Women's Studies

Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is both a discipline and an interdisciplinary program. Over the past 30 years, feminist scholarship has developed analytic and methodological tools by which to study and explore women's lives and constructions of gender from disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. The Women’s Studies Program offers a Bachelor of Arts, an undergraduate minor and a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies.

The discipline of Women’s Studies examines women and gender as multifaceted and diverse, embedded in a matrix of power relations including race, class, sexuality and nationality. Women’s Studies uses and transforms the analytical tools of different disciplines in the social sciences, arts and humanities and natural and physical sciences such as anthropology, art, biology, business, communication, education, history, legal studies, literature, nursing, philosophy, political economy, psychology, sociology and more. There are now over thousand undergraduate and graduate programs nationwide. Current scholarship at the University includes: Latin-American and Caribbean feminisms; feminist philosophy; sexuality; queer studies, women’s health issues; international human rights; social construction of identities; global women’s activism; gender and development; feminist pedagogy; critical race feminisms; postcolonial and transnational studies; globalization; feminist science studies; and third world feminisms.

Examples of recent course offerings: Women in Islam; Race, Gender and Science; Theorizing Black Feminisms; The Social Construction of Whiteness and Women; Globalization: Gender, Race, Class and Nation; Latin American Feminisms; U.S. Women’s Lives in Contexts: Reading and Creating Political Autobiography; Feminist Research Methodologies.

Women's Studies at UMass has a proud history. We are one of the most established Women’s Studies programs in the country, graduating our first undergraduate majors in 1975 and developing a graduate program in the 1990's. In addition to the thriving community of feminist scholars and teachers on campus and within the Five Colleges there is a Women's Studies specialist at the library. The University is also home to the Everywoman's Center, one of the oldest and largest women's centers in the country. Women’s Studies has also been a vibrant force at the other four colleges. The Four Colleges and the University, in collaboration with the Five College Consortium, worked together to establish the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, now in its 12th year. The Center organizes conference and workshops, features works in progress of Five College faculty, and offers residencies for national and international scholars and activists.

[edit] Links

• UMass Women's Studies Department