This course will explore the intersection of women's experience and disability issues, emphasizing the social and personal impact of disability and chronic illness on relationships, identity, employment, health, body image, sexuality, reproduction, motherhood, and aging. Through real stories of women's lives which reached the media in the last decade and before, students will move toward a dynamic understanding of the impact of a range of physical, emotional, and mental disabilities in the context of current social forces and public policy. We will explore historic perspectives as well as current trends in medicine, independent living, care-giving, insurance, public benefits, law, and community activism as they affect and are affected by disabled women and girls and their families. We will discuss controversial ethical issues such as prenatal screening, wrongful birth law suits, and physician-assisted suicide. Course readings will draw on the rich literature of disabled women's anthologies, biography and autobiograhpy, scholarly and popular literature of disability, feminist analyses, creative writing, women's art, film, and theatre.

Gender is arguably the most salient characteristic determining one’s place in society. Gender is often the first thing you notice about another person and your assessment of a person’s gender shapes your expectations of that person. These expectations (which are often requirements) place very real constraints and limitations on individuals and yet it is also a profound source of identity for many. The sociology of gender focuses on the social construction of gender. Gender will be explored as an institution and a system as well as how it is experienced by individuals. We will explore challenges to the normative gender system and the recent backlash to trans rights in the US and elsewhere. Some questions about gender that will be addressed in this course are: ❖ What is gender and why do we need it? ❖ What are the forces that shape gender? ❖ How is gender raced, classed, and sexualized? ❖ What happens when we don't live up to gender expectations? ❖ Can we break out of the binary system?

The literature of Greece, Rome, the Biblical lands, and other ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean basin.