Featured Course: Unruly Bodies (GWST 345)

By Nahom Nega

GWST 345: Unruly Bodies is a 3 credit course designed towards initiating a new perspective at looking at the human body. Drawing on feminist, queer, social, and critical race theory, this course examines the status of the body in both historical and contemporary debates about identity, representation, and politics. This course is committed to challenging the common sense behind the understanding of how the human body is produced, managed, and deployed in various ways to discipline and manage populations. The course will also investigate all the political possibilities of body work to resist and reshape the disciplinary practices listed above by paying close attention to “queer” forms of embodiment.

GWST 345 can be taken for Arts & Humanities (AH) or Culture (C) GEP credit. Courses GWST 100 or GWST 200 are recommended but not required for this course.

View Course

Get to know the Instructor:

Kate Drabinski

Dr. Kate Drabinski is a lecturer of Gender Women’s Studies courses and also Director of the Women Involved in Learning and Leadership(WILL), here at UMBC. Dr. Drabinski received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric with a graduate certificate in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. She was awarded a UMBC Breaking Ground grant to incorporate civic agency and digital activism into the Feminist Activism department. Besides teaching this Unruly Bodies course, Dr. Drabinski also teaches Introduction to Critical Sexuality Studies, Studies in Feminist Activism and Sexuality and Queer Theory.

___________________________________________________________________

Nahom Nega has been a marketing intern at the Division of Professional Studies since August of 2018. He is a sophomore Media and Communication Studies major with a minor in Entrepreneurship. Nahom is also a writer for the Retriever as well as co-founder of OCA Mocha, a entrepreneurial student led initiative to foster a relationship with local communities.