Women's Studies

The women's studies program offers you opportunities to examine the lived experience of women from all cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds, and explore the contributions of women to politics, science, literature, fine arts, and other fields. The minor program in women's studies provides an extra dimension to the liberal education that Fairfield offers to all students. It develops critical thinking and analytic skills, and encourages personal reflection and quests for empowerment.  As an interdisciplinary program, women's studies offers a unique way to combine elements from other disciplines and bring them together in especially powerful ways: women's studies encourages research and scholarship that integrate diverse ideas.

Apart from helping students to develop fresh perspectives, the women's studies program also provides other kinds of activities: the Women's Center in Canisius Hall offers informational resources as well as a meeting place for student groups. The program brings in various speakers on all kinds of topics, often giving students the opportunity for interaction and discussion. Fairfield's location between New York and New Haven gives students and faculty easy access to lectures, conferences, and organizations devoted to understanding and promoting women's issues.

Course of Study

The women's studies minor is an interdisciplinary program that offers all female and male students the opportunity to explore issues of diversity and alternative perspectives. In women's studies, you will learn how cultural assumptions about gender influence our personal identities as well as the public roles available to us. To complete the minor you must choose (with the assistance of the director) six courses from a variety of fields and disciplines, including anthropology, applied ethics, communication, economics, English, history, management, modern languages and literatures, music, nursing, philosophy, religious studies, and sociology. The sixth course should be the capstone seminar, WS 301, taken in your senior year after the other five have been completed.  One of the five courses must have a theory focus, and one or more of the courses should address issues of race, class, ethnicity, or sexuality as well as gender. Some of the many courses available are:

• Law, Women, and Work
• Contemporary Women Writers of Color
• Feminism in America
• Women and Mass Media
• Women: Work and Sport
• Women in Judaism
• Women in Music

Real-World Education

The women's studies minor offers a way to examine the conditions of life for women in the United States and around the world, in the past and the present. The discipline of women's studies is based in feminist analysis, and new developments in this field continue to offer fresh ways of understanding problems. By studying the social construction of gender, you will increase your understanding of the contributions made by women to their respective societies, develop your ability to critique ideas, and cultivate your capacity for an individual and collective vision of change.

The Faculty

Members of the women's studies faculty are drawn from many departments. The coordinating committee - those who help administer the program as well as teach - consists of the following:

Life after Fairfield

Your choice of a minor in women's studies will enhance your qualifications for almost any career. You'll develop new sensitivities and insights into the realities of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality in politics, society, and the workplace. You'll study these issues on both the theoretical and experiential levels, adding an educational dimension that will prove useful to prospective employers in business, government, the professions, and other fields. Women's studies minors have gone on to work as doctors, lawyers, in public relations, publishing, business, education - the list is endless. Women's studies will help you participate in the real world in which we live.

Profile

Kate Napolitano
Women's Studies minor

"I joined the women's studies program because I knew I couldn't succeed as well in the 'real world' after graduation without a better understanding of the men and women who populate it. Gender dynamics affect everything: job salaries, childcare policies, even (like it or not) your very family life at home. Once I joined the program, I realized it was so much more than I expected. Its engaging courses empowered and developed my creativity, compassion, awareness, and world view. Women's studies is almost a misnomer: I learned so much about men, about class, about race, and most importantly about myself in relation to those things, that I have a new confidence in myself both as a student, and as an active participant in the world."

For further information, please contact:
Dr. Johanna Garvey, Program Director
Donnarumma Hall 112
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06824-5195
Telephone: (203) 254-4000, ext. 2805
E-mail: jkgarvey@mail.fairfield.edu