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.
01:988:387 Feminism, Signs, and Representation (3)
Introduces major theories in contemporary critical theory including structuralism, recent critiques of structuralism. Focuses on the models and criteria to analyze cultural and social life.
01:988:372 Contemporary Feminist Activism (3)
Autonomous women's movements in the 20th and 21st centuries. Select case studies illustrate themes of gender and collective action.
01:988:371 Making Change (3)
In-depth analysis of different ways women have organized for change. Focus on three or four case studies using cross-cultural perspectives to illustrate various themes of gender and collective action by women.
01:988:370 Critical Feminist Investigation (3)
Introduces modes of knowledge production, research methods, and strategies for interdisciplinary feminist scholarship. Required for students pursuing honors in women's and gender studies. Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 235 or 201 or 301 or 302.
01:988:369 Feminism, Space, and Visuality (3)
Examines how space and vision have been associated with historically developed concepts of femininity and masculinity.
01:988:368 Producing Identities: Race, Gender, Class, and Sexualities (3)
Social constitution of the self and communities through emergence and transformation of concepts and categories (race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality) associated with personal identity.
01:988:350 Gender and Spirituality (3)
Class explores women's spirituality, feminist theology, and spiritual systems from around the world. How are spiritual systems and practices gendered?
01:988:344 Women and Leadership (3)
Course explores women's leadership for social change at work, in politics, communities, and the household in a variety of historical and contemporary meetings.
Prerequisites: By special permission of instructor. Students for this course must have applied and been accepted into the IWL Leadership Scholars Program.
01:988:341 Gender and Popular Culture (3)
Use of varied theoretical approaches to examine how popular culture texts shape everyday perceptions of race, gender, family, and nation. Texts include film, television, and radio. Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 201 or 235 or permission of instructor.
01:988:337 Globalization, Sex, and Families (3)
Transnational intimacies, travel, and migration. Case studies of transnational adoption, marriage, sex work, and domestic work. Larger contexts of globalization and impact on families and sexual relations.