About the Program

Features | Opportunities | Outcomes

 


Features

women's art show

This is a program in which students and faculty are enriched emotionally and intellectually. Our curriculum features wide ranging courses in a variety of disciplines as well as integrative core courses that are structured around generative cutting edge debates in feminist theory, practice and pedagogy. This interdisciplinary view does not limit itself to a single doctrine, methodology or position, but encourages students to develop their own feminist stance. There is consistent and integrated attention to differences of race, class, generation, nation, sex and sexuality, with influences from Queer Studies and Post-Colonial Theory. The program focuses on women's experience while it problematizes gender construction. The relationship between theory and activism appears throughout the Women's Studies curriculum in both individual courses and through the required Internship and Senior Project.

Senior Demonstrative Project

In the Senior Demonstrative project, students pursue their own activist project, putting their base of theory to action. The project provides an opportunity for students to synthesize the theoretical and practical experiences gained in the Major and to demonstrate their depth of understanding of a particular issue or problem to the larger Earlham community.

Internship

The internship enables students to apply theoretical approaches raised in Women’s Studies courses to practical situations in the world beyond the classroom. Internships can be done on an off-campus program, during the summer, or in Richmond during the academic year.

Please refer to Project & Internship Resources for more information.

Opportunities

A Living Communitiy

women's art show

Women's Studies includes both curricular and co-curricular initiatives. The program and its faculty support organizations such as Earlham's Action Against Rape. We also advise and support a student-run Womyn's Center; this is both a place and a group that sponsors films, art shows, workshops, and feminist student activism.

Earlham's Women's Studies students and faculty offer and attend lectures, readings and cultural events that address national and international women's and social justice concerns. We collaborate with local/regional activist organizations, visiting authors, academics and activists on campus, in nearby cities, and at regional and national conferences about academic and activist issues. Recent campus visitors include Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis, bell hooks, The Sex Workers' Art Show, and Bitch and Animal.

Women's Studies Off-Campus

Women's Studies students participate in virtually all of the College's and Great Lakes Colleges Association's (GLCA) off-campus programs. Of particular interest are the GLCA Urban Semester in Philadelphia, the New York Arts Program, the Antioch Women's Studies in Europe program and the Earlham-sponsored Borders and Tanzania programs. On off-campus programs, students have the opportunity to broaden their understanding of women's lives in the world.

Student/Faculty Research

Small groups of students join with faculty members to do groundbreaking collaborative research exploring a shared interest. Past projects have addressed the work of women in the Civil Rights Movement, the reception and use of Adrienne Rich's work, and the nature of women's friendships.

Outcomes

women's art show

Women's Studies graduates are everywhere doing everything. Many have earned advanced degrees in a variety of disciplines and from various institutions including the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, Iowa University, Smith College School of Social Work, Northeastern University, the City University of New York and Brown University. They are attorneys and social workers, acupuncturists and schoolteachers, midwives and college professors. One graduate is an award winning freelance writer; another is a finish carpenter and cabinetmaker in California. Jennifer works on an Indian reservation in Arizona where she and her husband are raising two children. Jane is the financial officer and grant-writer for a statewide Women's Empowerment Program in Kentucky.