Program in Women's & Gender Studies
Crossing Borders for Feminist Resistance
A digital research project applies transnational feminist theories & methodologies to investigate women's movements around the world…
Eyes on the Middle East
The seminar Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East uses gender as a lens to examine a rapidly changing region.
Politics of the Bathroom
Why do bathrooms engender serious public debate? Laurie Finke, professor of women's and gender studies, responds.
Students Create Podcast Series
For their final project, WGS seniors created a podcast to bring discussions out of the classroom and to the broader Kenyon community…
Finding Frida
"Imagine my surprise at finding Frida," said Professor Irene López about a painting outside a small restaurant in Brazil.
The women's and gender studies program offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the complex role gender plays in shaping the world around us.
The program enables students to understand how gender impacts their everyday lives as well as its role in society, institutions and practices both locally and globally. Coursework addresses important topics that are traditionally underrepresented in academic studies, such as the lives and works of women, gays, lesbians and peoples of color. Through its innovative pedagogies, the Program's encourages students to develop their own analytical skills to evaluate how gender is imagined and practiced throughout the world.
Women's and Gender Studies draws upon coursework in fields such as anthropology, English, history, Latin American literature and culture, political science, psychology, religious studies and sociology. Drawing up transnational and intersectional approaches, students investigate gender through its connections with race, class, cultural identity, sexuality, nationality, and religion. This holistic approach enables us to interrogate essentializing categories of identity and static notions like traditional vs. modern, West vs. East and heterosexual vs. homosexual, which distort significant gendered differences across the globe.