Classes revolving around women’s history, issues COR 4060 Women’s Health Issues

Professor: Resa Walch

What is it about?

This course will identify a broad range of health issues that are either unique to women or of special importance to women. The roles that women play as providers and consumers of health care will be examined. The student will be provided the opportunity to explore health care issues of women from adolescence through old age. The interface of gender, socioeconomic advantage/disadvantage and minority status will be studied. A primary objective of this course is to enable the student to become an informed consumer of health care services. This course is writing intensive. Open to students in the third or fourth year of study.

Why is it important?

“It allows students an opportunity to really delve deep into how did their perspective evolve around women’s health? How might they need to rethink that perspective? And where they land as an advocate for themselves and others, and students often end up realizing, ‘I definitely want to advocate for myself and my own health from all these perspectives, but how can I be an advocate for others?’ So I think it’s important because it really meets the intent of the Core Capstone at Elon. And I don’t know how familiar you are with that, but ethical, ethical reasoning and social responsibility and those things are essential to core capstone courses. So it just makes sense that the contents of this course would really look at that the ethical reasoning around all different issues in women’s health and social responsibility. I just really believe firmly that we still have a long way to go with women’s health. But students take this course to have a deeper understanding of what it means to be a woman seeking health care in today’s society, what it looks like from a historical perspective. And what might it look like in the future so to that it’s more fair, more accessible, and better outcomes for all women.”

WGS 1100 Sex and Gender

Professor: Antoinette Polito

What is it about?

This course addresses the following issues: the difference between sex and gender, how sex and gender are socially constructed, the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality; and the various types of feminisms. Students will develop and demonstrate the ability to critically explore how these identities intersect with each other as well as with other identities such as race, class, physical ability, and so on, and consider how their own identities are constructed.

Why is it important?

“I think it’s very important myself because I obviously think this information is important for folks to know, But what my students tell me and this is the fourth time I’ve taught this, they always say that they wanted to take this class because these issues are so important in their real life. So we try to make a lot of connection to everyday living right for those who identify as women we talk about, what is that like to be in a broader society for those who identify as male? We ask the same question and we try to, you know, talk through some issues together. When folks are non binary, we talk about how does that fit into a feminist framework, but I think it’s a really good place for people who aren’t necessarily going to be historians or, you know, Women’s and Gender study majors. It gives them a good sense of that history of women’s struggle. So, you know, even though it’s only been the past 200 years, we do give some grounding in kind of what things have been like for women over over time, and I think that’s particularly important during March you know, when we try to think about how far women have come in, I always tell my students, you know, it’s interesting because I’m much older than they are right, so I can tell them what it was like back in the day, you know, and, and they can teach me what it’s like now. so it’s a really nice, mutual education.”

WGS 3000 Current Controversies in Feminism Professor: Shayna Mehas What is it about?

This interdisciplinary course, designed for students ready to do advanced work, will explore several of the most highly contested issues within feminist thought and activism. Particular attention will be paid to writings by women marginalized by race, class, nationality and/or sexuality. Students will be expected to undertake a research project and/or activism.

Why is it important?

“I think first like teaching it through a feminist pedagogical lens is important because it gives my students specifically WGS students kind of a better understanding of like, what what does it actually mean, right? What is feminism rooted in? Again, I would say, and everybody can define this kind of their own ways, but I really say it’s community equality, right, equity, justices, etc. And so this creates a classroom environment where you can actually live that and work that as well as a lot of times. I think, when I think of a capstone class, I think of a capstone class as being something that prepares you to go out into the real world, right? And so when you go out into the real world, you don’t get a syllabus. You don’t get an assignment that has, you know, A, B, C, and D. But rather you have to learn to kind of work together in projects and to create something. Something bigger than what’s there before, right? And so this gives both a foundation of kind of understanding feminist pedagogy, as well as like creating an environment that hopefully will give some, quote, unquote, like real world experience into like project management or project work in terms of women and women’s history, as a Latin Americanist historian. I’m always trying to find ways to show really, how oftentimes in history we get very I’m trying to think of a good way to say this. People get written out of history all the time. And so how do we look from the ground up? How do we look at those populations that have been considered minorities or that have been othered and bring them back to the center? So I try to recenter feminism and really this idea of feminism as being human rights, which is where we are currently in feminism as something that Latin American women were doing in the 1920s. But what happened to them? Why don’t we hear their stories and so that’s really what I try to focus on is how do we bring these women that were so important to the movement back into kind of everyday knowledge?”

Cor 4690

Women in Music

Professor: Allison Wente

What is it about?

This course will look at the lives and music of women musicians, composers and performers and the social structure within which they lived. The course will allow students to investigate the artistic impact of historical events and trends in not only America, but also the world, and how women in different eras were able to interact musically.

Why is it important?

“We are naming a lot of people that are not normally named, and we’re discussing a lot of things about identity and how it relates to music. I think that it’s creating connections between music but also the arts more broadly, and culture and I think it helps show students how the culture and media they consume reflects the culture they’re experiencing and living.”