Mission

Women’s Studies proceeds from feminist perspectives that recognize the full humanity of everyone. These perspectives examine how able-bodiedness, age, class, ethnicity, nationality, race, and sexuality intersect with each other and with gender differently in different cultures and at different times. As the interdisciplinary practice of feminist scholarship, Women’s Studies interrogates and envisions alternatives to social structures, institutions, ideologies, relationships, and perceptions of gender in traditional academic disciplines.

The undergraduate B.A. in Women’s Studies, offered through the College of Arts and Sciences, is structured to provide a sound grounding in liberal education and an intensive involvement in an area of concentration. In addition, the program focuses on the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and culture. Since Women’s Studies is inherently interdisciplinary, most of these courses are taught by faculty from other departments and colleges such as African-American Studies, Anthropology and Geography, Communication, English, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. The B.A. in Women’s Studies also includes a social change component in that a student may elect to take 3 hours of Internship for course credit. A student intern will work 10 hours a week at a site that serves and assists women such as a battered women's shelter, a family planning clinic, a rape crisis center, or an educational outreach program.

The WSI's M.A. program has a global emphasis, with core courses emphasizing intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and culture. This focus on global feminisms, post-colonial, third world, and postmodern theory has attracted a number of international students to the WSI. In short, the Women’s Studies Institute at Georgia State University provides an interdisciplinary, critical, and global approach to the study of gender, race, sexuality, class, and the construction of knowledge and to the operations of cultural, political, and social institutions.