color" and "transnational" feminisms into productive dialogue by charting the development of U.S./third world feminist thought and action over the last four decades. Focusing on modes of theorizing and organizing around questions of subjectivity (race, gender, sexuality, nation, class) and resistance (anti-colonial, nationalist, queer, feminist, anti- globalization), the course will center on the relationship between feminist theory and practice. We will study theorizations of the intersectionality of oppressions as well as the practices of solidarity, and how they have emerged in relationship to third world women's resistance movements against colonialism, imperialism and globalization. We will also explore how these theories and movements have taken on different forms in the context of feminist and queer organizing across national borders.

This course will examine theories of sexuality from early sexology through the social histories and new paradigms of sexuality in the 1970s. We will consider key late 19th century figures including Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, Hirschfeld, and Freud. 20th century readings will include Kinsey, Gagnon, Simon, McIntosh, Reiss, Weeks, Vance, and Foucault.

This course will address key themes in contemporary scholarship on the psychology of women and gender. Samples topics include: women's mental health; sex roles, stereotypes, and discrimination; women's development across the lifespan; gender and political participation; and violence against women. Throughout, we will particularly examine when and how feminist psychologists have used feminist theory as a direct source of hypotheses and/or as a source of underlying assumptions, in framing research questions.

In addition, we will consider how gender intersects with race, class, sexuality, and other social dimensions. An effort will be made to ensure that coverage in this course links with that in related undergraduate courses (e.g., Psychology of Women; Gender and the Individual), to prepare graduate students for future teaching assignments.

Designed for individual students who have an interest in a specific topic (usually that has stemmed from a previous course). An individual instructor must agree to direct such a reading, and the requirements are specified when approval is granted.

This seminar is an introduction to feminist literary criticism, surveying major shifts in feminist theory and gender studies over the past four decades. We will read with care a variety of critical and literary texts that foreground the question of gender, and we will evaluate the uses and limits of gender as a category of (and for) literary interpretations. In addition to comparing different approaches to feminist literary criticism (e.g. interrogating images of women in literature, recovering women writers, constructing a separate tradition, defining womens' writing, analyzing the relationship between gender and genre), we will trace the influence of poststructuralist and queer theories, historicist work, and important debates/dialogues between critics who have shaped the field. Throughout the semester we will attend to the rhetorical strategies and political ideologies associated with gender criticism, as well as its institutional histories and future trajectories.

The seminar explores representations of costume, fabric, and fashion in art and visual culture of the modern period, particularly in Europe. (Readings focus on the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries).

Clothing is approached as an aspect of material culture that is directly linked to social behavior and its visual representation. The social, symbolic, and psychological aspects of clothing conveyed in pictures and other forms of imagery will be considered, along with clothing’s relation to economic consumption. The period saw a shift from an early modern emphasis on visible, external signs of social identity to a modern emphasis on an internally-defined self, which tended to conceive of clothing as a false or variable identity. Methods of manufacturing clothing simultaneously shifted from tailor- to ready-made, while the gendered connotations of “fashion” also changed. Themes addressed in the course include:

• the particular importance of fashion in staging representations of female subjects in works of fine art;
• the element of agency at work in the consumption, wearing, and representation of costume;
• the accessory as an early form of commodity consumption in the fashion realm;
• the coupling of art and industry during the period, as evidenced in links between the textile trade, fashion trade, fashion press, and fine art; and
• the role of historical and exotic costume in signifying cultural difference.

The seminar is coordinated with a special interdisciplinary workshop “More than Fashion: The Journal des Dames et des Modes (1797-1839),” which will feature papers by visiting scholars and take place on April 3, 2009. Focusing on an influential, illustrated fashion journal published during the first half of the nineteenth century, the workshop aims to bring out the journal’s role as a social educator, particularly its modeling of gender roles. With support from the Rackham Graduate School, a related half-day session has been organized for seminar students, who are invited to present papers to workshop participants for comment and discussion.

Readings include

• Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing;
• Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things, 1986;
• J.C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes, 1930; and
• John Styles, The Dress of the People, 2007.

Every Women's Studies graduate certificate student is required to carry out a research project with a feminist perspective. The form of the project will vary with individual students and is subject to approval by the student's faculty advisor. This can be a chapter of a dissertation, a prelim, a master's thesis project or a project undertaken in the Women’s Studies Program.

In the interdepartmental doctoral program, students have the opportunity to work out an interdisciplinary approach to a research problem with a faculty committee from an early stage of their training. They benefit from the kind of interdisciplinary mentorship that is necessary to develop and complete an interdisciplinary dissertation.

The course is designed to culminate in the production of an interdisciplinary research paper. The process for achieving this goal will vary from year to year. However, students are encouraged, wherever possible, to build on the work they began in their first year, in the required courses on Feminist Theory (WOMENSTD 530) and Approaches to Feminist Scholarship (WOMENSTD 601 or 603).

The preliminary exam in Women' Studies is based on the research paper completed in the WOMENSTD 891. The student will defend the paper in an oral exam to the prelim committee. This prelim committee should include at least one member from Women's Studies, who is not also appointed in the English Department, and one from the English Department, who is not also appointed in Women's Studies.

Every LGBTQ Graduate Certificate student will carry out a substantial culminating research project on an LGBTQ topic.

The project could be a dissertation chapter, a preliminary exam, a masters thesis or a large-scale independent study.

Election for dissertation work by doctoral student not yet admitted as a Candidate.

Graduate School authorization for admission as a doctoral Candidate. N.B. The defense of the dissertation (the final oral examination) must be held under a full term Candidacy enrollment period.