Lecture and discussion. Introduction to the ways in which femininity and masculinity have been represented in literature and constructed in culture. The new interdisciplinary scholarship on gender analyses is presented in works of literature, film, social science, and contemporary theory.

A critical interpretation of film from a feminist perspective and explanation of the relationship of gender to the language of film.

An examination of the experiences of African American women from slavery through the present. Emphasis will be on the history and historiography of these experiences, as well as on critical issues facing African-American women today.

Discussion of the methods necessary to analyze visual images of women in their historical, racial, and class contexts, and to understand the status of women as producers, patrons, and audiences of art and architecture.

Who or what constitutes the subject of gay and lesbian studies? Explores historical, methodological, and epistemological crisis points of essentialism/constructionism; sexuality across cultures; gender versus sexuality; bisexuality and the binary regimes of hetero/homo and male/female; community; identity; the politics of liberation; the place of feminism in les/bi/gay studies.

Themes include the politics of the canon in Africa, the problems of language, postcolonial counter-discourse, the African-American continuum, and Third World and Western feminism. Readings include novels, short stories, poetry, and drama by Elora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Miriam Tlali, Bessie Head, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Tess Onwueme.

Prerequisites: WMST V1001 and the instructor's permission. A survey of research methods from the social sciences and interpretive models from the humanities, inviting students to examine the tension between the production and interpretation of data. Students receive firsthand experience practicing various research methods and interpretive strategies, while considering larger questions about how we know what we know.

Prerequisites: Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Hirsch (mh2349@columbia.edu) by noon on Tuesday, November 6th, with the subject heading, "Intimacy seminar." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major or field, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course.

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> This course traces the Genealogies of Feminism through feminist and queer preoccupations with intimacy in the context of threats to intimate attachments caused by divisions of social difference and the inequities of power and by institutional, ideological and legal efforts to regulate kinship and affiliation. We will explore key feminist theoretical work about sites and spaces of intimacy such as love, the family (mother- daughter relationships, sisters, gay and straight marriage and adultery, motherhood, adoption and abortion), home and domesticity, friendship, activist community, collaboration, biopolitics and embodiment, and social networks.

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> This course explores theories of forms of life, human and social, which have been seen to develop in the course of a global history of contemporary modernity, with an attention to the role of aesthetics and affect, communication technology and built form in shaping and expressing dominant as well as marginalized and/or alternative forms of sociality, subjectivity and collective being and experience. We will examine several scholarly literatures that deal with issues of beauty, embodiment, sensory experience, pleasure, pain, subjectivity and structures of feeling, and their relations to questions of gender and power, social order and struggle, and historical change. We will also look at questions of biopolitics, violence and the limits and possibilities of different humanist and post-humanist conceptions of "life" for understanding politics in contemporary contexts. Readings include Marx, Benjamin, Buck-Morss, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Rancière, Esposito, as well as contemporary feminist ethnography of Southeast Asia.