About This Program
The Women's Studies minor affords vital inquiry into subjects inevitably more complex than they appear. The program reflects rich mergers of multidisciplinary traditions that arose and keep arising in the wake of women’s centuries-long struggles. At the heart of women’s studies are women’s demands for recognition—as capable scholars hungry to know—about themselves, their untold histories, their currently silenced voices, often invisible lives. Read more...
Contact Information
- Program Coordinator: Suzanne Holt | slholt@kent.edu | 330-672-8042
- Speak with an Advisor
Program Delivery
Examples of Possible Careers
- Support services for kids and families navigating gender and sexuality
- Support services for survivors of violence
- Women’s health and well-being
- Work in any of the following fields: advocacy, art, business and industry, communications, counseling, education and training, film, law, medicine, poetry work, politics, public relations, reporting, social policy, theater, writing
Admission Requirements
Admission to a minor is open to students declared in a bachelor’s degree, the A.A.B. or A.A.S. degree or the A.T.S. degree (not Individualized Program major). Students declared only in the A.A. or A.S. degree or the A.T.S. degree in Individualized Program may not declare a minor. Students may not pursue a minor and a major in the same discipline.
Program Learning Outcomes
Graduates of this program will be able to:
- Acquire and employ new lenses of study into subjects and experiences and very names of "woman" or "women" in contexts wherein such a designation matters.
- Employ new approaches to knowledge, new strategies of engagement with "others" as well as peers, new methods of research, new approaches to critical analysis and appraisal and new forms of praxis.
- Converse — and become conversant — with multiple feminisms; divergent purposes; and the positions and directions of variant studies, histories and commentaries through aptly selected/combined lenses and filters born of women's studies traditions.
- Interrogate and be able to continually interrogate the expansive lexicon of sexed- and gendered-terms to which "woman" as a question and "man" as a given gave rise.
- Deepen, expand and invigorate the "thought and theory" that inform the several key fields that continue to inform, challenge and shape the unstaid, unstill universe of women's studies (e.g., sex, gender, feminism, intersectionality, identity politics, sisterhood, womanism).
- Understand and build skills to engage in both feminist perspective-taking and actual praxis: the techniques and tools of navigating difference, seeking transversals, meeting demands of fieldwork and attaining goals.
Full Description
The Women’s Studies minor offers both diversity and depth of coursework, ranging from feminist humor to feminism as serious theory and world-making practice. Students can immerse themselves in experiential learning via internships and applied work.
Through inventive classes, facilitated engagement in discussion and carefully crafted opportunities for guided independent work, the minor embraces a logic of study initiated from many start-points; grounded in cores of feminist thought, substance and practice; enriched by multiple disciplines and capped by challenge.
The minor's curriculum aims to satisfy students' desire for both a solid foundation in women's studies and a taste of the diverse, complex and often contentious field. The minor's aim is to deliver coursework that speaks to students' very specific scholarly interests as well as to their passions and persuasions, both personal and political.
