Upcoming semester course list

Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Courses

+ Denotes General Education Course

+RGS 100 Cr.3   Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class

This course provides an introduction to how race, gender, sexuality, and class have been intertwined and coexisted over time to produce and reproduce social inequalities in the US, in the context of a globally connected world. It explores the key concepts, theories, and historical experiences that form the basis of scholarly work in comparative race, gender, sexuality, and class studies. The creation, transmittal, interpretation and institutionalization of racial, gender, sexual, and class identities are examined through a human rights framework. Offered Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer.

+RGS/SOC 150 Cr.3   Introduction to Social Justice

Students in this course will examine the concept of social justice through an intersectional and multidisciplinary lens. Students will begin with a critical investigation of the connections between the individual, the local, and the structural as they relate to justice and inequality in society. Social justice strategies are then evaluated, in case study fashion, through the lenses of gender, race, and class structures. (Cross-listed with RGS/SOC; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Annually.

RGS 308 Cr.3   Justice and Film

Film, along with other forms of media, helps to create, introduce, and reinforce cultural values, norms, and understandings. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course will provide students tools with which to critically analyze film as a cultural product, with a specific focus on representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and justice. Films to be viewed and analyzed will focus on issues such as interpersonal and gendered violence, parenting, immigration, economic justice, criminal justice policy, leadership, and the social construction of race, class, gender, and sexuality. While films will be the primary text in the course, each will be supplemented with the empirical and theoretical literature on the subject at hand. Offered Annually.

RGS 310 Cr.3   Decolonizing Sexual and Gender Identities

This course explores diverse historical and contemporary realities of LGBT and Two- Spirit indigenous people across the globe, in relationship with queer theory and decolonial feminisms.  Topics will include global, indigenous and western queer theory and feminism, along with mainstream LGBTQ movements, with an intersectional analysis of race, class, gender, sexuality, and Indigeneity in relation to settler colonialism. Department approval is necessary to apply more than three credits toward the RGS major/minor. Repeatable for credit - maximum nine. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Offered Annually.

RGS/SOC 316 Cr.3   Gender, Sexuality, and Social Change in Religion

This course examines the various gender roles, norms, mobility, restrictions and empowerment that people experience within religious traditions, for example: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Global case studies and engaging narratives focused on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and religion will be considered. Special attention will be paid to feminist laypersons and religious leaders who are reformulating traditional understandings and practices, and in turn, negotiating their agency within secular and spiritual spaces. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, RGS 150, WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, SOC 110, SOC 120, EDS 206. (Cross-listed with RGS/SOC; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Occasionally.

RGS 321 Cr.3   Sexual and Racial Violence in the United States

This course explores the history of how sexual violence in the United States has been used as a tool of racial oppression. Students in the course learn how organized responses to that violence, both by community and state actors, have been influenced by (and reflective of) racial politics. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, RGS 150, WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, WGS 212, EDS 206, POL 205, PUB 210, SOC 110, SOC 120, SOC 150. Offered Spring - Odd Numbered Years.

RGS 373 Cr.3   Gender and Human Rights

This course will provide an overview of transnational women's human rights movements in a variety of locations around the world; locations will vary with the instructor. Included in this overview will be the study of women's political participation as a human rights issue; women's bodily integrity as a human right; violence against women and reproductive sexual health and rights; human rights as a framework for social and economic and gender justice; and human rights as (quasi) legal accountability; UN agreements, treaties and venues of redress. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, RGS 150, WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, EDS 206. Offered Fall - Odd Numbered Years.

RGS/HIS 409 Cr.3   20th Century Civil Rights Movement

This course explores the modern civil rights movement in the US and the struggle for African Americans and other marginalized groups to gain equal rights in voting, education, employment, housing, and other facets of life in the US. It begins with the MOWM and examines the seemingly completing philosophies of civil rights organizations such as CORE, SNCC, SCLC, BPP, AIM, SDS, NCAI, YLP, RG, NOW, NBFO, the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis, STAR and other civil rights organizations, leaders, and local people in shaping their own destinies. It highlights and interrogates major national and local political struggles rooted in racial, gender, and sexual identities and their reciprocal relationships with international political and anti-colonial movements from 1941 to the present. It concludes with exploring the link between convict leasing, prison reform movements, political prisoners, and the prison industrial complex as the New Jim Crow. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, WGS 100, EDS 206, HIS 210. (Cross-listed with HIS/RGS; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Spring.

RGS 450 Cr.1-9   Internship in Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The internship is an academically relevant field experience for majors and minors in race, gender, and sexuality studies, which combines RGSS scholarship with practical experience. The field experience is supervised by the RGSS staff. A maximum of three credits will be counted toward the minor. Repeatable for credit - maximum nine. Prerequisite: six credits of any combination of RGS, ERS, and WGS courses; RGS major/minor or ERS minor or WS major/minor. Consent of department. Offered Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer.

RGS 490 Cr.3   RGSS Senior Capstone

This senior capstone course is designed as a culminating experience for students completing a major in race, gender, and sexuality studies or a Hmong and Hmong-American studies certificate. This course has three content foci: 1) Students apply what they have learned throughout their major in RGSS. Alone or in groups, students research, explain, and develop a means for addressing a social phenomenon through application of the material acquired in their courses - particularly those in RGSS. This culminates in a presentation and paper to be given before an audience that may include RGSS faculty, CASSH faculty, and UWL students. 2) Students analyze the ways race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality have played and continued to play in liberating oppressive roles in social, political, or cultural institutions. 3) Students identify and learn about careers such as journalism, marketing, community and housing development, media, health and medicine, community and union organizing, social work, and a wide variety of positions in federal, state, county, and local governments. Prerequisite: ERS 100, RGS 100, or WGS 100; concurrent enrollment in one of the following: RGS 335, RGS 336, RGS 340, or RGS 377. Offered Spring.