Fall 2026 Course Offerings

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

This introductory course provides a broad overview to how the field of Gender and Women’s Studies thinks about and conceptualizes gender and sexuality. Over the course of the semester, we will deeply engage a set of “threshold concepts”: the social construction of gender; privilege and oppression; intersectionality; and feminist praxis. Successfully completing this class will help you develop critical and analytic skills that will serve you as you move forward at UIC and in life. Together, we will become more engaged with the contemporary society and more critical readers of the range of legal, medical, cultural, activist, and political texts you encounter every day.

Taught by Dr. Jennie Brier

GWS 101
CRN 43353
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 10-10:50 a.m. CST, In Person & Online (Hybrid)
Friday Discussion Section Times Vary, In Person & Online 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 will explore the historical, social, cultural, economic, ideological, and political factors that shape lives, and inform the activism of women and gender non-conforming people around the world. Throughout the course, you will be asked to think critically about the history and established knowledge about differences and inequality, and/or differential access to power and resources, that shape our lives, and the lives of people around the world. This course will be taught with a transnational focus and an intersectional feminist lens.

Taught by Dr. Lynette Jackson

GWS 102
CRN 11894
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 2-2:50 p.m. CST, In Person
Friday Discussion Section Times Vary, In Person & Online 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

This course engages key concepts and social movement politics that have fomented the fields of LGBTQ studies and Gender and Women’s studies. As LGBTQ studies is an interdisciplinary field, the course materials for this class are drawn from the humanities, social sciences, and the biological sciences. This course examines sexuality and sexual minority politics using an intersectional lens that interrogates sexuality as it converges with race, gender, class, ability, nationality, and culture. We will consider state power and the ways in which it shapes identity including citizenship, belonging, and hierarchical social relations that reproduce oppressions while creating the conditions for resistance. Although US culture and history from the nineteenth century to the present will serve as the primary context for our discussions, we will attend to related transnational connections and examples. In our work together, we will engage feminist, LGBT, queer, and racial justice movements and approaches to social change. A wide range of materials will assist us as we chart a shared understanding of LGBTQ studies including community archives, film, stand-up comedy, literature, visual art, and popular culture. We will work toward an understanding of sexuality not only as an identity category, but also as a regime of power that conditions everyday life.

Taught by Dr. Freda Fair

GWS 203
CRN 11904
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 4:30-5:45 p.m. CST, In Person

GWS 242: Introduction to Arab American Studies

Addresses key themes in Arab American Studies: immigration and racism; family, gender, and sexuality; socio-economic class; religious affiliation; arts and cultures; and politics and political activism.

Taught by Dr. Nadine Naber

GWS 242
CRN TBD
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 2:00-3:15 p.m. CST, In Person

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Understanding US Society (USS) &
Exploring World Cultures (EWC)

Cross List:
ANTH 242, CRN 48377
GLAS 242, CRN 48375

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

This course will explore issues at the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality, through the lens of health, focusing primarily on women’s experiences in both U.S. and non-U.S. contexts. It explores questions such as: What does it mean to think of health as a human right? What are the gendered, racial, sexual, classed “structures” that influence the experience of health and wellbeing? How might we understand these structures and the ways in which they sometimes engender inequality and ill health? How have others attempted to redress such social inequalities? Using social science texts, primary documents and visual media, we will explore the historical and cultural constructions of gender, race, class, and sexuality, the cultural meanings and the politico-economic contexts of these constructions, the effects of and their impacts on women’s bodies, women’s health and illness.

Taught by Dr. Gayatri Reddy

GWS 262
CRN 32226
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays 3:30-6:00 p.m. CST, In Person

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

Cross List:
ANTH 262, CRN 46234

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:
Mondays, Wednesdays 3-4:15 p.m. CST, In-Person

Cross List:
HIST 292, CRN 28162

GWS 294: Topics in GWS: Dead Girls: True Crime & Gender Violence

According to a recent survey, 84% of the U.S. population ages 13 and over consumes true-crime programming, and across the true-crime ecosystem—which includes television, film, literature, podcasts, and social media—murder cases are the number one topic of interest. A little over a decade ago, series like Serial, Making a Murderer, and The Jinx became hugely popular and helped to instigate the contemporary surge in true-crime content and consumption. But what are the stakes of this popularity? Why is the American public so taken with stories that center violence, particularly when they involve (certain) women and girls? And who or what is actually behind what some commentators refer to as the “true crime industrial complex”? In this course, we will take up these questions and more by attending specifically to the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, and class, and considering how those intersections affect the narration and production of stories about “real life” violence in popular media. We will also explore the long history of crime-based storytelling (from Shakespeare to Law & Order) that preceded, and informs, this recent surge, and consider how feminist artists, cultural producers, and organizers have countered the excesses of the genre.

Note that students in this course must be prepared to engage actively with true-crime media, including content that deals explicitly with gender-based violence.

Taught by Dr. Terrion Williamson

GWS 294
CRN 43403
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 9:30-10:45 a.m. CST, In Person

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 3:30-4:45 p.m. CST, Online Synchronous

Cross List:
ENGL 345, CRN 49118

GWS 390: Feminism and Social Change

In this capstone course for GWS majors and minors, we will focus on how people of color and 2SLGBTQI people have imagined and practiced feminist social change. Students will analyze and debate key feminist issues and the various strategies activists use to understand social inequality and challenge it. We will focus on feminist activism in gendered violence, racism, reproductive healthcare, (dis)ability, environmental precarity, artificial intelligence, gender and sexuality, and settler colonialism through an intersectional lens. Students will apply concepts and methods learned in this course to their own analyses of contemporary feminist social justice issues, movements, and organizations.

Taught by Dr. Cindy Tekobbe

GWS 390
CRN 11916
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m. CST, Online Synchronous

GWS 455: Advanced Seminar in Feminism and Justice: Abolition, Decolonization, and Radical Worldmaking

This interdisciplinary seminar explores feminist visions of abolition and decolonization amid expanding incarceration, policing, border violence, and war, asking how these systems are connected and how they shape everyday life, political belonging, and ideas of justice in the present. Situating contemporary struggles within longer histories of US warfare, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism, the course examines how gender and sexuality are governed through the racial and class politics of prisons, policing, borders, welfare, medicine, and militarization. Drawing from Gender and Women’s Studies and allied fields, including critical race studies, Black and Indigenous studies, queer and feminist theory, disability and trans studies, postcolonial and decolonial thought, and carceral studies, students develop a shared analytical vocabulary while tracing carceral power across multiple sites, from the plantation and the colony to the border, the hospital, the welfare office, and the warzone. Centering transformative and healing justice approaches developed primarily by North America-based intersectional feminist, queer, trans, crip, anti-racist, and decolonial organizers, scholars, and artists, the seminar moves beyond reform to imagine abolition and decolonization as collective projects of radical world-making, grounded in mutual aid, collective care, pleasure activism, and practices of repair.

Taught by Dr. Ronak K. Kapadia

GWS 455
CRN 45221 (undergrad, 3 hours);
CRN 45251 (grad, 4 hours)

Course Details:
Wednesdays 3-5:30 p.m. CST, Online Synchronous

GWS 462: AIDS, Politics, and Culture

This course is designed to introduce you to the study of AIDS as a medical, social, political and cultural construction. Over the course of the semester we will question how, and to what extent, ideas about AIDS have changed over the last four+ decades. Using texts from a wide range of disciplines we will explore the historical epidemiology of AIDS, the politics of state response to AIDS, how activists across the world have addressed state (in)action, historical efforts to prevent the transmission of HIV, and the evolving representations of AIDS in the media. We will pay particular attention to the experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS. We will attempt to understand issues transnationally, to give concrete meaning to the phrase, “AIDS is a global pandemic” as well as constantly acknowledge the idea that we are currently living through (at least) two global health pandemics.

Taught by Dr. Jennie Brier

GWS 462
CRN 39253 (undergrad, 3 hours);
CRN 39256 (grad, 4 hours)

Course Details:
Mondays 3-5:30 p.m. CST, In Person

Cross Listed:
HIST 462
CRN 39254 (undergrad, 3 hours);
CRN 39257 (grad, 4 hours)

GWS 501: Feminist Theories

This graduate seminar will introduce students to foundational and emerging approaches to the study of genders and sexualities, focusing on feminist theoretical approaches. We will examine how feminist theorists have intervened in a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarly debates on topics ranging from embodiment, reproductive health, indigenous sovereignty, disability, pornography, and environmental humanities, among other issues. The course centers the voices of black, women of color, trans, and indigenous feminist scholars. By studying genders and sexualities from these diverse viewpoints, the course will demonstrate how “gender” and “sexuality” intersect with other identity categories—such as race, indigeneity, class, nation, and ability—and how they are formed in and through state processes and global capitalist relations. This course will explore how, rather than being trans-historical categories, “gender” and “sexuality” must be historically contextualized in relationship to, even as they act a structuring principles of, larger cultural, social, and political processes. This syllabus is in no way exhaustive. It focuses on recent scholarship in the field of Gender & Women’s Studies. The hope is that these texts will provide you with a theoretical foundation to build on in your own research, as well as an ability to think broadly about the field.

Taught by Dr. Darius Bost

GWS 501
CRN 30112
4 credits (Graduate Course)

Course Details:
Thursdays, 3:30-6 p.m. CST, In Person

This flyer includes Fall 2026 courses for the Social Justice Minor, including SJ core courses and courses that fulfill SJ elective requirements. Review the full listing of SJ courses, in the UIC undergraduate catalog.

SJ 101: Introduction to Social Justice: Stories and Struggles

This course, we will survey social justice movements and activism to learn about the histories of various communities that shape this nation. We critically analyze social oppressions people have faced as well as creative and powerful resistances and dreams they put forward as they continually change the world. Throughout the semester, students are tasked individually and collectively to reflect on how they are situated in this society and implicated in the multiplying oppressions and privileges as well as the fights for justice. We will explore ways to embody social justice ideologies in our classroom.

Taught by Dr. Akemi Nishida

SJ 101
CRN 38607
3 credits

Course Details:
Mondays, Wednesdays 9:30-10:45 a.m. 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 concepts, themes and frameworks that social justice activists, organizers and advocates use to analyze systems of oppression in the United States. We will consider how those analyses inform social justice efforts through exploring an array of historical and contemporary examples. This semester we will primarily focus on intersectional feminist efforts led by women and femme, queer and BIPOC individuals, organizations and communities. Students will be exposed to the historical antecedents of these contemporary efforts and will learn to identify, analyze and assess their development and impact.

Taught by Dr. Elena Gutiérrez

SJ 201
CRN 46177
3 credits

Course Details:
Tuesdays, Thursdays 5-6:15 p.m. CST, Online Synchronous

Fulfills General Education Requirements:
Understanding US Society (USS)