Graduate Minor Requirements
The Graduate Minor requires 20 hours of course work, which includes a 5 hour core course, one 5 hour gateway course, a 5 hour concentration course, and a 5 hour elective course.Required Core Theory Course: 5 credit hours
WS 700 Introduction to Graduate Studies (graduate, 5 credit hours)This course provides an introduction to Women's Studies as a professional/academic field of study and an orientation to the Department's graduate program, facilities, resources, and faculty. The course will introduce skills necessary for analyzing and comparing graduate level readings, techniques of group discussion, basic theoretical terminology and key issues and intellectual debates that characterize contemporary feminist discourse, epistemology, and pedagogy. Readings, discussion, activities, and papers will help students understand the nature of graduate study and clarify their academic goals.
The Minor Concentration Tracks:
Students will construct a track in one of the following concentrations with the help of their Women's Studies faculty advisor:- Difference and Diversity
- Gender Representation
- Gender, Power, and Social Change
WS 710 Theorizing Difference, 720 Theorizing Gender, Power and Change, or WS 740 Theorizing Gender Representation. Students will meet with a faculty advisor in Women’s Studies after being accepted to the minor program and will receive direction about which course will best suit their intellectual interests.
WS 710 Theorizing Difference (graduate, 5 credit hours)
This graduate-level course will examine cultural and theoretical treatments of difference by feminist scholars and artists. The texts will explore the social, political and cultural construction of difference, the relationships and intersections between categories of difference, and the ways in which individual women and groups of women interpret and experience multiple categories of difference. We will also explore the political, ethical and methodological dimensions of studying difference.
WS 720 Theorizing Gender, Power, and Change (graduate, 5 credit hours)
This course is one of the graduate core courses in Women's Studies. It provides an overview of analyses of gender in relation to social, political, and economic contexts, with particular attention to the ways that theories of power, knowledge, and identity have unfolded in the last 30 years. Readings include background excerpts from Marx, Fanon, Gramsci, & Althusser and a wide range of feminist works including ethnography, social theory, and critical race theory.
This course is designed to introduce graduate students to the central debates that have characterized feminist theories of representation of the last two decades. Such theories of representation have included analyses of gender in particular representational forms (autobiography, film, literature), explorations of the complex relationships between social context and individual text, and studies of the dynamics of identification, subjectivity, and desire.
The second course in the student's concentration area should be discussed with their Women's Studies faculty advisor. This course and the final 5 credit hour elective are to be chosen from the following:
WS 620 Topics in Feminist Studies (undergrad/graduate, 5 credit hours)Interdisciplinary in-depth analysis of selected topics in feminist research and interpretation. Topic varies quarterly; contact the Department of Women's Studies for specific course descriptions. (Repeatable to a maximum of 15 credit hours.)
623 African Women in Comparative and Historical Persectives(undergrad/graduate, 5 credit hours)
This course uses a cross-cultural approach to examine the cultures and roles of African women in the 20th and 21st centuries. Particular attention is given to the voices of African women as they confront and work to overcome the complex problems they encounter in their everyday lives.
WS 624 Women and Social Change in Latin America (undergrad/graduate, 5 credit hours)
Feminist perspectives to introduce students to Latin American women's experiences and reality as perceived by those who study women and women themselves.
WS 670 Gender Discrimination (undergrad/graduate, 5 credit hours)
This course will examine how law, social movements, and public policy shape our understanding of justice and gender discrimination and our efforts to end gender discrimination. We will consider the meaning and significance of gender discrimination within a global context and how gender discrimination intersects with other forms of discrimination based on caste, race, class, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, etc. We will examine case law, government policies, and UN resolutions on a variety of topics including rape, sexual harassment, educational equity, comparable worth and pay equity, sexual rights, Title IX, and human rights. We will compare and contrast a number of different approaches including, affirmative action, gender mainstreaming, and human capabilities theory. This course is cross-listed with Sociology.
WS 726 Gender & Public Policy (graduate, 5 credit hours)
Public policy affects the lives of men and women differently. Public policy is gendered in very specific ways. Women are treated differently by public policy and much of this treatment is accredited to the different views of women's needs and abilities across time. This course will explore the historical development of public policies affecting women's lives and the ways in which public policy has constructed the category women. We will also explore the ways in which feminists have resisted public policy categorizations particularly as they divide women along the lines of age, race, class, sexuality, urban/rural, and parental status.
WS 742 Feminism and the Cinema (graduate, 5 credit hours)
Study of the relationship between feminist film theory and criticism and specific genres, historical periods and issues in cinematic representation.
WS 750 Violence Against Women: Theory and Response (graduate, 5 credit hours)
The primary objective of this course is to provide graduate training in theorizing and developing analytical tools to assess the structural/cultural factors that contribute to violence against women, social responses to such violence, women's agency, and diverse strategies to eliminate violence against women.
WS 760 Feminist Methodology (graduate, 5 credit hours)
This course provides graduate students with an overview of feminist methodological issues and dilemmas and an introduction to a variety of research techniques and methods.
WS 771 Feminism and Psychoanalysis (graduate, 5 credit hours)
An analysis of major psychoanalytic writings about women and feminist responses to them.
WS 810 Topics in Black Feminist Theory (graduate, 5 credit hours)
Theoretical analysis of the politics and perceptions of womanhood in the black community.
WS 820 Topics in Gender, Power, and Social Change (graduate, 5 credit hours).
Advanced study of variable topics relating to gender, power and change, both theoretical (especially materialist and practical).
WS 840 Topics in Representing Gender (graduate 5 credit hours)
This course will offer in-depth investigations of topics and genres central to feminist theories of gender representation, including considerations of aesthetics, subjectivity, intersectionality, narrative, and/or the gaze. Course is repeatable to a maximum of 15 credit hours.
WS 860 Topics in Feminist Studies (graduate 5 credit hours)
This course will embody feminist studies on a variety of topics such as sexuality, activism, and materialism. Course is repeatable to a maximum of 15 credit hours.
Contemporary biological, psychological, social, legal, and political theories of sexuality.
