Stephanie O'Hara, PhD she/her

Basic concepts and perspectives in Women's Studies, placing women's experience at the center of interpretation. With focus on women's history and contemporary issues, the course examines women's lives with emphasis on how gender interacts with race, class, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. The central aim is to foster critical reading and thinking about women's lives: how the interlocking systems of oppression, colonialism, racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism shape women's lives; and how women have worked to resist these oppressions. This course satisfies a social science distribution requirement and the general education diversity requirement.

Contemporary feminist movement that reaches beyond the traditional goal of gender equality to include multiple intersecting categories such as race and class. Intersectional feminism is a theoretical lens for understanding how sexism, racism, and other oppressive frameworks, can overlap and affect people in multiple ways by reinforcing social inequalities and upholding systems of privilege.

Topics will be determined by the faculty member and will therefore vary.

Feminist theorizing of the twenty-first century. The course will focus on key issues in fourth-wave feminism and how social media has been used to highlight and address them, including a recognition of diversity and an emphasis on intersectionality; body shaming and rape culture; and the disruption of gender categories.  

Study under the supervision of a faculty member in an area covered in a regular course not currently being offered. Conditions and hours to be arranged.

Study under the supervision of a faculty member in an area not otherwise part of the discipline's course offerings. Conditions and hours to be arranged.

The WGS capstone course is designed to cohere a major student's core curriculum work. While the subject matter may change depending on the interdisciplinary connections, the course will be grounded in feminist scholarship and require a research project that draws upon feminist theories and feminist research methods, along with a public presentation at the end of the semester to the class and Women Studies faculty. This course will be an opportunity for students to integrate their major course knowledge and demonstrate their ability to apply feminist theory and research methods.