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Investigates how sex, gender, and power are entwined in the Chinese experience of modernity. Topics include anti-footbinding campaigns, free love/free sex, women's mobilization in revolution and war, the new Marriage Law of 1950, Mao's iron girls, postsocialist celebrations of sensuality, and emergent queer politics. Readings range from feminist theory to China-focused historiography, ethnography, memoir, biography, fiction, essay, and film. All course materials are in English.

Women's bodies in sickness and health, and encounters with lay and professional healers from the 18th century to the present. Historical consttruction of thought about women's bodies and physical limitations; sexuality; birth control and abortion; childbirth; adulthood; and menopause and aging. Women as healers, including midwives, lay physicians, the medical profession, and nursing.

The role of language in the construction of gender, the maintenance of the gender order, and social change. Field projects explore hypotheses about the interaction of language and gender. No knowledge of linguistics required.

The ballerina occupies a unique place in popular imagination as an object of over-determined femininity as well as an emblem of extreme physical accomplishment for the female dancer. This seminar is designed as an investigation into histories of the ballerina as an iconographic symbol and cultural reference point for challenges to political and gender ideals. Through readings, videos, discussions and viewings of live performances this class investigates pivotal works, artists and eras in the global histories of ballet from its origins as a symbol of patronage and power in the 15th century through to its radical experiments as a site of cultural obedience and disobedience in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This course explores the transition from Victorian to modern womanhood in the U.S. from the 1890s to the end of the 20th century, including the experiences of Native, European, African, Mexican, and Asian American women. It asks how, when, and why the majority of American women become wage earners, gained full citizenship, and enacted political opportunities; how race- and class-specific ideals of womanhood changed in popular culture; and how women have redefined their reproductive and sexual relations.

This class is structured around three motifs: love suicide (as a romantic ideal), female desire, and same-sex sexuality. Over the course of the quarter we will look at how these motifs are treated in the art and entertainment from three different moments of Japanese history: the Edo period (1615-1868), the modern period (1920-65), and the contemporary period (1965-present). We will start by focusing on the most traditional representations of these topics. Subsequently, we will consider how later artists and entertainers revisited the conventional treatments of these motifs, informing them with new meanings and social significance. We will devote particular attention to how this material comments upon issues of gender, sexuality, and human relationships in the context of Japan. Informing our perspective will be feminist and queer theories of reading and interpretation.

Gender roles, gender relations and sexual identity explored in contemporary literature and conversation with guest authors. Weekly meetings designated for book discussion and meeting with authors. Interest in writing and a curiosity about diverse women's lives would be helpful to students. Students will use such tools as close reading, research, analysis and imagination. Seminar requires strong voice of all participants. Oral presentations, discussion papers, final projects.

Analysis of medieval love, satirical and Crusade lyrics of the trouabdours. Study of deictic address, corporeal subjectivity, the female voice, love debates, and the body as a figure of political conflict. Course readings include medieval treatises on lyric and modern translations of the troubadour tradition. Works by Ovid, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born, La Comtessa de Dia, Thibaut de Champagne, Raimon Vidal, Dante, and Pound. Taught in English. Course includes a lab component for creation of multi-media translation projects: trobar. stanford.edu.

Theoretical issues, historical origins, changing forms of women's activism in response to war throughout the 20th century, and contemporary cases, such as the Russian Committee of Soldiers Mothers, Bosnian Mothers of Srebrenica, Serbian Women in Black, and the American Cindy Sheehan. Focus is on the U.S. and Eastern Europe, with attention to Israel, England, and Argentina.