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.

Introduction to Queer Critique In this course we will examine what is meant by queer critique through exploring the concepts, issues, and debates central to queer theory and activism both in the U.S. and around the world. We will work to understand how queerness overlaps with and is distinct from other articulations of marginalized sexual subjectivity. We will consider how desires, identities, bodies, and experiences are constructed and represented, assessing the ways in which queer theory allows us to examine sexuality and its raced, classed, gendered, geographic, and (dis)abled dimensions. Through engaged projects, we will practice how to translate and produce queer critique.

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.

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.

Feminist Engaged Research What makes research feminist? How does one conduct feminist research? How has feminist research been useful to social movements and how have movements informed feminist research? What happens to feminist research when it moves to the public sphere? In this class students learn how to produce original feminist research—how to craft research questions, write a literature review, choose relevant methodologies, and collect and analyze qualitative data. In addition to writing a research paper, students will translate their research findings into an alternative (non-academic paper) format and for an audience beyond our classroom. (Minimum of 3 GSFS classes. Class intended for GSFS majors and minors and students in the IGS Gender Track.) 3 hrs. Sem.

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.

Making Feminist Media Feminist media has always been from a particular place and engaged with how forms of power like race, gender, sexuality, and nationality get layered not just onto bodies, but into the way we express ourselves. For at least fifty years, feminists have utilized emerging technologies to put feminist theory into the world. In this course we will begin with 1970s mimeographed feminist polemics, move onto the zine movement of Riot Grrls, land in the feminist blogosphere of the first few decades of the 21st century and end with current feminist media on TikTok, podcasts, and other emerging technologies. In this course we will think about feminist media making as a genre and how feminist theory can infuse that genre into a more vibrant, complex, and even transformative site. Throughout the course we will read feminist theory, analyze feminist media, and produce our own feminist media.

Feminist Blogging Blogging is a genre that lends itself to both feminist theory and practice because it involves writing from a particular place and a particular embodiment, about how power operates in our social worlds. Feminist theory demands intersectionality: an ability to weave race, class, gender, sexuality and other forms of power into a single theoretical approach. Feminist blogging transforms intersectionality into a single narrative arc.  In this course we will think about blogging as a genre and how feminist theory can infuse that genre into a more vibrant, complex, and even transformative site. Throughout the course we will read feminist theory, analyze feminist blogs, and produce our own feminist blogs.

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, Introduction to Queer Critique, Gender and the Body and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Laurie Essig good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

This class was very interesting and very easy. It is definitely not a light intro into the field of gender studies, though. It tackles very divisive and active political topics. Overall, very interesting and worth taking.

It is clear that the professor genuinely loves this class. The lectures really help clarify some of the information in the readings if it was hard to understand that week. Papers are graded incredibly lightly, with most students getting 100s. The only real issue I find is that you have to turn in notes every day of class, which is tedious 

Laurie is a wonderful professor who is extremely knowledgeable. She can be blunt at times, but is clear and concise with what she wants from you and how to go about it. This class was incredible, and I quite literally wish everyone would take it. The title instills fear and stigma... but the content you are learning isn't all about what the title might allude to, because the tools and history you learn are so fascinating and explain why American culture is the way it is. This class is pretty heavy reading-based. It was all readings and reading notes and then a big project. So... if you do all the readings and participate in class you'll be good. Overall, if you see this class and are questioning. TAKE IT. IT IS SO WORTH IT.