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WOMEN'S STUDIES CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
INFORMATION
Prospective
Students
The Women's Studies Certificate Program is an
optional course of study for students already enrolled
in a Ph.D. program at The Graduate Center. It is designed to complement
existing doctoral programs and to accept as electives those courses that the
student uses to fulfill degree requirements elsewhere in The Graduate
Center. The certificate is awarded
when the graduate degree is conferred.
Women’s
Studies courses also may be taken to fulfill requirements for the Women’s
Studies concentration in the
Master of Arts in Liberal
Studies
at the Graduate Center.
All students are welcome to register for courses in Women’s Studies,
regardless of their intention to pursue the Certificate.
Course
Requirements
To qualify
for the Certificate, students must take two prerequisites courses (unless
similar course work has been done at another institution), two required
courses, and a minimum of two electives.
Click here to see the electives and required courses
offered for the current semester.
Required Courses:
The Proseminar: Multicultural/Transnational Feminisms
(3 credits) explores the diversity
and ambiguity of various feminisms through a number of frames, such as
postcolonialism, reproductive rights, environmentalism/biodiversity, NGOizing
and economic justice, with particular attention paid to regional, national
and local histories and geographies.
The
Workshop in Women’s Studies: Methods and Guided Research (3 credits)
focuses on the wide
range of methodologies developed for feminist research and other critical approaches
to the disciplines; there also is preparation for writing and publishing
essays and research papers, including an introduction to networks of journals
and granting institutions.
Prerequisite Courses:
Major Feminist Texts (3 credits) This course
offers students the opportunity to explore some of the writings that have shaped
feminist scholarship. The general aims of the course are, first, to explore a
range of critical reflections on the experiences of women and men in terms of
differences of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity and nationality.
Particular attention will be paid to texts that have rendered and shaped
these experiences in various historical periods and various geopolitical
settings. Second, the course will
introduce students to the history and logics of feminist scholarship, its
various epistemologies and methods, its relationship to the disciplines and
to other critical approaches, and the political and theoretical claims
involved. In addition, the
possibilities for the future of feminist scholarship are mapped in terms of
the opportunities and challenges, both local and global that face us
today.
Feminist Theory (3 credits) The aim of
this course is to explore feminist thought in terms of its contributions to
new perspectives on the social, the cultural and the political. Specific forms of cultural expression are
selected by the instructor that allow students to examine closely the
relationship of feminist thought to the significant shifts in consciousness
that have marked the late twentieth century. Students also explore the relationship
of feminist thought to some new fields of interest for feminist scholars, for
example science/technology, creativity and mass mediated cultures,
globalization and the transnationalization of political activism in
relationship to feminisms around the globe. Students revisit those domains of
intense critical investment by feminist scholars-such as, biology and nature,
political economy and work, representation and ideology, private and public,
sexual desire and unconscious fantasy. Questions about representation, reproduction, bodies, knowledge, power
and desire and the intersection of these with race, ethnicity, nation, class,
gender and sexuality are thereby addressed.
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