Mission

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now. -Audre Lorde

Women's Studies explores the experiences of women in cultures around the world. This program is interdisciplinary and examines the social construction of gender and sexual differences with an emphasis on women's experiences.

Women's Studies seeks to acknowledge and understand how gender relates to ethnicity, race, social class, religion, sexuality, nationality, globalization and other factors that shape everyday life. Students in the program acquire the knowledge and skills to understand the history and structures of gender inequalities and how to advocate for women's rights and freedoms.

CSUDH's Women's Studies Program unequivocally affirms that Black Lives Matter, and we will continuously ensure that our intellectual and activist work reflects this insight. Our curriculum has been, and will continue to be, grounded in decolonizing pedagogy; the works and theories of women of color; and queer, non-binary, and gender-expansive voices and worldviews.

White supremacy is our nations greatest ill, and the feminist movement has not escaped its contagion. As we continue our work to imagine and cultivate a more just world, we recognize that our labor is aligned with, and indebted to, the critical intellectual, emotional, and physical work that countless others, particularly Black women and other women of color, have done before us. Our faculty and curriculum acknowledge this history while working toward a more inclusive movement to end sexism in tandem with intersecting facets of oppression including race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. As feminists we honor this history of resistance and social justice, and are committed to reflect it in our pedagogy.

Curriculum

All of our courses center voices from people of color and use intersectional approaches to demonstrate comparative knowledge of how societal institutions and power structures shape the material reality of women’s lives, not only with respect to gender, but also race, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, social class, ability, and sexual orientation. Each semester we offer multiple sections of WMS 318: Race, Class, and Gender, to foreground our departmental and disciplinary commitment to intersectionality. Courses specific to students in our major, such as WMS 350: Research Methods, question white supremacist forms of logic while emphasizing feminist of color knowledge, while students in WMS 320: Feminist Principles, interrogate the racism in the suffrage movement and second wave of feminism, reading works by Ida B. Wells, Mary Terrell, and the Combahee River Collective. In WMS 400: Feminist Theories, students are offered a diverse perspective on the canon alongside theories rooted in Black feminist thought and women of color feminisms to push back and expand on the presumed canon. Elective courses, such as WMS 310: The Witch in Literature and Culture, highlight healing modalities of women of color through a decolonial and feminist lens.

Pedagogy

Faculty in the Women’s Studies Program are committed to teaching practices grounded in anti-racist, feminist pedagogy. Our courses are student-centered in the spirit of Adrienne Rich’s “Claiming an Education,” where faculty and students take equal responsibility for knowledge production and sharing. This means that in each of our courses, there is an emphasis on the different standpoints and cultural knowledge everyone brings to class. This commitment to anti-racist instruction carries over to student advisement, which is holistic to encompass academic success, personal growth, and professional development.

Faculty Development

Faculty have an active research agenda centered on the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation, and are experts in the areas of Decolonial Studies/Decolonization, Indigenous Feminisms, Latinx Parenting, Queer of Color Critique and Feminisms, Transnational Feminisms, U.S. South Asian communities, Womanism, and Xicana Feminism.

Women’s Studies faculty regularly participate in pedagogy workshops geared toward inclusive teaching both through CSUDH’s Faculty Development Center, as well as with organizations such as the California Faculty Association, National Women’s Studies Association, LGBT Scholars of Color Network, and Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation.

Community Building

Women’s Studies-sponsored and co-sponsored events center the voices of historically marginalized groups, and have included events on women of color in the media, queer entrepreneurs, Black birth justice, and “re-mixing” Black feminism. Our WMS faculty are actively engaged members of their communities who dedicate their labor outside the university to social justice causes including political education work for a SWANA for BLM organization, the Latina Mother’s Collaborative, and La Leche League.