Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Majors for 2012-13: front row (l-r) Christina Bowerman, Charlotte Shapiro, Scott McLellan; back row (l-r) Angela Neely, Heather Kirk, Elizabeth Worrall.
The WGSS curriculum is based in feminist scholarship - both within traditional disciplines across the academic divisions and in response to questions that cannot be answered within the framework of a single discipline. To foster this interdisciplinary inquiry, the Women's Studies Program was established in 1978 and has been built upon the feminist teaching, scholarship, and activism from faculty and students with a wide variety of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives. In the past few decades, the program has grown and evolved, changing its name to the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program in 2008 to recognize important changes within feminist scholarship.
Acknowledging this important history, WGSS courses retain Women's Studies' focus on examining previously unavailable information about the lives and contributions of women and analyzing the effects of cultural attitudes, power and inequality, and social structures on the experiences of women. In addition, feminist scholarship has recognized and explored commonalities between women's oppression and the oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other sexual minorities worldwide, as well as the varied experiences of masculinity throughout the globe. In this vein, WGSS courses explore the cultural construction of sex, gender, and sexuality in the context of their relationship between theoretical and experiential knowledge, and privileging historically marginalized voices, WGSS encourages scholarship and teaching that is committed to the feminist principle of creating a more just world for all.
The WGSS banner image is the Saxton McKinley House. This restored Victorian home in Canton, Ohio, is the designated First Ladies' National Historic Site. (photo compliments of the National First Ladies' Library)
What You Can Do With a Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Degree
Bowerman -- Recipient of the John Plummer Memorial Scholarship for 2012-13
Upon receiving the John Plummer Memorial Scholarship, Christina Bowerman '13, a Religious Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies double major, said, "I am honored and humbled by this generous award. The issue of queer identities and religious identities is dear to my heart because it is something that I have struggled with and something I do struggle with. I have been lucky to have a very supportive immediate family and group of friends who recognize the intersections of my religious and queer identity. Because I am so lucky to have such a strong support system, I hope that I can make a space on campus for people to struggle safely to find their identities like I have. Building these bridges is possible and should be a continued effort on Wooster's campus."