Women's and Gender Studies

An Interdisciplinary Program, Women’s and Gender Studies, is where students learn how gender and diversity, including race, ethnicity, nationality, class, sexual orientation, age, and ability, affects social relationships, artistic expression, institutional structures, and national and international political, cultural, and economic relations.

Programs & Student Information

Minor in Women's and Gender Studies
Minor in Women's Health
Certificate Requirements
Student Responses

The Women’s and Gender Studies minor involves twenty-one credit hours, including a six credit hour core emphasizing collaborative learning and critical thinking in global, activist, and feminist contexts. The minor complements a wide variety of majors, including Business, English, Communication, Education, Family and Consumer Sciences, History, Justice Studies, Psychology, and Sociology, and is excellent preparation for careers in the non-profit sector or in private sector fields such as human resources, marketing, management, education, and law.

Minor Requirements

Twenty-one credit hours, including a six credit hour core (WOMEN 200 and 399), and fifteen hours in Women’s and Gender Studies electives. Electives are cross-listed with course offerings from other departments, such as History, Communication, Psychology, English, and Family and Consumer Sciences. A sample of past courses includes:

ART 689 Contemporary Issues in Art
COMM 795 Issues in Communication: Gender Communication
ENGL 555/755 Topics in Literature: Booker Prize Winners
FCS 455 History of Costume
HIST 608 Women in American History
JUST 480 Women, Crime, and Justice
SOC 569 Society and Sexuality
SOC 663 Women, Men and Society

Please consult the online course schedule for a list of current electives.

View the Minor on the Interdisciplinary Academic page

The Women’s Health minor is designed to enhance student knowledge of the bio-medical, economic, political, psychological, social, historical, and cultural factors that influence women’s health. This is designed to complement programs that prepare students for careers in nursing, social work, criminal justice, recreation, public relations, counseling, public health, medicine, and related fields. The minor includes WGS 200 (Introduction to Women’s Studies), WGS 399 (Global Women’s Issues), and NURS 370 (Women’s Health Issues). To complete the minor, students take six credit hours of approved Women’s Health electives (at least 50% of the content of such courses must address women’s health, broadly defined) and six additional credit hours of approved Women’s Studies electives for a total of 20 hours.

View the Minor on the Interdisciplinary Academic page

The requirements for a certificate are 15 hours, including a six hour core consisting of WGS 200 Introduction to Women’s Studies and WGS 399 Global Women’s Issues. Additional Women’s and Gender Studies courses or electives will supplement the core. Graduate courses such as ENGL 875 Seminar can also be used if pursuing the certificate as part of post-undergraduate or graduate studies.

Both WGS 200 Introduction to Women’s Studies, and WGS 399 Global Women’s Issues can be used to fulfill general education requirements.

View the Certificate on the Interdisciplinary Academic page

"I never realized my biases, never really understood the pain caused by my ideas of what women could and should be. I'm a different person now, more compassionate and capable and willing to fight. I'm not ashamed of that. I feel like I'm being honest with myself for the first time in a long while. Real change doesn't seem like pipe dream anymore. It's what we deserve."
-Rebecca Bauman

"Through Women's Studies, I have met a group of strong, like-minded women on campus...My experience raising money for the Crisis Resource Center through the Vagina Monologues allowed me to do great work for the community, build bonds with women on campus and in the community, and use my talents and passion for the arts."
-Megan Stoneberger

"PSU's Women's Studies Program and the diverse individuals in it have guided, taught, and even argued with me, enabling me to think deeper, act more. Most of all, PSU Women's Studies has taught me the value of being an active participant in the community. The program has and will continue to inspire me to engage the world I live in through outreach at every level."
-Angel Asuncion Reed

About Us

What is Women's and Gender Studies?
WGS Links
Make a Gift to the Women's and Gender Studies Program

Women and Gender Studies Women's and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary program that places women and gender at the center of academic analysis. Students learn how gender affects social relationships, artistic expression, institutional structures, and national and international political, cultural, and economic relations. While centrally concerned with gender dynamics, Women's and Gender Studies also explores the ways other dimensions of diversity, including race, ethnicity, nationality, class, sexual orientation, age, and ability shape the experiences of both women and men.

The program offers a twenty-one credit hour minor and a fifteen credit hour certificate that can be earned at the undergraduate or graduate level. Both include a six hour core emphasizing collaborative learning and critical thinking in global, activist, and feminist contexts. The minor and certificate complement a wide variety of majors, including Business, English, Education, Communication, Family and Consumer Sciences, History, Justice Studies, Psychology, and Sociology, and is excellent preparation for careers in the non-profit sector or in private sector fields such as human resources, marketing, management, education, and law.

Links Supporting Hands

Resources

Women's History

Multicultural Women

International Human Rights Organizations

Women in the Arts

Women's Issues and Associations

Regional and Local Resources

The Women's and Gender Studies Program would like to thank those who have been so generous with their contributions. Your contributions help us provide quality education, educational opportunities, and financial assistance to our students.

Areas of need include scholarships, equipment, and the general fund. You may also contribute to other Women's and Gender Studies Program areas of your choosing.

Make a Gift

Community Events

Downtown Joplin Poetry Nights
3rd Monday of Every Month

Downtown Poetry (Joplin) Facebook

Lecture Series

Lela Lee draws a weekly comic strip titled "Angry Little Girls" which had its origins in an (un)animated video titled "Angry Little Asian Girl" that was drawn in 1994 on the floor of her college apartment. After she finished drawing and editing the video in her college class, she hid the vhs tape in a drawer because she was ashamed of the anger she expressed. A few years later, she dusted it off to try to make something of it. She added 4 more episodes to her first video and had a lightbulb idea to make t-shirts with ALAG on it. She sold the shirts out of the trunk of her car and sold out by word of mouth. This prompted her to launch her website www.AngryLittleAsianGirl.com in 1998 in order to sell her shirts online and to have an outlet to self-publish her weekly comic. She tried to get ALAG into the mainstream, but she was met with rejection and naysayers who told her, "there's no market for Asians." While selling shirts out of her car, she noticed a lot of women from different backgrounds shared her experience of suppressed anger. So she expanded the name to Angry Little Girls which became the umbrella name for her comic strip world. In 2003, she started her own corporation, Angry Little Girls, Inc., so she could license her art to merchandise companies. Her merchandise line was sold in malls all over America and her first book was finally published in April 2005. Just two months later, her first book went into its' fourth printing. The Angry Little Girls books have been translated into Korean, French, and German.

Lela writes books, television scripts, and is currently writing another book. In 2012, Lela was nominated for a Harvey Award for the book "Fairy Tales for Angry Little Girls." Pictured above are some of her books that are published by Abrams Image and Running Press respectively.

Pam Houston's most recent book is Contents May Have Shifted, published in 2012. She is also the author of two collections of linked short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, the novel, Sight Hound, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton.

Her stories have been selected for volumes of Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards, The 2013 Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA award for contemporary fiction, The Evil Companions Literary Award and multiple teaching awards.

She directs the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers, is professor of English at UC Davis, teaches in The Institute of American Indian Art’s Low-Rez MFA program, and at writer’s conferences around the country and the world.

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