Department of Women's and Gender Studies
For more than fifty years, Women's and Gender Studies at West Chester University has integrated the valuable life experiences of those people who have been traditionally neglected in academia:
- women,
- people of color,
- LGBTQIA+ people,
- indigenous people, and
- people of the global south
We continue this tradition by encouraging our students to incorporate their own voices and experiences into their studies, which helps students understand their own identities in relation to society and culture. It is through this shared understanding that sustainable social change begins, develops, and perseveres.
One way change occurs is within your engagement with others. Today, employers seek people who can effectively address diverse issues and diverse people. Many disciplines teach you about the importance of diversity. Our program will not only do this, but will also teach you the language and skills you need to create and facilitate a respectful space for all of your future clients, patients, employees, or students.
Department Overview
In this major and minor, students learn about, analyze, and apply:
Intersectionality
How categories of identity (race, class, gender, age, ability, sexuality, nationality, etc.) and structures of inequality are historically and currently experienced, represented, and resisted by people
Transnational Feminisms
How the theoretical issues examined through intersectional feminism are produced in specific cultural global contexts
Gender & Sexuality
How gender and sexuality operate in each our lives, regardless of identity or positionality
West Chester University offers a major (30 credits) and a minor (18 credits) in Women's and Gender Studies and the new Sexuality Studies minor (18 credits). To declare a major or minor, email Dr. Liam Oliver Lair.
Join the Gender Studies Club!
The Gender Studies Club is a student-led organization that is dedicated to creating conversations around gender for social change. All are welcome to join!
Our New Admin!
Please help us in welcoming our new admin for WGS, Nancy Repko! She is the new administrative assistant for the History and Women’s and Gender Studies
departments. She comes to West Chester University with an extensive background in
education and experience in providing administrative support. Nancy holds a B.A.
in English Literature and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and instruction from Penn State University.
She has worked in elementary and secondary schools, in both support roles and as a
teacher, teaching high school English and French in a cyber school.
Nancy lives in Chester Springs with her husband, Matt, and their dog, Rocket. She
has two sons, Chris and Jon, both of whom are in college. She enjoys running, hiking,
walking, playing tennis, and being active!
Nancy is looking forward to supporting the faculty, staff, and students at West Chester
University, and she is excited to be part of both the History and the Women’s and
Gender Studies departments.
The Women's & Gender Studies Collection
The Women’s and Gender Studies Collection is an online, always free, radically open-licensed resource available to everyone: students, teachers, community organizations, activists, and beyond. We hope to break down barriers to publication for communities that have historically been marginalized and offer mentorship to those who are new to publication.
Download the Call for Submissions !
CHECK OUT THE FACULTY FORUM PODCAST!
Faculty Forums is a podcast hosted by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. In this episode, we explore the topic of student engagement in research and creative activity, and feature Dr. Lisa Huebner
Help Support Women's & Gender Studies! Any monetary gift goes directly to supporting WGS students.
Quick Links
Explore WCU's Women's and Gender Studies Program.
To our WGS community:
As a Women’s & Gender Studies Department, we are sharing the attached essay, “Learning to Shout,” written by our colleague Dr. Justin Sprague. We are sharing this, with Justin’s consent, because as a department we feel that his powerful voice and narrative provides insight into the very real and personal toll that racism takes on people in our community. Histories of racialized violence exist in perpetuity, and it is our hope that through sharing Justin’s own story, in his own words, that this will incite each of us to pay more attention, to do more, and to be better in the world.
In this piece, Justin shares his experience with anti-Asian racism. Justin rightly highlights and deftly unpacks how “White supremacy operates at its core through anti-Black racism. Our suffering as AAPI [Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders] operates through the mechanisms of Black suffering. As a byproduct of white supremacy, anti-Blackness has and continues to lay the blueprint for all racism.” We encourage you to bear witness in order to be called to action. The emotions any of us feel in response to someone's disclosure of pain as the result of oppression are real, but to be valuable they must be utilized as a catalyst to engage in work that dismantles white violence, white domination, and racism in all of its forms.
We can and we must do better. Our question to all of us: how are each of us going
to be part of the solution? How will we each begin to shout for justice?
In solidarity,
The faculty of WGS
Department of Women's and Gender Studies
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