Mar 28, 2024  
2017-2018 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2017-2018 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

WGS 2880 - Gender, Race, and War

Credits: 4
This course will look at war and its aftermath through the prism of gender, race, sexuality and nation. It will explore how notions of war and peace are themselves gendered, and provide deeper understanding of the impact of war on the lives it touches within the military and in conflict regions. It will address both the construction of the enemy and the making of the soldier as gendered and racial projects. Using feminist analyses, we will study how officials deploy conceptions of gender, race, and sexuality in militarization - from training and maintaining combat-ready soldiers, to responses to peace and humanitarian efforts, to engagement with societies near military bases, and finally to postwar social justice initiatives and war memorials. While the primary focus will be on U.S. wars, the course will include transnational conflicts and perspectives. Organized thematically, course topics include debates about masculinity and its relationship to aggression, violence, and war; the history, roles, and treatment of women, people of color, and LGBTQ within the military and as veterans; the problem of rape and violence in the military and wartime; the treatment of women around military bases; the use of torture vs. humanitarian responses to conflict regions; the reconstruction of war zones; and the role of history and memory in maintaining gendered and racial understandings of war. 
Fulfills: D, X, and SOSC in LS Core