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.

Gender and Sexuality in African History
AS.100.430 (01)

An upper-level history reading seminar with a focus on histories of gender and sexuality in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 14/18
  • PosTag(s): HIST-AFRICA, INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST

Old World/New World Women
AS.060.388 (01)

The course considers the transatlantic writing of three women in the early modern period, Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, and Phillis Wheatley. We will consider issues of identity, spatiality, religion, commerce, enforced labor, sexuality, race, and gender, along with literary tradition, formal analysis and poetics. We will read a good deal of these early women writers. Foremost in our mind will be the question of how perceptions of space and time are mediated through the global experiences of early modernity.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 7/18
  • PosTag(s): ENGL-PR1800

Making and Unmaking Queer Histories: identities, cultures, and the politics of queer pasts in North America and Western Europe, 1900-Present
AS.100.283 (01)

Making and Unmaking Queer Histories introduces students to the major themes and historical developments which shape contemporary understandings of queer-identified subjects and communities in the US and Western Europe.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/18
  • PosTag(s): HIST-EUROPE, HIST-US, INST-GLOBAL

Freshman Seminar: Investigating Gender and Sexuality in Mesopotamian Art
AS.010.104 (01)

Specifics of gender and sexuality are not universal norms, but rather are the product of particular cultural formations. Works of art are especially critical in shaping and conveying these particularities. This seminar examines how artistic products expressed and constructed gender identities and notions of sexuality in ancient Mesopotamia from the 4th millennium to the Hellenistic period. As a group, we will explore a variety of case studies, through which students will be introduced to ancient Mesopotamian culture and will develop skills in specific research skills such as critical reading, analysis, and interpretation.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Lower Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

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
  • Status: Closed
  • Seats Available: 8/30
  • PosTag(s): BEHB-SOCSCI

Women & Modern Chinese History
AS.100.424 (01)

This course examines the experience of Chinese women, and also how writers, scholars, and politicians (often male, sometimes foreign) have represented women’s experiences for their own political and social agendas. Cross listed with East Asian Studies.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/12
  • PosTag(s): HIST-ASIA, INST-NWHIST, 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
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/30
  • PosTag(s): PHIL-MIND

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
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): INST-PT, PHIL-ETHICS

Classics Research Lab: The Symonds Project
AS.040.420 (01)

This course gives participants a unique opportunity to engage directly in empirical research and its interpretation and dissemination. Topics vary. This semester’s offering is organized around a project to reconstruct digitally the library of the nineteenth-century writer John Addington Symonds, author of one of the first studies of ancient sexuality. No prerequisites, but potential students should contact instructor for permission to enroll.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Closed
  • Seats Available: 2/12
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL

Sex, Law and Islam
AS.100.421 (01)

ISIS, “virgins” in paradise, the sexual slavery of Yazidi women…. This course will use anthropological and historical studies to examine the long history of how rules and understandings about sex, sexuality, and gender have mattered in how people think about Islam.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/22
  • PosTag(s): HIST-ASIA, HIST-AFRICA, HIST-EUROPE, INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST, ISLM-ISLMST

Human Sexuality
AS.200.204 (02)

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
  • Status: Closed
  • Seats Available: 5/30
  • PosTag(s): BEHB-SOCSCI

Gendered Voices
AS.211.374 (01)

The course will explore the notion of ‘voice’ in order to show how poetry, literature, philosophy, and music have been dealing with it throughout the ages. In particular, by focusing on classical figures such as the Sirens, Circe and Echo, as well as by considering the seminal discussions of the 'voice' in Plato and Aristotle, the course will address the gendered nature of the voice as a tool to seduce and manipulate the human mind. More specifically, the course will discuss the ways in which male, female, queer, gendered and un-gendered voices embody different functions. Course materials include classical, medieval and early modern sources as well as later rewritings of myths concerned with the voice by authors such as Jules Verne, Karen Blixen, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and Italo Calvino. A selection of theoretical works (e.g. Cavarero, Silverman, Dollar, Butler) will also be discussed. The course is taught in English and all materials will be available in English translation; Italian majors and minors should enroll in section 2.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/14
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL

African American Family
AS.230.316 (01)

This course is an examination of sociological theories and studies of African-American families and an overview of the major issues confronting African-American family life. The contemporary conditions of black families are explored, as well as the historical events that have influenced the family patterns we currently observe. Special attention will be given to social policies that have evolved as a result of the prominence of any one perspective at a given point in time.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-AP, SPOL-UL

Gendered Voices
AS.211.374 (02)

The course will explore the notion of ‘voice’ in order to show how poetry, literature, philosophy, and music have been dealing with it throughout the ages. In particular, by focusing on classical figures such as the Sirens, Circe and Echo, as well as by considering the seminal discussions of the 'voice' in Plato and Aristotle, the course will address the gendered nature of the voice as a tool to seduce and manipulate the human mind. More specifically, the course will discuss the ways in which male, female, queer, gendered and un-gendered voices embody different functions. Course materials include classical, medieval and early modern sources as well as later rewritings of myths concerned with the voice by authors such as Jules Verne, Karen Blixen, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and Italo Calvino. A selection of theoretical works (e.g. Cavarero, Silverman, Dollar, Butler) will also be discussed. The course is taught in English and all materials will be available in English translation; Italian majors and minors should enroll in section 2.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/5
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL

Seeing Like a Woman
AS.300.367 (01)

What does it mean to “see,” think, desire, feel, speak, act, or write “like a woman”? Gendered notions of seeing have had an impact on politics and society long before the #metoo movement and far beyond debates about women’s rights in isolation. This seminar examines the issues of female desire, subjectivity, spectatorship and performance in fiction, poetry, memoir and film from a variety of cultures and theoretical perspectives. This is not a course on “the image of the woman” in literature, film or politics, but a course in which we examine the ways in which both male and female theorists, novelists, poets, and filmmakers have imagined how women “see,” feel, think and behave.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/18
  • PosTag(s): n/a

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; Psychology; Public Health; Sociology; Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/25
  • PosTag(s): BEHB-SOCSCI

Topics in Romance Literatures: Opera and literature across borders
AS.211.400 (01)

In this year's course we will look at the relation between some of the great operas of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and their literary sources (case studies will include the various versions of Don Giovanni). We will also discuss some recent philosophical interpretations of opera. At stake will be the question of how literature is translated into music and stagecraft, and what these translations say about the times and cultures in which they were produced. During the course we will view and listen to operas and read their source materials as well as critical works about both. The course will be conducted in English, although readings will be available in their original languages. Language majors will be expected to do research in their language of concentration.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/15
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-FREN, GRLL-ITAL

Stories of hysteria
AS.300.439 (01)

Many are the stories that recount episodes of hysteria, and we owe them not only to medicine. To the modern observer, they are a puzzle, involving strange beliefs about wandering wombs, demonic possession, and female virtue (or lack thereof). Closer to our time, contemporary media, as well as accounts in the social and clinical sciences have evoked cases of “mass hysteria” in America and across the globe. Marriage, it was thought for a long time, might be the best cure, which might be the reason case-studies of this illness can be as intriguing and troubling as novels. Against a backdrop of medical and historical materials, we will examine a selection of stories, from the 17th century onward, that evoke aspects of hysteria. They serve as our case-studies and as prompts to study an illness born at the convergence of histories and myths, of medical science, and of cultural and gender assumptions. Among the notions we will explore: The birth of psychoanalysis, trauma and PTSD, the concept of repression, the visual aspects of an illness and its spread in the arts, including cinema.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 11/20
  • 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
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/18
  • PosTag(s): INST-AP, SPOL-UL

Women of the Book: Female Mystics, Miracles, and Material Culture in Early Modern Europe
AS.389.325 (01)

Students will study and assess JHU’s new, unparalleled rare book and manuscript collection about the spiritual lives of women at the crossroads of religious mysticism, miracles, and material culture, 1450-1800.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level:
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 6/15
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL, GRLL-FREN

Women in French Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries
AS.212.318 (01)

This course will examine the changes in the relationship of women to literature in France before the French Revolution from several points of view: (1) What were the social and intellectual contexts of gender distinctions? (2) How did men writing about women differ from women writing about women? (3) How were these questions affected by the changing norms of literary productions? Texts by Mme. de Sévigné, Molière, Mme. de Lafayette, Prévost, Diderot, Rousseau, Laclos, and Beaumarchais.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/12
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-FREN

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
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Feminist and Queer Theory: Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality-Intersectional Feminist Theory
AS.363.306 (01)

This class is intended to introduce students to intersectional feminist theory. This theory born out of the writings of Black women, investigates the cooperation and interaction of multiple social identity categories and structures of oppression. Next to reading feminist theory, will engage with novels and movies. All readings are accessible on blackboard.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/25
  • PosTag(s): n/a

WGS Internship Practicum: The Carceral State, Gender, and the Family
AS.363.415 (01)

This class will examine the U.S. government’s use of incarceration, parole, and house-arrest as default forms of social management, in lieu of social welfare policy. We will explore the origins of the “carceral state” and its impact on targeted communities. The class will focus on often neglected aspects of the ongoing crisis of mass-incarceration in the U.S., in particular its debilitating effects on single-mother households, children who grow up with incarcerated family members, and the extreme violence and deprivation of basic medical needs faced by incarcerated women and LGBTQI individuals. Topics will include black-feminism and “black matriarchy,” the relationship between domestic violence and mass-incarceration in communities of color, women and non-gender conforming prisoners, the “school-to-prison pipeline,” the psychological effects of policing on targeted communities, and the fiscal interests served by mass-incarceration. We will engage sociological, historical, and philosophical materials, as well as literature, film, and past and present social movements.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 18/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Curatorial Seminar
AS.389.420 (01)

In collaboration with a local museum, conceptualize and develop an exhibition, potentially including but not limited to: checklists, exhibition texts, interpretive strategies, and programming. Exhibition theme varies year to year. Concepts, ethics and practicalities of curation are key concerns. Research visits to regional museums and private collections as relevant.

  • Credits: 4.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Closed
  • Seats Available: 7/12
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Gender and Sexuality beyond the Global West: Stitching Women-Sewing and Gender, Labor, and Art
AS.363.331 (01)

What’s radical about stitching? And how did sewing coming to be viewed—across centuries, cultures, regions, and political epochs—as (in embroidery artist Hannah Hill’s words) “women’s work”? This course will analyze and discuss how work with needle and thread has been associated with women, their bodies, and the domestic space where the repetitive labor of mending, the mixed opportunity for making, and the devalued practice of the “applied arts” took place. Looking at histories of work, fictions, and visual objects, we will explore stitching’s gendered past and its potential for oppressive normativity and radical, creative expression alike. Over the semester, our course follows the “red thread” of stitching via four short response papers (or one Unessay), one in-class presentation, and one final oral history/research project on an inter-disciplinary discussion related to the (often radical) politics and poetics of women’s lives and works. Authors and artists may include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Gaskell, Virginia Woolf, Alice Walker, Carol Ann Duffy, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgeois, Elaine Reichek, Silvia Federici, Mariarosa dalla Costa, Kyung-Ah Ham, and Project Runway.

  • Credits: 3.00
  • Level: Upper Level Undergraduate
  • Status: Waitlist Only
  • Seats Available: 0/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.100.430 (01)Gender and Sexuality in African HistoryT 4:00PM - 6:30PMLarson, Pier MGilman 308HIST-AFRICA, INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST
AS.060.388 (01)Old World/New World WomenM 1:30PM - 4:00PMAchinstein, SharonGilman 400ENGL-PR1800
AS.100.283 (01)Making and Unmaking Queer Histories: identities, cultures, and the politics of queer pasts in North America and Western Europe, 1900-PresentTTh 9:00AM - 10:15AMHindmarch-Watson, KatieGilman 308HIST-EUROPE, HIST-US, INST-GLOBAL
AS.010.104 (01)Freshman Seminar: Investigating Gender and Sexuality in Mesopotamian ArtT 1:30PM - 4:00PMFeldman, MarianGilman 177
AS.200.204 (01)Human SexualityW 1:30PM - 3:50PMKraft, Chris SAmes 218BEHB-SOCSCI
AS.100.424 (01)Women & Modern Chinese HistoryW 1:30PM - 4:00PMMeyer-Fong, TobieGilman 308HIST-ASIA, INST-NWHIST, INST-GLOBAL
AS.150.436 (01)Philosophy of GenderMW 4:30PM - 5:45PMTaylor, Elanor J.Gilman 288PHIL-MIND
AS.150.404 (01)The Idea of PowerTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMLebron, Christopher JosephGilman 288INST-PT, PHIL-ETHICS
AS.040.420 (01)Classics Research Lab: The Symonds ProjectTTh 3:00PM - 4:15PMButler, Michael Shane, Dean, GabrielleGilman 108GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL
AS.100.421 (01)Sex, Law and IslamW 1:30PM - 4:00PMKhan, Naveeda, Shepard, ToddShaffer 303HIST-ASIA, HIST-AFRICA, HIST-EUROPE, INST-GLOBAL, INST-NWHIST, ISLM-ISLMST
AS.200.204 (02)Human SexualityW 4:00PM - 6:20PMKraft, Chris SAmes 218BEHB-SOCSCI
AS.211.374 (01)Gendered VoicesTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMRefini, EugenioMaryland 202GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL
AS.230.316 (01)African American FamilyTTh 9:00AM - 10:15AMMcDonald, Katrina BellGilman 413INST-AP, SPOL-UL
AS.211.374 (02)Gendered VoicesTTh 12:00PM - 1:15PMRefini, EugenioMaryland 202GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL
AS.300.367 (01)Seeing Like a WomanT 1:30PM - 4:00PMEakin Moss, AnneGilman 208
AS.290.420 (01)Human Sexual OrientationW 6:30PM - 8:50PMKraft, Chris SAmes 218BEHB-SOCSCI
AS.211.400 (01)Topics in Romance Literatures: Opera and literature across bordersTTh 3:00PM - 4:15PMEgginton, William, Refini, EugenioBloomberg 172GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-FREN, GRLL-ITAL
AS.300.439 (01)Stories of hysteriaTTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMEnder, EvelyneGilman 400
AS.230.370 (01)Housing and Homelessness in the United StatesTTh 4:30PM - 5:45PMGreif, MeredithKrieger 304INST-AP, SPOL-UL
AS.389.325 (01)Women of the Book: Female Mystics, Miracles, and Material Culture in Early Modern EuropeT 3:00PM - 5:30PMHavens, Earle Ashcroft, II.BLC MackseyGRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL, GRLL-FREN
AS.212.318 (01)Women in French Literature of the 17th and 18th CenturiesTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMAnderson, WildaGilman 418GRLL-FREN
AS.363.445 (01)Reading Judith Shakespeare: Women and Gender in Elizabethan EnglandW 1:30PM - 4:00PMPatton, Elizabeth 
AS.363.306 (01)Feminist and Queer Theory: Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality-Intersectional Feminist TheoryTTh 1:30PM - 2:45PMHussein, RimaKrieger 308
AS.363.415 (01)WGS Internship Practicum: The Carceral State, Gender, and the FamilyW 1:30PM - 4:00PMCarmel, Samantha LynneGilman 400
AS.389.420 (01)Curatorial SeminarTh 4:15PM - 6:45PMKingsley, Jennifer PGilman 277
AS.363.331 (01)Gender and Sexuality beyond the Global West: Stitching Women-Sewing and Gender, Labor, and ArtTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMRoss, Sarah CatherineBloomberg 276