FEMGEN 123G: Liberatory Practice Lab: Engaging Sounds in Community (MUSIC 123G)
This course is an incubator for new musical practices grounded in the cultivation of community. Learning from live performances, workshops, and archival texts by Black and queer feminist, Indigenous, and disability-culture activists, participants will deepen their understandings of their personal musical practices and backgrounds and imagine new ways of relating through sound. The course will center on a series of gatherings shaped in partnership with guest artists and local community organizations. Each participant will develop original sound-based experiences (compositions, guided meditations, or other participatory happenings) for these gatherings, supporting their classmates' initiatives as collaborative listeners and soundmakers. Participants with backgrounds in any sound-based practices are welcome. No prior experience in composition is necessary. Students who wish to enroll are asked to fill out a brief questionnaire [[
https://forms.gle/hw8NVG6ksMdMGuak7].
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 12 units total)
FEMGEN 139A: Archaeology & Disability (ANTHRO 139A, ANTHRO 239A, ARCHLGY 139, ARCHLGY 239)
In this course, we will explore the ways archaeology and disability relate to each other, including both the ways archaeologists interpret disability in the past and how ableism shapes the practice of archaeology in the present. We will examine a variety of theoretical frames drawn from Disability Studies and other disciplines and consider how they can be usefully applied to archaeology. Case studies from a variety of geographic and temporal contexts will provide the basis for imagining an anti-ableist archaeology. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to: 1. Articulate several major ideas from disability studies and apply them to archaeological case studies; 2. Explain how disability studies and disabled self-advocates are reshaping the practice of archaeology; 3. Demonstrate improvement in the research and writing skills that they have chosen to develop through the flexible assignment structure of the course.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Heath-Stout, L. (PI)
FEMGEN 147: Feminism and Technology (FEMGEN 347A)
How can a feminist lens help us understand technology? What can technology teach us about gender? This course explores the mutual shaping of gender and technology using an intersectional feminist approach. We will draw on theories from feminist science and technology studies (STS) to examine contemporary and historical case studies with attention to how race, sexuality, disability, and class impact the relationship between gender and technology. Topics include the history of computing, digital labor and the gig economy, big data and surveillance, bias and algorithms, reproductive technologies, videogames, and social media.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
Instructors:
Butler-Wall, A. (PI)
;
Deb, A. (TA)
FEMGEN 151: Authoring Gender and the Body
Across time, place, and discipline, the body has been a contested site for defining ideas about complex experiences of gender and sexuality. This course asks: how have a diverse array of authors used "body-writing" to intervene in these debates? We will engage multiple disciplines of body-writing, addressing theory, memoir, autobiography, political manifesto, and scientific discourse; reading will include some foundational gender studies texts while driving toward hyper-contemporary, intersectional feminist, gender, and sexuality discourses. As we consider a broad variety of strategies and polemics in body-writing, we will interrogate themes such as power, class, race, pleasure, trauma, disability, reproduction, beauty, transition, sustainability, technology, and intersectionality. How does body-writing connect the literary, scientific, political, personal, and metaphysical concerns of multiple liberation movements? How does embodied writing challenge the fact of mortality? How has bod
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Across time, place, and discipline, the body has been a contested site for defining ideas about complex experiences of gender and sexuality. This course asks: how have a diverse array of authors used "body-writing" to intervene in these debates? We will engage multiple disciplines of body-writing, addressing theory, memoir, autobiography, political manifesto, and scientific discourse; reading will include some foundational gender studies texts while driving toward hyper-contemporary, intersectional feminist, gender, and sexuality discourses. As we consider a broad variety of strategies and polemics in body-writing, we will interrogate themes such as power, class, race, pleasure, trauma, disability, reproduction, beauty, transition, sustainability, technology, and intersectionality. How does body-writing connect the literary, scientific, political, personal, and metaphysical concerns of multiple liberation movements? How does embodied writing challenge the fact of mortality? How has body-writing contributed to interdisciplinary feminist, gender, and sexuality knowledge production? Crucially and centrally, assigned reading will provoke our own embodied writing as we conduct our own weekly experiments in body-writing. Emerging from these experiments, each student will conduct a large-scale research project focused on an author, genre, and/or theme of their choice.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Goode, L. (PI)
FEMGEN 162: Intersectionality and the Politics of Ballet (DANCE 162P, TAPS 162P)
Ballet dancers drag a long and conservative history with them each time they step onstage. Yet recently some of the most radical challenges in dance are coming from ballerinas, featuring prosthetic limbs, non-female identifying dancers en pointe, and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women performing classical repertoire. This seminar uses dance history to reposition ballet as a daring future-facing art form, one where the politics of nationality, religion, class, gender, race, and disability intersect. These issues are provocatively illuminated by classically trained dancers like South African artist Dada Masilo in her gender-bending Swan Lake and Giselle adaptations, Phil Chan's anti-Orientalist restagings, and activist American dancer Alice Sheppard's showcasing of the art of disability partnered by her wheelchair. What can ballet bring to the pressing social issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity when for centuries it has been considered an exemplar of the static imperialist, Western art f
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Ballet dancers drag a long and conservative history with them each time they step onstage. Yet recently some of the most radical challenges in dance are coming from ballerinas, featuring prosthetic limbs, non-female identifying dancers en pointe, and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women performing classical repertoire. This seminar uses dance history to reposition ballet as a daring future-facing art form, one where the politics of nationality, religion, class, gender, race, and disability intersect. These issues are provocatively illuminated by classically trained dancers like South African artist Dada Masilo in her gender-bending Swan Lake and Giselle adaptations, Phil Chan's anti-Orientalist restagings, and activist American dancer Alice Sheppard's showcasing of the art of disability partnered by her wheelchair. What can ballet bring to the pressing social issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity when for centuries it has been considered an exemplar of the static imperialist, Western art form and idealized white body? What has shifted to reveal ballet as a vital medium for registering new global identities and social justice challenges? How can an art form built on obedient bodies be politically dangerous? Exposing limitations of binaries such as masculine/feminine, White/Black, heterosexual/homosexual, and colonial/ colonized histories, we consider how culture is complicated through the ballet repertoire and its techniques for disciplining and gendering bodies. Using live and recorded performances, interviews with practitioners reshaping the field, and close readings of new scholarship, we will see how 21st century politics are being negotiated through ballet in an intersectional frame.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
FEMGEN 171Q: What is Gender-Based Violence (GBV)? Policies and Politics of Recognition and Prevention
This course investigates violence, broadly defined, in perhaps its most common and historical manifestation, based on gender identity. Utilizing an interdisciplinary lens, it explores the complex phenomenon of gender-based violence (GBV), examining its causes, manifestations, and the political, social, and economic structures that sustain it, as well as ways to prevent and address it. The course asks how GBV, while globally widespread, manifests differently across varied contexts and has varying implications for intersecting identities across gender, religion/belief, nationality, class, disability, race, migration status, and more. Given the growing threat of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV), the course also delves into how technology and online spaces can harm individuals and groups based on gender, with grave political implications, including on democracy and freedom of expression. Moving from recognition to prevention, the course integrates both theoretical analy
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This course investigates violence, broadly defined, in perhaps its most common and historical manifestation, based on gender identity. Utilizing an interdisciplinary lens, it explores the complex phenomenon of gender-based violence (GBV), examining its causes, manifestations, and the political, social, and economic structures that sustain it, as well as ways to prevent and address it. The course asks how GBV, while globally widespread, manifests differently across varied contexts and has varying implications for intersecting identities across gender, religion/belief, nationality, class, disability, race, migration status, and more. Given the growing threat of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV), the course also delves into how technology and online spaces can harm individuals and groups based on gender, with grave political implications, including on democracy and freedom of expression. Moving from recognition to prevention, the course integrates both theoretical analysis and applied approaches. It examines the roles of state and non-state institutions, community groups, and individuals in identifying and resisting violent structures and advancing strategies for justice and human rights. Special attention is given to policymaking, international frameworks (such as those developed by the United Nations), and transnational feminist responses across the Global South and North. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with the critical tools to analyze the dynamics of gender-based violence across global contexts and to imagine transformative responses, policies, and laws.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-ER
Instructors:
Tajali, M. (PI)
FEMGEN 185B: Mad Fiction: Literature of Mental Illness (CSRE 184B, ENGLISH 185B)
How have literary traditions of madness informed modern fiction's portrayals of the human mind, particularly in the context of rapidly shifting cultural frameworks about the origins and manifestations of mental illness? What are the repercussions of new forms, trends and genres for parsing (or blurring) the line between condition and personhood? Using the novels of Akwaeke Emezi, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, and Leslie Marmon Silko to guide our inquiries, we'll consider inherited and new metaphors of madness in light of emerging theoretical interpretations of disability, identity, gender and trauma.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Howse, R. (PI)
FEMGEN 347A: Feminism and Technology (FEMGEN 147)
How can a feminist lens help us understand technology? What can technology teach us about gender? This course explores the mutual shaping of gender and technology using an intersectional feminist approach. We will draw on theories from feminist science and technology studies (STS) to examine contemporary and historical case studies with attention to how race, sexuality, disability, and class impact the relationship between gender and technology. Topics include the history of computing, digital labor and the gig economy, big data and surveillance, bias and algorithms, reproductive technologies, videogames, and social media.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Butler-Wall, A. (PI)
;
Deb, A. (TA)
FEMGEN 442: (Re)Framing Difference: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Disability, Race and Culture (AFRICAAM 442, CSRE 343, EDUC 442, PEDS 242)
This course uses social theories of difference to examine the intersections of disability, race and culture. The course will examine these concepts drawing from scholarship published in history, sociology of education, urban sociology, cultural studies, disability studies, social studies of science, cultural psychology, educational and cultural anthropology, comparative education and special education. Implications for policy, research and practice will be covered.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Artiles, A. (PI)
GSBGID 504: The Care Economy
'There are only four kinds of people in the world: Those who have been caregivers. Those who are currently caregivers. Those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.' Former First lady Rosalynn Carter.nWe have a broken care system in the United States. Americans spend more than $648 billion annually on care, and it is expected to grow. There is a significant labor shortage of trained caregivers. In 2025, 63 million American adults provided ongoing care to adults or children with a medical condition or disability - representing almost one-quarter of all adults in the United States. The infant and childcare market is similarly unaffordable, fragmented, and broken. Every business leader today is confronting the complexities of a workforce of young parents, often challenged to find care for their children and/ or their parents and family members. These markets, often referred to as the Care Economy, are overlooked and ripe for reinvention with the potential for enormous
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'There are only four kinds of people in the world: Those who have been caregivers. Those who are currently caregivers. Those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.' Former First lady Rosalynn Carter.nWe have a broken care system in the United States. Americans spend more than $648 billion annually on care, and it is expected to grow. There is a significant labor shortage of trained caregivers. In 2025, 63 million American adults provided ongoing care to adults or children with a medical condition or disability - representing almost one-quarter of all adults in the United States. The infant and childcare market is similarly unaffordable, fragmented, and broken. Every business leader today is confronting the complexities of a workforce of young parents, often challenged to find care for their children and/ or their parents and family members. These markets, often referred to as the Care Economy, are overlooked and ripe for reinvention with the potential for enormous social impact. This course will expose students to key insights about the Care Economy from five perspectives: business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, caregivers and policymakers. We will explore the spectrum of care needs from infants and children to older adults, and how other developed countries such as Singapore, Denmark, and Japan have created their care systems and addressed the needs of working families. During the course, students will meet several distinguished business and thought leaders working to build a better care system, including the CEO of a leading care navigation company, major investors in the Care Economy, and key leaders and policy innovators spearheading public-private partnerships for caregiving. The course will include cases, panels with innovators and entrepreneurs, class exercises and care workshops, and lectures. Class topics will include the ROI of care to employers; the caregiving ecosystem; the different needs and complexities of caring for infants, children, older adults, and those with disabilities; and understanding the payors. The important role of policy will be evaluated both within organizations as well as local, state and national initiatives, to create a better care system for all people from 'first breath to their last.'
Terms: Win
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Golden, S. (PI)