The women's and gender studies curriculum offers a series of courses on women, gender, and the family, providing a coherent grasp of women's achievements throughout history as well as a sense of female psychology and socialization. In offering students a systematic range of women's studies perspectives and fields, the program allows them the opportunity to relate the interdisciplinary study of women's experience to the content of their major academic field of study.
More specifically, women's and gender studies has the following goals:
- To develop the leadership potential of women by exposing them to women's history and their achievements in various fields
- To offer male students the opportunity to study the history of women's contributions in the arts and sciences and to understand fully the unique nature of women's experiences
- To understand the ways in which women's works in art, literature, history, science, religion and philosophy have been inspired and influenced by a tradition of women's works in all creative and academic fields
- To identify the particular circumstances of working class and minority women and understand how the forces of gender, race and class shape their lives and determine their work
Since its inception in 1989, the women's and gender studies curriculum includes a growing number of courses on male gender roles which reflect the growing body of scholarship centered on how men are gendered in American society. Although the majority of women's studies courses emphasize gender in western societies, one of the goals of this program is to provide a global context and to offer students courses which will define the roles and issues of women and men in non-western societies.
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Co-Concentration in Women's and Gender Studies
The co-concentration in women's and gender studies allows students to combine it with another area of study.
Requirements:
- Sex Roles: An Introduction to Women's Studies (IDS 303)
- Women and Men: Debating the Differences (IDS 323)
- Seminar in Women's Studies (WMS 400)
- Four other women's studies courses It is important to understand that students electing the co-concentration in women's and gender studies can not earn general studies credit for the courses which are part of their concentration.
The listings and topics vary from year to year, but among the courses offered on a regular basis for either the program or the co-concentration
are:
- Sex Roles: Introduction to Women's Studies (IDS 303)
- Women and Men: Debating the Differences (IDS 323)
- Feminism & Philosophy (PHI 228)
- Women and the Bible (REL 244)
- Goddesses: East and West (REL 255)
- Women in Latin America (LAS 340)
- U.S. Social History: The American Family 1600-1900 (HIS 311)
- Sex, Gender and Culture (ANT 320)
- Psychology of Gender (PSY 406)
- The Family (SOC 261)
- Domestic Violence (SOC 311)
- Intimate Relations (SOC 312)
- Women Writing in America (ENG 235)
- Black Women Writers (ENG 235)
- Women Writers: Africa & the Caribbean (ENG 235)
- Women's Texts (ENG 390)
- Women & Art (IDS 214)
- Men in Transition (IDS 220)
- Race, Class & Gender (PHI 135)
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The Women's and Gender Studies Program
Requirements:
• IDS 303 or IDS 323
• Four other women's studies courses. (Students may also choose to take both women's studies IDS courses and three other women's studies courses.)
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Courses
WMS 400
Seminar in Women's Studies
Addressing developments in the new scholarship on women and in feminist theory and methodology, the seminar focuses on topics from different disciplines and affords students the opportunity to present their own scholarly work in the field. Topics vary from year to year and take advantage of the wide range of expertise of faculty specializing in women's studies fields. Major focus in this seminar course is on issues related to past, present and future constructions of gender in the United States.
The voices of both women and men representing various viewpoints and disciplines are reviewed and studied in order to interpret and understand the concepts of sex, gender, gender roles and gender identity (psychological based theories are emphasized). The meanings of these concepts are examined critically as a function of changing perspectives associated with biological determinism, technology, economics, politics and social construction within the Romantic, Modern and Postmodern periods of history. Special topics are researched. In addition, part of the focus is on our construction of human sexuality and the relationship among gender, sex and sexuality.
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