Gender Studies

Welcome to the Gender Studies webpage. On this page you'll find the mission of the department, departmental student learning goals, a curricular map and assessment schedule, and progress made from the most recent Program Review Action Plan (2009-2010). If you have questions about the assessment findings or questions about the department, please contact Jean Keller, Gender Studies Department Chair, at [email protected].

MISSION

The mission of the Gender Studies Program at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University is to teach students to recognize, analyze, and critique social and cultural systems of power related to gender that create and reinforce hierarchies of difference. This learning empowers students to live their lives with integrity and positions them to become leaders for change in their communities.

STUDENT LEARNING GOALS

1. Understand sex and gender as social constructs that are intersectional and vary across temporal, spatial, and cultural boundaries.

a. Understand key gender terms such as sex, gender, intersex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

b. Analyze the ways in which sex and gender are constructed.

c. Identify factors such as race, class, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality and ability that inform their intersectional gender identities and explain how these factors influence their self-conception and experience in the world.

d. Articulate how constructs of sex and gender vary across time, space or culture.

e. Explain how key terms such as sex, gender, intersex, sexual orientation, and gender identity are contested categories.

f. Students’ analyses will incorporate an understanding of gender as constructed.

g. Analyze how intersectional gender identities and power differentials influence the life experiences of persons from a social group to which they don't belong.

h. Analyze why constructs of sex and gender vary across time, space and culture.

Goal 2: Students will reflect on how constructs of sex and gender apply to their own lives as well as their interacts with others.

a. Recognize how sex and gender have mattered in their own lives.

b. Identify factors that influence how their own gender has advantaged or disadvantaged them in a social context.

c. Identify how their gendered assumptions about themselves affect their expectations of and interactions with others.

d. Analyze the extent to which gendered experiences of others vary from their own experiences.

e. Analyze factors that influence how other people’s gender has advantaged or disadvantaged them.

f. Analyze how gendered expectations affect their interactions with others.

Goal 3: Students will cultivate interest in social concerns related to sex, gender, and social inequality.

a. Identify particular social concerns related to sex, gender, and social inequality.

b. Become interested in understanding concerns related to sex, gender, and social inequality.

c. Articulate their interest in concerns related to sex, gender, and social inequality.

d. Want to continue learning about social concerns related to sex, gender, and social inequality.

e. Compare and contrast social concerns related to sex, gender and social inequality.

f. Value the importance of attention to social concerns related to sex, gender, and social equality.

g. Advocate about social concerns related to sex, gender, and social equality.

h. Express a commitment to addressing/taking action on social concerns related to sex, gender and social equality.

i. Evaluate actions taken in relation to sex, gender and social equality.

Goal 4: Cultivate the habit of questioning gender constructs when encountering knowledge claims and perspectives, such as those advanced by texts, artistic works, media, and science/social science.

a. Identify and describe the way gender is used to make claims and advance perspectives.

b. Use gender as a category for analysis to understand knowledge claims and perspectives.

c. Develop their habit of questioning gender constructs

d. Identify, describe, and critically question the way gender is used to make claims and advance perspectives.

e. Use gender as a category for examining subject matter.

f. Demonstrate their habit of questioning gender constructs.

g. Identify, describe, and critically question in a complex manner the way gender is used to advance perspectives.

h. Use gender as a category of analysis for examining subject matter in a complex manner.

i. Strengthen their habit to use gender as a category of analysis.

Goal 5: Understand, compare, and evaluate a range of gender theories from multiple disciplines that inform and structure the field of Gender Studies.

a. Be introduced to feminism.

b. Understand that women’s, men’s studies, gender, and LGBTQ+ studies, are academic fields of study.

c. Introduce Post-Colonial Theory.

d. Compare and evaluate a range of feminist theories and other gender-related theories.

e. Compare and evaluate the explanatory power of these theories in a range of subject areas.

f. Analyze how postcolonialism shapes experiences and policies at the global level.

Goal 6: Understand, analyze, and critique social and cultural systems of power that create and reinforce hierarchies of difference.

a. Identify and describe social systems of power that create and reinforce hierarchies of difference.

b. Discuss hierarchies of difference in terms of privilege or oppression.

c. Analyze social systems of power that create and reinforce hierarchies of difference.

d. Critique hierarchies of difference and social systems of power in terms of privilege or

Goal 7: Develop the skills - analytical and activist - to become agents of change regarding justice and gender equality in their local and international communities.

a. Describe the social and political contexts in which movements for gender equality arose in the US.

b. Identify and describe the primary movements for gender and sexual equality of the United States.

c. Identify and describe specific skills and strategies used by agents of change.

d. Describe the social and political contexts that gave rise to movements for gender equality outside of the US.

e. Identify and describe one or more movements for sexual and gender equality transnationally.

f. Analyze and evaluate the strategies used by movements for gender equality, both in terms of pragmatic results as well as larger social and ethical significance.