Course Description

University Writing teaches both foundational skills and habits of mind integral to the intellectual life of this university. In this section of University Writing, you will develop as a reader and writer by engaging with contemporary texts that investigate and challenge cultural ideas about gender. Gender seems at once familiar and invisible, omnipresent and inescapable. The intersection of gender and power informs how we approach topics in law, politics, history, education, athletics, arts and pop culture, economics, science, and health. Drawing from the expansive, interdisciplinary field of gender studies--including work written by faculty affiliated with the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University--you will have the opportunity to consider the ways that gender structures human experience.

Emphasizing critical analysis, revision, collaboration, and research, this course delves into a field of study marked by an ever-evolving terminology, diverse methodologies, and philosophical and ethical investigations. What is the relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality? How does gender connect with race, class, disability, and other forms of identity? At what moments do our expressions of our body, gender, and sexuality become a mode of resistance? Engaging with questions like these, you will read and discuss scholarly and popular texts, complete regular informal reading and writing exercises, write several longer essays, and undertake a research-based project of your own design.

These classes will have section numbers in the range of CC/GS1010.200 to CC/GS1010.299.

Each semester approximately 4-5 sections are offered in the College/SEAS and 1 in General Studies.