Women’s and Gender Studies Major

Major requirements

The major in Women’s and Gender Studies consists of at least nine credits.

A total of three courses must be taken at the 300-level or above.
Women’s and Gender Studies majors who have taken a first-year seminar with a member of the Women’s Studies faculty may petition the Women’s and Gender Studies Coordinator to count that FYS towards credit for the major.
Women’s and Gender Studies Majors are urged to pursue internships, service learning opportunities and independent research that will complement their course work in Women’s and Gender Studies.
Courses in Four Specific Areas. These areas replace the earlier two areas. These were designed explicitly to expand students’ horizons beyond the lives and perspectives traditionally centered in American feminism: white, straight/cisgender women living in the U.S. Therefore students will build their major by choosing one from each area.

Required courses

Introduction and theory

COURSES from FOUR AREAS

Four courses: students will choose ONE course from each Area

ELECTIVE COURSES

TWO more courses, chosen from any area but not used before.

(Note: other courses may qualify for these various categories with permission of the Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies)

Area #1: Choose ONE course from a sexuality studies lens

Courses in this area take a critical and contextual approach to the study ofdiverse genders, sexual identities, and sexual practices.

Area #2: Choose ONE course from a race & ethnicity studies lens

Courses in this area show how gender can be understood in its relationship(s)to race and ethnicity and their impact on systemic inequality and lived experience.

Area #3: Choose ONE course addressing gender and its interaction with power and place beyond the United States

Courses in this area explore the diverse ways in which gender is constructed around the world and examine gender’s dynamic interactions with power and place. Courses in this area may focus on gender in a single national context and/or in a transnational perspective, but they should be based on experiences beyond the United States.

Area #4. Choose ONE course with a disciplinary perspective on gender and power

Courses in this area question the representation of gender in various academic disciplines – either in the subject matter those disciplines study, or in the makeup of the disciplines themselves – and provide tools for exposing often-obscured relationships of gender and power.