3 “Why/What is Women’s and Gender’s Studies?”
MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/womens-and-gender-studies/wgs-101-introduction-to-womens-and-gender-studies-fall-2014/instructor-insights/
Why take a course in Women’s and Gender’s Studies?
A course in Women’s and Gender’s Studies (WGS) will help you become familiar with key issues, questions and debates in Women’s and Gender Studies scholarship, both historical and contemporary. A WGS course will introduce you to many of the critical questions and concepts that feminist scholars have developed as tools for thinking about gendered experience. A WGS course will offer you the opportunity to explore the complex ways in which gender intersects with class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and age within various spheres and institutions of society.
What is Women’s and Gender’s Studies?
Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) is an interdisciplinary field that asks critical questions about the meanings of sex and gender in society. A WGS course offers the opportunity for study and discussion of key issues, questions and debates in Women’s and Gender Studies, both historical and contemporary. Gender studies scholarship critically analyzes themes of gendered performance and power in a range of social spheres, such as education, culture, and work. A WGS course draws on multiple disciplines–such as art, literature,religion, philosophy, and music — to examine cultural assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality. A WGS course offers the opportunity for analysis of current events with the aim to increase awareness of contemporary and historical experiences of women, and of the multiple ways that sex and gender interact with race, class, nationality and other social identities.
*The text was changed so as not be be specific to the course description, overview, and outcomes for MIT OpenCourseWare’s WGS.101 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies course.