Gender and Women’s Studies Minor

Director: M. Rieker

The goal of the minor in Gender and Women’s Studies is to provide undergraduate students with an interdisciplinary examination of the factors that influence our notions of male and female, masculine and feminine and the various forms of gender relations under conditions of social transformation and development. As such, the minor builds on existing curricular strengths by fostering intellectual discourse on the nature and role of gender as an analytical category fundamental to the understanding of self, society, history, politics and social change in a cross disciplinary and comparative perspective.

The minor in Gender and Women’s Studies is comprised of five courses taken from different disciplines. Four of the five courses making up the minor should be taken from disciplines outside the student’s major. Three of the four courses must be taken from the core undergraduate courses listed below. One of the three must be the course ANTH 360 Gender and Social Change, which provides the students with the common conceptual background which they will need to pursue other courses in the minor. Up to two courses not regularly offered which deal specifically with gender, or upon special petition, special topics courses in which the students have written research papers on some aspect of gender may be taken. Petitions must include copies of the papers which students wrote and must be submitted through the director to the Graduate Advisory committee of the Institute.