This course is an introduction to Women’s Studies and employs an interdisciplinary set of tools for analyzing women’s experiences. We will use a variety of pedagogical practices, including experiential learning to study the ways that sex and gender manifest themselves in social, cultural and political contexts.

The goal of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to apply their theoretical understanding of Women's Studies to practical and concrete situations in their communities which affect women's daily lives. Students will work in a variety of community settings--educational, political, and/or social service agencies--according to their interest.

In this seminar, you will undertake an in-depth study of violence against women in America today, with a major part of your study taking place in a community service setting. This will be a service-learning seminar, which means that you won't only study violence against women in the abstract (through readings and class discussions) but will also have your own encounters with issues of violence against women through your community service work.

This course will introduce you to the discipline of Women's Studies. We will employ a multicultural/interdisciplinary/experiential approach to address a number of questions: How does our culture define women and men? How do images of women and men in media shape our behavior? What roles do our ideas about gender play in the institutions of family, sexuality, health, work and politics?

Women, Race & Class is an interdisciplinary examination of the historical institutions, forces and movements that have shaped the status, identities and conditions of multicultural women. While many of the assigned readings are based in the United States, we will also look at global connections and contexts. We will emphasize relationships between theory, practice/action and multiple perspectives.

The course will explore the ways in which the field of Women's Studies has raised new questions and brought new perspectives to those areas where the humanities and social and behavioral sciences intersect, material which is interdisciplinary in nature and frequently poses a challenge to conventional disciplinary boundaries.