Women’s and Gender Studies
Academic Department Introduction
We explore gender and its intersections with other relations of power, such as race, social class, sexuality, nationality, age, dis/ability, and ethnicity. These forces shape the individual and collective lives of people across diverse cultures and times, and provide contexts for analyzing the worlds in which we live.
Our curriculum and faculty research reflect the vibrant contours of global feminisms today. We cover a variety of theoretical and empirical scholarship such as feminist theory; queer and trans studies; anticarceral/abolition feminisms; Indigenous and transnational feminisms; media studies; science and technology studies; critical animal studies; critical health studies; environmental and reproductive justice and their intersections; and feminist activism within disciplinary and interdisciplinary frameworks.
Learning goals
- Interrogate how sex, gender, sexuality, race, dis/ability, and nation have been historically constructed, unsettled, and contested as social identities and systems of power.
- Examine the potent material and political implications of social identities.
- Apply an intersectional lens of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality to recognize the interlocking systems of privilege, oppression, and opportunity.
- Deploy gender as a category of intersectional analysis in written and oral communication.
- Cultivate a transnational awareness about shifting frames in global geopolitics.
- Demonstrate knowledge of the history of activism and the complexities of social change.
Programs of Study
Women’s and gender studies major and minor
Students explore how structural changes and historical moments intersect with individual lives. Each major chooses one of the following concentrations, taking at least four courses in that area:
1. Representations, media, and race
2. Feminist science, health, and reproductive justice
3. Labor, families, and the state
4. Transnational feminism(s), global context
Course highlights
Asian/American Women in Film
WGST249
This course will serve as an introduction to representations of Asian/American women in film beginning with silent classics and ending with contemporary social media. In the first half of the course, we examine the legacy of Orientalism, the politics of interracial romance, the phenomenon of "yellow face," and the different constructions of Asian American femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. In the second half of the course, we look at "Asian American cinema" where our focus will be on contemporary works, drawing upon critical materials from film theory, feminist studies, Asian American studies, history, and cultural studies.
(CAMS 241 and WGST 249 are cross-listed courses.)-
Love and Intimacy: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
WGST205
This course explores love and intimacy in transnational context. In this course, we will examine the systems of meaning and practices that have evolved around notions of love and intimacy and investigate their broader political significance. We will further explore how love and intimacy are linked to economics, consumption practices, structural inequalities, disruptive technologies, and shifting ideas about subjectivity. If we accept that love, intimacy, and sexuality are socially constructed, how much agency do we exercise in whom we love and desire? How and in what ways do our experiences and expectations of love and intimacy shift as a result of economic arrangements, mobility, and technology? Finally, what, if any, ethical frameworks should mediate our intimate connections, desires, and labor with others? -
Seminar: Contemporary Reproduction
WGST322
This course focuses on the politics of human reproduction which is inextricably linked with nation states, as well as cultural norms and expectations. Reproductive issues and debates serve as proxies for more fundamental questions about the intersecting inequalities of citizenship, gender, race, class, disability and sexuality. What does reproductive justice look like? We will discuss how the marketplace, medical technologies and the law are critical to creating social hierarchies that are produced, resisted and transformed. We ask: Why is access critical to control for the use of fertility technologies (both pre-and during pregnancy), gamete purchase, egg freezing? How is each accomplished and by whom? How are new technologies in reproduction coupled with the global marketplace creating a social hierarchy between people (e.g. gamete donors, gestational carriers). Finally, what is the relationship between the commercialization of reproduction and the creation of new intimacies and forms of kinship? The course emphasizes both empirical research situated in the U.S. and research involving transnational flows. (SOC 322 and WGST 322 are cross-listed courses.)
Places and spaces
We have an accessible and welcoming lounge for department-sponsored events and informal student gatherings.
Research highlights
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Professor Banu Subramaniam’s new book, Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism (University of Washington Press, 2024), examines how the plant sciences and botany have been profoundly shaped by empire, and how those histories live on in our study of plant worlds today.
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Professor Rosanna Hertz conducted research on single mothers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and co-authored an article about her findings in the 2021 issue of Journal of Family Issues. Her latest co-authored book is Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin (Oxford University Press, 2019).
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In Professor Elena Creef’s book Shadow Traces: Seeing Japanese/American and Ainu Women in Photographic Archives (University of Illinois Press, 2022), she examines little-known visual archives of four historical groups of Asian women. She also follows the augmented reality work of Japanese artist Masaki Fujihata and his digital simulation of the WWII Japanese American evacuation, BeHere/1942.
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Professor Jennifer Musto’s 2022 article “The Afterlife of Decriminalisation” explores the harms of reforms billed as trauma-informed alternatives to punishment. As co-facilitator of the Anti-Carceral Co+Laboratory (ACC) with Laura Grattan, professor of political science, she organized “Dreaming Abolition, Co-Creating Abolitionist Knowledge in Greater Boston,” a convening to explore how scholar-activists and organizers can reimagine freedom, justice, safety, and education beyond prisons.
Opportunities
We work closely with students to identify opportunities that will deepen their experience within our department.
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WGST Leadership Council
Majors and minors selected to join the WGST Leadership Council engage in student outreach and offer strategic advice and leadership in shaping departmental programming.
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WGST tutor program
As tutors providing peer support to students enrolled in WGST courses, WGST majors and minors have a vital opportunity to translate their understanding of gender and sexuality studies and apply their critical thinking, writing, and editorial skills.
Beyond Wellesley
Beyond Wellesley
Our graduates are thought leaders, policy innovators, entrepreneurs, writers, artists, and healers. Many devote their careers to confronting the most pressing issues of our time. They work in a range of fields, including health care, education, law, and the nonprofit sector. Employers of recent WGST graduates include United We Dream, Google, Accenture, the National Academy for State Health Policy, and Planned Parenthood.
Recent Employers
Department of Women’s and Gender Studies
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481