What is Women's Studies?

The field of Women's Studies is interdisciplinary. Calling upon such fields as history, economics, psychology, health, music, literature, and visual arts, Women's Studies seeks to understand the position of women in society. The interdisciplinary nature of Women's Studies fosters an active examination of the varying influences upon women's and men's lives such as race, class, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, and age. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Women's Studies program provides students an opportunity to think about the construction and influences of gender in contemporary society, to discover the historical factors that have shaped the current status of women from varying backgrounds and countries, and to explore paths to achieve equality for all people.

Core Major Objectives:

• Understand the historical, social, and political contexts of women's movements and feminist thought.
• Understand feminist theories and apply them in critiquing and transforming their world.

• Connect women's movements and feminist theory to other social justice movements and theories.

Concentration-Specific Objectives

Gender Studies

• Identify and evaluate the social construction of gender and the ways gender intersects with other forms of identity.

Politics, Justice and Policy

• Understand the gendering of our socioeconomic and political worlds and the individual and collective components of social change.

Cross-Cultural Inquiry

• Identify, compare, and evaluate culturally and historically specific ideas of gender, sex, and sexuality.

Arts and Letters

• Apply a critical feminist perspective to the study of literature and the arts.