Office: Draper 106
Extension: 3217
CPO: 2104
Women's and Gender Studies fulfills the mission and curriculum of Berea College by offering students the opportunity both to critically examine issues of gender across many fields of knowledge, and to study the varied contributions and experiences of women in a range of historical periods and in diverse cultures. The questions and insights that women’s studies scholars have brought to their fields of inquiry have expanded the traditional boundaries of intellectual investigation and generated new areas of research and teaching. In keeping with this tradition of scholarship and teaching, Berea College Women’s Studies Program offers an interdisciplinary academic course emphasizing critical thinking and inquiry.
TheWomen's and Gender Studies Program is devoted to the study of the roles, contributions, and global conditions of women throughout history, as well as the exploration of human experience as viewed through the lens of gender. As women’s studies scholarship has evolved, it has become increasingly attentive to how race, class, and sexuality contribute to an understanding of how power works in society. Because gender cuts across many fields of knowledge, scholarship in women’s studies is interdisciplinary, drawing on and drawing together both methods of inquiry and material content from many different fields. Thus one important value of women’s studies courses is that they move beyond the confines of a single point of view to examine problems and questions from interdisciplinary perspectives. Moreover, since women’s studies addresses the complexity of women’s experience from a multicultural perspective, the program is not only interdisciplinary but also cross-cultural in focus. These perspectives, in turn, help female and male students gain a new understanding of their own unique roles in society.
In its twenty one-year history at Berea, the Women's and Gender Studies Program has been specifically developed to address the College’s mission to educate the whole human being. Its own mission is in accord with the College’s “Common Learning Goals” as presented in the College Strategic Plan (last revised in 2006). The Women's and Gender Studies Program’s commitment to critical thinking, diversity, collaboration, and interconnection corresponds to the College’s express dedication to those same values. Moreover, the Women’s Studies Program exemplifies the College’s commitment to establishing teaching and learning communities across disciplines, drawing together students and faculty from all areas of the College into communities of learners and critical questioners reflecting upon issues which transverse and transcend the traditional departmental boundaries.
a. Critical Thinking: A primary value of women’s studies courses is the formation of learning communities where student and faculty engage in critical exploration, leading to a synthesis of their learning in various women’s studies cross-listed courses, in other courses and life experience, and through the events and workshops of the program. Students study a multiplicity of critical perspectives and theories as lenses through which to examine texts. Emphasis is placed on reading and analysis of texts. Indeed, critical thinking in service to moral and personal growth, and a commitment to social action, is at the core of the program’s own mission. To provide an educational space and a formal academic program where mutual consideration and reasoned discussion of gender may occur is the founding principle of the program. For students at Berea College, to think “gender” is to adopt a critical perspective toward their surrounding environment. Implicit in the core program of women’s studies is the expectation that students will engage in a process of moral and spiritual development that will lead them to stronger commitments to service in their communities.
b. Diversity: A commitment to diversity and respect for “all people of the earth” is clearly manifested in the women’s studies and general studies curriculum that addresses multicultural issues and global concerns. Titles of the particular courses listed under WST include: Introduction to Women’s Studies; Classic Texts; and Special Topics (Women of Color in the Third Wave). Courses cross-listed with other departments that fulfill WST requirements are indicative of this commitment, with titles including, for example, African-American Women Writers; Women and African-Americans in Politics; Literature of Caribbean Women; and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Family, to name a few. In the past five years, Short Term offerings have also focused on expanding student understanding of women’s cultures, including titles such as Women in Contemporary Japan; Women in China; and Never Again a World without Us (Mexico’s Zapatistas). Furthermore, women’s studies co-curricular events have focused consistently on philosophical debates and inquiries into diversity and difference, featuring such speakers as Winona LaDuke, bell hooks, Holly Near, Madhu Prakash and Gustavo Esteva, Vandana Shiva,--again, a partial but representative list. Finally the Women’s Studies Program’s Wednesday luncheons, Peanut Butter and Gender, one of the most popular luncheon events on campus, offers regular community gatherings to celebrate women of color and other scholars who help us to break bread across our cultural differences.
c. Collaboration: The hallmark of women’s studies as an international field of inquiry is the notion that learning and teaching represent acts of collaboration. By definition, women’s studies takes the “road less traveled” among academic disciplines in its insistence to broaden its knowledge base by embracing multiple disciplinary perspectives. Team-based study, group classroom assignments, and collaborative computer assignments are commonplace in the women’s studies classroom. The women’s studies curriculum offers numerous courses that cross-list with other departments, far outnumbering its own four core offerings. Those include AFR/ENG African-American Women Writers; AFR/PSC Women and African-Americans in Politics; AFR/ENG 212 Literature of Caribbean Women; CFS 207 Family Relations; CFS 366 Cross Cultural Family; ENG 237 Women and Literature; HIS 228 Gender in the Modern West; REL 211 Women in Religion; REL 223 Liberation Theologies; and SOC 325 Gender and Sex Roles.
The Women's and Gender Studies Program’s commitment to critical thinking, respect for diversity, and collaboration is indicative of its alignment with the liberal arts tradition of the College. The current women’s studies curriculum and the proposed interdisciplinary concentrations emphasize the College’s focus on developing teaching and learning communities across disciplines, centered in a program which honors the primacy of human interaction and relationship within the context of community responsibility, social justice, and the intellectual and moral development of the individual.
