Recognizing that a neglect of women in most of the established disciplines has led to inadequate and incomplete understanding of human experience, Women's Studies is committed to an intensive exploration of the impact and strength of difference and diversity in women's lives. Women's Studies expands our intellectual vision and our capacity to resolve problems, through challenges to the traditional disciplines and development of new bodies of knowledge. Our program is committed to the multi-cultural and global study of women's lives. All courses are interdisciplinary and each considers the complex dynamics among race, ethnicity, locality, class, gender, and sexuality. Classroom readings and discussions represent a wide variety of theoretical perspectives on 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, and contemporary feminist politics. Encouraging active student participation in collaborative classroom discussion, analysis and critique is the signature mark of all Women's Studies classes. Thus, critical thinking, analysis, and the development of students' skills in undertaking research, written and verbal, provide the Women's Studies student the professionalism needed to pursue their future careers or further graduate study.

What can you do with Women's Studies?

Graduates with a Women's Studies major will be prepared to enter the full range of graduate, professional, and specialist service programs open to liberal arts and sciences graduates. In addition, this major provides a sound background of skills and understanding relevant to work in a variety of fields valuable to the community, such as counseling, health, education, welfare, as well as key areas of business, human resources management, public relations, advertising, mass media, the arts, civil service, and international aid organizations. A useful book is Women's Studies Graduates: The First Generation written by Barbara F. Luebke and Mary Ellen Reilly, New York: Teacher's College Press, 1995, available in Schurz Library