Catherine Villanueva Gardner, PhD

Basic concepts and perspectives in Women's Studies, placing women's experience at the center of interpretation. With focus on women's history and contemporary issues, the course examines women's lives with emphasis on how gender interacts with race, class, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. The central aim is to foster critical reading and thinking about women's lives: how the interlocking systems of oppression, colonialism, racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism shape women's lives; and how women have worked to resist these oppressions. This course satisfies a social science distribution requirement and the general education diversity requirement.

Study of ecofeminism as systems of oppressions based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity that stem from a cultural ideology that enables the oppression of nature. The course explores ecofeminist theories, literature, and practice, including ecofeminist ethics, and the applications of ecofeminism to the lives of individual men and women, as well as cultural institutions and organizations. Cross listed as PHL 307.

The WGS capstone course is designed to cohere a major student's core curriculum work. While the subject matter may change depending on the interdisciplinary connections, the course will be grounded in feminist scholarship and require a research project that draws upon feminist theories and feminist research methods, along with a public presentation at the end of the semester to the class and Women Studies faculty. This course will be an opportunity for students to integrate their major course knowledge and demonstrate their ability to apply feminist theory and research methods.