What is Women's and Ethnic Studies?
The Women's and Ethnic Studies Program (WEST) was established in the spring of 2008 as an interdisciplinary course of studies with a major in Women's and Ethnic Studies, and two separate minors in Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies respectively. The Program evolved from existing programs in Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies. Both the WEST major and the Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies minors provide an intersectional perspective to the study of race, gender and other systems of oppression and privilege. The WEST Program and Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies minors also promote curricular and faculty development and sponsors a variety of cultural programming in collaboration with The Matrix Center for the Advancement of Social Equity and Inclusion.
Learning Outcomes:
- Students should demonstrate strong reading, writing and critical thinking skills.
- Grasp and demonstrate skills in using a range of methodological approaches.
- Demonstrate an understanding of U.S. culture and society from multiple perspectives based upon the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality.
- Examine relationships among racial/ethnic groups and the nature or basis of racial/ethnic formation and its intersections with class, gender and sexuality.
- Demonstrate an understanding of women's history in a variety of cultures.
- Demonstrate knowledge of the ever-increasing scholarship on women and minority groups in various disciplines.
- Develop the ability to synthesize personal reality with the larger race and gender realities through the theoretical knowledge gained.
- Cultivate competencies for working with people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and foster an appreciation of diversity.
- Demonstrate a measurable increase in the knowledge of the basic theories, concepts and debates in Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies.
- Possess knowledge regarding phases in the development of individual and collective consciousness and formation of identities on the basis of cultural identity in general, and racial, gender and class identity in particular.
- Develop knowledge of the rapidly increasing scholarship on women and U.S. minority groups with special focus on their historical, literary and artistic achievements; their social, political and economic conditions; and their relations to the dominant power structures in U.S. society in terms of gender, race and sexuality.