White People White people did not just appear out of nowhere. Instead, they are the result of a long history of structural and everyday racism that was always intertwined with class, sex, sexuality, and nation. We will explore how whiteness became a foundational category for citizenship in the US, especially after the Civil War when the Color Line was drawn through the legal, cultural, and spatial practices of Jim Crow. We will consider how "new immigrants" and even white "trash" became white primarily through the exclusion of Black Americans. Finally, we will look at the formation of whiteness today as a site of privilege, aggrieved entitlement, and violence.

Feminist Theory The course offers an overview of key feminist texts and theories that have shaped the analysis of gender and sexuality. We will examine foundational theoretical texts that have animated the field of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. Working within a transnational perspective, the course encompasses texts which fall under the categories of critical race and critical sexuality studies. (GSFS 0200 or GSFS 0191 or GSFS 0289) 3 hr. lect.

Gender and the Body What is your gender and how do you know? In order to answer this question, we need to consider how gender is known through biology, psychology, consumer capitalism, and our everyday embodiment.  We will also look at how the meaning and performance of gender have changed over time from Classical Greece to Victorian England to the contemporary U.S.  Throughout, we will consider how gender does not operate along, but is always entangled with, race, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability.

Decolonizing Porn: Circulating Desire between Europe and the Americas In this course we will use feminist, queer, critical race, and decolonial theories to analyze porn in Europe and the Americas. The goal is to give students the analytic tools they need to think deeply about the centrality of porn to our lives and to global capitalism, creating jobs in the “gig economy” as well as huge amounts of profit even as it extracts unpaid labor from trafficked bodies. We will consider pornographic photography, cinema, AI, and deep fakes. Texts will include Linda Williams’ Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible,” Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex,” Heather Berg, Porn Work and Jennifer Nash’s The Black Body in Ecstasy. In the SPAN section of the course, students will also be asked to participate in Spanish at least three times on the Spanish-language day of the class. All students will present their public-facing projects at the end of the class.

Sociology of Heterosexuality Most people believe that heterosexuality is natural or rooted in biology and so never look very closely at it as a product of culture.  In this course we will examine the artifacts, institutions, rituals, and ideologies that construct heterosexuality and the heterosexual person in American culture.  We will also pay close attention to how heterosexuality works alongside other forms of social power, especially gender, race, and class.

Laurie Essig

Reviews and ratings for Laurie Essig at Middlebury College.Laurie Essig teaches White People, Feminist Theory, Gender and the Body and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Laurie Essig good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

The readings were a bit dense, but Laurie is highly effective at helping navigate the tough material. The class is super fun and full of real-world examples. Papers were allowed and encouraged  to be projects. Grading was fair. The class was a ton of fun! 

I really enjoyed this course and it helped me understand the complexity of our understanding of gender. I found the readings to be really interesting and valuable, and Laurie is a great professor who really wants her students to succeed. After taking this class I switched from a GSFS minor to a GSFS joint major, and I am so happy I did it!