What does it mean to be a gendered individual in a Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, or Buddhist religious tradition? How important are gender differences in deciding social roles, ritual activities, and spiritual vocations? This course tackles these questions, showing how gender - how it is taught, performed, and regulated - is central to understanding religion. In this course we will learn about gendered rituals, social roles, and mythologies in a range of religious traditions. We will also look at the central significance of gender to the field of religious studies generally. Part of the course will be focused on building a foundation of knowledge about a range of religious traditions and the role of gender in those traditions. This course focuses on religious traditions with origins outside the West. Although it is beyond the scope of this class to offer comprehensive discussions of any one religious tradition, the aim is to provide entry points into the study of religious traditions through the lens of gender. This course will train you in historical, anthropological, and theoretical methodologies. We will also read religion through feminist and queer lenses - we will explore the key characteristics of diverse feminist and queer studies approaches to religion, as well as limits of those approaches.

What makes men and women different? What is the nature of desire? This course introduces students to a long history of speculation about the meaning and nature of gender and sexuality -- a history fundamental to literary representation and the business of making meaning. We will consider theories from Aristophane's speech in Plato's Symposium to recent feminist and queer theory. Authors treated might include: Plato, Shakespeare, J. S. Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin, Catherine MacKinnon, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, bell hooks, Leo Bersani, Gloria Anzaldua, David Halperin, Cherrie Moraga, Donna Haraway, Gayatri Spivak, Diana Fuss, Rosemary Hennesy, Chandra Tadpole Mohanty, and Susan Stryker. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.

What makes men and women different? What is the nature of desire? This course introduces students to a long history of speculation about the meaning and nature of gender and sexuality -- a history fundamental to literary representation and the business of making meaning. We will consider theories from Aristophane's speech in Plato's Symposium to recent feminist and queer theory. Authors treated might include: Plato, Shakespeare, J. S. Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin, Catherine MacKinnon, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, bell hooks, Leo Bersani, Gloria Anzaldua, David Halperin, Cherrie Moraga, Donna Haraway, Gayatri Spivak, Diana Fuss, Rosemary Hennesy, Chandra Tadpole Mohanty, and Susan Stryker. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.

This course will introduce students to the ways in which sex, gender, and sexuality mark our bodies, influence our perceptions of self and others, organize families and work like, delimit opportunities for individuals and groups of people, as well as impact the terms of local and transnational economic exchange. We will explore the ways in which sex, gender, and sexuality work with other markers of difference and social status such as race, age, nationality, and ability to further demarcate possibilities, freedoms, choices, and opportunities available to people.

This first‑year seminar invites students to explore the history and cultural meanings of Italian gastronomy, tracing its transformations from Ancient Rome to the present, in Italy and abroad. We examine how Italian food has been conceived, represented, produced, consumed, and marketed across a range of contexts including family in rural and urban settings, commercial spaces like restaurants, markets, and food industries. As we investigate how Italian culinary practices reflect broader historical, social, and economic shifts, we consider how food shapes politics, national identity, international relations, and contemporary marketing strategies. Building on this foundation, we adopt an intercultural perspective to study the migration of Italian culinary traditions to the United States to address some questions, including: How have dishes, ingredients, and food rituals changed? What emerges when Italian foodways interact with local cultures, particularly in communities in the Philadelphia area? By examining these dynamics, we gain insight into adaptation, hybridization, and cultural exchange. Through close reading analysis, case studies, and experiential learning activities (conversation with guest speakers, interviews with food experts, visits to museums and local food establishments) students develop a deeper understanding of Italian food as both a political artifact and a living, evolving practice. Course materials include literary narratives, films, scholarly articles, artworks, recipes and cookbooks, selected archival material, and commercial sources. All the reading and viewing material is in English. No knowledge of Italian is needed.