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Arts and Humanities

Minor in Women and Gender Studies

The Women & Gender Studies Program at the University of Southern Maine minor offers an interdisciplinary program that provides the university with a spectrum of feminist courses and educational programs on all aspects of women's lives, gender, and sexualities.

Students with this minor learn to contextualize and critically examine all aspects of our knowledge, culture, and society, while learning about feminist analyses of gender. Subject matter includes women in American, European, Soviet, and Latin American history; cultural studies of feminist movements; multicultural perspectives on women's history; feminist economics; and analyses of popular culture and everyday life from a range of feminist perspectives.

This minor is offered at Lewiston-Auburn College through USM's Women and Gender Studies Program and is open to all majors. Any student wishing to pursue the minor in women and gender studies should complete the necessary paperwork so that the minor appears on their transcript.

The minor consists of a minimum of 9 credits of required courses and 9 credits of Women and Gender Studies-related courses as follows:

Both of the following (6 credits):
     WST 130 Introduction to Women and Gender Studies
     WST 201 Women, Knowledge, and Power

Either of the following (3 credits):
     WST 380 Politics of Difference
     WST 390 Contemporary Feminist Theories

Additionally, 9 credits of women's studies related courses are required (two of the courses must be at the 300-level or above). Those regularly offered at Lewiston- Auburn College include the following:
     HUM 342 Women of Color in Fiction
     HUM 451 Masculinities in U.S. Literature and Culture
     SBS/HUM 458 Representations of Motherhood
     SBS 341 The Family
     SBS 361 The Psychology and Sociology of Women

See the women and gender studies program in this catalog for other related courses.