The U.S. comprises 5% of the world’s population but holds approximately 40% of the world’s guns. We also experience more gun-related deaths than any economically comparable nation. How did the nation become a “gun culture,” and whose rights and interests does widespread armament serve? Who is included in the Second Amendment’s appeal to “the right of the people to have and bear arms,” and how have notions of race, gender, class, and sexuality framed popular understandings of “good guys” and “good women” whose armed citizenship is required for the nation’s security?... Read more about Guns in the U.S.: A Love Story

The term implicit bias was coined in 1995 to capture the idea that bias, i.e., a deviation from truth or shared values can be implicit, i.e., occur without conscious awareness and/or conscious control. It belongs to an area of scientific psychology named implicit social cognition (ISC), dedicated to exploring the hidden aspects of the mental representation of social groups.... Read more about Implicit Bias: Science and Society

This seminar will explore female rulership in Europe from the late Roman empire to the age of Elizabeth I. Discussion of varied texts and images (most of them primary sources in translation) will reveal the role of queens within their societies, their relationship to broader social and cultural institutions such as the Christian Church, and the ways in which queens were celebrated, criticized, and imagined by writers and artists of their time.... Read more about God Save the Queen! Ruling Women from Rome to the Renaissance

Rosalind, Portia, Ophelia, Juliet, Isabella, Cressida, Cleopatra, Cordelia, Imogen, Volumnia, Miranda, Lady Macbeth—the women of Shakespeare’s plays have become iconic figures, cited, admired, critiqued, and invoked in every generation. But in the English public theater of Shakespeare’s time no women were permitted to appear onstage.... Read more about Shakespeare's Women

The femme fatale—the attractive, seductive woman who brings about the downfall of men—has fascinated us through the ages, from Biblical figures like Eve and Delilah, to historical women such as Cleopatra and Wallis Simpson, to the media personas of modern pop stars like Cardi B and Miley Cyrus. In the classic femme fatale narrative, the woman’s dangerous actions empower her, but she also must submit to the fact that her empowerment renders her a villain. Might this contradiction in the femme fatale’s character reflect tensions in our own evolving understanding of gender? How can the femme fatale character help us untangle the real-world gender problems that modern women and men face?... Read more about Expository Writing 20: The Femme Fatale

This class offers an introduction to the relationship between race, gender and social institutions. We will interrogate how gendered and racial classifications contribute to the making of law and other core social institutions at the same time that these very institutions reflect and create distinctions on the basis of gender and race.... Read more about Gender, Race, and Social Institutions

Close readings of postwar French fiction and theory with emphasis on what is called "the feminine'' in key psychoanalytic, philosophical, and literary writings of the French poststructuralist tradition. In particular, we will focus on fifty years of dialogue between postwar theory in France and feminist practice in the United States. Writers considered include Cixous, Duras, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Wittig as well as Deleuze, Derrida, and Lacan....