This interdisciplinary course will explore a variety of narratives (fiction, non-fiction, drama, film, art, performance, music, websites, etc.) that advance feminist perspectives while also situating such views through an examination of racial politics. This course will address issues of diversity and marginalization, while challenging dominant and/or mainstream narratives that have served to silence others in the past and in the present. Narratives will represent a cross-range of cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities. Finally, in this writing intensive course, we will engage in select writing projects – writing for a public blog, writing for publication, and writing for multimedia.

Women's Studies Department Goals and Learning Outcomes:

This course was developed as part of the Women's Studies undergraduate curriculum. It also currently serves as an introduction to the concentration in "Arts, Writing, and Activism" for the Women's Studies major. Students who enroll in Women's Studies courses will be able to demonstrate that they:

1. understand and can use intersectional feminist analysis.
2. understand what it means to place women at the center of knowledge-making.
3. understand how feminist pedagogy may be different from other forms of teaching.
4. understand the relationship between Women's Studies scholarship and feminist action.

For more information, please visit the website: www.albany.edu/ws

Course Goals and Learning Outcomes:

This course will parallel these departmental goals and objectives in that students will:
1. dismantle the intersecting ideologies of racism, classism, sexism, etc.
2. conceptualize feminist social justice beyond gender equity and towards community and human dignity.
3. fully participate in the teaching process as active learners, peer educators, and public scholars.
4. apply scholarship in the classroom to activism beyond these walls.

General Education U.S. Diversity and Pluralism Requirement:

This course is also cross-listed with the English department. The English section of this course fulfills the General Education U.S. Diversity and Pluralism requirement; we will focus primarily on contemporary experiences in the United States, even as we explore historical developments of our contemporary moment and also venture beyond U.S. borders. Courses fulfilling this requirement offer students perspectives on the diversity and pluralism of U.S. society with respect to one or more of the following: age, class, disability, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, and sexual orientation. Given that categories of diversity and pluralism intersect, approved courses will, wherever possible, deal with more than one category.

Approved courses provide students with substantial knowledge of diversity and pluralism as expressed through social, political, ideological, aesthetic, or other aspects of human endeavor. Drawing on the experience of specific groups, courses explore the theories, dynamics, mechanisms, and results of diversity and pluralism, including the sources and manifestations of controversies and conflicts.

General Education Written Discourse Requirement:

Both sections fulfill the writing intensive general education requirement in that students will be able to:

• produce coherent texts within common college-level written forms;
• demonstrate the ability to revise and improve such texts, as well as provide peer-review of their classmates' writing;
• research a topic, develop an argument, and organize supporting details.

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