Women's and Gender Studies
Administrative Information
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Prof. Patricia Dailey, 602 Philosophy; 854-1667; pdailey@columbia.edu
Program Office: 763 Schermerhorn Extension; 854-3277; (fax) 854-7466
Located with the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality and taught in cooperation with Barnard College’s Department of Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies, the program in women's, gender, and sexuality studies provides students with a culturally and historically situated, theoretically diverse understanding of feminist scholarship and its contributions to the disciplines. The program is intended to introduce students to the long arc of feminist discourse about the cultural and historical representation of nature, power, and the social construction of difference. It encourages students to engage in the debates regarding the ethical and political issues of equality and justice that emerge in such discussion, and it links the questions of gender and sexuality to those of racial, ethnic, and other kinds of hierarchical difference.
Through sequentially organized courses in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as required discipline-based courses in the humanities and social sciences, the major provides a thoroughly interdisciplinary framework, methodological training, and substantive guidance in specialized areas of research. Small classes and mentored thesis-writing give students an education that is both comprehensive and tailored to individual needs. The major culminates in a thesis-writing class, in which students undertake original research and produce advanced scholarship.
Graduates leave the program well prepared for future scholarly work in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, but the major also prepares students for careers and future training in law, public policy, social work, community organizing, journalism, and all those professions in which there is a need for critical and creative interdisciplinary thought.