This is the required core course for the university-wide graduate certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies. The starting point for the course is the acknowledgement that sex- and gender-based modes of social organization are pervasive and, further, that their prominence and persistence gets reflected in sex- and gender-conscious research across the humanities, the arts, the social sciences, design and fashion, and studies dedicated to social policies and innovative strategies for social intervention. The main aims of the course are two-fold: (1) to provide a maximally in-depth survey of influential theoretical approaches to sex and gender and, in addition, (2) to capture the significance of the different approaches by discussing them in reference to a range of historically salient and politically pertinent cases. This course will be offered for the first time in the spring of 2015. During its inaugural term, it will be specifically focused on crafting a narrative that explains the fundamental appeal of, while also bringing out disagreements among, many (or all) of the following theories of gender and sexuality: standpoint theory, object relations theory, theories of intersectionality, Marxian feminisms, French feminisms, poststructuralist theory, queer theory, gender skepticism, affect theory, analytic gender theory and transnational feminist theory. The syllabus will align theoretical approaches with illustrative cases taken from historical texts, works of art and visual or material culture and journalistic sources such as documentary films. Cases will include (but not be limited to) sexual harassment and assault, transgender experience, and issues of body image and fatness.