This upper-level seminar examines how Western medical knowledge, practices, and institutions define female health and normality and manage diseased and gender-variant female bodies. We will explore how medicine conceives of the female body as a medical problem or mystery and consider how race, class, and sexuality inflect medical conceptions of the female body. Topics include "female maladies," medicalization of childbirth and the pregnant body, medical management of transgender and intersex bodies, medical conceptions of ideal body weight and fitness, gender norms and cosmetic surgery,...

How have the life sciences been transformed by the completion of the human genome projects and the arrival of whole-genome technologies?  Joining "postgenomic" assessments of the genome projects, this seminar examines the history and contemporary practice of genomics from a multidisciplinary perspective.  This course is intended primarily for graduate students.  Working with the professor, students will produce a substantive seminar research paper that may form the basis for future publishable work.

The objective of this course is twofold: First, the course will provide a feminist analysis of methods and methodologies as intellectual frameworks within the social sciences, sciences, and humanities. We will focus on how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge, engage feminist epistemologies, and employ feminist methodologies.  Second, the course will provide a practicum in feminist research methods, as students work on a collaborative research project over the course of the semester.  Working individually on a project related to students' interests and...