Susan S Heinzelman

Interdisciplinary topics relating to Women's and Gender Studies.  Seats restricted to WGS MA and Portfolio students during early registration.  Check cross-listings for home departments and originating field of study.

Intensive study of selected topics in women's and gender studies.

Intensive study of selected topics in women's and gender studies.

This course is designed to prepare graduate students in gender studies and the qualitative social sciences to conduct a research project for their master’s theses or similar projects. We will explore a range of research methods and traditions as well as the epistemological assumptions underlying them. We will consider what it means to conduct “feminist” research, as well as the perils and promise of the more participatory research traditions. Some of the research methods we will explore include interviewing, survey research, case studies, textual analysis, and participant observation.

E 316N  l  World Literature

Instructor:  Heinzelman, S

Unique #:  34615

Semester:  Spring 2015

Cross-lists:  C L 315

Restrictions:  n/a

Computer Instruction:  No

Flags:  Global Cultures

Prerequisites: One of the following: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A.

Description: This course will offer a window on contemporary world literature through fiction. We will be reading texts from New Zealand, Turkey, Australia, India, the United States and the United Kingdom. Authors will include Orhan Pamuk, Sara Suleri, Louise Erdrich and Zadie Smith.

Requirements & Grading: Attendance is required; you may miss three classes without an excuse. After your third absence you must provide a written excuse. If you fail to do so, I will lower your grade by 10% for each class missed. Please see me at the beginning of the semester if you have some special circumstances that will prevent you from being in compliance with this policy.

I prefer to hold discussion classes rather than lectures; to this end, please come to class with the reading for the day prepared. It should not fall to the same few students each day to sustain discussion. If we cannot hold productive discussions because too few students are prepared, I will resort to pop quizzes.

Final Examination: 35%; Quizzes (5-Objective questions and interpretative commentary): 50%; Midterm essay, 3-4 pages: 15%.

Instructor:  Heinzelman, S            Areas:  -- / B

Unique #:  34594            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Spring 2013            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  n/a            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: E 603A, RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 603A; and a passing score on the reading section of the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test.

Description: It is clearly impossible to study, in one five-week course, the literature of a nation produced over approximately twelve hundred years. Even if we were to have the luxury of the reading time afforded by a long semester, we would still only scratch the surface of Britain’s literary culture. Moreover, we only be addressing the “literary” culture—and thus ignore the many other forms that culture takes---economic, social, political. Furthermore, when we speak of “British” culture, we are invoking not one but many varieties of national identity – from the Celts and the Gaels to the English (Saxon and Norman)—and the transformations that those groups have undergone over time.

Rather than attempt to locate major literary movements and their authors over the centuries, I have chosen to focus on five authors and to use their work to illuminate the historical and cultural complexities to which they responded. Those five authors are: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Bronte, and Yeats.

Requirements & Grading: Attendance is required; you may miss three classes without an excuse. After your third absence you must provide a written excuse. If you fail to do so, I will lower your grade by 10% for each class missed. Please see me at the beginning of the semester if you have some special circumstances that will prevent you from being in compliance with this policy.

I prefer to hold discussion classes rather than lectures; to this end, please come to class with the reading for the day prepared. It should not fall to the same few students each day to sustain discussion. If we cannot hold productive discussions because too few students are prepared, I will resort to pop quizzes. I will be handing out extra readings during the semester; any handouts will be left outside my office door after the class. Do not call or email me asking where you can pick up handouts.

Final Examination: 35%; Quizzes (5-Objective questions and interpretative commentary): 50%; Midterm essay, 3-4 pages: 15%.

Instructor:  Heinzelman, S            Areas:  V / G

Unique #:  35615            Flags:  n/a

Semester:  Fall 2012            Restrictions:  n/a

Cross-lists:  WGS 345            Computer Instruction:  No

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description:

“Torture has been widely viewed in the past in terms of pain and suffering inflicted on a person – usually assumed to be male – in the custody of the state. However, this narrow understanding excludes many forms of severe pain and suffering deliberately inflicted on women and girls. . . and denies [them] protection from the many egregious forms of severe pain and suffering deliberately inflicted . . . in an assertion of power and control by the state or with its acquiescence.”

-- Amnesty International October 2011, Gender and Torture Conference report

This course examines the various ways in which torture has been defined in the late 20th and 21st centuries with a special focus on issues related to violence against women. The course will assess national and international responses to those acts conventionally regarded as torture, as well as to the many ways in which forms of violence against women—such as rape, domestic violence, and the denial of reproductive rights—take on the characteristics of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. We will ask what happens to state accountability and the state’s responsibility both to prevent harm and to provide remedies to victims when the definition of torture is expanded to include forms of harm that are disproportionally endured by women.

We will examine legal documents, national and international reports, philosophical essays, drama, film, and fiction to reach tentative conclusions about the crisis of state power in relation to the widespread use of torture against women.

Texts: Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Octavia Butler, the “torture memos” (Bush Administration); The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo (A film by Lisa F. Jackson).

Requirements & Grading: In-class (group) presentation: 30%; Brief response papers: 40%; Final research paper: 30%.

Introduction to the feminist theories and methods used in various disciplines; the ways these theories can inform interdisciplinary perspectives in the student's own field of study. Offered in the spring semester only. Women's and Gender Studies 391 and Women's Studies 391 may not both be counted. Prerequisite: Graduate standing, Women's and Gender Studies 390, and consent of the graduate adviser.

This course is designed to prepare graduate students in gender studies and the qualitative social sciences to conduct a research project for their master’s theses or similar projects. We will explore a range of research methods and traditions as well as the epistemological assumptions underlying them. We will consider what it means to conduct “feminist” research, as well as the perils and promise of the more participatory research traditions. Some of the research methods we will explore include interviewing, survey research, case studies, textual analysis, and participant observation.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Restricted to students in the WGS MA Program.  This course introduces students to feminist theory as it intersects with race, nation, and sexuality. Since this is an introductory course, we will not explore feminist theory in all its incarnations. Rather than charting the historical development of a single body of knowledge called feminism, the class will read contemporary work by women that deals with questions of representation, reproduction, labor, transnationalism, and colonialism. Each week we will unpack one primary text with the intent of understanding the circumstances of its production, its significance, and how it can help us think about our own work.

Please check back for updates.

Introduction to the interdisciplinary women's and gender studies graduate program.     

Please check back for updates.

Restricted to students in the WGS MA Program.  This course introduces students to feminist theory as it intersects with race, nation, and sexuality. Since this is an introductory course, we will not explore feminist theory in all its incarnations. Rather than charting the historical development of a single body of knowledge called feminism, the class will read contemporary work by women that deals with questions of representation, reproduction, labor, transnationalism, and colonialism. Each week we will unpack one primary text with the intent of understanding the circumstances of its production, its significance, and how it can help us think about our own work.

Varies by topic/section.

Interdisciplinary topics relating to Women's and Gender Studies.  Seats restricted to WGS MA and Portfolio students during early registration.  Check cross-listings for home departments and originating field of study.