Program Info
What is Women's Studies?
Women's Studies is an
interdisciplinary undergraduate Program, providing an academic
framework and broad-based community for scholarly inquiry focusing on
women, gender and sexuality. Exploring gender with the tools of
different, and often multiple, disciplines, Women's Studies subjects
strive to help MIT students better understand how knowledge and value
take different forms depending on a variety of social variables. In the
course of their inquiry, students not only learn how to use gender as a
category of analysis, but also reflect on the manifestation of gender
in their own lives, leading to a range of personal and intellectual
discoveries. Although gender is a central component of every subject,
the study of gender requires attention to connections between gender,
sexuality, race, class, religion, nationality, and other social
categories; different subjects shed light on different aspects of such
connections.
The Program in Women's Studies
offers an undergraduate curriculum consisting of core classes and
cross-listed subjects from several departments. Students may
concentrate, minor and petition for a major departure in WS. There are
more than 40 faculty members who are affiliated with the Program from
fields as diverse as architecture, history, comparative media studies,
brain and cognitive sciences, literature, and political science, for
example. The Program in Women's Studies is offering 28 classes,
crosslisted in approximately 16 different fields,
during the academic year 2006-2007, with approximately 300 students
enrolled.
The Women's Studies Program at
MIT is also an important resource for faculty with an advanced
knowledge of gender studies within particular disciplines who are
interested in learning more across disciplinary lines; it also welcomes
faculty who have an emerging interest in the field of Women's Studies.
MIT is
also a part of the Graduate
Consortium in Women's Studies, which was established in 1993
jointly between MIT and six other institutions -- Radcliffe College,
Boston College, Brandeis University, Harvard University, Northeastern
University, and Tufts University. The Consortium now also includes Boston University and Simmons College.
An award offered annually, the Louis
Kampf Writing Prize in Women's and Gender Studies, was founded in
1996 in honor of retired literature professor Louis Kampf.
A chair in women's studies, the
Genevéve McMillan and Reba
Stewart Professorship in the Study
of Women in the Developing World, was established in 1996. The Women's
Studies program hosts Genevéve McMillan/Reba Stewart Lecture on
Women in the Developing World each semester.
The Women's Studies Research Room
in the Humanities Library is a multidisciplinary resource for the study
of women and gender. The Women's Studies Program also contains a small
lending library of women's fiction, feminist anthologies, feminist
magazines, and contemporary women's studies non-fiction for the MIT
community.
Documents from past MIT Program in Women's Studies events
Virtue and Virtuality: Gender, Law, and Cyberspace
From Barbie to Mortal Kombat
Race and Cyberspace Symposium
Race in Digital Space
|
