Women's & Gender Studies

Address: 200 Foust Building
Phone: 336.334.5673
Web site: wgs.uncg.edu

Majors & Concentrations

• Women's & Gender Studies (BA) U871

What's unique about Women's and Gender Studies at UNCG?

Interdisciplinary Program: A flexible, interdisciplinary curriculum allows students to take a wide variety of courses and develop an understanding of global gender issues. Students combine study in a variety of disciplines with a sequence of innovative core courses and, if they wish, with internships and independent study. Students have a great deal of freedom to design their own concentrations within the major and to double major in other fields as well. The MA offers a choice of three concentrations: Gender and Community Leadership, Gender and Health, or an Individually Designed MA.

Tradition of Excellence: Deeply connected to the university's history as the Woman's College, the current WGS program was founded in 1972, and is one of the oldest and most active programs in the nation. The MA program is currently the only master's degree program in Women's Studies in the state of North Carolina, and the only one available between Baltimore and Atlanta. Currently, more than 100 faculty affiliates from 17 departments on campus are actively engaged in the program.

Critical Awareness: The Women's and Gender Studies degree program intentionally advances educational experiences that lead students to become critical, independent, globally aware thinkers who seek creative ways to enact their knowledge and inspire social transformation. Completion of a degree in WGS prepares students to lead impactful lives in professional, civic, and personal contexts.

Professional Application: A Women's and Gender Studies degree prepares students for many different careers in private and public organizations, including careers in the arts, health services, recreation, social services, business, law, government, non-profit agencies, international organizations, and teaching. A second major in Women's and Gender Studies may create a specialization, thus increasing one's application to professional and civic engagements.

Message from the Program Head

"Deeply linked with UNCG's legacy as Woman's College—a politicized space that dared to educate women—the current Women’s and Gender Studies program advances a core knowledge that prepares students for a variety of impactful professional and personal endeavors. Faculty and students involved in this scholarly community pay special attention to the ways that gender gains social, cultural and political power through articulations with race, social class, physicality, and sexuality. Throughout the program, a mixture of core and elective courses, as well as extracurricular activities invite students to ponder and question the conditions of life for men and women in a global society. Involvement in the Women's and Gender Studies program ensures opportunities to link learning, research, and activism in professionally and socially relevant ways, as well as to explore multiple modes of analytic engagement."

– Katherine M. Jamieson, Director, Women's and Gender Studies Program

Student success story

WGS graduate Heather Douglas, BA 2003, joined the Peace Corps after graduation to serve as an HIV/AIDS health volunteer in Mozambique, Africa. Heather elected to stay an additional year to serve as the Volunteer Leader (PCVL) for new Peace Corps volunteers. During this third year, she is learning to teach English as a second language while working with Helen Keller International, an American NGO that concentrates in vitamin A and iron distribution, eye care and surgeries, and nutrition projects

Career experience through internships

WGS students have identified several local, national, and international venues for internships that extend the curriculum toward an application of new knowledge and opportunity to facilitate change. Some of those internships have taken place at the Women’s Resource Center; Triad Health Project; Commission on the Status of Women; Planned Parenthood; Feminist Majority, Washington, DC; YWCA; Girls, Inc.

Special help available for students

Graduate assistantships, tuition waivers, and the Sally and Alan Cone Fund provide support for student work in Women's and Gender Studies.

What Women's and Gender Studies students say

This is how recent graduates sum up their experience in the program as expressed through their senior portfolios:

"In this program, I have continually felt that my opinion was important and listened to by professors and classmates. The things that I have learned are things I would not have learned in any of my other classes. Women’s and Gender Studies helps you to look critically at elements of life and society that are normally overlooked and taken for granted…something that has helped me grow as a person, not only as a student."

"Even though I am graduating in two weeks and will officially have left UNCG, I will unofficially be a part of the program for the rest of my life, because it is such a large part of who I am. I will use it when I read the newspaper, when I listen to music, when I talk to my sister about boys, when I talk to my brother about girls, when I go out alone late at night, when I go see my doctor, when I raise my children, and whenever I have the opportunity, because women are everywhere and they are a part of everything, and they have a voice that needs to be heard."

Academic Clubs, Organizations and Activities

• Students, faculty, and staff coordinate a biannual conference focused on gender and crucial social, cultural, and political issues.
• WGS coordinates students, faculty and staff in a staging of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues."
• In March, UNCG sponsors a university-wide celebration of women's history with lectures, exhibits, performances, forums, and many other activities.

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