Gender and Women's Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

The undergraduate program in Gender and Women's Studies (GWS) is designed to introduce students to the intersectional analysis of gender, women, and sexuality, focusing on gender and sexuality as categories of analysis and on the workings of power in social and historical life. The department offers an introduction to feminist theory as well as more advanced courses that seek to expand capacities for critical reflection and analysis and to engage students with varied approaches to feminist research. The curriculum draws students into interdisciplinary and intersectional analysis of specific gender practices through investigating areas such as feminism in a transnational world, the politics of representation, feminist science studies, gender and work, gender and health, and queer visual culture. Students learn to apply methods derived from the social sciences, the humanities, and the interdisciplines to the study of gender. They explore a growing body of feminist and queer theory that revises our understanding of gender, sexuality, society, and culture.

Our students have a unique opportunity to interact with an amazing cadre of GWS faculty. The program allows our students to pursue a broad array of careers and interests after graduation. Gender and Women's Studies students get significant personalized attention. The department is known for its investment in the well-being of its students, and its smaller size produces a supportive community among students, faculty, and staff.

Declaring the Major

To declare the major, students must complete GWS 10 or GWS 20, and have a minimum grade point average (GPA) of 2.0. To complete the major, students must take two of the three gateway courses (GWS 10, GWS 20, LGBT 20AC) . For details on how to declare the major, please see the department's website.

Honors Program

To be eligible for the GWS Honors Program (GWS H195A and GWS H195B), students must have an overall 3.3 GPA, and a 3.5 GPA in the major. In addition, eligible students must write a brief proposal, to be approved by the faculty teaching GWS 101, and have a GWS faculty member or affiliate agree to chair the honors thesis by the beginning of the fall term of their senior year. GWS H195 cannot be used as an elective in the major.

To receive honors in GWS, students must have a 3.6 for honors, a 3.8 for high honors, or a 3.9 for highest honors. In addition, the student must receive a minimum of an A- in both GWS H195A and GWS H195B.

For details on how to declare the major click here.

Minor Program

The Department of Gender and Women's Studies offers a minor in Gender and Women's Studies. For further information regarding minor requirements, please see the Minor Requirements tab on this page. Students must declare the Minor the semester before they intend to graduate.  Once they have decided to minor in the program, they must complete and submit the GWS Minor Worksheet to the undergraduate adviser.  After fulfilling all course requirements, students must complete a Completion of L & S Minor form and submit it to the GWS undergraduate adviser in 608 Social Sciences Building.

Other Minor Offered by the Department of Gender and Women's Studies

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies (Minor)

Visit Department Website

Knowledge About the Field

1. Intersectionality: Analyze gender as it intersects with other relations of power such as race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, nationality, religion, geography, ability, and age; distinguish universalist understandings of gender, women, and sexuality from multi-dimensional analyses that recognize interconnectivity and mutual constitution of categories.
2. Gender issues: Recognize the social, political, economic, national, and cultural dimensions of gender as these relate to disparities in power and privilege. Become familiar with a range of past and present major issues pertaining to gender, such as race and citizenship, reproductive and sexual politics, media representation, understandings of masculinities and femininities, racialization of gender and sexuality, women's enfranchisement, gender and violence, identity politics, immigration, sex discrimination, changing families, gender and environment, labor, language, health disparities, gender and science, histories of colonialism, nation-state formations.
3. Feminisms, Feminist Theories and Feminist Research: Describe and distinguish a broad range of feminist theories and practices in their specific cultural and historical contexts both nationally and internationally; identify the contributions and limits of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdiciplinary feminist research and scholarship.
4. Historicization and contextualization: Articulate differences in sociopolitical contexts that inform opinions, theories, identities, subcultures and politics pertaining to gender and sexuality. Discuss issues of gender and sexuality in the context of their specific histories, knowledge frames, and politics. Work flexibly with a variety of epistemological approaches, recognizing each as culturally specific and inherently limited.

Ways of Communicating

1. Visual Media and New Technologies: Evaluate, interpret, and generate information from a variety of sources, including print and electronic media, film and video, and internet technologies.
2. Written and Verbal Communication: Express ideas effectively, both verbally and in written form, tailoring arguments and presentation styles to audience and context.

Critical Practice

1. Creativity: Bring together a variety of texts, ideas, theoretical, political, empirical, aesthetic, and rhetorical approaches in order to respond imaginatively to social, political, and intellectual issues.
2. Collaboration: Work collectively, take initiative, offer and receive constructive criticism, exchange ideas and creatively work together toward a common endeavor.
3. Engaged Practices: Engage in a variety of feminist approaches, linking theory with practice. Learn how to be an effective advocate informed by transnational, political, sociocultural, and philosophical contexts.
4. Knowledge production: Understand that social, cultural, and scientific knowledges are rarely pre-given, but produced. Demonstrate ways in which various cultural practices, including cultural traditions, academic practices, and information genres participate in and shape specific productions of knowledge, considering roles played by aesthetic forms, scientific journals, popular fiction, news media, the internet, and practices of citation.
5. Ethics: Articulate ethical positions of scholarly and activist theories of gender; that is, consider what approaches inform value judgments on specific gendered or feminist practices. Understand other ethical research concerns such as human subjects and plagiarism.
6. Critical self-awareness: Demonstrate self-reflexivity about one's ideas and social and political positions.

Skills

Critical Thinking

1. Critical analysis: Identify and evaluate arguments, rhetorical styles, synthesize ideas, and develop well-substantiated, coherent, and concise arguments.
2. Logical reasoning: Identify and follow a logical sequence or argument through to its end; recognize faulty reasoning or premature closure.
3. Abstract thinking: Generalize for a specific purpose and/or in a way that clarifies and heightens understanding of major issues at stake; identify the essential or most relevant elements of a concept, event, object, text, etc.
4. Argumentation: Marshal appropriate and relevant evidence in order to develop a clear claim or stance using specific rhetorical approaches.

Doing Research

1. Problem solving: Identify important historical and contemporary issues relating to gender and women's studies, evaluate various responses to them, and adapt the knowledge gained through this process to everyday situations.
2. Research Skills: Produce or locate resources and learn to build a research agenda. Read broadly in order to develop well-focused projects, using primary and secondary sources. Delineate key points in scholarly articles and respond to them. Use different modes of research, including empirical methods, scholarly literature, and theoretical and artistic engagement. Develop advanced library skills tailored to specific research projects, including facility with electronic databases, bibliographic reference materials, archival documents, and image and sound repositories.
3. Interdisciplinarity: Draw from multiple fields of study or define new fields; grasp means and significance of expanding, crossing, transgressing, or bridging disciplinary boundaries.