Recent scholarship has made it clear that full understanding of human behavior, culture, and society cannot be attained without investigating women’s experiences.  The Women’s Studies minor is an 18-hour interdisciplinary program designed to offer students such an opportunity.  It provides new ways of approaching conventional disciplines and opens up questions previously unexamined.

Our aim is two-fold: to stimulate and promote new scholarship in the area of Women’s Studies and to encourage traditional departments to broaden fields of study to include women’s issues.  Attention paid to women’s perspectives has altered our understanding of historical change, social, economic, and political life, and the arts and sciences.  In addition, Women’s Studies highlights the necessity of understanding important social divisions other than gender: those of race, economic status, sexual identity, and nationality It provides key conceptual tools that women and men can use in educating themselves both in and out of college.

Courses listed below are offered on a regular basis; in addition, occasional special topics courses may be taken for credit toward the minor with permission of the Women’s Studies Minor Chair.  All Women’s Studies Minor students are required to submit a writing portfolio in the final semester of their senior year to the Women’s Studies Minor Chair.  The portfolio must consist of one paper (worth at least 10% of the course grade) from each of the following classes: WST 2309, WST 4309, and one cross-listed Women’s Studies course. Once the minor has been selected, students should contact the Women’s Studies Minor Chair as soon as possible, as well as declare their minor in the Registration Office, 1125 McAfee Gym.