New Major Added in Gender, Women and Sexuality
Studies
In addition to the already widely successful Gender Studies
minor, Butler University will have a new major in Gender, Women's
and Sexuality Studies in the fall of 2010, with courses that
include Philosophy of Feminism, Feminist & Queer Theory and
Resistance for Social Change in the U.S.
"With this major, Butler University lives up to its
groundbreaking abolitionist and coeducational beginnings," said Ann
Savage, associate professor of media arts and director of the
gender-studies program.
The University has offered a Gender Studies minor for 15 years,
and participation in that area of study has grown from three
students attaining a minor in 2003 to nearly 40 in 2008. This
spring, Gender Studies started a speakers' series that brought in
experts from New York, Minnesota and California universities.
As part of the new major, the University has hired its first
full-time professor in Gender Studies, Brooke Campbell, who
previously taught at Colby College in Maine. Faculty associated
with the areas of African and Diaspora Studies, Peace Studies and
the Collaborative for Critical Inquiry Into Race, Gender and
Sexuality will teach classes in the new major.
"Although the major is Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, the
program takes an intersectional approach, is broadly conceived and,
of course, includes the critical inquiry of race and class as
well," Savage said. "All of our identities hold all of these
positions: gender, race, class and sexuality. None of us are more
of one than the other, but rather we have integrated identities and
the new major is inclusive and representative of this
perspective."
In the proposal to create the new major, Savage wrote that
majoring in Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies prepares students
for professions in public administration, health and human
services, the arts, law, medicine, social work, journalism and
non-governmental social justice organizations, as well as graduate
work in a number of programs.
"More and more employers seek graduates who are well prepared to
work in a diverse and multicultural world," Savage said.
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