Fall 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 cross-listed 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. Jennie Brier

GWS 101
CRN 43353
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 10-10:50am CST, On Campus and Online (Hybrid) 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 is an interdisciplinary course that explores how particular historical, social, cultural, economic, and political factors shape various forms of violence that women experience across the globe. We will focus on both women and communities outside the United States as well as the impact of U.S.-led policies on communities across the globe. We will examine constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality along with the ways in which global capitalism, neoliberalism, displacement, and militarism and war impact the lives of women and LGBTQ people.

Taught by Dr. Manoucheka Celeste

GWS 102
CRN 11894
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 203: Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies

An interdisciplinary introduction to LGBTQ+ studies that engages current personal, political, and cultural issues, including: coming out, hate crimes, transgender communities, queer of color critique, military, AIDS, families, religion, activism, representations in literature, film, and media.

Taught by TBD

GWS 203
CRN 11904
3 credits

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

GWS 255: Introduction to Middle East and Muslim Feminisms

The course examines key themes in Middle East Feminisms including how struggles around gender and sexuality are shaped in the context of history and politics, including: racism, classism, nationalism, imperialism, and colonization. We will explore this thematic historically with a focus on the Arab region and Arab diasporas in the U.S. (Arab American communities). We will focus on both how dominant political structures (states, global powers, etc.) target and portray women from the Middle East and LGBTQ people as well as how these women and LGBTQ people portray themselves and actively resist and challenge domination/oppression. We will focus on their visions for freedom, liberation, feminism, radical justice, decoloniality, and queer justice.

Taught by Dr. Zeina Zaatari

GWS 255
CRN 46217
3 credits

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

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Exploring World Cultures (EWC)

Cross List:
ANTH 255, CRN 46220
GLAS 255,  CRN 46219

GWS 292: History and Theories of Feminism

History and Theories of Feminism is an intermediate level GWS/HIST course, intended to provide students with a foundation in the history of feminist organizing and women’s activism, as well as the theoretical arguments that have developed in conjunction with these social movements. This course will primarily focus on 19th and 20th century American women’s activism, including aspects of American feminism that are often overlooked or forgotten in contemporary analyses of US and global gender issues.

Taught by Dr. Norma Claire Moruzzi

GWS 292
CRN 28005
3 credits

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

Cross List:
HIST 292, CRN 28162

GWS 345: Queer Theory

This advanced seminar explores a major paradigm shift in queer and trans studies, examining how sexuality and gender intersect with race, migration, nationalism, militarism, capitalism, globalization, sensation, and empire. We will build a foundation in queer and trans cultural criticism while engaging key debates in these interdisciplinary fields. Through diverse cultural texts—film, video, memoir, zines, graphic novels, performance, music, and activist media—we will analyze topics such as the histories and futures of the AIDS crisis, digital subcultures and performativity, intersectionality and women of color feminisms, transnationalism and queer diasporas, and queer archives and trans media aesthetics. Other focal points include queer sex panics, critiques of neoliberalism, militarism, and the prison industrial complex, as well as utopias and radical worldmaking in queer and trans thought. Throughout, we will foreground critical race and postcolonial theory, trans studies, Marxism, feminist theory, disability studies, and interdisciplinary approaches to queer embodiment, affect, desire, and politics.

Taught by Dr. Ronak K. Kapadia

GWS 345
CRN 49119
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 12:30-1:45pm CST, Online Synchronous

Cross List:
ENGL 345, CRN 49118

GWS 390: Feminism and Social Change

In times of war, austerity, and attacks on personal and political freedoms, what responses can feminist action offer us? In this capstone course for GWS majors and minors, we will investigate through an intersectional lens: gun violence, environmental racism, anti-trans legislation, anti-feminist movements, food and medical deserts, artificial intelligence and technofascism, MMIW, and more. In this course students will apply methods and interventions learned today to imagine and create a more just, inclusive, and feminist tomorrow.

Taught by Dr. Cindy Tekobbe

GWS 390
CRN 11916
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 9:30-10:45am CST, Online Synchronous

GWS 394: Intermediate Topics in Gender and Women’s Studies: Black Women & Health

In describing how she started the National Black Women’s Health Project, Byllye Avery wrote, “What we did first off was to come together as a group of black women to start talking about the realities of our lives.” This course introduces students to three interconnected areas. First, following Avery, we consider the realities of Black women’s lives locally and globally, with emphasis on health disparities. Second, we explore how Black women have and continue to organize public health projects, seek public health reform, and respond to health disparities and crises, from the HIV and AIDS epidemic to the Covid-19 pandemic. Third, we engage with scholarship and broader works of Black women who contribute knowledge on multiple aspects of health (e.g. mental, physical, spiritual). Taken together, students will learn about factors that impact Black women’s health and how Black women work to improve the health and lives of all.

Taught by Dr. Manoucheka Celeste

GWS 394
CRN 38366
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 3-4:15pm CST, In-Person

Cross List:
BLST 394, CRN Coming Soon!
PUBH 394, CRN Coming Soon!

GWS 403: Queer Histories

This course focuses on queer contributions to intellectual and political struggles for gender, sex, and sexual liberation at the intersection of race, class, and national difference from the 19th and 20th centuries to the present. Employing an interdisciplinary cultural and historical approach, the course centers on LGBTQ histories and gender and sexual minority cultural practices, and contemporary politics in the United States. In our work together, we will engage “queer” as an identity category and a critical analytical category applied to sites of historical, political, economic, aesthetic, and social inquiry. The course readings and conversations will be grounded in materials based primarily in the humanities and the social sciences. We will examine a diverse array of materials including film, visual art, poetry, media, popular culture, literature, and social movement and community history archives.

Taught by Dr. Freda Fair

GWS 403
CRN 36324 (undergrad, 3 credits);
CRN 36366 (grad, 4 credits)

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

Cross List:
HIST 403, CRN 36367 (undergrad, 3 credits);
CRN 36368 (grad, 4 credits)

GWS 501: Feminist Theories

This graduate seminar, one of two required core courses in the GWS Graduate Concentration, provides an advanced introduction to the key academic and political debates shaping Gender and Women’s Studies. We will explore critical interventions by feminist and queer theorists who position gender and sexuality as central—rather than peripheral—to scholarly analysis, challenging notions of what is considered “natural” or “normal” in traditional disciplines. Through an intersectional lens, we will examine how gender is constructed alongside race, class, sexuality, disability, nationality, and other social identities. We will also consider why feminist theorizing, as Bruno Latour (1988) suggests, is an “obligatory point of passage” for intellectual inquiry. Our discussions will situate gender within broader structures of power, including histories of racism, colonialism, capitalism, globalization, and the institutional frameworks of medicine, academia, and the prison-industrial complex. By the end of the course, students will gain a deeper understanding of gender as a dynamic social force—one that cannot be studied in isolation but must be analyzed in relation to intersecting systems of oppression and resistance.

Taught by Dr. Ronak K. Kapadia

GWS 501
CRN 30112
4 credits (Graduate Course)

Course Details:
Tuesdays, 3:30-6pm CST, Online Synchronous

GWS 594: Special Topics in Gender and Women’s Studies: Feminist Oral History and the Practice of Listening

This course will explore and critically engage the long history of feminist practices of oral history, with a particular focus what it means to listen and hear oral narratives. We will begin the semester with more theoretical texts focused on the work of oral historians and qualitative scholars, and will also have an opportunity to design and potentially pilot an oral history project. This will include engaging with narrators to determine what kind of questions to ask, how to work with narrators after the interviews are conducted to process the transcripts, and how to collaborate on using the materials after the interviews are complete.

Taught by Dr. Jennie Brier

GWS 594
CRN 38368
4 credits (Graduate Course)

Course Details:
Tuesdays 6:30-9pm CST, In-Person

Cross List:
HIST 593, CRN Coming Soon!

SJ 101: Introduction to Social Justice: Stories and Struggles

This course is an introduction to the study of social justice and social justice movements. We will examine both theoretical and activist approaches to social justice; issues of power, privilege, and freedom; intersecting systems of oppression, methods of resistance, and transformative visions of possibility. While most examples are from the United States, there will also be examples from South Africa, Mexico, Bolivia and Palestine/Israel. The course is organized around case studies, stories, and activist lives, and will include the themes of: racial justice (including Reparations) and allyship, indigenous rights, environmental justice, economic justice, prison abolitionism, LGBTQ rights, disability rights and Black Queer Feminism.

Taught by Dr. Lynette Jackson

SJ 101
CRN 38607
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 9:30-10:45am CST, In-Person

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

SJ 201: Theories and Practices of Social Justice

In this course we will explore key frameworks social justice activists in the United States use to analyze systems of oppression and how those analyses inform social justice strategies and goals. This semester we will primarily focus on intersectional feminist activism, or, contemporary efforts led by women and femme, queer and BIPOC individuals, organizations and communities. Students will be exposed to the historical antecedents of these efforts and will learn to identify, analyze and assess their impact.

Taught by Dr. Elena Gutiérrez

SJ 210
CRN 46177
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 3:30-4:45pm CST, Online Synchronous

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Understanding US Society (USS)