Hamilton College Gender Blending/Bending/Breaking - An interdisciplinary introduction to thinking about, and living in, genders in the United States, from mid-20th-century Second Wave feminism to transgender liberation today, in relation to issues of sexualities, ethnicity, race and nation. Uses literary, historical, political movement and other texts.

Vassar College Racism and Intellectuals - Racism is now a global mode of thought, and racial inequality has become a permanent part of global existence through the racial ideologies and discriminatory practices of institutionalized racism. The primary aim of this class is to explore intellectuals' approaches to race and racism, to examine the connection between ideological racism and scientific racism, and the "discourse of confrontation."

UCLA Speaking Out: Public Speaking on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues - Interdisciplinary course designed to teach leadership and public speaking skills on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. Sexual identity development, personal growth, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history intersect with public speaking and leadership skills. Topics include sexual identities, family, leadership, and public speaking performance.

Amherst College Ingrate Books: Chartering and Un-chartering Patriarchy - The so-called European "Great Books" tell and retell the heroic tale of how males took charge of heaven and earth. We shall consider the formation of that literary canon from the standpoint of contemporary works that revise, debunk, or reverse this myth. Ancient texts will be paired with modern retellings: Homer's Odyssey with Christine Bell, The Perez Family; Sophocles' Antigone and Opedipus the King with Rita Dove, The Darker Face of the Earth and Martha Graham, Night Journey; the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Shakespeare's Tempest with Gloria Naylor, Mama Day and Fred Wilcox, Forbidden Planet; Euripides' Medea and Bacchae with Toni Morrison, Beloved; and the Ballad of Mulan with Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior and James Cameron, Aliens. We shall examine how the subordination of female to male supports other ranked categories: mind/body, rational/irrational, public/private, heaven/earth, order/disorder. If classic heroines and goddesses such as Penelope, Demeter, Antigone, Medea, and Athena were male constructs implicated in the silencing of Greek women, can they be remade as the basis of a modern non-exclusionary canon?

Bates College Goldberg's Canon: Makin' Whoopi - Whoopi Goldberg has been a locus of cultural contradictions since her arrival in the public's consciousness. Her dark skin and perennially nappy hair defy cultural standards about female beauty, yet she is one of a handful of actresses who can open big budget Hollywood films. The same Hollywood film industry acknowledges her as a "leading lady," yet it has seldom given her "leading lady" roles. This course examines Goldberg's film and television performances, her career as a humorist, and her controversial persona as an antagonistic public figure. Some of the social and cultural issues students address in this unit include skin color and hair texture chauvinism, the grotesque and the comical, racial and gender stereotypes, black lesbianism, and discourses about the black female body.

UT-Austin Introduction to the Study of African American English - African American English (AAE), which is spoken by some African Americans, is a linguistic variety that has set rules for putting sounds and other units together to form words, putting words and phrases together to form sentences and interpreting sentences. After clarifying the difference between AAE and the intended meaning of Ebonics, we will investigate four areas: Speech events, components of the grammar, history, and educational issues. The section of speech events will focus on the communicative styles of some African Americans and the role these styles play in the development of verbal skills. In addition it will compare speech events-such as call and response and strategies used in sermons and rap-in secular and religious environments. The discussion of the components of the grammar will provide an analysis of present day patterns (sound patterns, word use and meaning, sentence structure) of AAE and explain how they provide evidence to support the claim that the language system is rule-governed. For example, in expressing the fact that nobody left, speakers of AAE can use two types of sentences with two negative (nobody and didn't): 1) Nobody didn't leave. 2) Didn't nobody leave. These sentences are not accepted in mainstream America; however, they are formed according to rules. They are not mainstream English with mistakes. Also, AAE speakers use words that occur in other varieties of English, but they use them with different meanings. Kitchen and steady have special uses in the following sentences: 3) I didn't know you could do that with your kitchen. 4) That girl was steady driving. In this section of the course, we will address the difference between "sounding Black" and speaking AAE. Also, in this course, we will discuss hypotheses about the African, Creole, and English origins of AAE. Issues such as teacher attitudes, strategies for instructions and attitudes toward AAE in the marketplace will be considered in the section on education and employment. Finally, we will discuss the use and representation of AAE in literature and the media. We will analyze passages from works such as Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine and John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers. In addition, we will compare speech events and minstrel speech in Warren Beatty's Bulworth and Spike Lee's Bamboozled.

Brown University Prison Intellectuals and Political Prisoners - This course-open to juniors/seniors with a background in radical theory/praxis-explores the writings of contemporary political prisoners and prison intellectuals. The focus is on U.S. revolutionary struggles and repression. Students will critique a forthcoming anthology on prison intellectuals; "dialogue" with political prisoners through correspondence; and facilitate a spring conference at Brown.

Wesleyan University Queering the American State: Politics and Sex after 1968 - This class will examine the history of state formation, the emergence of new sexual and anti-sex discourses in the public sphere, and the mobilization of queer political communities in the post-1968 United States. In addition to examining the nature of state regulation aimed more generally at defining realms of citizenship and controlling unruly bodies, we will emphasize the emergence of particularly urgent spheres for queer political organizing after Stonewall; among there are the production of knowledge, litigation, electoral participation and rights-based organizing. We will also examine intersections between queer politics and other civil rights movements; and to realms of cultural activity which produce, reproduce, or transform political discourses about sex and sexuality.