WEIS 190.  Diverse Women in Popular Culture   (3).

General education social and behavioral sciences course. Examines how women of various races, classes and ethnicities are represented in a wide variety of popular media. Encourages the critical analysis of why and how these popular representations are politically and socially significant in shaping society's perceptions of women. Also explores women's popular genres.

WEIS 287.  Women in Society: Social Issues   (3).

General education social and behavioral sciences course. Examines women's efforts to claim their identities from historical, legal and social perspectives. Includes recent laws relating to women, contemporary issues (such as rape, day care, working women, the future of marriage), agencies for change, theories of social change, and the relationship of women's rights to human rights.

WEIS 360.  Dealing with Diversity   (3).

General education social and behavioral sciences course. Discusses the pluralistic nature of U.S. society. Equips students with skills to live and work within a diverse society, with particular attention on the global community.

WEIS 386.  Gender, Race and Sports   (3).

General education social and behavioral sciences course. Students, regardless of athletic background, learn how to think critically about gender/race intersection in sports. Uses an interdisciplinary approach to topic. Focus is on women’s and men’s amateur and collegiate sports. Students gain knowledge regarding struggles over the entrance of historically underrepresented athletes into organized athletics from the late 19th century to the present. Students learn how to practice interpretation, social and political phenomena that make up athletics. Includes exercises in social observation regarding how social inequality functions in mundane ways by comparing women’s and men’s sports as well as differential experiences within women’s sports due to race/class. Also investigates contemporary controversies surrounding Title IX’s applicability to athletics, “NIL” in NCAA athletics, unintentional racial and gendered outcomes structured by the hierarchy between “revenue” and “non-revenue” sports. Guest speakers from WSU Athletics and local sports media as well as attendance at WSU sporting events are part of course content.

WEIS 387.  Women in Society: Cultural Images   (3).

General education social and behavioral sciences course. Examines the impact of cultural images and ideas in women's lives. Emphasis is on the intersection of gender and race in shaping social experience and political interest. Major topics include ideology as vehicle through which women come to belong to and negotiate society; privilege, intellectual origins of ideas about gender and race, and differences in status among women that impact their lives, their relations with men and with each other.

WEIS 587.  Theories of Feminism   (3).

Because feminism is not a single ideological stance or perspective, course examines a variety of ideas underlying feminist cultural critiques and visions for social change. Discusses the contribution of women's studies to various academic disciplines. Prerequisite(s): WOMS 287, 387, or 6 hours of women's studies courses, or instructor's consent.

WEIS 588.  Gender, Race and the West/East Divide   (3).

Examines critically the role of gender and race in the making of a supposed essential divide between the West and the East. Students are introduced to Edward Said's concept of Orientalism and the field of critique that targets how Europe and the U.S. craft an identity the West via its other, called variously, the Orient, Islam, the Muslim world, and the Arab world. Questions explored include: What is Orientalism? What is the relationship between colonialism/imperialism and the representation of the Orient or the East? How, for whom, and for what purposes do gender and race matter in this construct of a divide between West and East? These questions are examined across genres and media — i.e., in travel accounts, film, literature, policy making and news reportage.