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COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

GENDER AND WOMEN'S STUDIES

Professor Alice Dailey teaches a class.

In Gender and Women’s Studies, you’ll examine gender and sexuality as fundamental to human experience across the globe. 

Gender and Women’s Studies encourages critical analysis of gender and sexuality at local, national, and global levels—now and in the past. Our curriculum brings feminist and queer theory into conversation with fields of study across the University—from history to sociology to global finance—helping students discover new alternatives for thinking about the problems of the world and the contributions of its people. As teachers, we are profoundly influenced by feminist models of collaborative learning and shared authority. We recognize our students and their life experiences as sources of vital expertise, and we help them find a voice, a sense of community, and a purpose as agents of social change.

WHY GENDER AND WOMEN'S STUDIES?

In Gender and Women’s Studies, you’ll study a wide range of fields from the perspectives of feminist and LGBTQIA critical analysis, in a global context and with the purpose of promoting a better world.

You’ll study how assumptions about gender and sexuality operate in society—shaping cisgender, nonbinary, transgender and queer identities—and how they influence economic, social and political structures.

You’ll acquire tools for making intersectionality central to your awareness of how identity works—learning how we can make sense of gender and sexuality only through rigorous exploration of race, ethnicity, class, ability, nationality, religion and other axes of inequality.

Travis Foster, PhD
Director of Academics

Kelly-Anne Diamond
Director of Programming

Reagan Venturi
Graduate Assistant

   

NEWS AND EVENTS

STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE

The Gender and Women’s Studies program is happy to announce the return of the 33rd Student Research Conference on Friday, February 10th, 2023! This conference will again highlight and celebrate research examining gender and sexuality produced by students across the university over the previous year. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to submit and present their work. The day will culminate with a keynote address by nationally recognized scholar Emma Heaney. MORE...

All Villanovans are welcome to attend Spring 2022’s Feminist Book Club. This term, we will be discussing Sarah Schulman's new book, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993.

“As a double major in Biology and Gender and Women’s studies, I’m passionate about practical applications of biological research as well as understanding the wide spectrum of human experience,” says Kaitlyn Chan ’20 CLAS. "GWS has allowed me to better understand how societies are built and where ‘traditional’ beliefs originate from. My goal is to enter a master’s degree in genetic counseling, where I hope to blend my two majors to help people experiencing various genetic conditions.”

TACKLING TIMELY TOPICS

At a time when white supremacy is front and center in US headlines, a Villanova professor is tackling the topic from a fresh perspective in a new book. In "Genre and White Supremacy in the Postemancipation United States," Travis M. Foster, PhD, offers an important new study of popular literature’s role in refashioning and resisting white supremacy in an emergent post-emancipation climate. MORE...

#SAYHERNAME

Students in the GWS capstone course, #SayHerName: Gender, Race, and Social Justice, taught by Jill McCorkel, PhD, spent their final semester of college doing applied case research on behalf of incarcerated women in Philadelphia. In February, their research included a class trip to the Philadelphia Municipal Court. MORE...

Villanova Art History Professor and GWS faculty member Dr. Timothy McCall has just published a new book: Brilliant Bodies: Fashioning Courtly Men in Early Renaissance Italy!

Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power. More information can be found by clicking the book cover, and you can use code "NR22" for 30% off. MORE...