Graduate Program Overview
For more than three decades, women's studies scholars and teachers at Ohio State have been exploring women's lives and histories in complex and challenging ways. We've examined how traditional disciplines exclude women, and we've offered remedies. We've looked at the diversity of women's experiences, and we're building theories that account for difference as well as similarity. We've utilized interdisciplinary thinking in these endeavors whether we are exploring the relationship between gender and movements for social change, examining the connections between feminist theory and art forms by and about women, or studying women's economic strategies across cultures. We rethink and reconstruct what women have been and what women might become, how gender affects human behavior and interacts with race, class, age, and sexuality, and how theory and practice enhance one another.The Department
More than 30 years old, the Department of Women's Studies is home to widely published, award-winning faculty. Committed to building a diverse curriculum, we recruit nationally and internationally. Our department offers one of the largest and most comprehensive programs in the country.Thirteen core faculty members hold regular, contractual appointments in the Department of Women's Studies. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and have expertise in a variety of specialties, including gender and public policy, sexuality, women's health, gender and visual culture, women and the legal system, feminist literary criticism, women and work, women's history, feminist theory, and feminist methodology.
In addition to faculty members with formal appointments in Women's Studies, we have over 55 associated scholars in other academic units who are specialists in discipline-based feminist scholarship and teach courses that may count toward women's studies graduate degree.
Women's Studies...- has over 150 majors, 125 minors, and 33 M.A. and PhD students.
- is supported by a full-time Women's Studies librarian who oversees an extensive independent Women's Studies Library that has over 18,000 monographs and 100 current journals.
- has over 400 articles on an electronic database for our national, custom-designed reader, Reading Women's Lives
- offers internships in government, nonprofit organizations and cultural institutions and created Peer Power, an outreach initiative for middle and high schools.
- Offers support to all graduate students with a teaching, research, or administrative assignment.
The University
The University has a number of attractions that contribute materially to our Women's Studies program. Among these are: The Mershon Center for International Security and Public Policy, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, the Kirwan Institute for Race and Ethnicity in the Americas, and The Ohio State University Association for Women in Development.Additional activities, resources, and events that may be of particular interest to graduate students in Women's Studies include The Multicultural Center, which houses the offices of Women Student Services; the Rape Education and Prevention Program; and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transsexual Student Services. The Multicultural Center offers many workshops and speakers each quarter. In addition, they provide student advocacy, information referrals, a resource library, and a speaker's bureau.
