Women's & Gender Studies invites students to use gender as a fundamental category of analysis to understand the operations of power between men, women, and transgender individuals in past and present societies and to recognize how gender has informed and interacted with diverse axes of identification including sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, age, nationality, and religion. Majors will study the methods and theoretical paradigms of feminist and queer research, focusing on how theorists and scholars in the interdisciplinary field of women's and gender studies have critically engaged, challenged, and revised categories of philosophical and political thought, including liberalism, socialism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and post-colonialism. They will learn how feminist methodologies have reshaped the ways we approach knowledge in the traditional disciplines and how they form the basis of gender, sexuality, queer, and masculinity studies. Students are encouraged to investigate historical and contemporary contributions of women as well as the significance of gender as a cultural construction in the social and natural sciences, in the arts and literature, and in religion. They will also analyze the multiple ways in which gender influences our individual and collective assumptions in local and global contexts and informs diverse political and social debates.
Mailing Address
Women's and Gender Studies
735 University Avenue
Sewanee, TN 37383-1000
Department Chair
Dr. Andrea Mansker
Office Location: Walsh-Ellett 203
Phone (931) 598-1861
Email: amansker@sewanee.edu
