Women's and Gender Studies

The Women's and Gender Studies Program at the College of St. Scholastica offers a minor designed to cultivate critical thinking about women, sexuality, and gender in relation to topics of immediate political concern today. These include the objectification of women in media and advertising, the war on women's bodies and reproductive health, the trafficking of women and girls, the gendered nature of institutions, homophobia, and the problem of racism in white middle-class feminist movements.

In the interest of introducing students to the history and complexity of these global issues - political, intellectual, and cultural - the program stresses the critical place of feminist theory in understanding contemporary women's and GLBT movements in America and around the world. In this sense, the program turns on a debate that remains central to Women's Studies — the relationship between academics and activism, or theory and practice.

Students with a minor in Women's and Gender Studies have gone on to enjoy careers in healthcare, publishing, the ministry and midwifery or to pursue graduate study.

Program Outcomes

Students will develop finely honed critical thinking and writing skills and a heightened awareness of how the mainstream media and advertising industry often objectify women. Specifically, through this minor, students will:

• Analyze and discuss a wide variety of texts, including written, visual, and musical forms of expression and representation.
• Become familiar with methods of research in the humanities and social sciences that have informed the critical and historical study of women, sexuality, and gender.
• Develop the critical thinking and communication skills — written and verbal — needed to critique, assess, and construct arguments based on theoretical sophistication and historical investigation.
• Understand how race, ethnicity, religion, class and other social categories and identities intersect with sexuality and gender and shape interpretations of what it means to be female, male, trans-gendered, and/or inter-sexed.

Formats and Locations

The Women's and Gender Studies minor is offered in a traditional, on-campus format at our main Duluth campus.

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Prospective Students

Current Students