WMNS 250: Sex & Gender Around the Globe
Summer 2026, 1st 5wk Session (6/8-7/10), online asynchronous, Dr. Jiling Duan
How have women and gender minorities all around the world fought, and continue to fight, for their basic human rights? How and why is a global perspective important for understanding sexual and gender politics both in their contemporary forms and in historical roots? This interdisciplinary course critically explores the politics of gender and sexuality in a global context, engaging with scholarship that traces both the expansion of women’s rights and queer movements, and the rise of transnational counter-mobilizations rooted in conservative, religious, and nationalist ideologies.
In this course, we will examine the lives of women from diverse societies, as well as the strategies through which women have worked individually and collectively to resist oppressions and build better communities. We will investigate major global issues that impact women and gender minorities, including capitalism, colonialism, nationalism, politics, culture, media, religion, migration, and more. By analyzing how these issues operate in local and global communities, we explore the possibilities for feminist and queer activism and resistance to make progressive social change worldwide.
This course can count in the WMNS major and minor; LGBTQ/Sexuality Studies minor; and ACE 9 or CDR Diversity. Also just a really good elective.