Objectives

1. To examine the effects of gender on cultural, political, and personal experience, transforming intellectual inquiry by utilizing diverse women’s experiences as the roots of that inquiry.
2. To integrate knowledge across traditional academic boundaries.
3. To promote an understanding and appreciation of women in contemporary society.
4. To encourage students, both women and men, to develop skills for addressing the conditions leading to social injustices in their personal lives, in the workplace, and in society.

The Program

The Women’s Studies Program sponsors events and programming related to women’s and gender issues. This extracurricular programming is an important part of the program’s educational mission. Many students benefit from these activities, in addition to those benefits gained from being enrolled in women’s studies courses.

Housed in the Sociology Department, the minor in Women’s Studies supports and is supported by this programming. The minor provides a structure in which issues of gender and their interaction with other elements of identity important to both women’s and men’s lives can be studied in a concentrated and comprehensive fashion, illuminating and enhancing major courses of study. This intellectual structure addresses gender-related issues through coursework in multiple disciplines. Students are able to incorporate an emphasis on women’s studies into any program of study at Lewis. Both men and women are encouraged to participate in the Women’s Studies Program.

Each student’s program of study in Women’s Studies is developed with the advice and consent of the program director. In addition to the regularly offered courses listed here, other courses (such as Special Topics courses in various disciplines) and workshops meeting the requirements of the minor are listed together each semester in the online University Course Schedule, published by the Office of the Registrar.

Minor