In 2016 the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) celebrated its twentieth anniversary, marking two decades of research, coursework, and programming dedicated to studying the conceptual categories of women, gender, and sexuality across disciplinary boundaries. MAPH students can choose to take courses entirely in Gender and Sexuality, but many also pursue classes in subject areas like Art History, Cinema and Media Studies, Comparative Literature, English, Philosophy, and Romance Languages and Literatures.
Selected Faculty
Sample Courses
GNSE 36210 - Witches, Sinners and Saints (Larissa Brewer-Garcia)
This course examines representations of women's bodies and sexualities in colonial Latin American writings through a variety of lenses, including: the witch’s body as a site of sexual excess, the tortured body as a site of knowledge production, and the mystic’s body as a double of the possessed body.
GNSE 25000 - Modern Korean Women’s Fiction (Kyeong-Hee Choi)
Students will read selected poetic and prose works by Korean female writers, focusing upon gendered aspects of the development of modern Korean literature. The class also examines a selection of relevant nonfictional sources and documents that help us understand the literary stakes facing the writers.
GNSE 48700 - Colloquium: Social Movements in Chicago, 1950-2010 (Adam Green)
This class will introduce students to four social movements in twentieth-century Chicago through archival materials, scholarship, and memory: Puerto Rican empowerment, radical feminism, gay rights, and police accountability to Black communities.
GNSE 23400 - Virginia Woolf (Lisa Ruddick)
Along with a number of Woolf’s major works (fiction and intellectual prose), students read short fiction by other modernists and theoretical and critical texts that give a sense of the range of contemporary approaches to Woolf.
GNSE 27013 - Woman/Native (Sonali Thakkar)
This course reads works of postcolonial literature and theory in order to consider the entanglements of the figures of “women” and “natives” in colonial as well as postcolonial discourse.
Visit the Center’s course page for an extended listing of classes and descriptions.
The Gender and Sexuality Studies Option
Students who would like a more directed course of study may want to complete the MAPH Gender and Sexuality Studies Option. Students who complete the following requirements will receive a Gender and Sexuality Studies notation on their MAPH transcript:
- The MAPH Core Course
- Advanced Theories in Gender and Sexuality or another approved theories course
- Three Gender and Sexuality Studies or approved courses
- An MA thesis in gender and/or sexuality studies under the supervision of a GSS-affiliated faculty member, with approval from the Director of Studies in GSS
Recent Gender and Sexuality Thesis Projects
“Ou est l’homme, ou est la femme: Crises of Gender and Sexuality in Un Chien Andalou,”
Anthony Grassetti, MAPH ’10
Advisor: Jennifer Wild
“Gaming for Gender: The Use of Narrative and Violence in Crafting Gender Identity in Videogames”
Ruby Rubin, MAPH ’16
Advisor: Patrick Jagoda