Fall 2025 GSF-Housed Courses

*To see each course's flyer, please click here.

LGBTQ Studies

GSF 202S

CZ

Lauren Henschel

Topics include homosexuality and theory, history, law, religion, education, the arts and literature, the military, and the health sciences.


Introduction to Digital Feminism

GSF 265S
R, STS, SS
Lauren Henschel

How can we as users and producers critically and effectively analyze digital culture from a feminist and gender studies perspective? This course will help by focusing on digital innovation and its history, unpacking and questioning them through the insights and tools offered by gender, sexuality and feminist studies. We will discuss subjects such as the rise of the Silicon Valley, gaming culture, social media, algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, extraction of data applied to biotechnology, macroeconomic development of IT platforms and the impact of technology on ecology using a current event or debate to give a historical, ethical, sociological, theoretical, literary or cinematographic perspective.


Sexuality and the Law

GSF 272S
CCI, EI, CZ, SS
Juliette Duara

This course will introduce students to legal and ethical issues at the intersection of law, gender and sexuality. The course will use interpretive methods used in jurisprudence, as well as conceptual tools developed by feminist, critical race and queer theoreticians to explore such issues as the criminalization of gay sex, the equal protection of all persons regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and the role of the state in resolving perceived conflicts between that right to equal protection and the right to religious freedom. The course will take a cross-cultural / multi-jurisdictional comparative approach to these issues.


Gender and Media

GSF 273S
CCI, SS
Lauren Henschel

The aim of this course is to critically analyze media culture and communication landscapes from a feminist and gender studies perspective. We will address a wide range of media innovations and their histories, unpacking and critically questioning them through the insights offered by feminist, queer, and intersectional analytical tools. To each, we will examine historical, ethical, sociological, theoretical, literary or film perspectives. What roles do media spaces play in our everyday lives and how do our politics and self-understandings inform and reflect burgeoning platforms? This course will consider these questions in terms of US media cultures and its interconnected global frameworks.


Selected topics: 60s and 70s New York Feminism

GSF 290S

R, STS, SS

Topics vary each semester offered.


Sex Work: The Politics of Sexual Labor

GSF 352S

CCI, SS

Kathi Weeks

Sex work from the perspective of the labor and the purchase. Controversies over questions of gender and power, consent and coercion, sexual practices and labor contracts, trafficking and migration. Cultural representations of sex workers and their clients. Legal regimes from abolition to regulation and decriminalization.


Feminist Reproductive Ethics

GSF 367S 

CCI, EI, SS

Do women experience the world differently than men? An examination of women's experience, women's ways of knowing, ethical systems and feminist critique, patriarchy, dualistic thinking, gender oppression, care ethics, ethical dilemmas.
 

Intimacies

GSF 382S

CCI, EI, CZ, W

Anna Storti

A deep dive into the theoretical concept of intimacy, this seminar touches upon the racial, sensorial, and sexual life of nations and the state. Through discussions about citizenship, religion, migration, political economy, belonging, community, and activism, we consider what it means for bodies to exist in relation not only to other bodies, but also within the larger body of the nation-state. We examine theoretical writing alongside film, performance and installation art, law, and pop culture, bringing sexuality to bear on indigenous genocide, the Antebellum South, anti-immigration and miscegenation law, US militarism in Asia and the Pacific, LGBTQ rights, and political scandal.


Senior Capstone 

GSF 499S

CCI, R, W

Jennifer Nash

Advanced research course for majors in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. Topics vary by semester. Students produce a significant research paper. Consent of instructor required.


Interdisciplinary Debates

GSF 960S
Anna Storti

Designed for advanced graduate students, this course will highlight current debates in feminist studies through a topical approach that draws on faculty research and expertise.