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Fall 2022 Graduate Courses
[Core Courses]
WST 601 - Feminist Theories
Ritch Calvin
Tuesdays: 1:15 - 4:05pm
This course examines concepts and conversations that have played a key role in constituting
the
field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and queer, feminist, and trans scholarship
more
broadly. Far from promising a definitive or comprehensive overview of “feminist theory,”
each
iteration of this course focuses on particular topics, themes, and/or theoretical
frameworks. As
such, instructors model for students how to build reading lists that track conceptual
debates
within the field or trace the contestations and contradictions of particular feminist
genealogies.
Together, instructors and students situate these concepts and conversations within
broader
historical, geopolitical, and intellectual contexts in order to question the purpose
of specific
theories at the moment of their emergence and to evaluate their current usefulness
for developing
transnational and intersectional understandings of gender and sexuality. At its core,
this course
attends to the ways in which the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and cisheteronormativity
have
conditioned western feminist thought and seeks to support students in developing theoretical
tools for practicing distinctly anti-racist and decolonial women’s, gender, and sexuality
studies.
WST 680 - Interdisciplinary Research Design
Liz Montegary
Wednesdays: 4:00 - 6:50pm
This interdisciplinary seminar guides students engaged in feminist, liberatory, and
social justice oriented projects through the process of research design. We will explore
interdisciplinary ideas and debates voiced by scholars and activists about the relationship
between theory and research practice, and the conduct of research and research outcomes.
Students will be introduced to an array of research methods available across the Arts,
Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences, think critically about their use, and gain
some hands-on experience with methods. The seminar is designed as a workshop to apply
knowledge of methods and methodologies to students' own research, and over the semester,
students will develop either a research proposal for funding agencies and/or their
dissertation proposal (prospectus). Course topics will include formulating and refining
research questions; developing appropriate theoretical frameworks; articulating scholarly
value; and thinking critically about the methods used in feminist interdisciplinary
research. Students are expected to work collaboratively, presenting their individual
works-in-progress to the class for constructive critique.
[WGSS-Related Electives] - (courses still being added)
AFS 533 - Race, Gender, and Globalization
Georges Fouron
Mondays 2:40-5:30pm
This seminar explores current issues and debates relating to the racialized and gendered
effects of globalization. Topics include an overview of the sociology of globalization
and theories of globalism/the global system, transnational classes and a transnational
state, global culture and ideology, transnational migrations and the new global labor
market, globalization and race/ethnicity, women and globalization, local-global linkages,
and resistance to globalization
ARH 554 - Topics in Visual Culture - "What is Photomedia?"
Brook Belisle
Thursdays 1:15-4:05pm
This class examines issues in the interdisciplinary field of visual culture. Visual
culture studies look at the dynamic state of visual media in contemporary life and
their historical origins, seeking to relate art and film to the mass media and digital
culture.
EGL 587 - Topics in Race, Ethnic Studies - "Queer Ecologies: Race, Gender, Sexuality
and the Environment in Literature and Culture
Jeff Santa Ana
Thursdays: 5:45 - 8:35pm
This course can satisfy the Literature of People of Color or the Non-Western Literature
content area requirements for SBU teacher education students. (only one, not both)
This graduate seminar uses ecocriticism and queer theory as its critical lens to explore
the concept of queer ecologies in relation to race, gender, sexuality, and the environment
in recent literature and culture. As understood and defined in ecocriticism and the
environmental humanities, the term queer ecology refers to interdisciplinary scholarly
practices that reimagine nature, biology, and sexuality in light of queer theory.
As Catriona Sandilands explains, “queer ecology currently highlights the complexity
of contemporary biopolitics [as conceptualized by Michel Foucault], draws important
connections between the material and cultural dimensions of environmental issues,
and insists on an articulatory practice in which sex and nature are understood in
light of multiple trajectories of power and matter” (“Queer Ecology” in Keywords for
Environmental Studies). Queer ecology upends and resists heterosexist concepts of
nature and the natural, drawing from a diverse array of disciplines, including the
natural and biological sciences, environmental justice, ecofeminism, and queer studies.
At its heart, queer ecology deconstructs various hierarchical binaries and dichotomies
that exist particularly within Western human notions of nature and culture. This seminar
examines literature and prose (fiction and nonfiction) and films that feature a variety
of modern and contemporary representations of human and nonhuman or more-than-human
relations in the context of race, gender, sexuality, and the environment. We will
examine and explore cultural works (our course’s textual and visual materials) through
a queer ecologies critical lens to reimagine nature, biology, and sexuality in light
of queer theory. Our goal will be to produce new critical understandings through the
lenses of ecocriticism and queer theory as we read and discuss the cultural works
for our class.
HIS 532 - Theme Seminar - "Uprisings, Riots, Rebellions, State, Racial, Populist and
Political Violence in Global History"
Robert Chase
Wednesdays 2:40-5:30pm
In the aftermath of global responses to George Floyd's murder and the insurrection
at the Washington, D.C. Capitol, this course asks our students to historicize and
rethink histories of violence through the lens of new histories and approaches to
writing state atrocity, urban uprisings, and populist street violence and vigilantism.
As such, this theme course explores new and exciting work that reconsiders state,
racial, and street violence as a matter of political uprisings and state reprisal.
Through a critical historical lens, we will reconsider the meanings and differences
between what historians and political pundits might name as riots, senseless violence,
insurrections, uprisings, revolutions, terror, and liberation. The course will rethink
sites of violence through a global and transnational lens and one that spans three
centuries (18th, 19th, and 20th centuries). Course topics will include slave revolts;
"race riots" and historical memory; and urban uprisings as an expression of political
discontent and resistance to global systems of white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism.
We will also take up new work on populist violence and vigilantism through new work
on lynching’s and public memory; extremist street violence; the history of gun violence
as racial and political violence; genocides and “race wars;” and, domestic terrorism
and political violence (from Nazi Germany to the Oklahoma City bombing). We will
also read new work on state violence as political reprisal, racial repression, and
as part of a global campaign of anti-insurgent thought and practice during the Cold
War era. Topics of state violence will include global and domestic systems of policing
and incarceration; border control, immigration detention and deportation; political
violence in totalitarian regimes; and state campaigns against guerilla insurgencies
during the Cold War. Despite popular narratives that argue that we have entered a
new millennium as a less violent age (particularly the claims of Harvard psychologist
Steven Pinker about the decline of violence), the persistence and even the intensification
of modern-day violence requires that we think historically about this phenomenon to
better disentangle the many meanings of violence as social, cultural, political, and
racial expression. Pre-requisite: Enrollment in a History MA or PhD Program or permission
of the instructor with enrollment under the HIS course number.
SOC 514 - Adv. Topics in Global Sociology - "Global Political Economy & Institutions"
Kristen Shorette
Thursdays 4:45-7:25pm
This course will focus on the historical development of macro-structural change. We’ll
examine
foundational work & contemporary applications from political economic and institutional
perspectives as well as work that integrates the two. The major substantive areas
– broadly
conceived – will include economic inequality, the natural environment, human health
and
wellbeing, and human rights.
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View Past Graduate Courses:
Spring 2021