Courses

The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found at https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/.

Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information.

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Michelangelo: Religion, Sexuality, and the Crisis of Renaissance Art
AS.010.301 (01)

The course will focus on the controversies surrounding the representation of the body in the writings and figurative art of Michelangelo and his contemporaries, the historical circumstances under which the most admired artist in Europe was attacked as a blasphemer and an idolator, and the effect of widespread calls for censorship on his later production. The writings of Michelangelo, Pietro Aretino, Benvenuto Cellini and own writings will be considered with a focus on their staging of an ambivalent and transgressive eroticism.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Campbell, Stephen
  • Room: Gilman 177
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/18
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe
AS.100.426 (01)

Witchcraft, magic, carnivals, riots, folk tales, gender roles; fertility cults and violence especially in Britain, Germany, France, and Italy.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Marshall, John W
  • Room: Gilman 75
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/25
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL, HIST-EUROPE

French Masculinities
AS.061.397 (01)

Examines changing ideals of masculinity in France after 1960 as they found expression on film, rooting the work of iconic stars and directors in their cultural, political and historical contexts.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:20PM, M 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
  • Instructor: Mason, Laura
  • Room: Latrobe 120
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 13/18
  • PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

Making and Unmaking Queer Histories, 1800-Present
AS.100.283 (01)

Making and unmaking queer histories introduces students to some of the major themes and historical developments which shape contemporary understandings of past queer lives and communities in the United States and Western Europe since the nineteenth century.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
  • Instructor: Hindmarch-Watson, Katie
  • Room: Gilman 17
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/21
  • PosTag(s): HIST-EUROPE, HIST-US, INST-GLOBAL

Philosophy of Gender
AS.150.436 (01)

In this class we will examine philosophical questions about gender, and about the intersections between gender and other social categories including race, class and sexuality. We will focus specifically on questions about the metaphysics of gender and other social categories.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM
  • Instructor: Taylor, Elanor J.
  • Room: Gilman 288
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/20
  • PosTag(s): PHIL-MIND

21st Century Female Playwrights
AS.225.318 (01)

This is a writing intensive class exploring the current wealth of women playwrights, including Pulitzer Prize winners: Wendy Wasserstein, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, and Jackie Sibblies Drury (2019 Prize for FAIRVIEW). We will discuss Script Analysis and read (and see) plays by numerous writers including Claire Barron, Kia Corthron, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Ruhl, Danai Gurira, Caleen Sinnette Jennings, and Hansol Jung. This class will include a mid-term and a Final Paper.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 6:00PM - 8:30PM
  • Instructor: Denithorne, Margaret
  • Room: Merrick 105
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

The Idea of Power
AS.150.404 (01)

The Idea of Power surveys seminal texts in the history of political thought on the nature, promise, and dangers of political and social power; it also critically engages contemporary texts on race and gender power relations

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Lebron, Christopher Joseph
  • Room: Krieger 308
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-PT, PHIL-ETHICS

Human Sexuality
AS.200.204 (01)

Course focuses on sexual development, sexuality across the lifespan, gender identity, sexual attraction and arousal, sexually transmitted disease, and the history of commercial sex workers and pornography. Please note that the use of electronic devices is not permitted during this class, in order to promote the full interactive potential of this engaging seminar-style offering. Open to Juniors & Seniors within the following majors/minors: Behavioral Biology; Biology; Cognitive Science; Medicine, Science & the Humanities; Molecular & Cellular Bio; Neuroscience; Psychological & Brain Sciences; Public Health; Sociology; Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Kraft, Chris S
  • Room: Ames 218
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/40
  • PosTag(s): BEHB-SOCSCI

Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury
AS.060.348 (01)

An exploration of the achievements and investments of one of the most influential coteries in the history of Britain. In addition to delving into key fictions by Virginia Woolf, we will examine novels by Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster, art criticism by Roger Fry and Clive Bell, biographical essays by Lytton Strachey, economic writings by John Maynard Keynes, and poetry by T. S. Eliot.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Mao, Douglas
  • Room: Smokler Center 301
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Housing and Homelessness in the United States
AS.230.370 (01)

This course will examine the role of housing, or the absence thereof, in shaping quality of life. It will explore the consequences of the places in which we live and how we are housed. Consideration will be given to overcrowding, affordability, accessibility, and past and existing housing policies and their influence on society. Special attention will be given to the problem of homelessness.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
  • Instructor: Greif, Meredith
  • Room: Gilman 17
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/19
  • PosTag(s): INST-AP, SPOL-UL

Cinema of the 1930s: Communist and Capitalist Fantasies
AS.300.324 (01)

Comedy and musical comedy film flourished in the USA during the Great Depression as well as in the USSR during the Stalinist Great Terror. This course will compare films of the era in a variety of genres (musical, epic, Western, drama), examining the intersections between politics and aesthetics as well as the lasting implications of the films themselves in light of theoretical works on film as a medium, ethics and gender.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Eakin Moss, Anne, McCabe, Nathan
  • Room: Gilman 208
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 13/25
  • PosTag(s): INST-GLOBAL

Human Sexual Orientation
AS.290.420 (01)

This course will examine the historical and current theories of sexual orientation and sexual variation development by examining the biological, psychological and social contributing factors that influence the development of sexual orientations and variations along with treatment and modification of problematic sexual behaviors. Please note that the use of electronic devices is not permitted during this class, in order to promote the full interactive potential of this engaging seminar-style offering. Students may enroll in both AS.200.204 and AS.290.420, but cannot do so in the same semester. Enrollment is limited to Senior Majors & Minors in Behavioral Biology; Biology; Cognitive Science; Medicine, Science & the Humanities; Molecular & Cellular Bio; Neuroscience; Public Health; Sociology; Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 4:00PM - 6:30PM
  • Instructor: Kraft, Chris S
  • Room: Ames 218
  • Status: Reserved Open
  • Seats Available: 5/25
  • PosTag(s): BEHB-SOCSCI

Love and its maladies
AS.300.334 (01)

Much of what we know about love and desire we owe to fiction’s ability to evoke these experiences. Consider for example that the publication, in Germany, of The Sorrows of Young Werther inspired young men across Europe to dress and behave just like this lover. Just as nowadays film and television represent, as well as mold our conceptions of love, love-stories from the eighteenth-century onwards have given shape to gendered subjectivities in ways that still matter now. As, intriguingly, illness is a recurrent theme in many modern love stories, we will be prompted to decipher signs and symptoms in the bodies of mind of our protagonists. Why is it that in Western cultures, passion is tightly interwoven with a landscape of pain, suffering, and disease? In studying texts that represent major aspects of a romantic sensibility, we are indeed invited to trace the steps of a history of the body increasingly defined by gender and by medical knowledge. The readings for this class (all available in English) include: Austen, Persuasion; Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece; Barthes, Lover’s Discourse; Goethe; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Mann, Death in Venice; Winterson, Written on the Body.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
  • Instructor: Ender, Evelyne
  • Room: Gilman 219
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Reading Judith Shakespeare: Women and Gender in Elizabethan England
AS.363.445 (01)

If Shakespeare had a sister who went to London to be a writer, what would she write? Virginia Woolf’s account of the thwarted career of Shakespeare’s hypothetical sister, Judith, in A Room of One’s Own frames our reading of plays and poetry by Shakespeare and contemporary women writers, including Isabella Whitney, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer, and Mary Wroth. Working within a selected historical context, students will create fictional biographies of “Judith Shakespeare,” including her perspective on our identified authors and a sample or description of Judith’s own literary accomplishments. Secondary course readings will reflect contemporary economic, political, and religious contexts.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Patton, Elizabeth
  • Room: Shaffer 304
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/12
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-PR1800

WGS Internship/Practicum: Feminist Animals: Sex, Nature, and Nonhumans
AS.363.416 (01)

Introducing feminist approaches to ecology and nonhumans, this course considers the interconnections between heteropatriarchal domination and the domination of nonhuman animals and ecologies. What different sensibilities and ways of seeing sex and gender open up when attention shifts to nonhumans? What tensions within and between feminism, animal liberation, and ecological concern come to the fore when each approach is alongside the others? How does the study of nonhumans extend the promise of feminism, and vice versa? In responding to these questions, we will see the real breadth of issues that the theory and practice of feminism can address.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:30PM
  • Instructor: Guha-Majumdar, Jishnu
  • Room:  
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Queer & Trans Public History
AS.389.230 (01)

This course introduces students to a blend of public history, queer studies and transgender studies. Students learn oral history and archival research methods as they draw on and contribute to the university’s archival, museum, and library collections.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
  • Instructor: Plaster, Joseph
  • Room: Smokler Center 213
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/15
  • PosTag(s): PMUS-INTRO

Scribbling Women in the Literary Archive
AS.389.346 (01)

Students examine select texts and archival materials related to Emily Dickinson, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Edith Wharton, Ida B. Wells, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sui Sin Far, Alice Duer Miller, and Zora Neale Hurston. Students interrogate how these writers navigated the constraints of gender, as informed by race and class, in the decades before and after the 19th Amendment and consider literary collecting in relation to gendered cultural politics.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: M 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Dean, Gabrielle
  • Room: BLC Macksey
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Feminist Modernisms
AS.363.400 (01)

Prize Teaching Fellowship seminar. Triangulating feminist psychoanalysis and theories of embodiment and subjectivity with art criticism and case studies of artistic practice (primarily painting), this course comparatively investigates the routes modernism takes after the Second World War and decolonization (1945/1947). We will be interested in specific postcolonial and postwar contexts where modernism in the domain of the visual arts was mounted as a feminist project. Each week will pair readings that establish conceptual frameworks with close analyses of works by specific artists, including those represented by the Library's Special Collections and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Texts include Freud, Spivak, Butler, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Mahmood.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: T 3:00PM - 5:30PM
  • Instructor: Ballakrishnen, Meghaa
  • Room: Gilman 134
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Powerful Women in Opera
AS.376.344 (01)

Many opera scholars have noted that opera abuses its female characters. Many operatic heroines die, whether from violent acts or chronic diseases. However, women in opera also wield great power through their voices as ambitious queens, cunning servants, magical beings, and femmes fatales. In this course we will examine how these female characters operate through explorations of the operas’ historical context, their texts and scores, and modern performance practice. Spanning from the 17th to 21st centuries, the repertoire studied in this class will provide an introduction to opera history. At the same time, we will delve deeply into different ways to do close analyses of opera through the lens of gender, reading the work of such thinkers as Carolyn Abbate, Naomi Andre, Adriana Caverero, Catherine Clément, and Wayne Koestenbaum.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: M 4:00PM - 6:30PM
  • Instructor: Kass, Lily T
  • Room: Shaffer 202
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Feminist and Queer Theory: Family Matters: Queer and Feminist Responses to Family Life
AS.363.307 (01)

This course examines the historical development of feminist and queer critique, focusing on how the concept of family life has been understood by generations of writers, activists, and theorists. We will read important early works on western forms of kinship and family structure, and investigate how contemporary developments in reproductive technology, queer marriage, and workplace integration have produced new imaginings of familial belonging and its alternatives.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
  • Instructor: Giardini, Joseph Aurelio
  • Room: Maryland 109
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.010.301 (01)Michelangelo: Religion, Sexuality, and the Crisis of Renaissance ArtTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMCampbell, StephenGilman 177HART-RENBAR
AS.100.426 (01)Popular Culture in Early Modern EuropeTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMMarshall, John WGilman 75INST-GLOBAL, HIST-EUROPE
AS.061.397 (01)French MasculinitiesT 3:00PM - 5:20PM, M 7:30PM - 10:00PM ScreeningsMason, LauraLatrobe 120FILM-CRITST
AS.100.283 (01)Making and Unmaking Queer Histories, 1800-PresentTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMHindmarch-Watson, KatieGilman 17HIST-EUROPE, HIST-US, INST-GLOBAL
AS.150.436 (01)Philosophy of GenderMW 4:30PM - 5:45PMTaylor, Elanor J.Gilman 288PHIL-MIND
AS.225.318 (01)21st Century Female PlaywrightsT 6:00PM - 8:30PMDenithorne, MargaretMerrick 105
AS.150.404 (01)The Idea of PowerTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMLebron, Christopher JosephKrieger 308INST-PT, PHIL-ETHICS
AS.200.204 (01)Human SexualityW 1:30PM - 4:00PMKraft, Chris SAmes 218BEHB-SOCSCI
AS.060.348 (01)Virginia Woolf and BloomsburyTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMMao, DouglasSmokler Center 301
AS.230.370 (01)Housing and Homelessness in the United StatesTTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMGreif, MeredithGilman 17INST-AP, SPOL-UL
AS.300.324 (01)Cinema of the 1930s: Communist and Capitalist FantasiesMW 10:30AM - 11:45AMEakin Moss, Anne, McCabe, NathanGilman 208INST-GLOBAL
AS.290.420 (01)Human Sexual OrientationW 4:00PM - 6:30PMKraft, Chris SAmes 218BEHB-SOCSCI
AS.300.334 (01)Love and its maladiesMW 3:00PM - 4:15PMEnder, EvelyneGilman 219
AS.363.445 (01)Reading Judith Shakespeare: Women and Gender in Elizabethan EnglandW 1:30PM - 4:00PMPatton, ElizabethShaffer 304ENGL-PR1800
AS.363.416 (01)WGS Internship/Practicum: Feminist Animals: Sex, Nature, and NonhumansW 1:30PM - 4:30PMGuha-Majumdar, Jishnu 
AS.389.230 (01)Queer & Trans Public HistoryTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMPlaster, JosephSmokler Center 213PMUS-INTRO
AS.389.346 (01)Scribbling Women in the Literary ArchiveM 3:00PM - 5:30PMDean, GabrielleBLC Macksey
AS.363.400 (01)Feminist ModernismsT 3:00PM - 5:30PMBallakrishnen, MeghaaGilman 134
AS.376.344 (01)Powerful Women in OperaM 4:00PM - 6:30PMKass, Lily TShaffer 202
AS.363.307 (01)Feminist and Queer Theory: Family Matters: Queer and Feminist Responses to Family LifeTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMGiardini, Joseph AurelioMaryland 109

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Social Justice Podcasting: Stories of Period Poverty
AS.230.131 (21)

Students will learn how to create their podcast series that focuses on the topic of period poverty; women and girls who cannot afford sanitary products in the city of Baltimore. Students will produce podcast episodes on the issues of why period poverty exists, how to end period poverty and eco-friendly, and affordable sanitary product alternatives for women and girls. Students will work in groups while researching their topics, writing episodes, and producing and packaging their podcasts.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 12:45PM
  • Instructor: Nuriddin, Najma Reshmaan
  • Room: Krieger 309
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 11/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Social Justice Podcasting: Stories of Period Poverty
AS.230.131 (11)

Students will learn how to create their podcast series that focuses on the topic of period poverty; women and girls who cannot afford sanitary products in the city of Baltimore. Students will produce podcast episodes on the issues of why period poverty exists, how to end period poverty and eco-friendly, and affordable sanitary product alternatives for women and girls. Students will work in groups while researching their topics, writing episodes, and producing and packaging their podcasts.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Days/Times: TTh 9:00AM - 12:45PM
  • Instructor: Nuriddin, Najma Reshmaan
  • Room: Krieger 309
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.230.131 (21)Social Justice Podcasting: Stories of Period PovertyTTh 9:00AM - 12:45PMNuriddin, Najma ReshmaanKrieger 309
AS.230.131 (11)Social Justice Podcasting: Stories of Period PovertyTTh 9:00AM - 12:45PMNuriddin, Najma ReshmaanKrieger 309