Gender and Women’s Studies, B.A.

Major Requirements

The Gender and Women’s Studies Department emphasizes interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and transnational studies with a focus on gender.

It includes course work in feminist theories, women and social movements, transnational feminisms, women of color feminisms, decolonial and postcolonial feminisms, women’s economic conditions in the context of globalization and development, productions of women in the media and literature, queer studies, women’s health and masculinity studies.

The Gender and Women’s Studies Department teaches students to view the world with a critical analytical approach grounded in a social justice framework. The department adheres to a disciplinary practice that centers on an integrative, intersectional framing of issues concerning gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, age and the differently abled.

The major and minor provide a background for various careers such as law, counseling and healthcare or advanced graduate degrees in fields such as Women’s Studies, education, communication, politic, cultural and media studies. 

Requirements for the B.A. Degree

The major in Gender and Women’s Studies is a 45 unit major. It consists of required Lower Division (3 units) and Upper Division courses (15 units), plus Electives (15 units) and a Concentration (12 units). 

Required Courses - Lower Division (3 Units)

Students are required to take EITHER GWS 100 or GWS 110 to fulfill lower division requirements

• GWS100 - Introduction to Women's Studies (3)
  An interdisciplinary study of women in American society, including such topics as social conditions, laws, symbols, values, communication, and power. (Available for General Education, Comparative Cultural Studies F-3)

OR

• GWS110 - Women, Work, and the Family (3)
  Focuses on historical and contemporary relationship between home and community work and the marketplace within which women perform.   Examines the differences in experience of work and family as these are shaped by race, class, gender and sexuality. (Available for General Education, Comparative Cultural Studies.)

Upper Division Requirements (15 Units)

• GWS300 - Women as Agents of Change (3)
  Prerequisite: GWS100 or GWS110 or consent of the instructor, and completion of the lower-division writing requirement. New definitions and options for women within the family, community, and society. Students study and report on women's resources and organizations for change within the local community as well as on the national and international scene. (Available for General Education, Comparative Cultural Studies F-3)
• GWS 301 - Feminist Theories
  Prerequisite: GWS100, GWS110 or GWS300, or consent of the instructor. Course explores many different kinds of feminist theories historical and contemporary (Fall Semester Only).
• GWS 302 - Feminist Methods
  Prerequisite: GWS100, GWS110 or GWS300, or consent of the instructor. Course explores the many different kinds of feminist methods/methodologies that emerge out of, and/or are complementary with, feminist theories. (Spring Semester Only)
• GWS 305 - Gender and Women's Studies Community Service
  Prerequisite: GWS100, GWS110 or GWS300, or consent of the instructor. Students work in a variety of community settings- educational, political, and/or social service agencies- to apply theoretical understanding of Women's Studies to pratical and concrete community situations which affect women's daily lives. Includes regular class meetings. (Fall Semester Only).
• GWS 400 - Gender and Women's Studies Senior Seminar
  Prerequisite: GWS301, or consent of the instructor. Variable themes. With emphasis on examination of multiple levels of women's relationship to power cross-culturally (economic, political, social, personal, symbolic), students produce research paper(s) which integrate the multidisciplinary field. (Spring Semester Only).

Electives (15 Units)

15 units of electives must be taken from the list below. Up to 12 units of Electives can be Experimental and Selected Topics courses, as long as the suffix is different. 3 units may be taken outside the department in consultation with a Women's Studies advisor. Courses may be taken either as Electives or for the Concentration, but cannot be counted for both categories.

Additional courses require the consent of the Department Chair or Department Advisor. 

• GWS 220 - Men and Masculinity (3)
  Recommended Preparatory: GWS 100. This course provides a multidisciplinary investigation of ways in which masculinity is constructed in the context of fatherhood, media, sports, fraternities, law, militarization, racialization, state violence and men’s movements. The course evaluates and critically analyzes how male identities are created, negotiated and explicated in theories of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and class. Of particular interest is the way social institutions sustain and elaborate on how masculinity is organized and what it has come to mean. 
• GWS 222 - Gender, Sexuality and American Indian Communities (3) 
  Recommended preparatory AIS 101, GWS 100. A survey course that examines the concepts of gender and sexuality as they are politically, economically, socially and culturally constructed in    American Communities. Special attention is given to the special role settler colonialism plays in shaping these constructions. Explores the degree to which Indigenous articulations of gender and sexuality make possible a world in which all genders and sexualities are valued fully. (Cross-listed with AIS 222.) (Available for General Education, Social Sciences.)

• GWS 230 - Women Entertainment (3) 
  Preparatory: GWS 100. Women and Entertainment is a broad, introductory examination of women’s experience and interface with the entertainment arena, including but not limited to, film, music, and other popular cultural sites of knowledge production, from a uniquely feminist lens that focuses on the intersectionality of gender, race, class and sexuality. The course explores women’s roles in entertainment as producers, participants as well as consumers of various media. (Available for General Education, Arts and Humanities.)

• GWS 315: Gender, Sexuality and Islam in the U.S. (3)
  This interdisciplinary course examines the gender dimension of social contours of Islamic communities in North America, with an emphasis on the U.S. After a brief review of the geopolitics and historical background, immigration trends and acculturation process of communities, the course will explore what it means to be a Muslim person in the U.S. today. Special attention will be paid to social activism and feminist discourse among the diaspora Muslims and their cross-pollination or transnational impacts on the processes of globalization, reformation and democratization in the Muslim-majority countries.

• GWS320- Women and Urban Life (3)
  Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement. Course examines the gendered use of space and how women have balanced and crossed public and private spheres. Examines women and urban issues from the micro-level (community-based organizations and grassroots mobilizations) to the macro-level (national and international states and corporate entities).
   
• GWS340- Women, Gender & Global Development (3)
  Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement Course examines women's roles and concerns in socio-economic and political development processes. Positive and negative effects of colonization, post-colonial modernization, democratization, and capitalist and socialist development strategies on women and gender relations in the "Global South" and "Global North" will be examined.
   
• GWS351- Intersections of Gender, Race, Class and Sexuality (3)
  Course examines historical and contemporary issues surrounding the diversity of women living in the U.S. Gender, race, socio-economic class and sexuality are presented as central theoretical concepts and as conditions of experience that affect all women and men, as well as being primary categories of social relations for us all.
   
• GWS360- Feminist Ethics (3)
  Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement. Course examines debates about whether an essential "women's" morality exists and considers what is at stake in these arguments. Course examines the impact of gender on categories of moral virtue and ethical agency. Raises the question of how (and if) women's experience has created a moral vision which challenges the dominant ethical norms of U.S. culture.
   
• GWS370- Women and Violence (3)
  Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement. This course focuses on dimensions of violence women experience in the United States and internationally. It provides an overview of sexual violence including rape in intimate partnerships, childhood sexual assault, sexual harassment, sex trafficking, and violence against women under foreign occupation. Varied feminist scholarship around three broad areas will be covered: Sexual Violence Against Women, Physical Violence Against Women; and Perpetrators of Violence Against Women. The course includes an examination of case studies that illuminate domestic abuse, judicial abuse and war rape among others. (Available for General Education, Social Sciences).
   
• GWS380- Sexual and Reproductive Health(3)
  The course employs a gender-based analysis of the global problem of sexual health and examines the cultural, social and economic variables associated with sexual and reproductive health disparities in the US and abroad. The course provides a feminist approach to understanding women's symbolic meaning in society; and inequality of power in sexual relationships. In addition, the course has a community service component, which involves a project on public health activism in the local community (20% of the grade).
   
• GWS410 - Sex, Lies & Media (3)
  Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement. In this course, students employ critical perspectives to examine narrow definitions of gender/sexuality constructed in media representations. Students deconstruct norms of masculinity and femininity generated by industries such as television, film and advertising which perpetuate and naturalize the commodification of women’s bodies. Special attention is paid to bodies and modes of sexuality that transgress (representations of the queer body, for example). Students also construct alternative imagery and generate new ideas about gender and sexuality through discussion and various projects.
   
• GWS420 - Women and Gender in Islamic Societies (3)
  Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement. This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural course explores how gender roles, sexual norms and gender attitudes have reflected, resisted or changed in response to historical, cultural, social, economic and political changes in the Islamic societies. What has been the impact of modernity, colonialism, modernization, nationalism, and globalization on the status of Muslim women and gender relations? How have Muslim women sought to articulate and define their roles and identities? What is the impact of the recent wave of Islamist movements (“fundamentalism”) on women and gender politics? How Muslim women’s responses have interacted with the transnational women’s movements and global feminism? In addition to required readings, class lectures and guest speakers, we will watch and discuss a few documentary films.
   
• GWS430 - Global Sexualities (3)
  Prerequisite: Completion of the lower division writing requirement. Neoliberal globalization is fundamental to understanding contemporary discourses of sexuality as sexuality is also key to understanding global issues. The course will foreground a wide range of theoretical perspectives of feminist, queer and globalization theories that help students understand how the emergence of sexuality as an intellectual and social arena is concurrent with specific characteristics of the globalization process and how the new theories of sexuality advance and challenge the feminist agenda for global social and gender justice.
   
• GWS 440 -Latin American Feminisms (3)
  Recommended Preparatory Courses: GWS 100 or GWS 110. Students study the situation of women and the different types of feminisms that have emerged in Latin America in contemporary times. The course examines how feminism and the status of women in Latin America have been impacted by factors such as colonialism, imperialism, modernization, democratization, Latin American social revolutions (e.g., in Cuba and Nicaragua), and 21st-century socialism. Available for graduate credit.

• GWS395/GWS495- Special and Experimental Topics in Women's Studies (3)
  Prerequisite: completion of GWS100 or 110 and 300. The study of selected themes or figures in Women's Studies. Topics will change from semester to semester. These are courses that are either offered one time (Special Topics courses) or new courses in development (Experimental Topics). You may take up to 4 of these courses towards your Major Electives as long as the suffix is different.

Concentration

All Students must also complete a 12 unit concentration from the list of seven possible concentration areas below. They may also design a concentration in consultation with the Chair of Women's Studies.

I. Philosophy & Religion (12 Units)

II. Race & Ethnicity (12 Units)

III. Communication & Media (12 Units)

IV. Law & Public Policy (12 Units)

V. Social Work & Welfare (12 Units)

VI. Criminology (12 Units)

VII. Literature (12 Units)

Total Number of Units: 45

• Catalog - Gender and Women’s Studies, B.A.