Spring 2012 Event! TODAY!!
TODAY
TODAY
TODAY
TODAY
TODAY
Thursday, February 9
5pm Doors Open
5:30-7p Movie Screening
7p-8p Panel Discussion Q & A
Morse Auditorium
602 Comm. Ave
Panelists:
John Carroll, COM, Assistant Professor,
Mass Communication
Barbara Gottfried, WGS,
Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Kathleen McGuinn, Current WLA member,
BU Law Student
Tessa Bartholomew-Good, CAS 2012,
Moderator
Sarah Joanne Davis Award Deadline April 1, 2012
The newly reconfigured Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program promotes interdisciplinary inquiry across the university, provides a site for collaborative research, and develops new pedagogical approaches to advance the field. Our work fosters understanding of the forces that shape our experiences as gendered and sexed human beings. We examine the social, political, and economic positions of women and men in diverse cultures and historical moments worldwide. We seek to understand the ways in which our bodies, social and cultural experiences, and imaginative constructions affect what it means to be women and men. Feminist theory, gender analysis, and queer theory help us understand how assumptions and beliefs about femininities, masculinities, and sexualities shape human institutions, including the science and scholarship that inform our understanding.
The Program offers a variety of courses and an undergraduate minor, and we sponsor public lectures, film screenings, and discussions. Boston University faculty interested in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies participate in a lively intellectual community 
as part of the Faculty Network on Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Interested graduate students from across Boston University take courses not only at BU but also through the Boston-area Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS), to which we belong.
Program History
Our program began in the 1970s and emerged in the 1980s as the Boston University Women’s Studies Program, a site of intellectual inquiry and feminist consciousness-raising concerning women’s lives. At that time studying women remedied newly recognized omissions across the academy. Beginning in the 1970s the Women’s Studies faculty created a rich array of courses in the humanities and social sciences concerning women in diverse cultures, societies and institutions throughout the world. The field of women’s studies soon grew to include inquiry into the gendered experiences of men alongside the continuing study of women. 
Scholars began to problematize the very notion of sex as a biological given or social reality and focused concern on topics in sexuality that could not be reduced to concerns with gender. Current scholarship in the field examines the extent to which sexuality and gender have been linked together historically (through the recruitment of sexuality as the “performance” or “proof” of gender, for instance) as well as aspects of sexuality that are distinct from gender. This approach has led to important new insights, while also contributing to an understanding of how gender and sexuality intersect with other categories such as race and class. Our current program name, Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies makes it clear that Boston University is a place at which the study of sexuality is welcomed and encouraged, both in conjunction with and alongside the study of gender.
Opening for a post-doctoral Visiting Scholar, the appointment to run from September 1, 2012 through August 31, 2013.
New Course:
WS101/WS102
Gender and Sexuality:
An Interdisciplinary Introduction
2011 – 2012 Events
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Bu Wgs
Our new email address is E-mail: wgs@bu.edu
Our new web address is www.bu.edu/wgs
