Considers the economics of cultural production, ways of critically reading popular texts, and how consumers make use of popular culture. Pays particular attention to the ways gender, race, and class influence how popular texts are created and consumed. An investigation of the core tensions and strains in contemporary American society and culture with emphasis on individual freedoms vs. social responsibility, pluralism, social inequality, gender, and poverty and prosperity. This course will take a life cycle approach to the major biological and cultural landmarks in a woman's life, and the differing ways that various cultures react to these changes. Medical, anthropological and archaeological materials will be incorporated into the discussions, where appropriate.
Internships are a supervised work experience at a site chosen according to student interests.
Examines how laws and legal institutions reflect and reproduce cultural notions of gender. Focuses on how legal equality and sex discrimination have been defined and challenged. Topics include rape law, reproductive issues, marriage and divorce, pornography, workplace regulations, and, generally, how gender and race ideologies interact in legal decision making. Addresses the influence of gender on the distribution of public goods and the way gender, interacting with race and class, shapes social, political, and economic institutions. This course relates feminist theory and empirical studies to gender and gender power in political organizations and institutions.