CUNY Academic Commons

WGST 1001 @ Brooklyn College, Fall 2021 — Intro To Women’s Studies: Sex, Gender, and Power

This space is for our class to learn gender studies histories and approaches, practice public writing, and build an academic community in perilous, structurally harmful times.

The course is an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of gender and how it’s been shaped (and imagined!) by power in the U.S. We’ll concentrate on the expansiveness of what it means to be a woman or a gender non-conforming person in a country that, historically, has always really wanted two genders to look and operate only two ways. We’ll pull apart the material and social constructions of sex and gender, and pay close attention to the power dynamics that drive and structure every person’s lives, with women and gender minorities bearing the brunt of the harm that does. We’ll also maintain an intersectional framework, recognizing that to properly do women’s studies, you need gender studies, critical race studies, Black studies and ethnic studies, queer studies, and trans studies.