All College Writing Courses

Race, Rhetoric, and Protest
In this course we will study the theoretical and rhetorical underpinnings of racial protest in America. We will begin by studying movements from the 1950s and 1960s, moving from bus boycotts to Black Power protests, and will build to analyzing recent protests in Ferguson, Dallas, and New York. Readings will include texts from Charles E. Morris III, Aja Martinez, Shon Meckfessel, Gwendolyn Pough, and various articles and op-eds. Students will write analyses of historical and contemporary protest, op-eds about the local culture, and syntheses on the course readings. 3 hrs. Lect

Making Feminist Media
Feminist media has always been from a particular place and engaged with how forms of power like race, gender, sexuality, and nationality get layered not just onto bodies, but into the way we express ourselves. For at least fifty years, feminists have utilized emerging technologies to put feminist theory into the world. In this course we will begin with 1970s mimeographed feminist polemics, move onto the zine movement of Riot Grrls, land in the feminist blogosphere of the first few decades of the 21st century and end with current feminist media on TikTok, podcasts, and other emerging technologies. In this course we will think about feminist media making as a genre and how feminist theory can infuse that genre into a more vibrant, complex, and even transformative site. Throughout the course we will read feminist theory, analyze feminist media, and produce our own feminist media. 3 hrs. lect. This course is part of the Public Humanities Labs Initiative administered by the Axinn Center for the Humanities./

Gender Politics of the Arab World
The aim of this course is to explore the ways in which the social and cultural construction of sexual difference shapes the politics of gender and sexuality in the Middle East and North Africa. Using interdisciplinary feminist theories, we will explore key issues and debates including the interaction of religion and sexuality, women’s movements, gender-based violence, queerness and gay/straight identities. Looking at the ways in which the Arab Spring galvanized what some have called a “gender revolution,” we will examine women’s roles in the various revolutions across the Arab World, and explore the varied and shifting gender dynamics in the region. Taught in English (formerly ARBC/GSFS 0328) 3 hrs. Sem. (GloDeFem)/

Writing Race and Class
In this course we will take a literary and intersectional approach to topics of race and class. Readings include stories, essays, poems and videos by writers such as James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa and Kelly Tsai. Students will respond to critical and creative writing prompts, conduct fieldwork, and design two writing projects of their own. The class format will include conversations with guest writers, writing workshops, contemplative activities, and individual conferences with the instructor. Students will preferably have prior experience in discussing issues of race and class, although introductory theories will be made available to provide frameworks for discussion.

Outlaw Women
In this course we will read and discuss literary texts that feature women who defy social norms: daring survivors, scholars, “whores,” queers, artists, servants, revolutionaries. Texts include Powell’s The Pagoda, Duras’s The Lover, Lorde’s Zami, and Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. The course will take postcolonial and global approaches to desire and difference and to narratives of resistance, rescue and freedom. We will discuss rhetorical practices, such as écriture féminine, and readerships, such as women’s book groups, through a transnational lense. Students will develop their critical imaginations through discussion, contemplation, research, and analytical and creative writing. 3 hrs. lect.

The Politics of Reproduction: Sex, Abortion, and Motherhood
In this course we will examine contemporary reproductive issues both in the United States and around the world. We will work to understand both how reproductive politics are informed by broader cultural ideas regarding gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and geography and also how ideas about reproduction reinforce conceptions of these very identity markers and ways of experiencing the world. Because requirements for being considered a “good” woman are intimately tied to what it means to be a “good” mother, challenging dominant understandings of gender and sexuality requires critical engagement with ideas about reproduction. 3 hrs. lect. (FemSTHM)/

Men and Masculinities
In this course we will consider the creation and performance of masculinities in the American context.  We will ask how men are made and how that making relies on class, race, sexuality, and nation. We will begin with early capitalism and the birth of the ideal man as “market man.”  We will then look at how ideal masculinity depends on the creation of “degenerate” men, like the myth of the hyper-masculinized Black male “beast” and the creation of the mythic mannish lesbian.  We will then trace these late 19th century men and masculinities into our current moment of political machismo, trolling misogyny, bromance, feminist men, hipster men, dandy bois, transmen, and more.  Readings will include: Michael Kimmel, Guyland; C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges, Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Continuity and Change; C.J. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School; Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity, and bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity.  (GSFS 0191 or GSFS 0200 or GSFS 0289) 3 hrs. sem.

Transnational Feminist Conservation
In this course we explore a transnational feminist approach to conservation. We will start by delving into the masculinist history of conservation, and reviewing a set of theories and vocabularies focused on gender, as well as race, class, and ability as key sites of power that effect both human and non-human bodies and ecological processes, from coral reefs to the arctic tundra. We will compare case studies across multiple regions globally on topics such as conservation via population control, feminist food, community-based conservation, and feminist-indigenous approaches to inquiry. We will debate feminist science, examining the conflicting epistemic foundations of objective versus situated knowledge. We will hone our writing skills in a variety of genres including blogs, academic essays, poems, and zines. (ENVS 0211, ENVS 0215 or ENVS/GSFS 209) 3 hrs. sem.

Collaborative Film-making
This course offers students an opportunity to collaboratively make videos with a group of young women workers in Bangalore, India who were the first in their families to get professional jobs and join the city’s growing startup economy. However, with job cuts, many workers lost their jobs. Others stayed on, knowing their jobs were precarious. How do the workers make meaningful lives amidst this uncertainty? Through a transnational and collaborative project, Middlebury students will connect with workers, read about the ethics and challenges of collaborative research and develop 5-minute films of their lives through videos, photographs, and audio files shared online. No prior experience with filmmaking is required.