Women's Studies Minor

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Mansfield University offers individual Women's Studies courses and an 18 hour academic minor in area of studies.

Women's Studies courses focus on and analyze women's experiences, emphasize a collaborative relationship between instructors and students, and encourage students to connect issues raised in the classroom to their own lives.

PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS

Suffregette march reenactment
Women's Studies Participation in the 1890s Parade

Core Requirement:

  • WS 1100- Introduction to Women's Studies

Choose one Humanities Course:

  • ENG 3326- Women's Literature
  • ENG 3328- Lesbian and Gay Literature
  • HST2210- American Women's History
  • HST 3313- Women in European History
  • HST 3325- History of Witches and Witch Hunts
  • MU 2205- Women in Music

Choose one Social Sciences Course:

  • COM 3334- Gender and Communication
  • NUR 4402- Women's Health Issues
  • PSY 3309- Stereotypes and Prejudice
  • PSY 4422- Psychology of Women
  • SOC 2232- American Family Systems
  • SOC 3310- Sociology of Sex and Gender

Choose two electives from the courses listed below. Any of the courses listed above, and/or courses cross-listed with Women's Studies.

  • ENG 2220- Special Topics in Literature
  • ENG 3305- Comparative Literature
  • ENG 3307- Literature in English from Around the World
  • ENG 3320- Special Topics in Literature
  • ENG 4401- Seminar in Library Studies
  • HST 3294- Topics in American History
  • HST 3295- Topics in Global History
  • HST 3296- Topics in European History
  • HST 3326- History of Women and Television

Capstone Course:

  • WS 4410- Seminar in Women's Studies

Criteria for Inclusion of Courses in the Women's Studies Minor:

The Women's Studies Committee has created the following guidelines for Women's Studies courses at Mansfield University. Women's Studies courses will be taught from a feminist perspective in that they meet some, if not all, of the following guidelines:

  1. The course puts women and women's experiences at the center of study.
  2. The course considers "traditional" research or canons from the perspective of gender
  3. The course incorporates gender theories of inequality.
  4. The course is taught from a cross-cultural perspective, utilizing content and possibly pedagogical approaches from a diversity of cultures (both North American, i.e. African-American, Hispanic, Native American and Asian-American, and international cultures).
  5. The course demonstrates a recognition that the marginalization of women is comparable to that of other groups marginalized because of race, social class, ethnicity, and sexual identity.
  6. The course includes current scholarship on and by women.
  7. The course recognizes a connection between the private or domestic and public spheres of life.
  8. The course recognizes the link between its content and other disciplines (perhaps through including some material from other disciplines or by taking an interdisciplinary approach.
  9. Teaching methods for the course include efforts to focus on student empowerment and to decentralize authority in the classroom (e.g. collaborative learning).

***Please note: The Women's Studies Steering Committee sees criteria #1 as absolutely crucial and requires that at least half of the materials studied in a literature class be written by women and that at least half of the course content be about women.