This course is designed to enable advanced Women's Studies students to engage in common research on interdisciplinary topics. Our popular image of Victorian womanhood is of a role that is uniform and highly restrictive. In fact, though, "the woman question" in various forms and incarnations was a hotly contested issue throughout the period, in art, literature, politics, religion and other public discourses, with women taking active and public part in the contestation to an unprecedented degree. This period also saw the emergence and/or public legitimation of a number of scientific and social science disciplines-evolutionary biology, comparative anthropology, sociology, psychology, physiology, and more-most of which turned their attention at some point or another to the vital question of women's essential identity and proper role in society. All of these discourses were of course also heavily inflected by issues of race and class. Our goal will be to gain a multifaceted picture of the process of constructing and reconstructing womanhood in this period, with the particular avenues of inquiry to be determined by student interests. Format: seminar. Requirements: weekly reading and occasional short papers and one substantial research paper (15-20 pages) or final project. Students will present work-in-progress and be asked to read and discuss one another's work. Prerequisites: Women's and Gender Studies 101 and two electives (one of which may be taken in the term in which the seminar is held.) Enrollment limit:20. Preference given to seniors.