Our program strives for a broad and complex understanding of the female experience in a global context. Encountering cross-cultural and multi-racial perspectives, our students explore women’s lives, labor, and arts; they examine the politics of gender; and they study the history of gender roles as well as representations of those roles in different media. Focusing on the interaction of class, race, gender, and sexuality, we help our minors analyze the relations of power in various cultures, and we provide our students with a basic structure of ideas, a framework for analyzing the fundamental shift in understanding arising from a systematic retrieval of history and from women’s changing awareness.
Our curriculum offers students the chance to develop skills such as critical thinking, writing, research, and social activism. Students will find these skills are necessary for a wide range of academic disciplines. Our minor prepares students for careers in many fields, including research, policy, government and nonprofit agencies, publishing, international affairs, education and advocacy.
Faculty representing diverse disciplines in the College of Arts and Sciences collaborate with and contribute to the Women’s Studies program.
WST 240 Introduction to Women's StudiesProvides a basic structure of ideas for examining questions of gender differences in history, culture, and contemporary society. Students learn central concepts and research methods in women's studies and use them to examine such topics as family, religion, work, gender, sexuality, and social change.
3 creditsWST 250 Women in Popular CultureExplores the cultural images and realities of contemporary women and their lives. Print, film, television, short fiction, and artifact will be used to document cultural rates.
3 credits
Gen Ed Area: CapstoneWST 301 Women, Peacemaking, and NonviolenceConsiders the theoretical foundations of non-violence and explores the application of these principles with reference to the experiences and history of women.
Approved for General Education Capstone.
3 creditsWST 368 Women and LeadershipExplores women's leadership issues at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Key themes include the relational aspects of leadership, authenticity, identity and power, and the voice of leadership.
General Education Applications Area: Leadership
3 creditsWST 369 Women and Community ChangeExplores women's roles in U.S. history from the perspectives of women activists. Examines women's impact on social, political, and cultural change in the U.S. including movements for economic justice, race relations, sexual identity, peace, gender equality, public health, and social welfare. Formerly WST 369 Women and Community Change
3 credits
General Education: LeadershipWST 403 Feminist CriticismFocuses on several schools of feminist criticism and theory. Serving as an introduction to feminist theory and criticism, the course will introduce students to some of the theories and theorists that serve as a foundation for understanding current feminist thought. We will explore the evolution and historical development of feminist criticism and will place ourselves as feminist scholars in this tradition. To emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of feminist scholarship, we will also explore several of the disciplines to which feminist criticism has been and can be applied. Students will have the opportunity to apply the feminist theories to their appropriate disciplines.
3 credits
Prerequisite: WST 240
Our program strives for a broad and complex understanding of the female experience in a global context. Encountering cross-cultural and multi-racial perspectives, our students explore women’s lives, labor, and arts; they examine the politics of gender; and they study the history of gender roles as well as representations of those roles in different media. Focusing on the interaction of class, race, gender, and sexuality, we help our minors analyze the relations of power in various cultures, and we provide our students with a basic structure of ideas, a framework for analyzing the fundamental shift in understanding arising from a systematic retrieval of history and from women’s changing awareness.
