Academics
Insert general "Academics" content here.
01:988:480 Ethics and Leadership (3)
This course will explore contemporary relations between ethics and politics, between conceptions of leadership and the production of depoliticized masses, between individual values and public beliefs.
01:988:445 Feminist Advocacy for Women's Rights through the United Nations
The course will foster Women's and Gender Studies learning goals: Students will be able to identify, analyze, and critique the formation and reproduction of social, economic, and political hierarchies grounded in race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality. The course aims to bridge feminist theory and praxis through readings, discussions and concrete experiences at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). In 2015, the CSW review 20 years of progress since the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing China. The course will explore four broad themes: global strategies for sustainable development; human rights and macroeconomic policies; the contributions and insights of feminist perspectives on women's economic rights and development and the possibilities and liabilities of the United Nations as a venue for feminist advocacy. The course will encourage the use of an intersectional lens to explore these themes.
01:988:430 IWL Social Action Project (BA)
Independent action projects designed to address a particular problem or women's policy issue relevant to the work done at the internship site. Projects include gender component and development of leadership skills. Class meets biweekly.
01:988:429 Engendering Development (3)
Examines gender differences in economic opportunity, human rights, and political representation across developing countries.
Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 235 or 301.
01:988:426 Internship for IWL Scholars (BA)
Examination of women, community activism, and leadership for change; explores how women's leadership shapes organizations, social movements, and policy development. Interns work in placements relevant to their policy interests and produce proposals for social action projects. Prerequisites: Acceptance into IWL Leadership Scholars Program and 01:988:344, or by permission of instructor.
01:988:425 Internship in Women's and Gender Studies (6)
Interns work in organizations related to women's and gender studies. Supervision by assigned staff at the placement site. Seminar, student journal, paper, and assessment of work experience required.
Prerequisite: 01:988:301 or 302 or 303. Permission of undergraduate director required.
01:988:422 Internship in Women's and Gender Studies (3)
Students work in organizations related to women's and gender studies. Supervision by assigned staff at the placement. Paper, student journal, and assessment of work performed at placement required. Permission of undergraduate director required.
01:988:420,421 Women's Global Health Internship (3,3)
RN Response Network provides medical assistance in the context of natural disasters wherever they may occur. This internship placement involves 150-180 hours of professional work with RN Response Network in conjunction with a research paper that links this professional experience with relevant academic work on humanitarian intervention.
01:988:416 Women's Global Health: Special Topics (3)
*Topic varies with instructor. The requirements for the course would be the equivalent of any 400-level course in the department.
01:988:414 Care Work (3)
Overview of "care economy." Explores recent efforts to heighten its profit-making potential; considers long-term implications of efforts to deskill and outsource care work.
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.
Graduate Program
The Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies offers the Ph.D., the M.A. , and a Graduate Certificate Program. The graduate program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is the joint enterprise of a diverse Graduate Faculty comprising more than 100 scholars. Our students benefit from the rich resources of the larger feminist community at Rutgers which includes 27 Ph.D. students, 21 M.A. students, and over 100 Ph.D. students in other departments who are pursuing certificates in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In addition, the many Rutgers institutes and centers devoted to feminist research -- the Institute for Women's Leadership, the Center for American Women and Politics, the Center for Women's Global Leadership, the Center for Women and Work and the Institute for Research on Women -- enrich the opportunities for our students to gain practical skills and to broaden their knowledge of feminist research and politics.