Courses - Spring 2026
WGSS
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
WGSS105
Explores theories of disability justice as they intersect with feminist and antiracist struggles. Analyzing how disability has been an important aspect of institutions and social experience in the United States and beyond, the course considers how disability activists have responded to ableism by developing art, political strategies, and subcultures that promote a more just society built for a wider variety of human bodies.
Cross-listed with AMST298D. Credit only granted for WGSS105 or AMST298D.
WGSS115
Restriction: Must not have taken CMSC216 or higher.
Cross-listed with: CMSC115.
Credit only granted for: WGSS115 or CMSC115.
Race and gender have shaped computing from its earliest histories to contemporary debates over bias in search algorithms, surveillance, and AI. As computational processes shape ever more dimensions of everyday life from the personal to the global scale, understanding how they operate and how power operates within them grows ever more important. Combating racism and sexism is not as simple as ensuring the pool of programmers and engineers is more diverse; structures of power are embedded in digital technologies as they are in all aspects of our society, and we must learn to perceive their operation if we hope to transform them. We will examine how racism and sexism operate in the field of computer science and in everyday uses of digital technologies, while studying how feminist and racial justice movements have created alternative approaches. This class is for anyone who wishes to better understand the relationships between digital technology, structural power, and social justice.
WGSS200
Introduction to WGSS: Gender, Power, and Society
Credit only granted for: WMST200 or WGSS200.
Formerly: WMST200.
Examines constructions of race, class, sexuality, ability, and gender relations from a social science multi-disciplinary perspective. The course interrogates the ways that systems of hierarchy and privilege are created, enforced, and intersect through the language of race, class, sexuality, and national belonging. The course will provide students with the skills to examine how systems of power manifest in areas such as poverty, division of labor, health disparities, policing, violence. In addition to examining the impact of systems of power, students will reflect on their own location within the exercise of racialized, and gendered power relations. This course encourages students to understand and critique these systems both personally and politically.
WGSS205
Developed by feminists of color, reproductive justice frameworks offer a roadmap for economic, social, and medical justice advocacy attentive to the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability. This course reviews the historical, legal, and social bases of reproductive rights in the U.S.; discusses the history of feminist organizing for reproductive freedom; surveys critical theories of reproductive justice that go beyond abortion law to advocate for broader social transformation; and evaluates the possible futures of intersectional feminist activism after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Cross-listed with AMST298J. Credit only granted for AMST298J or WGSS205.
WGSS211
Cross-listed with: HIST211.
Credit only granted for: HIST211, WMST211 or WGSS211.
Formerly: WMST211.
An examination of women's changing roles in working class and middle class families, the effects of industrialization on women's economic activities and status, and women's involvement in political and social struggles, including those for women's rights, birth control, and civil rights.
WGSS230
Introduction to Humanities, Health, and Medicine
Restriction: Permission of ARHU-History Department.
Cross-listed with: ARHU230, ENGL254, HIST219N.
Credit only granted for: ARHU230 , ENGL289C, ENGL254, ARHU298A, HIST219N, or WGSS230.
An overview of the historical, cultural, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of medicine, human health, disease, and death from the points of view of various humanistic disciplines.
For information on registration, please email hhmminor@umd.edu.
WGSS250
Credit only granted for: WMST250 or WGSS250.
Formerly: WMST250.
Provides students with a critical introduction to the ways that art and art activism have served as a conduit to understanding and challenging systems of inequity and practices of normativity. Interrogating the categories of gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, the course will provide students with an examination of how artists have responded to pressing social justice issues of their eras. While the course centers visual art, students will also engage genres such as music, plays, literature, digital and performance art as arenas of social change.
WGSS255
Cross-listed with: ENGL250.
Credit only granted for: ENGL250, WMST255 or WGSS255.
Formerly: WMST255.
Explores literary and cultural expressions by women and their receptions within a range of historical periods and genres. Topics such as what does a woman need in order to write, what role does gender play in the production, consumption, and interpretation of texts, and to what extent do women comprise a distinct literary subculture. Interpretation of texts will be guided by feminist and gender theory, ways of reading that have emerged as important to literary studies over the last four decades.
WGSS275
Cross-listed with: CMLT275.
Credit only granted for: WMST275, CMLT275 or WGSS275.
Formerly: WMST275.
Comparative study of selected works by women writers of several countries, exploring points of intersection and divergence in women's literary representations.
WGSS290
Credit only granted for: WMST298D or WGSS290.
Formerly: WMST298D.
Explores the contributions of feminist scholarship in framing and resolving contemporary controversies concerning gendered bodies. It includes the ways in which knowledge about the human body has been shaped by cultural ideas of gender, race, sexuality and ability.
WGSS291
Racialized Gender and Rebel Media
Credit only granted for: WGSS291 or WMST298N.
Formerly: WMST298N.
An introduction to the interdisciplinary field of women's studies and an exploration of the ways in which media has been used as a platform for racial justice, feminist activism, and cultural transformation, with a principal focus on the expressions of women of color. The goals of the course are to explore how different forms of media shape the stories which circulate about race, femininities, masculinities, ethnicities, sexualities, religiosity, power and difference, and to examine how various media formats been used to disrupt dominant stories, to tell new stories, and to create differing understandings of citizenship.
WGSS310
Transgender Studies
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F
Cross-listed with: LGBT310.
Credit only granted for: LGBT310, WMST310 or WGSS310.
Introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies, providing a history of the field and engaging current debates within it. Students will explore the emergence and consolidation of trans identities, practices, cultures, and knowledges across medical, historical, sociological, cultural, and artistic contexts, paying particular attention to dynamics of race, class, and ability, to global and transnational difference, and to the implications of transgender studies for understanding gender and sexuality overall.
WGSS315
Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness and Their Intersections
Examines fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability. Though we will look at fatness as intersectional, this course will particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness. We approach this area of study through an interdisciplinary humanities and social-science lens which emphasizes fatness as a social justice issue. The course closes with an examination of fat liberation as liberation for all bodies with a particular emphasis on performing arts and activism as a vehicle for liberation and challenging fatmisia.
WGSS320
Cross-listed with: CLAS320, HIST328W.
Credit only granted for: CLAS320, WMST320, WGSS320 or HIST328W.
A study of women's image and reality in ancient Greek and Roman societies through an examination of literary, linguistic, historical, legal, and artistic evidence; special emphasis in women's role in the family, views of female sexuality, and the place of women in creative art. Readings in primary sources in translation and modern critical writings.
WGSS325
The Sociology of Gender
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Prerequisite: 3 credits in SOCY courses.
Cross-listed with: SOCY325.
Credit only granted for: SOCY325, WMST325 or WGSS325.
Formerly: WMST325.
Institutional bases of gender roles and gender inequality, cultural perspectives on gender, gender socialization, feminism, and gender-role change. Emphasis on contemporary American society.
WGSS358
Undergraduate Teaching Assistantship
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F
Restriction: Permission of ARHU-Women's Studies department. Repeatable to 9 credits.
Students work under the supervision of a faculty mentor to assist with an undergraduate LGBT or WMST course while also becoming conversant in feminist, critical race, and queer pedagogical debates and approaches.
Students work under the supervision of a faculty mentor to assist with an undergraduate LGBT or WMST course while also becoming conversant in feminist, critical race, and queer pedagogical debates and approaches.
WGSS368
Undergraduate WGSS Internship
Credits:
3 - 6
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F
Restriction: Permission of the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
WGSS378
Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Assistantship
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Restriction: Permission of the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Repeatable to 9 credits if content differs. Formerly: WMST378.
WGSS379S
Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; AI Otherwise
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
WGSS428J
Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Health Inequality: Social Determinants and the Intersections of Medicine, Technology, and the Humanities
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Explores medicine as a complex health care system contributing to multifaceted disparities through its engagement with interconnected systems of inequality. Examines health inequities in the American healthcare system and its association with race, ethnicity, gender, age, and geographic location. Analyzes social determinants associated with healthcare disparities, such as access, quality of care, and use of technology on health outcomes and quality of life. Explores the lived experiences of health and medical conditions and healing through the use of humanistic sources. Assesses existing health policy and its legislative intent in relation to existing needs of under-served populations. Students learn how the maintenance of systems of inequality affects the health and health care of individuals and communities and asks them to think critically to uncover solutions to reduce health care disparities and inequity and promote preventive and primary health care.
WGSS471
Women's Health
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Restriction: Must be in a program in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; or must be in a major within SPHL-Behavioral & Community Health department.
Cross-listed with: HLTH471.
Credit only granted for: HLTH471, WMST471, or WGSS471..
Formerly: WMST471.
The women's health movement from the perspective of consumerism and feminism. The physician-patient relationship in the gynecological and other medical settings. The gynecological exam, gynecological problems, contraception, abortion, pregnancy, breast and cervical cancer and surgical procedures. Psychological aspects of gynecological concerns.
WGSS487
Advanced Research Seminar in Gender, Race, and Queer Studies
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Prerequisite: WMST300 or WGSS301; and WMST400 or WGSS302.
Credit only granted for: WMST487 or WGSS487.
Formerly: WMST487.
A research seminar that allows students to focus their developed skills on a single topic of their own choosing while meeting regularly in seminar to discuss, critique, support, and learn from their peers' projects and assessments. Students choose a topic based on their own interests and prior coursework, perform advanced research appropriate to the question, and formulate an appropriate method of presentation of their research findings. The culminating presentation may take the form of a written paper or a creative, digital, or activist project.
WGSS488F
Senior Seminar; Blackness, Gender, and Sexuality: Women Writing Self in the African Diaspora
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Restriction: Permission of the Harriet Tubman Department of Women,omen Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
In this broadly configured course, we examine the way that Black women write new narratives and possibilities for themselves in the midst of hierarchies and harms such as trans and homophobia, patriarchy, colonialism, ableism, and white supremacy. Multi-textual in content, we will examine visual art, songs, folklore, film, literature, policy and legislative reform as conduits for how Black women flip the script and imagine new possibilities for self and community. The texts we engage will reflect key moments, movements and events from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.
In this broadly configured course, we examine the way that Black women write new narratives and possibilities for themselves in the midst of hierarchies and harms such as trans and homophobia, patriarchy, colonialism, ableism, and white supremacy. Multi-textual in content, we will examine visual art, songs, folklore, film, literature, policy and legislative reform as conduits for how Black women flip the script and imagine new possibilities for self and community. The texts we engage will reflect key moments, movements and events from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.
WGSS489
Individual Research in Gender, Race and Queer Studies
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg
WGSS489A
Individual Research in Gender, Race and Queer Studies; WGSS Honors Thesis Writing
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F
WGSS498I
Advanced Special Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Asian American Women and Gender
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Cross-listed with AAST498G. Credit only granted for AAST498G or WGSS498I.
Examines Asian American identities through a transnational, gendered framework, and studies the impacts of exclusion and immigration laws and U.S. histories of (neo)colonialism and war on domestic, sexual, repr oductive, and economic labor of Asian American women. Also explores Asia n American feminism in context of Women of Color feminisms and queer of color critique.
Examines Asian American identities through a transnational, gendered framework, and studies the impacts of exclusion and immigration laws and U.S. histories of (neo)colonialism and war on domestic, sexual, repr oductive, and economic labor of Asian American women. Also explores Asia n American feminism in context of Women of Color feminisms and queer of color critique.
WGSS498Y
Advanced Special Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Dickinson, Erotics, Poetics, Biopics: Some (Queer) Ways We Read Poetry
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Prerequisite: two English courses in literature or permission of department. Repeatable to 9 credits if content differs. Also offered as LGBT448Y and ENGL439D. Credit granted for ENGL439D, LGBT448Y, or WGSS498Y.
WGSS498Z
Advanced Special Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Black Women's Art and Culture
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
Cross-listed with AAAS498B and AMST498Z. Credit only granted for WGSS498Z, AAAS498B, or AMST498Z.
WGSS499
Independent Study
Credits:
1 - 3
Grad Meth:
Reg, P-F, Aud
WGSS602
Methodologies and Epistemologies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud
Prerequisite: WMST400 or WGSS302; or permission of the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Restriction: Must be in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies doctoral or graduate certificate programs.
Credit only granted for: WMST602 or WGSS602.
Formerly: WMST602.
Examines the politics and practice of knowledge production in the interdisciplinary field of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Explores how theory is connected to the formation of raced/gendered/sexed bodies, subjectivities, and existences that unsettle Eurocentric genealogies of disciplinary knowledge formation. Introduces students to methodological and epistemological frameworks for attending to the impact of relations of power and domination on how research and scholarship are created and defined within and across disciplinary boundaries, cultures, and paradigms.
WGSS619
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Teaching Practicum
Credits:
1
Grad Meth:
S-F
WGSS628
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Colloquium
Credits:
1
Grad Meth:
S-F
WGSS698J
Special Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Health Inequality: Social Determinants and the Intersections of Medicine, Technology, and the Humanities
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud, S-F
Explores medicine as a complex health care system contributing to multifaceted disparities through its engagement with interconnected systems of inequality. Examines health inequities in the American healthcare system and its association with race, ethnicity, gender, age, and geographic location. Analyzes social determinants associated with healthcare disparities, such as access, quality of care, and use of technology on health outcomes and quality of life. Explores the lived experiences of health and medical conditions and healing through the useof humanistic sources. Assesses existing health policy and its legislative intent in relation to existing needs of under-served populations. Students learn how the maintenance of systems of inequality affects the health and health care of individuals and communities and asks them to think critically to uncover solutions to reduce health care disparities and inequity and promote preventive and primary health care.
WGSS698P
Special Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud, S-F
WGSS698Z
Special Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Black Women's Art and Culture
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud, S-F
WGSS699
Independent Study
Credits:
1 - 3
Grad Meth:
Reg, Aud
WGSS708
Research Seminar in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Credits:
3
Grad Meth:
Reg
WGSS799
Masters Thesis Research
Credits:
1 - 6
Grad Meth:
S-F
WGSS898
Pre-Candidacy Research
Credits:
1 - 8
Grad Meth:
Reg, S-F
WGSS899
Doctoral Dissertation Research
Credits:
1 - 8
Grad Meth:
S-F
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