Gender and Feminist Studies
Scholarship on women and gender 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 gender, sexuality, and 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 Gender’s Studies courses offered by all The Claremont Colleges. Students who are interested in courses other than those listed below should consult the Intercollegiate Feminist Center website forcourses offered each semester. The Feminist Center for Teaching, Research and Engagement is located at 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.
As a Gender and Feminist Studies student, you will focus on the relations of power that have produced inequalities among genders through three avenues of study: examining the lives and contributions of women and other historically marginalized genders, grappling with the role of gender in existing theories of society and being, and exploring intersections of race, class, ethno-national origin, and sexuality in theories and identities.
Pitzer Advisors: S. Gilbert, C. Johnson, H. O’Rourke
Learning Outcomes
- How to connect knowledge about women, gender, and sexuality across multiple disciplines.
- The interdisciplinary, intersectional, international, and transnational approaches of different feminist and/or queer scholarly and activist perspectives.
- How to address social inequality and injustice, both in theory and in practice.
- How to examine the interrelationship of theories, methods, and ways of knowing (epistemologies) about gender and sexuality.
- Understand how gender and sexuality have key roles in the formation of transnational, national, and local identities, desires, and bodies.
Major Requirements
The major requires a minimum of ten (10) courses, distributed among core courses and three tracks. If students have two majors, no more than two (2) courses, including a methods course, may be counted toward the completion of both majors.
Required Courses
Core Courses
(one course from each numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 below):
Group 1
Group 2 (Feminist Theory)
Group 3 (Intersectionality of gender/race/class/sexualities)
Group 4
Tracks
Students should take at least one (1) course from each track that focuses on gender and empowerment; and complete an additional three (3) courses from one of the tracks:
- Global, National and Local Communities
- Creativity: Art, Literature, Spirituality, Identity
- Sciences, Medicine and Technologies
