Gender and Women’s Studies

Associate Professor Kyla Tompkins, coordinator
Steering Committee: Deborah Burke², Angelina Chin³, April Mayes, Erin Runions

Gender and women’s studies (GWS) at Pomona College focuses on the culturally and historically specific production of sexual difference, on the wide-ranging impact of feminist research both inside the academy and in the larger society and on the intersections of gender with other social forces such as race, sexuality, class and colonialism. The program fosters rigorous critical inquiry into these multiple forms of difference, challenging conventional cultural assumptions about women, sexuality and gender roles and promotes the development of new ideas and research in feminist scholarship within an open, supportive environment.

Gender and women’s studies offers two kinds of majors. One stands alone and emphasizes the theoretical focus of recent feminist interdisciplinary scholarship. The other major features disciplinary tracks that link feminist research and theory with a discipline or interdisciplinary program. Both forms of the major prepare a student for a variety of careers and for graduate study. The major with disciplinary tracks enables students whose career plans or plans for graduate study might not have a direct link with gender studies to explore disciplinary and interdisciplinary constructions of knowledge in ways richly informed by feminist scholarship.

Departments and programs participating in the disciplinary tracks major are listed below. Each student electing this major has a faculty adviser who teaches in both GWS and the participatory department or program. The faculty includes Bernhard, Brown, Burke, Chávez-Silverman, Cheng, Chin, Clark, Crighton, Fitzpatrick, Flapan, Gorse, Grigsby, Hagedorn, Irish, Jackson, Kassam, Levin, Mayes, Mahdavi, Miyake, Ochoa, Pinkel, Pohl, Rapaport, Raff, Reed, Rudova, Runions, Sandoval, Seery, Teixido, Thai, Thomas, Tompkins, Waller, Worley and others with courses cross-referenced in GWS. We recommend that all GWS majors take at least one feminist theory course by the end of their junior year. Courses toward a gender and women’s studies major or minor must be taken on a letter-grade basis, unless a petition to take the course Pass/No credit is approved by the program coordinator and steering committee.

• Gender and Women’s Studies Major
   
• Gender and Women’s Studies Minor
   
• Gender and Women’s Studies Courses