Exciting Fall 2023 Courses in WGSS

We have Fall courses both online and in-person!

LGBT 310 Transgender Studies

Damien Hagen
MWF 11:00am - 11:50am

Introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies, providing a history of the field and engaging current debates within it. Students will explore the emergence and consolidation of trans identities, practices, cultures, and knowledges across medical, historical, sociological, cultural, and artistic contexts, paying particular attention to dynamics of race, class, and ability, to global and transnational difference, and to the implications of transgender studies for understanding gender and sexuality overall.

LGBT 350 - LGBT People and Communications

Shantala Thompson
TH 2:00-3:00 PM
Gen Ed: DSSP and DVCC
Want to improve campus climate and educate UMD students on LGBTQ+ equity and rights? Become a Peer Educator and join our speaker's bureau on LGBTQ+ inclusive practices at the University of Maryland by enrolling in LGBT 350 - LGBT People and Communications.

The course is open to all, but you must first speak with staff in the LGBT Equity Center for an assessment of knowledge and skill level. LGBT 200 is generally a prerequisite, but if your current level of knowledge is sufficient, you may be given permission to enroll. To request an appointment, email speakersbureau@umd.edu. Please provide your name, pronouns, year, preferred email address, and three different times you are available, Monday and Wednesday for a virtual meeting.

LGBT 448L: Black Queer Studies

Sydney Lewis
MW 2:00pm-3:15pm 
Gen Ed: DVUP

Black Queer Studies is an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to LGBTQ+ Studies and Black Studies. In this course, we will center Blackness to meditate upon the overlapping and interwoven categories of race, gender, and sexuality with the goal of decoupling whiteness from LGBTQ+ studies and decoupling heterosexuality from Black studies. We will look at texts from the humanities,including some short literature and film, and the social sciences in order to trace topical trajectories of Black queer thought. Throughout we will consider how Black queer liberation can, and has, provided tools and a guide for our collective liberation.

NEW COURSE!
WGSS 105: Introduction to Disability Studies 

Neel Ahuja
MW 11:00 AM-11:50 AM with Friday discussion sections
Online 
Gen Ed: DSHU and pending DVCC

This course will introduce students to theories of disability justice as they intersect with feminist and antiracist struggles. We will consider how disability activists have responded to ableism by developing art, political strategies, and subcultures that promote a more just society built for a wider variety of human bodies. Students will learn about disability activists' critiques of medical knowledge; explore different experiences of disability relating to mental illness, chronic disease, and sensory and mobility impairments; debate ethical questions concerning medical technologies; and analyze the work of disabled artists and activists of color. This course has been designed for online instruction complemented by optional in-person class sessions.

WGSS 263 Intro to Black Women's Studies

Elsa Barkley Brown
TH 11:00 AM-12:15 PM
Fulfills requirements of the major and Black Women's Studies Minor

Interdisciplinary exploration of Black women, culture and society in the United States. Drawn primarily from the social sciences and history with complementary material from literature and the arts.

WGSS 319P Pleasure, Intimacy, and Violence

Zenzele Isoke
TuTh 9:30am-10:45am        
Fulfills a fundamental requirement of the major

This is an interdisciplinary course that explores how pleasure, intimacy, and violence are shaped by processes of race, gender, class and sexual injustice in the United States. We will explore how our understandings of sexuality are influenced in the U.S. by focusing on the relationship between micro-level (interpersonal) and macro-level (societal) violence. We will explore concepts of racialized-gender trauma, black queer crossings, pleasure activism, and black love through creative non-fiction, autoethnography, and community-engaged praxis. This is an exciting and demanding course for students who wish to engage topics of rape/rape-culture, blackness, and sex from an WGSS perspective. This course will be especially beneficial to students who would like to do professional anti-violence work in communities of color after graduation.  The aim of this course is to learn to speak of and imagine sex in an environment that values non-violence and respect for all bodies and genders. 

Please note that this course includes practicing respectful and open discussion of sex, sexual practices and sexual histories in candid and explicit ways, which includes topics like rape and sexual assault, masturbation, fantasy, teen sex, and nonhuman sex.

WGSS 488G Senior Seminar: Transnational Feminisms

Sayan Bhattacharya
M 3:00pm - 5:30pm
Department permission required

What constitutes transnational feminisms and how does it relate to or differ from global or international feminisms? This course will engage with contemporary feminist debates on racism, casteism, right wing moral panics around sexual and gender identities and settler colonialism to de-exceptionalize the US as the center of feminist knowledge production.