Gender and Feminist Studies Minor

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

1. How to connect knowledge about women, gender, and sexuality across multiple disciplines.
2. The interdisciplinary, intersectional, international, and transnational approaches of different feminist and/or queer scholarly and activist perspectives.
3. How to address social inequality and injustice, both in theory and in practice.
4. How to examine the interrelationship of theories, methods, and ways of knowing (epistemologies) about gender and sexuality.
5. Understand how gender and sexuality have key roles in the formation of transnational, national, and local identities, desires, and bodies. 

Minor Requirements

Students interested in completing a minor in GFS are required to complete a minimum of six (6) courses: one (1) course from each of the core course sections 1, 2, and 3 (introductory, feminist theory, and intersectionality courses) and one (1) course from each of the three tracks. 

Required Courses

Core Courses

Group 1

• GFS 026 PZ -Introduction to Gender Studies  

• GWS 026 PO -Intro Gender and Women’s Studies  or

• FGSS 026 SC FGSS 026 SC -Intro Fem+Gndr+Sexuality Studies  or

• GFS 036 PZ -Introduction to Queer Studies  

• FGSS 036 SC FGSS 036 SC -Introduction to Queer Studies  or

• ID 076 JT ID 076 JT -Intersectn:Gender/Race/Sexuality  

Group 2 (Feminist Theory)

• CHLT 166 CH -Chicana Feminist Epistemology ;

• GFS 170 PZ -Queer of Color Critique  

• GWS 180 PO GWS 180 PO -Queer Feminist Theories  ; or

• FGSS 184 SC FGSS 184 SC -Intersectional Feminist Theories  .

Group 3 (Intersectionality of gender/race/class/sexualities)

• CHLT 060 CH -Women in the Third World ; 

• CHLT 061 CH -Contemporary Issues of Chicanas ;

• CHLT 115 CH -Gender, Race & Class ;

• CHLT 154 CH -Latinas in the Garment Industry ;

• CHLT 166 CH -Chicana Feminist Epistemology ;

• ARHI 178 PO -Black Aesth/Poli (Re)presentatn ;

• ASAM 090 PZ -Community Studies ;

• ENGL 140 PO -Literature of Incarceration: Writings from No Man’s Land ; 

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:

1. Global, National and Local Communities
2. Creativity: Art, Literature, Spirituality, Identity
3. Sciences, Medicine and Technologies