Gender Studies Minor

Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the social construction of gender in societies, polities, economies, the arts, and cultures in the United States and around the world. At Saint Joseph’s, it is a multi-disciplinary minor that allows students from a variety of majors to investigate the ways in which gender intersects with race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, ability, age, and other identity factors to produce system-wide structures and individual-level psychologies. Gender, therefore, creates opportunities and constraints for individuals based on their particular identities within specific temporal, sociopolitical settings.

Gender Studies minors select approved courses from a variety of disciplines in the fine arts, humanities, education, health studies, social sciences, and business. These courses complement their major fields of study and give students a useful lens for understanding and interacting with their school, family, social, and professional environments, places where equality and justice claims are increasingly important.

Mission Statement

The Gender Studies Program gives students a grounding in gender, feminist, and intersectional theories. While learning about gender as a concept and using methods such as intersectional analysis, students explore how gender interacts with other aspects of identity. As minors, students study these theoretical constructs and learn how they function as systematic and structural processes at the individual, societal/cultural, and/or institutional levels. Gender Studies minors will also have the opportunity to develop their own project(s) in various disciplines that are grounded in gender, feminist, and/or intersectional analysis.

Co-Directors

  • L. Baglione (POL) and E. Morgan (MTF)

Committee on Gender Studies

  • Albright 
  • Burkhalter 
  • Hall 
  • Hoffman 
  • Joyce 
  • Logue 
  • Regis 
  • Scola 
  • Sillup 
  • Wetzel

Goal 1: Learn Fundamental Knowledge: Students will gain foundational knowledge of gender, feminism, and/or intersectionality as core concepts and theoretical constructs.

Outcome 1.1: Students will identify, define, and/or explain the core concepts and theories related to gender, feminism, and intersectionality, as appropriate to the discipline.

Goal 2: Think and Make Analytical Arguments: Students will think critically and develop arguments that address how gender, feminism, and intersectionality function as systematic and structural processes at the individual, societal/cultural, and/or institutional levels.

Outcome 2.1: Students will articulate verbally and/or in writing arguments that analyze how gender, feminism, and/or intersectionality function as systematic and structural processes at the individual, societal/cultural, and/or institutional levels, as appropriate to the discipline.

Goal 3: Apply Skills to Analyze and Assess:  Students will apply their knowledge of gender, feminism, and intersectionality by developing a project, broadly defined, that analyzes and/or assesses real world phenomena and/or creative works through the lens of the core theoretical constructs.

Outcome 3.1: Students will write, create, and/or present a project that analyzes and/or assesses the application of gender, feminism, and intersectionality to real world phenomena and/or creative works, as appropriate to the discipline.

Gender Studies minors complete six (6) courses from the list of approved classes. Their set of six courses must simultaneously satisfy two additional criteria:

  1. No more than three (3) courses can be from the same discipline (with the same three-letter course code)

  2. At least one (1) course must come from the designated “Theories Courses” list

These conditions help assure that students have a sufficiently multidisciplinary and theoretically sophisticated understanding of Gender Studies when they complete the minor.

Choose 6 Courses:18
Theories Courses: 1
POL 323
Women and American Politics
POL 325
Intersectionality
POL 368
Sex & Power around the World
SOC 208
Sociology of Gender
THE 357
Feminist Theologies
Other Gender Studies Courses: 2
ARH 107
Women, Gender, and Art
ENG 226
Brit/Irish Detective Fiction
ENG 309
British/Irish Immigration Lit
ENG 312
Modern Irish Drama
ENG 313
Cont Irish Women's Writing
ENG 444
Race, Class, and Gender
ENG 450
Health, Advocacy, Storytelling
FRE 322
Making our Voices Heard
FRE 422
Fr Wom Writ of Mid Ages & Ren
HIS 385
Women in America
PHL 294
Reproducing Persons
POL 113
Intro to Comparative Politics Baglione Section ONLY
POL 150
First Year Seminar Baglione and Scola Sections ONLY
POL 309
Advising and Advocacy
PSY 212
Multicultural Psychology Shih Section ONLY
REL 382
Women & Religion in Anc Wrld
SOC 102
Social Problems Begen Section ONLY
SOC 150
Social Problems and Change Begen Section ONLY
SOC 202
Advanced Social Problems Begen Section ONLY
SOC 209
Intimate Relations
SOC 215
Gender, Race, and Justice
SOC 356
Gender, Crime & CJ
SOC 470
Special Topics Begen Section ONLY
Total Hours18
1

Courses that qualify as Theories classes are those that are particularly heavy in gender, feminist, and/or intersectional theories. Students will read foundational theoretical texts themselves (rather than only reading texts which apply those theories as critical frameworks in the study of other topics) and engage rigorously with concepts that are at the root of gender, feminist, and/or intersectional studies.

2
  • Gender, feminism, and/or intersectionality are woven through the fabric of the class and at the center of analysis. These theories and concepts must permeate the entire course and cannot simply be a single unit in the class. Theoretical frameworks and concepts that provide sustained analytical inquiry are expected, and course content, materials, and assignments must be critical and analytical in nature.
  • The courses analyze the construction and maintenance of gender as systematic and structural processes at the individual, societal/cultural, and/or institutional levels, as appropriate to the discipline. 
  • The courses  emphasize the ways in which identities intersect, overlap, and interact to produce multiple experiences of gender, and then attend to the complex consequences of these intersections.
  • The courses encourage students to see themselves as potential social justice advocates and agents for social change.