Description
The Department of Women and Gender Studies works to make knowledge about gender, power, and liberation more accessible as well as to critically study a diverse range of women’s and other marginalized perspectives, histories, and cultural creations and contributions. The Department seeks to promote student success within an academic, professional, and personal context. The major curriculum seeks to provides students with the occasion to investigate the intersections of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, sexuality, and ability as dimensions of social identity, and as considered at local, national, and transnational levels.
This interdisciplinary major offers students a well-rounded undergraduate education leading to expertise in a wide variety of skills that prepare students for career and graduate school success. Students have an opportunity to understand themselves and their society within an inclusive view of the human experience.
Recent Women and Gender Studies graduates have gone on to highly competitive masters and doctorate programs in law, sociology, gender studies, history, social work, communications, public health, and English at nationally recognized research universities. Graduates stepping into the workforce have assumed careers as crisis counselors, government officials, librarians, human rights activists, and Peace Corps/AmeriCorps volunteers.
Admission to the Program
Any undergraduate student can declare this major.
Program Requirements
General Education Requirements (28-31* credits)
Major Department Requirements (36 credits)
Students in the Women and Gender Studies major pursue either a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree, and must complete the corresponding degree’s requirements.
Students must earn a grade of “C” or higher for all courses in the major.
The major in Women and Gender Studies consist of 36 credits fulfilled as follows:
Required Core Courses (27 credits)
- WMS 101 Introduction to Women and Gender Studies*
- WMS 271 Gender, Race and Class*
- ONE course selected from:
- WMS 330 Global Perspectives on Women and Gender
- ONE course in Feminist Theory selected from:
- WMS 411 Feminist Research Methods
- WMS 420 Practicum in Women and Gender Studies (3-9 credits)
- WMS 421 Senior Seminar in Women and Gender Studies
-
ONE course in Women’s History by advisement. As of the publication of the catalog, options include:
- WMS 324 Politics in America 1780s-1900s; Sex, Race, Culture and Party
- WMS 328 Women in America
- WMS 344 Sex, Sin and Sorority: Women in Early American Republic
- WMS 358 Family and Social Change in American History
- WMS 359 History of European Women
- WMS 366 Gender and the Islamic World
- WMS 368 Women in the Mediterranean World
- WMS 438 Women and Gender in Latin American History
- WMS 444 Sexuality, Gender, and Identity in Medieval Europe
- WMS 478 Gender and Race in Modern America
*Fulfill general education and major requirements
Elective Courses (9 credits)
- THREE Women and Gender Studies electives from approved, interdisciplinary cross-listed courses
Electives (52 credits)
Total Credits (120 credits)
Additional Degree Requirements
Students must earn a grade of C or higher for all courses in the major.
Student Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of the program, students will be able to:
- Describe why centering anti-racist and decolonizing work is essential to effective social justice work and feminist thinking.
- Explain how patriarchy and other sex/gender systems of power intersect with other systems of power.
- Theorize ways in which bodies and social identities are culturally and historically constructed and shaped.
- Identify and critically evaluate research and scholarly arguments within the field of Women and Gender Studies.
- Identify and analyze language, media representation, and dominant forms of communication to produce an original argument about how power and privilege operate in society.
- Apply collaborative strategies and knowledge of Women and Gender to imagine and create transformative feminist futures.