Gender and Feminist Studies

Pitzer Advisers: C. Johnson, H. O’Rourke, J. Parker, S. Snowiss.

Scholarship on women addresses three kinds of pressing intellectual needs. The first is to provide more information about women’s lives and contributions. The second is for the revision of existing theory that claims to speak for all human beings while it has been based almost exclusively on the experience of men. The third is for the integration of perspectives shaped by sensitivity to race, class, ethno-national origin and sexual orientation within the study of gender.

Courses in Gender and Feminist Studies focus on the relations of power that have produced inequalities between genders. We consider gender inequality a human construction subject to change rather than an innate, ordained condition. In the classroom and in research, our critical perspective challenges conventional concepts and methods of analysis and encourages the formulation of new paradigms of teaching, learning and research that reflect the diversity of women’s experience.

Pitzer offers a major and a minor in Gender and Feminist Studies and combined majors with other disciplines in the social sciences, in the humanities and fine arts, in the natural sciences, as well as in interdisciplinary subjects, including Asian American, Africana, and Chicano/Latino/a Studies.

Pitzer’s Gender and Feminist Studies courses are part of the rich variety of Women’s Studies courses offered by all The Claremont Colleges. Students who are interested in courses other than those listed below should consult the Intercollegiate Women’s Studies brochure of courses offered each semester. The Intercollegiate Women’s Studies Teaching and Research Center is located at 107 Vita Nova on the Scripps campus. Open to all faculty and students of The Claremont Colleges, it provides programs of lectures and seminars each semester.

The Pitzer Student Women’s Center, located upstairs in the Grove House, has a small library devoted to Gender and Feminist Studies and provides a meeting space for interested students.