GGustavus Adolphus College offers an inter-departmental major and minor in Women's Studies to demonstrate the usefulness of gender as a category of analysis. Through selected courses, students study interconnections among the fundamental questions raised by scholarship on women. Students also gain historical and cross-cultural perspectives on women's experience through the examination of other issues, such as race, class, and cultural difference, that are central to the study of gender. A critical awareness of methodology (in the organizing of knowledge and the framing of analyses) also is important within each course.
| Name | Phone | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elizabeth Baer Professor (Chair) | 507-933-7324 | profile | web | schedule |
| Janet DeMars Swanson Tennis Center Manager | 507-933-6185 | profile | web | schedule |
| Margaret O'Connor Professor | 507-933-7573 | profile | web | schedule |
Gustavus Adolphus College offers a major and a minor in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. This interdisciplinary program examines gender and sexuality as cultural and social categories that organize and shape human experience. Students will interrogate the social meanings of femininity, masculinity, sexual behavior, and desire as integral to the ways that groups and individuals construct their identities within and across a variety of historical, social, and cultural contexts. To this end, students will also examine the ways that gender and sexuality intersect with other categories of social difference such as race, class, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ability, and age. Students will explore such topics as constructions of femininity and masculinity, the history of feminism, gender roles and relations, and cultural configurations of sexual desire and identity in discussion-based classes.
Courses in the GWS Program come from a variety of disciplines. A multidisciplinary approach will provide students with a foundation for thinking more broadly about categories of social difference and the various cultural and legal institutions that produce and sustain them. Students who successfully complete the program will be exposed to a wide array of methodologies regarding the history, theory, and practice of gender studies and will gain extensive experience with writing and research with a strong emphasis on information literacy.
In order to develop personal experiences with and perspectives on the workings of gender in Western and non-Western societies, the GWS Program recommends that students consider off-campus (international or domestic) academic programs. (The Office of International Education has information on many programs including HECUA, CGE, and SIT that would be particularly interesting to GWS students.) The GWS Program makes every effort to work with students in selecting courses from these programs that may be applied to the major or minor requirements.
In keeping with the mission of the College, students will be encouraged to orient these insights toward furthering the cause of social justice.
