Women's and Gender Studies Courses & Requirements

The City College of New York offers a Minor in Women's and Gender Studies.

REQUIRED COURSES (3 credits)
WS 10000: Women's and Gender Roles in Contemporary Society (3 credits)

ELECTIVE COURSES (12 credits)
Appropriate electives in the Women's and Gender Studies department or respective sub-disciplines can be taken and must be approved by the Women's and Gender Studies program director.

Total Credits: 15

WS 10000 - Women's & Gender Roles in Contemporary Society 
Fulfills General Education requirement for a Perspectives Course, under the category Self and Society.
An introduction to issues that arise when women's lives and gender roles become the focus of critical inquiry. How do different societies and academic disciplines define women? How do women's experiences vary in relation to factors such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, nationality? How have women resisted, adapted to, and transformed "women's space" in the United States and elsewhere?
This introductory, interdisciplinary course will present and problematize traditional and contemporary perspectives about women's and gender roles in society, both in the United States and abroad. Based on instructor selections, students may analyze and examine the history of women's struggles, oppressions, and resistance through the work force and the economy, education, home and family life, government and other political arenas, and religious life. Other focus topics may include, but are not limited to health and sexuality, law and social control, and constructions of race, nationality, ethnicity, and identity.
Credits: 3
Frequently offered as an honors option for Honors Students

25441: Gender and Sexuality in New York Politics
In recent years, several new policies, political figures, and organizing efforts focused on women and LGBTQ communities have sprouted across New York. While New York City failed to elect its first female Mayor in 2021, it did elect a majority-women City Council. Governor Cuomo resigned in disgrace, elevating his Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul to the state’s highest post. What difference, if any, has this representation made? The state repealed a “walking while trans” ban that advocates argued led to discrimination against the LGBTQ community. How did they win this fight, and what has happened since? What are communities and organizers fighting for now? This class will look at these questions and more to understand the roles women and LGBTQ New Yorkers currently hold in our political landscape. It will evaluate how mainstream issues like housing, environmental justice, and labor affect women and queer people, and will dive into the policy issues specific to these communities.

31000: Independent Study 
The student will pursue a program of independent study under the direction of a WS faculty member.
Note: With the approval of the Program Director.
Credits: 1-4
Hours: 3-4 hr./wk.

31012: LGBTQ History, Culture and Movements
This course traces the history of LGBTQ people as well as struggles for recognition and acceptance both in the US and globally. With attention to how sexual identity intersects with race, class and gender, the course will examine how LGBTQ people can be placed within historical and political contexts. We will question how and why homosexuality became criminalized and the movements that led to decriminalization. We will spend a significant portion of time on the USA and Western Europe in the 19th and 20th century and the development of a contemporary LGBTQ movement. We will also look at how people of various gender identities and sexualities lived before and outside of European colonial context and explore how European colonization influenced changes in perception of people with gender variant identities as well as people outside of heteronormative sexual practices in their local communities.

31122: Blancas, Negras & Morenas: Gender and Race in Another America

31123: Latinas' Reproductive Rights

31126 - Women Writing Culture
This course seeks to place feminist research and women’s writing center stage. We will explore through theory and practice how, for whom, and to what end cultural representations have been presented in written form. We will interrogate the processes behind producing ethnographic and other nonfiction writing, looking at methods, as well as ethical considerations. Guided by recent decolonial feminist scholarship and queer of color critique, our aim will be to build on a variety of anti-oppressive methodologies such as research-based performed ethnographies, digital storytelling, and other forms.

31167: Coming of Age in the African Diaspora
This course will be an examination of feminist/womanist/political awakenings in young women throughout the African Diaspora. This examination will be through literature by Black women from various regions and time periods. The course will be centered in the philosophy of the “personal is political” and how the awakening to this fact affects the trajectory of the young women’s lives in these works.

31210 - Order in the Courtroom: Law and Narrative Power

31340 - Witches and Other Dangerous Women

31350 - Black Power Women: Autobiography and Biography

31467 - Post Trauma Recovery (PTR): Healing Our Communities

32459: Criminalization and Mass Incarceration
An in depth look at the systemic racism and classism that has fueled the pipeline of incarceration, the policies and practices of the carceral state and the continuous impact it has on the people.

32463: Queer of Color Critique
In What’s Queer About Queer Studies, editors say that queerness can never be presumed in advance. Queerness is not a cohere term, rather they would say, it is always in flux, reinventing itself as a process and identity. In this course, we will examine this assertion and ask, who is queer? Why are they queer? When are they queer? Beginning with Cathy Cohen and Roderick Furgeson we will learn the connections between the process of racialization and queerness. We will then move to theorists such as Jasbir Puar who examines the relationship between the Racial State and queerness. Finally, we will interrogate the relationship queer studies, and queer of color critique has with antiblackness and settler colonialism. We will end this course drawing on Jose Munoz?s theories on utopia in order to discuss the future of queer theory and its usefulness in the project of abolition, and in reimagining the world as we know it.

33256: Black Women Creating and Inventing Home
The course will draw upon U.S. Census records of black households, lynching numbers, property and educational records of black females, black women's political and social organizing and family structures after slavery and the early 20th Century. With more than 90% of the black population living in the Cotton Belt it will be interesting to see the possibilities of enlarging one's agency in Border states as well as its isolation, elusiveness and lack of black tradition and social networks.

31100-32000: Selected Topics in Women's Studies 
Topics not covered in the usual program offerings, which will vary each semester. Credits and hours will be determined by the Program.
Credits: 1-4
Hours: 3-4 hr./wk.

Below is a partial listing of courses accepted for credit in the Women's Studies Program.
Elective Courses (totaling 12 cr.) with approval of Program Director. Please consult an advisor for all applicable courses each semester.

Anthropology
22500: Class, Ethnicity, & Gender
23200: Witchcraft, Magic, & Religion
23600: Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality
25500: The Anthropology of Health & Healing
31107: Anthropology for Reproduction
31403: Women and the Violation of Human Rights
32400: Violation of Human Rights

Art
29204: Women & Art II

Asian Studies
20700: Asian Women

Black Studies
31160: Women of the African Diaspora
31706: The Black Woman

English
31713: Latina Writers
31746: Women's Literature
37501: Women Writers of the Middle Ages & the Renaissance
37502: Women Novelists of the 19th Century
37503: 20th Century Women Writers
37517: 19th Century Women Writers
41313: Gender Issues in Victorian Literature
41476: Feminist Theory

Foreign Languages and Literatures
31500: Selected Topics: French Women in Literature (in English)
40103: Women of Antiquity
45300: Gender Issues in Hispanic Letters

History
31129: U.S. Family
31610: History of Childhood in America
31613: Women & Medicine
31706: The Black Woman
31910: Women in the Middle East
35900: Women in World History through the Middle Ages
36000: Women in Modern History
43100: History of Sexuality
44400: Women in U.S. History
48200: Women & Gender in Latin America
48500: Women and Gender in the Middle East

International Studies
31510: Culture, Gender, & Class: Morocco (Study Abroad Course)
31965: Decolonizing the Witch
33200: Transnational Feminism

Jewish Studies
27300: The Jewish Woman
31500: Jewish Woman in Literature

Latin American and Latino Studies
13100: Urban Hispanic Child
31200: Women/Health: Latinas & Other Women of Color
31304: Gender & Sexuality in the Latino Community

Philosophy
34600: Feminist Philosophy

Political Science
22900: Women & Politics
31108: Feminist Political Theory
31117: Politics, Law, Families
31544: Family Law

Psychology
31823: Psychology of Women and Violence
35100: Psychology of Human Sexual Behavior
36500/36504: Family Psychology
38800: Psychology of Women
B9506: Gender Psychopathy (Graduate level course, requires professor's permission to register)

Sociology
26600: Family Relationships
27700: Ethnic Families in the United States
31701: Work & Family
38207: Sex Roles & Social Change
38209: Sociology of Sexualities
38210: Sociology of Gender

Theater
31126: Queer Theater