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    Law and American Society

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023
    At a time when the rule of law is imperiled, our democracy and equal rights of every kind under assault by multiple forces, the importance of understanding our constitutional system of rights and laws as essential to the fabric of the nation cannot be overstated. The course will examine law as a vehicle of political conflict and a defining force in American society in four dimensions: 1.) as it establishes individual rights, liberties, and the limits of toleration; 2.) as it attempts to resolve differences among competing constituencies; 3.) as it sets out terms of punishment and social...
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    Online Dating and the Transformation of Intimacy

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/104269
    Over the past twenty years, online dating has become the go-to way for people to seek intimacy. This has exacerbated problematic social forces such as sexism and racism. But many forms of attraction have also found expression as online dating has risen to prominence – with dozens of genders, sexualities, and relationship styles offered on OkCupid; platforms for threesomes, S&M enthusiasts, and gay men that like beards; and connections formed by many forms of mediation, from...
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    Psychology of the Gendered Body

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    Our perceptions of gender—our own and others’— shape our embodied experiences and behaviors. This course examines the embodiment of gender via the lens of psychological science. We will begin by exploring recent research related to gender and the body, and then study the underlying psychological mechanisms that influence our self-perceptions about gender. Our disciplinary foundation in psychological science will allow us to complicate current understandings of gender and embodiment...
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    LGBT Life Stories

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    In this seminar we’ll read a range of classic LGBT life stories (memoirs, journals, diaries, essays, and autobiographies), beginning in the 1800s and ending in the present. We will study them as products of their specific historical moment, paying close attention to changing ideas about race, class, gender, and sexuality. Questions: How do people narrate the story of their identity? What aspects of their life histories do they highlight; what do they censor? How does the “coming...
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    Introduction to Feminist Science Studies

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    This seminar is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of feminist science studies. As the feminist movements of the 1970s began to change the American political landscape, academic feminists began inquiries into the marginalization of women in science – a debate philosopher Harding called “the woman question in science.” Feminist scientists began to examine sex, gender and race bias in their own disciplines. In consequence, they raised questions about androcentric – male-...
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    Stories of Gender and Justice

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    With gender inequities and biases pervasive within and across cultures worldwide, and the global pandemics of gender-based violence and structural violence further intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic, how have individuals, groups, communities, and nations globally fought for (and against) gender justice? How have struggles against gender injustice intersected and conflicted with struggles against racial, ethnic, environmental, health, LGBTQIA+ and other forms of injustice? Gender...
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    Queer/Medieval

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    The / in this course title can suggest a slippage or interchangeability; opposition and polarization; or erotic or romantic friction. This course functions as an introduction to queer theory as an intellectual tool with which to read texts far removed from the political, cultural, and social discourses from which queer theory emerged. We will ask: what can queer theory offer readers of medieval literature in its explorations of gender, sexuality, race, power, narrative, trauma, and...
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    Love's Labors Found: Uncovering Histories of Emotional Labor

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    How do love, care, and desire influence the value of work, and why is emotional labor – which is vital to child or elder care, domestic labor, nursing, teaching, and sex work – often considered to be something other than work? How and why do the racial and gender identities of workers affect the economic, social, and emotional value of their labor? How do political and social arrangements of labor help produce and reinforce racial categories while solidifying the boundaries...
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    The Making of Inequalities in Latin America: Seminar

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website

    This new iteration of the Latin American History Workshop will examine recent historiography on the region focusing on the making of social, racial and gender inequalities. The seminar will explore three main areas of scholarship: first, slavery and other forms of forced labor and its relationship with the emergence of racial ideologies; second, gender inequalities, especially in regard to struggles to obtain labor and reproductive rights; third, the enduring struggles for democracy in the region, comprising resistance to dictatorships, military interventionism, and right-wing extremism...

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    How Sweet is it to be Loved By You: Black Love and the Emotional Politics of Respect

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    The word 'love' is almost never used in any portrayal or description of the African American community's daily life in contemporary media and in the social sciences. But love, as a human experience, is central to our understanding of what it means to be a vital member of a culture and society and thus respected, nurtured, etc. This seminar examines the love that difference makes. It is a comprehensive study of the representation of gender, love and sexuality in African American and...
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    Wit, Irony, Comedy

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    In life, as in literature, humor often takes us by surprise: it gives delight; it lightens our mood; it makes us laugh. The question is: why? Laughter, in many ways, is a mystery. If tragedy’s existence is all too easy to explain— suffering needs to be borne, and we yearn to find explanations for it—then it’s comedy that’s the enigma. Taking the comic seriously, this seminar provides a broad investigation into the psychological, sociological, philosophical, dramatic, and literary...
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    Implicit Bias: Science and Society

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website

    We coined the term implicit bias in 1995 to capture the idea that bias, i.e., a deviation from accuracy or values can be implicit, i.e., operate without conscious awareness or conscious control. The idea emerged from basic research on implicit social cognition (ISC), an area of scientific psychology that explores the hidden aspects of mental representations of self, other, and social groups. Today, 25 years later, the term implicit bias has transcended academic psychology and permeated contemporary culture where it is used and contested every day. In this seminar, we will study the...

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    Qualitative Research Lab: Immigration, Citizenship, and Belonging

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    What does citizenship mean to the millions of people who immigrate to the United States? How do immigrants and their families experience the process, the complexities, and the challenges of immigration, integration, and naturalization? And how do undocumented and DACAmented immigrants describe the paradoxes of being a vital part of US society while being excluded from many formal categories of citizenship and belonging?
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    Introduction to Sociology

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website

    What is society? What is the role of the individual in society? How does the way society is organized affect the behaviors and beliefs of people who live in it? How can we change our societies? This course introduces students to the field of sociology. By surveying social theory as well as empirical studies, students acquire what C. Wright Mills calls the "sociological imagination": the ability to think beyond our personal lives and to connect the experiences of individuals with large social structures. Readings include prominent empirical investigations into family dynamics, class...

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    Gender and Health: Introductory Perspectives

    Semester: 

    Fall

    Offered: 

    2022
    Course website
    This course will introduce students to gender as a theoretical concept and a category of analysis in public health—specifically, the ways in which gender contributes to differentially structuring women and men's experiences of health. The course proposes to answer such questions as: How can understanding gender structures help us interpret public health research? How has gender influenced the construction of public health in diverse societies? How do our social frameworks and...
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    Gender, Race, and Poverty in the United States

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023
    This course investigates the realities of poverty through an intersectional lens, meaning that we will consider the simultaneous impact of race, gender, sexuality (and other identities) on economic insecurity. In what ways are conversations about poverty and its causes infused with assumptions and stereotypes related to gender, race, and sexuality? We hear so much in the media about what causes poverty – what is reality and what is myth? How do these myths operate to reinforce and...
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    Leaning In, Hooking Up: Visions of Feminism and Femininity in the 21st Century

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023
    What does it mean to “do” feminism, or to “be” a feminist in the 21st-century United States? What can we make of the dominant social expectations for a woman’s life? This course explores contemporary ideals of feminine success, including their physical, familial, professional, and political manifestations. We will engage with highly-contested topics—including sexual violence and Title 9; work-life balance; the imperatives of self-care and presentation; and new models for sexuality...
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    Psychology of Women

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023
    How does being a woman affect our behavior, our evaluations of ourselves, and our interactions with others? This course examines psychological science on women and girls in western industrialized societies, addressing such topics as gender stereotypes, girlhood, women and work, relationships, pregnancy and motherhood, mental health, violence against women, and women in later adulthood. We will consider these topics through an understanding of gender as a social construction, being...
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    Women's Voices in Asian and Asian American Literature

    Semester: 

    Spring

    Offered: 

    2023
    This course introduces students to the writings of both canonical and lesser-known Asian and Asian American women writers. The course especially examines the works by Chinese/ Chinese American, Japanese/ Japanese American, Korean/ Korean American women writers. Moving from the pre-modern to contemporary era, the course will explore a range of women’s voices and experiences as reflected through poetry, fiction, diaries, and epistles. Authors will include Murasaki Shikibu, Li...
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