A binary system of gender is not a fact of nature. Nor is it politically neutral. It has been (and is being) wielded and enforced as a way to consolidate power and to stigmatize, target, discipline, punish, and exclude those who are deemed non-conforming: usually transgender people, intersex people, indigenous people, people of color, people with disabilities, queers, immigrants, women, and others who often demonstrate that alternative models of gender are both viable and valuable. A binary system of gender is enforced through many forms of violence, including the violence of erasure.
These are foundational concepts in transgender, queer, and feminist scholarship.
The Politics of Feminism in the Shadow of the Sweatshirt
Feminist Friday
40 Years of GWS
Celebrate 40 Years of GWS!
GWS Internship ProgramClassroom Knowledge in Action!
GWS has a new Exhibition Space!
Ruth Nicole Brown has devoted her career to what she calls “engaged scholarship” with black girls to create new worlds with, ask questions of, and celebrate black girlhood. The professor of gender and women’s studies remains active on campus, in the surrounding Urbana-Champaign area, and across the United States co-organizing spaces dedicated to humanistic inquiry, the documentation of black girlhood culture, and collective knowledge production about the myriad ways social and political conditions shape and are shaped by black girls.
GWS 470This course familiarizes students with the major concepts, frameworks, and central debates animating transgender studies scholarship and politics.
GWS 399Directed internship experience for GWS students. Students will complete course requirements in addition to holding a semester long internship. Students must have consent of the Internship Coordinator.
GWS 204Examines the history of gender in videogames, focusing on how movements like #GamerGate, #RaceFail09, internet bullying, doxing and trolling emerged as the coordinated effort to consolidate and maintain videogames and geek culture as the domain of masculinity and whiteness.
GWS 366This course explores the complex relationship between gender and disability, including the fraught connections that certain avenues of feminist, queer, and transgender politics have with disability.
GWS 333Explores the phenomenon of autobiography in the contemporary world. Students will read theories of autobiography, and ask questions about how writing about the self is gendered, and how representations of the self fare in the outside world.
GWS 363Aspects of popular culture, including television, magazines, newspapers, social networking sites, and internet sources to name a few, are ways that health information is disseminated. Students will examine how we define health and understand disease as related to popular culture.
Spotlight
Elizabeth Labedz never thought sports were for her until she began to play fast pitch softball at the age of ten. She found that playing sports with other girls helped her grow physically, emotionally, and mentally. When Labedz became interested in girls’ studies while earning her degree in gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois, she developed a life-long commitment to helping girls think less about how their bodies look and more about how their bodies work.
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