Ohio Wesleyan University | Women’s and Gender Studies Program

Welcome

THE WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES PROGRAM is an area of study as well as an optic for understanding society, culture, and political events. The program offers interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and transnational courses and provides a meeting ground to explore questions about political institutions, global events, and collective and individual action. Courses in the program examine how an individual’s social experiences are shaped by history and institutions of gender/sex, socioeconomic class, race, sexuality and nationality.

Students are encouraged to develop their analytical, comparative, transnational, and media literacy skills by taking courses in the program offered by contributing faculty in history, economics, literature, sociology, anthropology, journalism, and zoology, as well as many other departments. The academic frameworks provided in courses seek to enhance the integration of these skills beyond the classroom and campus to one’s everyday public and personal lives.

Courses in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program provide perspectives throughout the entire curriculum as they are also taught by many faculty across various disciplines. In this way the program enriches more traditional disciplinary approaches not simply by including the study of women and gender constructions but by transforming the categories through which knowledge is produced, applied, and disseminated within that given discipline.

On campus many Women’s and Gender Studies majors, minors, and self-designed majors are often involved in programs including: the Women’s House, the Peace and Justice House, the Women’s Resource Center, PRIDE, Amnesty International, Progress OWU, the GLBT Task Force, NARAL, and Sisters United. Many students also participate in on-campus and off-campus community service projects, internships, and study abroad programs.

Women’s and Gender Studies is a growing and dynamic field and many majors often combine this major with other disciplines. In addition to going to graduate school many students pursue careers in virtually all fields including law, government, social services, education, health professions, research, medicine and journalism.