WMST 193 Introduction to Women's Studies: Women, Art, and Culture

This course develops effective oral and expressive communication skills and skill in art analysis, as it introduces the ideas and issues central to women’s studies and feminism with emphasis on women’s art and culture: how women have been represented in the visual arts; the values women have chosen for themselves in being the subjects of their own lives; and the innovative and risk-taking strategies women have created for navigating the paradigms in the dominant culture and developing an alternative women’s culture.

Credits

3

Prerequisite

Eligible to enroll in ENGL 121

Hours Weekly

3

Course Objectives

1. Analyze prescriptive cultural paradigms for women and the innovative, creative, and risktaking
   strategies invented by women to navigate alternatives in social roles, image
   making, and artistic expression.
   
2. Examine the values prescribed for women and the values women have chosen as their
   own in Mesoamerica, Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as the United States.
3. Develop criteria for aesthetic analysis to be applied in evaluating works of art; compare
   the artistic visions of women as artists with the portrayal of women as subjects of art,
   using the rubric of woman-as-object vs. woman-as-subject to capture the subjectivity of
   women as agents of their own lives vs. assumptions about women that treat them as
   objects.
4. Demonstrate the ability to organize and articulate ideas or concepts on women, art and
   culture topics for a range of audiences and purposes; effectively and creatively
   communicate an abstract or concrete idea so that an audience clearly perceives the
   intended purpose.
   
5. Deliver a formal oral presentation on women, art and culture topics in front of a group,
   using appropriate spoken and symbolic forms of communication, including language and
   gestures, effective vocal projection and modulation, and the use of powerful rhetorical
   devices; offer and receive peer feedback.
6. Analyze one’s own communication style and those of others, through collaborative
   critique and revision of oral presentations on women, art and culture topics; critique
   one’s own recorded oral presentation objectively assessing content, visual, vocal, and
   verbal elements in a written evaluation.

Course Objectives

1. Analyze prescriptive cultural paradigms for women and the innovative, creative, and risktaking
   strategies invented by women to navigate alternatives in social roles, image
   making, and artistic expression.
   
2. Examine the values prescribed for women and the values women have chosen as their
   own in Mesoamerica, Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as the United States.
3. Develop criteria for aesthetic analysis to be applied in evaluating works of art; compare
   the artistic visions of women as artists with the portrayal of women as subjects of art,
   using the rubric of woman-as-object vs. woman-as-subject to capture the subjectivity of
   women as agents of their own lives vs. assumptions about women that treat them as
   objects.
4. Demonstrate the ability to organize and articulate ideas or concepts on women, art and
   culture topics for a range of audiences and purposes; effectively and creatively
   communicate an abstract or concrete idea so that an audience clearly perceives the
   intended purpose.
   
5. Deliver a formal oral presentation on women, art and culture topics in front of a group,
   using appropriate spoken and symbolic forms of communication, including language and
   gestures, effective vocal projection and modulation, and the use of powerful rhetorical
   devices; offer and receive peer feedback.
6. Analyze one’s own communication style and those of others, through collaborative
   critique and revision of oral presentations on women, art and culture topics; critique
   one’s own recorded oral presentation objectively assessing content, visual, vocal, and
   verbal elements in a written evaluation.