Spring 2025 Course Offerings

Check out Gender & Women’s Studies and Social Justice course descriptions here!

This flyer includes courses housed in GWS and/or taught by GWS core faculty. Review the full listing of GWS courses, including crosslisted courses, in XE Registration, available at my.uic.edu.

GWS 101: Gender in Everyday Life

An interdisciplinary introduction to GWS that draws on the humanities and social sciences. Emphasizes intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, and nation. Addresses historical and contemporary debates, focusing primarily on U.S. concerns.

Taught by Dr. Terrion Williamson

GWS 101
CRN 15130
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 10-10:50am CST, In-Person and Friday Discussion Section Times Vary, Online Synchronous & In-Person Options.

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Understanding the Individual & Society (UIS) &
Understanding US Society (USS)

GWS 102: Global Perspectives on Women and Gender

Global Perspectives on Women and Gender examines the historical, social, cultural, economic, and political factors that shape the lives and activism of women and gender non-conforming individuals worldwide. Students will critically analyze histories of inequality and access to power and resources, all through a transnational and intersectional feminist lens.

Taught by Dr. Lynette Jackson 

GWS 102
CRN 15134
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 2-2:50pm CST, In-Person and Friday Discussion Section Times Vary, Online Synchronous & In-Person Options.

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Understanding the Individual & Society (UIS)  &
Exploring World Cultures (EWC)

GWS 204: Gender and Popular Culture

Explore what makes pop culture popular and how it reflects and shapes gender, race, class, and sexuality. Through music, TV, sports, and social media, students will apply feminist and cultural studies theories to analyze these representations. You’ll engage as both a scholar and producer, with special focus on feminist media and cultural studies.

Taught by Dr. Manoucheka Celeste

GWS 204
CRN 30324
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 2-3:15pm CST, In-person

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Understanding the Individual & Society (UIS) &
Understanding US Society (USS)

Cross List:
COMM 204, CRN 30325

GWS 262: Constructions of Gender, Race, Health, and Human Rights

Explores issues at the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality through the lens of health in both U.S. and non-U.S. contexts.

Taught by Dr. Neslihan Sen

GWS 262
CRN 44940
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 4:30-5:45pm CST, In-Person

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Understanding the Individual & Society (UIS)  &
Exploring World Cultures (EWC)

Cross List:
ANTH 262, CRN 44954

GWS 292: History and Theories of Feminism

This is an intermediate-level GWS/HIST course that provides a foundation in feminist organizing and women’s activism. The course focuses on 19th and 20th-century American women’s activism, highlighting often-overlooked aspects of American feminism in contemporary discussions of U.S. and global gender issues.

Taught by Dr. Dez Brown 

GWS 292
CRN 24653
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 9:30-10:45am CST, In-Person and Online (Hybrid)

Cross List:
HIST 292, CRN 24686

GWS 294: Contemporary Latina Narratives

What are the stories that we tell about ourselves? This course studies recently published literature, memoirs, films, music, and other media authored by Chicana and Latina creators exploring femme and women’s knowledge, carework and cariño, colonial legacies, survivor narratives, decolonial love, and queer futurity. Authors include Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez (Latina Rebels), Yesika Salgado, Locatora Productions, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Carmen Maria Machado, and Gabby Rivera.

Taught by Dr. Esther Díaz Martín

GWS 294
CRN 37069
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 11-12:15pm CST, In-person

Cross List:
LALS 292, CRN 44830

GWS 390: Feminism and Social Change

This capstone course for GWS majors and minors focuses on the feminist struggles of women of color and LGBTQI people of color for social change. Students will analyze intersectional feminist issues and the strategies used by organizers to challenge power and inspire justice. Topics include feminist coalition politics, decolonial feminisms, reproductive justice, abolition, disability justice, healing, and anti-fascist feminisms. Students will apply course concepts to contemporary feminist movements and organizations.

Taught by Dr. Ronak Kapadia

GWS 390
CRN 15139
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 3-4:15pm CST, In-Person and Online (Hybrid)

GWS 410: Race, Gender and Representation: Black Bodies in Media and Mass Culture

What is at stake? This course begins and ends with this question as we explore scholarship and public conversations around Black representation and Black media production.  These include defining Black popular culture, which notions of taste and authenticity, as well as its socio-political relevance to an emancipatory project. With readings covering music, film, television, and social media, students will gain insight into Black cultural criticism from multiple geographic locations. Implicit in Black cultural criticism is an analysis of power. As such, students will be exposed to scholarly works  that exemplify an intersectional approach, which places notions of race, ethnicity, nation, sexuality, gender, and class in conversation with one another. This course is also interdisciplinary as we draw from Black Cultural Studies alongside gender and womens’ studies, communication, history, literature, and sociology.

More broadly, this course examines the relationship between media and culture. With an emphasis on media literacy, students also further develop skills to think and engage critically with a range of media forms. The work of this course is threefold: to explore theories about media and media industries; to analyze media texts; and to investigate questions of representation, belonging, democracy, oppression, and liberation.

Taught by Dr. Manoucheka Celeste

GWS 410
CRN 47969 (undergrad, 3 credits);
CRN 47971 (grad, 4 credits)

Course Details:
Tuesdays, 3:30-6:00pm CST, In-Person

Cross List:
BLST 410, CRNs 47967 (undergrad, 3 credits); 47968 (grad, 4 credits);
COMM 410, CRNs 47972 (undergrad, 3 credits); 47973 (grad, 4 credits)

This course focuses on feminist epistemologies and approaches to social change that span the field of gender and women’s studies. Starting from the idea that gender and women’s studies is an interdisciplinary field, the course readings, themes, and conversations will be grounded in the humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences. We will employ intersectionality as a theory and a methodology as we study the evolution of feminist social movement politics and “gender” as a social phenomenon and a site of scholarly inquiry, social critique, and struggle that converges with race, sexuality, class, ability, and nationality among other categories of difference from the 1850s to the present. In our work together, we will examine feminist historical, theoretical, and activist frameworks putting them in conversation with capitalist critique, critical race studies, cultural studies, queer and LGBT studies, disability studies, historical materialism, psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism. While US feminisms will serve as our primary anchor, we will engage connected transnational feminist movements and solidarity organizing. Our conversations will draw on a diverse set of cultural materials ranging from literature, film, visual art, and poetry to comedy, social media, and community and historical archives.

Taught by Dr. Freda Fair

GWS 502
CRN 28371
4 credits

Course Details:
Wednesdays, 3-5:30pm CST, In-Person

3 credits (undergraduate course)