What are the career and graduate school options for Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies majors from The College of Wooster?
Graduates of the WGSS program go in many directions after Wooster. Some have attended graduate school in women’s and gender studies, others have pursued graduate degrees in social work, library science, English, sociology, psychology, nurse-midwifery, and divinity. Their careers include working with NGOs for women’s rights, counseling in rape crisis centers, coordinating sex education programs for Planned Parenthood, teaching from pre-school through College. Whatever their chosen field, alums report the profound impact that their major/minor in WGSS has had on their view of the world, affecting everything from becoming politically active to the paid work they engage in to making choices about creating families and raising children.
Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at The College of Wooster
The WGSS curriculum is based in feminist scholarship-both within traditional disciplines across the academic divisions and in response to questions that cannot be answered within the framework of a single discipline. To foster this interdisciplinary inquiry, the Women’s Studies Program was established in 1978 and has been built upon the feminist teaching, scholarship, and activism of faculty and students with a wide variety of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives. In the past few decades, the program has grown and evolved, changing its name to the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program in 2008 to recognize important changes within feminist scholarship.
Acknowledging this important history, WGSS courses retain Women’s Studies’ focus on examining previously unavailable information about the lives and contributions of women and analyzing the effects of cultural attitudes, power and inequality, and social structures on the experiences of women as they intersect with race, nation, ability, class, religion, and other axes of difference. In addition, feminist scholarship has recognized and explored commonalities between women’s oppression and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other sexual minorities worldwide, as well as the varied experiences of masculinity throughout the globe. In this vein, WGSS courses explore the cultural construction of sex, gender, and sexuality in the context of their relationship between theoretical and experiential knowledge and privileging historically marginalized voices. WGSS encourages scholarship and teaching that is committed to the feminist principle of creating a more just world for all.
Administrative Coordinator - Africana Studies, Archaeology, East Asian Studies, Middle Eastern & North African Studies, Religious Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, South Asian Studies, Urban Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Archaeology major Henry McMahon spent the summer before his senior year at The College of Wooster in Guatemala surveying an ancient plaza inside El […]
Amelia Menk Brown ’96, originally from Poland, Ohio, knew she wanted to attend a small, liberal arts college, but the Independent Study program made […]
A major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies consists of 11 courses spanning Africana Studies, Anthropology, English, History, Communication Studies, Political Science, and World Languages.
Minors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and Global Queer Studies (GQST) consist of six courses spanning Africana Studies, Anthropology, English, History, Communication Studies, Political Science, and World Languages.
Majors explore their own research questions relating to gender and sexuality. In their Jr. Independent Study seminar, Doing Feminist Research, WGSS majors, minors, and other students who plan to pursue feminist research in their I.S. are introduced to feminist research methods as well as distinctive feminist critical approaches to issues in the social sciences, natural sciences, and the humanities. In their senior year, working under the guidance of a faculty member, students explore their own research for the Independent Study project.
Recent I.S. Projects
a study of fat positive feminism in blogs
an analysis of novels about eating disorders published in the U.S. and France
an investigation of feminist Bible study techniques in South Africa
a study of masculinity in the ex-gay movement
a cross-cultural feminist analysis of quinceañeras in Nicaragua & the U.S.
a study of charged comedy aimed at combatting racism, sexism & homophobia through stand-up comedy
a photovoice project with LGBTQ+ students on campus
the development of an augmented reality video game to teach students, staff & faculty about the experience of sexual assault survivors
Citational Politics
The College Libraries and various academic areas, including Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Global Queer Studies, collaborate to highlight the importance of feminist politics of citation, being aware and strategic with how we cite, and acknowledging those whose work inspires and influences our own. As part of that effort, we brought Dr. Christen A. Smith to campus to talk about her work with the Cite Black Women movement.
Archaeology major Henry McMahon spent the summer before his senior year at The College of Wooster in Guatemala surveying an ancient plaza inside El […]
Name: Kate Larson Majors: Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Psychology Advisors: Zareen Thomas, Amber Garcia, Katie Holt The goal of this research was to complete Critical […]
Name: Rachel Jones Major: Psychology Minor: Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Advisors: Amber Garcia Second Reader: Meredith Hope Research has examined the relationship between […]
Hannah Lane-Davies ’21 explores the commitments of contemporary birth workers
Alumni
Alumni of the WGSS program go in many directions after Wooster.
Some have attended graduate school in women’s and gender studies, others have pursued graduate degrees in social work, library science, English, sociology, psychology, nurse-midwifery, and divinity.
Their careers include working with NGOs for women’s rights, counseling in rape crisis centers, co-ordinating sex education programs for Planned Parenthood, teaching from pre-school through College, and one alum owns her own hula hoop company to promote positive body image!
Whatever their chosen field, alums report the profound impact that their major/minor in WGSS has had on their view of the world, affecting everything from becoming politically active to the paid work they engage in to making choices about creating families and raising children.
Amelia Menk Brown ’96, originally from Poland, Ohio, knew she wanted to attend a small, liberal arts college, but the Independent Study program made […]