This course analyzes the social construction of gender and its relationship to class, race, age, ethnicity, and sexual identity. A wide range of topics are discussed including the following: Systems of privilege and inequality in women's lives; learning gender; sexuality, power, and intimacy; mental health and health issues; women's work; social policy issues; religion and spirituality in women's lives; and activism and social change.

This course offers in depth study of topics of interest to women's studies scholarship. May be taken up to three times with different course material.

This course focuses exclusively on films about young women and girls in the United States and other countries. We will examine how their lives and experiences are represented in coming of age films from the 1990s to the present. To these ends, we will analyze multicultural representations of young women and girls in order to understand the complex ways in which identity and experience shape growing up female and the transition from girlhood to womanhood. This course is part of the Women's Studies Minor and Film Studies Minor.