Is gender identity a social construct? How is gender represented in art and media? See how past and present societies have interacted with diverse axes of identification, and investigate the contributions of women throughout history and around the world.

Why women's and gender studies at Sewanee?

Women's and Gender Studies invites you to use gender as a fundamental category of analysis to understand the operations of power among men, women, and transgender individuals. You will study the theoretical paradigms of feminist and queer research, focusing on how scholars have critically engaged, challenged, and revised categories of philosophical and political thought.

You’ll learn about contemporary contributions of women as well as the significance of gender as a cultural construct within the social and natural sciences, in the arts and literature, and in religion. You’ll also study the multiple ways in which gender influences our individual and collective assumptions in local, global, political, and social contexts.

A Sampling of Courses

Intro to Black Women's Studies
Women's Studies

This introductory course explores the interlocking forms of oppression circumscribing Black women’s lives in the United States. It contextualizes Black women’s struggles for social justice historically within the broader narratives of Black freedom struggles and the Women’s Rights Movement. It underscores the ways in which despite their marginalized status, Black women have used their agency within both the private and public realms to interrogate, challenge, and resist their subordination and subvert the status quo, particularly as it is reinforced in negative constructions of Black female identity.

WMST 160
Taught by Courtney Thompson
Comparative Sexual Behavior
Psychology

A survey and critical evaluation of research investigating the psychological and social factors in sexual behavior with some attention to the underlying biology. A comparison and contrast across species, across individuals, and across cultures. Topics include partner preference, sexual dysfunction and treatment, changes across the life span, and commercial sex. Readings include selections from works that have changed the American understanding of sexual behavior.

PSYC 213
Taught by Terri Fisher
Intro to LGBT Studies
Women's Studies

A survey of the history, politics, culture, psychology, biology, and literature of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people. Readings and lectures focusing on works by and about LGBT people.

WMST 111
Gender, Colonialism, and Culture in Greater Mexico
Anthropology

Starting from the premise that the region encompassing northern Mexico and the southwestern United States can be viewed as a single cultural region, this course examines how colonizing processes mobilized gendered and racialized identities to consolidate new social hierarchies in this part of the world. We learn about the historic interactions between Indigenous, European, and African peoples thrown together by the acts of exploration, conquest, and enslavement, and the hybridized cultural social forms which resulted. With these historical legacies in mind, we move to see how contemporary racialized and gendered identities are constructed and contested in the context of “Greater Mexico.”

ANTH 314
Taught by Donna Murdock
German Queer Cinema
German

This course traces German queer cinema from the earliest representations of gay and lesbian sexual orientations in 1920s Weimar to topics such as sexual indeterminacy and the queering of nationality and migrant culture in contemporary films. The course examines how films both represent and produce non-normative sexual desires and identities. It also considers sexual and gender identity in relation to particular historical and cultural moments as well as to other constituting experiences (Taught in English).

GRMN 357
Taught by Liesl Allingham
View All

Women's & Gender Studies

Programs of Study

Requirements for the Major & Minor in Women's and Gender Studies

Meet some professors

Paige Schneider
paige.l.schneider@sewanee.edu

Professor Schneider teaches courses in the sub-fields of gender and politics, political sociology, and women, gender and sexuality studies. A founding member of the College’s community engaged learning program, and the intergroup dialogue program (IGD), she teaches a course on race and class. Dr. Schneider’s earlier research examined cultural politics and the institutionalization of social movements in political parties. Her current research in the area of domestic politics considers barriers to college access and persistence to graduation among rural youth. In the area of gender and politics, Dr. Schneider’s research examines female incursions into traditionally all male preserves such as sport, and politics. In 2018 she received a grant to conduct field research in Uganda examining violence against women in politics, and the relationship between gender and violence during elections in countries that have adopted gender quotas.

Assistant Professor of Politics and Women's and Gender Studies
Courtney Thompson
clthomps@sewanee.edu

Dr. Thompson's research areas focus on the African diaspora, with particular emphasis on Black women’s studies, the African American literary tradition, constructions of Black masculinity, and diverse representations of Africa. Dr. Thompson’s current research examines political discourse in Black women’s writings, specifically the relationship between Black women’s progressive politics in the United States and democratic reform. She is currently working on her book manuscript, tentatively titled “We Are Fighting for Democracy: Black Women Activists and the Pursuit of All Things Equal, 1920s-Present." The book reflects her broader research interests in autobiography, politics, social movements, and Black feminist theory.

Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women's and Gender Studies
Julie Berebitsky
jberebit@sewanee.edu

Julie K. Berebitsky offers courses in United States history, specializing in women's history. She is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Social History. Professor Berebitsky’s new book, Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power and Desire (Yale University Press) is the first monograph to historicize our understanding of sexual harassment in the J. Berebitsky book coverworkplace.

Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies
Melody Lehn
mjlehn@sewanee.edu

Professor Lehn is committed to investigating the ways that rhetoric imagines and sustains our democratic practices and communities. At Sewanee, she teaches courses in Public Speaking, Teaching Speaking and Listening, Argumentation and Debate, and Voices of American Women. Professor Lehn also researches and writes at the intersection of rhetoric, politics, and gender, with an interest in the public addresses of American political women. She has presented more than thirty research papers at state, regional, national, and international conferences, and her work has appeared various prestigious publications. Her current book project maps the creation, circulation, and consumption of religious, gender-related rhetorical appeals in the 2016 presidential election.

Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Women’s and Gender Studies

Contact

Andrea Mansker
Professor of History and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies

amansker@sewanee.edu

Walsh-Ellett 203, Ext.1861

Bairnwick Women's Center
Fostering community, encouraging conversation

The Bairnwick Women’s Center is a student-led movement that seeks to educate and to empower the Sewanee community by promoting social justice, equality, and voice. Challenge notions of traditional understanding. Commit to open and honest dialogue. Provide a platform for many voices.

You're invited
Multicultural Center
There's beauty in diversity

The Ayres Multicultural Center is a setting where you and other members of your community from different backgrounds can come together for quality time, conversation, and events. A student body and a curriculum that reflect the diversity of our society are important features of any college experience.

Join Us
Senior Projects for Women's Studies
Feminists-in-action

As part of their capstone experience, all Women's and Gender Studies majors and minors work in teams to transform feminist theory and methodologies into praxis. Students are asked to reflect on some of the most important contemporary feminist issues facing young people of their generation and to collectively accomplish a concrete form of activism on a local, national, and/or global scale.

Check them out