WOST 401 - Feminist Theory

Units: 4 ; Breadth Area: Diversity
Feminist theories of American women’s liberation movement from mid-sixties to present. Gender identity; “nature vs. nurture” theories of female subservience and male domination; pornography; rape; class, race, and gender.

Prerequisites: Junior, senior or post-baccalaureate standing.
Possible Instructional Methods: Entirely On-ground, or Entirely Online, or Hybrid.
Grading: A-F or CR/NC (student choice).
Breadth Area(s) Satisfied: Overlay - Diversity
Course Typically Offered: Spring ONLY

Student Learning Outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Discuss and analyze writers who radically questioned gender roles and relations and how ways of thinking about gender shapes public and private life. Additionally, differences among women such as race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, et. al. are emphasized.
Examine historical and contemporary research on feminist theory. Examine theoretical views about race and gender and expose them as shaped by social factors. Explore the Women’s Rights Movement, and trace the depths of women’s oppression historically in the United States.
Analyze theoretical and empirical studies on feminist theories of intersectionality. Examine how feminist theory evolved from a focus on gender to a broader focus on how the categories of race, class, sexuality, and nationality expanded feminist theory. Examine feminist critiques of capitalism, sexuality, racism and law.
Identify and analyze feminist theories written by women who differ in terms of race, class, sexuality, religion, immigration status. Students explore how gender, race, class, age, religion and disability impact women and complicated individual and group identities from a feminist perspective.

Diversity Overlay Learning Outcomes

describe the histories and/or experiences of one or more U. S. cultural groups and the resilience and agency of group members;
identify structures of oppression and the diverse efforts and strategies used by groups to combat the effects of oppressive structures;
analyze the intersection of the categories of race and gender as they affect cultural group members’ lived realities and/or as they are embodied in personal and collective identities;
recognize the way that multiple differences (including, for example, gender, class, sexuality, religion, disability, immigration status, gender expression, color/phenotype, racial mixture, linguistic expression, and/or age) within cultural groups complicate individual and group identities.