Gender and Feminist Studies

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.  

What You Will Learn

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. 

The major requires a minimum of ten (10) courses, distributed among core courses and three tracks.

Core Courses

(one course from each numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 below):

1. GWS 026 PO – Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies or
   FGSS 026 SC – Introduction to Feminist Gender, and Sexuality Studies or
   FGSS 036 SC – Introduction to Queer Studies or
   ID 76 CMC – Intersections: Gender, Race and Sexuality
2. Feminist Theory, such as
   POST 163 PZ – Feminist Theory
   CHLT 166 CH – Chicana Feminist Epistemologies
   GWS 180 PO – Queer Feminist Theories or
   FGSS 184 SC – Intersectional Feminist Theories
3. Intersectionality of gender/race/class/sexualities, such as
   CHLT 060 CH – Women in the Third World 
   CHLT 061 CH – Contemporary Issues of Chicanas & Latinas
   CHLT 115 CH – Gender, Race and Class: Women of Color in the U.S.
   CHLT 154 CH – Latinas in the Garment Industry
   CHLT 166 CH – Chicana Feminist Epistemologies
   ARHI 178 PO – Africana Aesthetics and the Politics of (Re)presentation
   ASAM 090 PZ – Asian American and Multiracial Communities
   ENGL 140 PO – Literature of Incarceration: Writings from No Man’s Land
   MS 080 AA – Video and Diversity  
4. GWS 190 PO – Senior Seminar or GFS 191 PZ – Senior Thesis or Project (Candidates for Honors must complete both the Sr. Seminar and Sr. Project/Thesis)

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

If students have two majors, no more than two (2) courses, including a methods course, may be counted toward the completion of both majors.

Students wishing to complete a combined major in GFS and another discipline are required to complete all the core courses, one course from two of the tracks,  and two additional courses from one of those two tracks. All combined majors have two advisers, one of whom must be a GFS adviser as listed in the current catalog. 

Students interested in completing a minor in GFS are required to complete the Introduction to Women’s Studies, Feminist Theory and Intersectionality courses from the core courses section and one course from each of the three tracks.

Students are required to have a cumulative and GFS GPA of 3.5 and the recommendation of the field group based on the quality (A or A-) of the senior project or thesis. In addition, candidates for honors must complete both the Senior Seminar and the Sr. Project/Sr. Thesis. Two advisers are required for the Sr. Thesis/Sr. Project and one must be from the Pitzer GFS field group. The final version of the honors thesis or project to be reviewed by the field group is due two weeks before the end of classes.