Women's Studies
Visit the Department Web Site »
Women’s Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study that encourages inquiry into the full range of human experience by raising fundamental questions about gendered relations in human behavior, culture, and society.
As the academic branch of the women’s movement, Women’s Studies challenges assumptions upon which the Western tradition of scholarship has been based and seeks to integrate the diverse experiences and perspectives of women into the curriculum.
Our core curriculum offers students the analytical tools for understanding gender as it is constructed within and through differences of ethnicity, class, sexuality, and nationality. It enables students to interpret the diverse lives, issues, and voices of women in our multicultural and transnational world.
Women’s Studies faculty, from departments campuswide, work closely with the program leader to offer a dynamic and student-centered major, minor, and certificate of study. Our program also works with the student-run Women’s Center and other women’s groups on campus to provide a network of resources, support, and referral on women-centered issues, organizations, and events. We sponsor programs of interest to women, including workshops, speakers, and an annual women’s retreat.
This program is useful in the following careers: administrator of nonprofit women’s organization, affirmative action officer, attorney, community organizer, computer software designer, coordinator of women’s programs in government and business, counselor, editor, environmental activist, international development worker, journalist, legal assistant, lobbyist for women’s issues, political advocate, psychologist, rape crisis specialist, researcher on women’s projects, social worker, teacher, union organizer, urban planner, women’s center director, women’s health care specialist, writer.
Degrees Offered
BA, Minor