Undergraduate Program
Undergraduate Program
Undergraduate Director:Dr. Yana Rodgers
Sr. Department Administrator: Monique Gregory
The Women's & Gender Studies undergraduate program, founded in the early seventies, is one of the oldest in the nation. Currently, the program has over 200 majors and minors and serves over 1900 students annually in a wide array of core and cross-listed courses. The major, approved in 1984, introduces students to significant issues and debates in feminist scholarship, theory, and activism.
“Women’s & Gender Studies seek to enrich traditional disciplinary approaches not simply by including women but by transforming the categories, through which knowledge is produced and disseminated.”
All courses are interdisciplinary and each considers the complex dynamics among race, ethnicity, locality, class, gender, and sexuality. The readings and discussions in each class represent a wide variety of women's perspectives concerning issues such as: the conceptualization of difference, the production and recreation of femininity and masculinity, language and gender, the division of labor, women and poverty, sexual violence, reproductive rights, gay and lesbian theory, gender and popular theory, and contemporary feminist politics. Ultimately, we strive to ground both research and theory in the everyday realities of feminist activism around the globe. Women’s & Gender Studies program faculty, students and staff are active members and leaders of academic and community women’s organizations.
The WGS alumnae pursue their professional career in various fields. One-fifth of our graduates continue their education in graduate programs in different fields (political science, English, law) around the country. Many alumnae also engage in work in the area of health and pharmacy (about one fourth). Others choose law (one-fifth of the alumnae), education (one fourth) media or computer studies. Many WGS graduates continue their activist work in non-governmental organizations that engage with women and work, international politics and women’s leadership.
01:988:312 African Feminism
- Course Code: 01:988:312
- Semester(s) Offered: Spring
- Credits: 3
01:988:311 Gender, Race, and Visual Media
- Course Code: 01:988:311
Course Description
We live in volatile times. Across the country, people are faced with job insecurity, decreasing wages, long working hours, continual war, and police violence, all against the backdrop of a dramatically uncertain future for the existence of life as we know it on earth. How do we manage? How do our different positions according to hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality shape our ability to thrive in these difficult conditions? Do our popular forms of entertainment, especially TV and blockbuster films, serve to anesthetize us to our difficult reality or to engage with it and maybe even strategize resistance?
In this class, we will examine visual culture, especially Hollywood cinema and television in light of the economic structure of our day: neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is predominantly characterized by extreme wealth inequality. However, neoliberalism materializes not only in the economic realm, resulting in shrinking paychecks for the vast majority of us. It also works through the social structures of race, gender, and sexuality. We will analyze how TV shows such as Transparent and films including The Wolf of Wall Street and The Hunger Games help to construct new racial, gendered, and sexual roles that respond to the political imperatives of late capitalism. In this way, we will be exploring how these notions of human difference function as dense sites of power, serving as sites of both oppression and resistance.
We will look at culture as political ideology and commodity, examining the story each text tells as well as its conditions of production, distribution, and reception. For example, when looking at TV, we will consider its function as cultural entertainment and also as a site of labor. We will examine a documentary about how Mexican women are organizing for better labor conditions in the Tijuana factories that produce most of the world’s television sets. Students will gain practice in analyzing race, gender, and sexuality as sites of power, analyzing visual texts, and making connections between culture and politics.
01:988:310 South Asian Feminism
- Course Code: 01:988:310
Objectives:
Using a variety of materials, including theoretical texts, videos, movies, research projects, and guest lectures, this course will explore the situation of South Asian women in general and Indian women in particular since the early 20th century. This course will also discuss about the role of women within the current challenges of informal economy through scholarly debates. This course thus intends to examine the development process, particularly in India with a reflection on of the entire South. Also in addition a few lectures on empirical perspectives with a macro-micro linkage perspective would be imparted for understanding the role of informal economy and gender aspects within it.
Using multitude teaching materials as noted students will examine: (1) Gender inequalities which hinder women's progress in developing countries, like in India. (2) Contribution of women workers even those functioning in the informal economy to development, (3) A system of developing linkages of women’s participation to the economy through both formal and informal work as well as non-market work (such as household chores, care work) and (4) Programmes and efforts made by the governments and other organizations to improve the conditions of informal workers and women's lives in developing countries, and specially in India.
01:988:307 Women and the Law
- Course Code: 01:988:307
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring
- Credits: 3
01:988:303 Global Feminisms
- Course Code: 01:988:303
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer
- Credits: 3
01:988:302 Feminist Theory: Contemporary Engagements
- Course Code: 01:988:302
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer
- Credits: 3
01:988:301 Feminist Theory: Historical Perspectives
- Course Code: 01:988:301
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer
- Credits: 3
01:988:299 Mentoring Leadership and Practice
- Course Code: 01:988:299
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring
- Credits: 3
01:988:296 Topics in Women’s and Gender Studies
- Course Code: 01:988:296
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring
- Credits: 1.5
01:988:294 Topics in Women’s and Gender Studies
- Course Code: 01:988:294
- Semester(s) Offered: Fall, Spring
- Credits: 1.5