About
The Women’s Studies Program was created at UW Oshkosh in 1974. It became the Women’s and Gender Studies Program in 2013, to more accurately reflect the contents of its curriculum. The program seamlessly aligns with the four priorities described in UWO’s strategic plan: enhance student success, promote academic excellence, expand community engagement and economic development, and build an inclusive and supportive institutional environment.
Student Learning Outcomes
Student Learning Objectives
The Women’s and Gender Studies program offers a flexible array of course content through which students can demonstrate mastery of program learning objectives. The many subject areas and key women’s and gender studies issues that students have the opportunity to explore include:
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Historical and cross-cultural studies of gendered identities and lived experiences
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History of feminist and LGBTQ movements in the U.S. and globally
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Social justice issues including sexual and gender violence, abolition, environmental justice, workplace inequities, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and ableism
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Gender roles and inequities in such social institutions as the family, schools, the political system, legal system, and medical establishment
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Gendered health, sexual health and education, and gendered embodiments
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Representations of women and gender in the media
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Reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, family and parenting
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Feminist approaches to work, labor, and class status
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Beauty and body image
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Sexuality and gender identity
Through engagement with such content areas, students will be able to:
- Define and explain the social construction of gender
- Identify and analyze intersecting systems of privilege and oppression in local and global contexts
- Develop and practice communication skills that support and respect the experiences and perspectives of diverse communities
- Apply theoretical frameworks, concepts, and ethics in the fields of Women’s and Gender Studies and LGBTQ Studies
- Construct arguments concerning issues, theories, and practice in women’s and gender studies using a disciplinary or feminist research methodology
- Reflect critically on one’s own learning of feminist thought and practice
- Apply key women and gender studies concepts to effect change through civic engagement and activist projects, to one’s own life, and/or to non-Women’s and Gender Studies academic coursework
Portfolio Guidelines
Students graduating with a minor or major in Women’s and Gender Studies will compile a portfolio, which will be put together during the senior seminar, and will consist of six pieces of writing:
- The research paper written during the Senior Seminar. The research paper may be a new piece of work, or students may choose to revise and expand upon a paper written for another course. Students will also include in the portfolio a statement of the research problem and an annotated bibliography of at least seven sources, both of which will be written during the planning and drafting stages of the research paper.
- A 3-5 page reflective essay, written during the Senior Seminar, in which the student explains where and how the work contained in the portfolio demonstrates the skills-based and content-based learning outcomes of the program.
- A 4-5 page essay on feminist activism written during the Senior Seminar. This essay can take either of two forms:
- an essay which analyzes a feminist activist project that the student has participated in (e.g. internship, service learning project, volunteer project, etc.), explaining its intended outcome and evaluating its effectiveness, both in promoting the social change envisioned and the personal growth it provoked; or
- an essay emphasizing some effect(s) of feminist movement during the past two hundred years, and connecting this to the individual student’s development as a Women’s and Gender Studies major or minor.
- Three additional papers written during his/her coursework in the minor or major. These three papers will be chosen in consultation with the professor teaching the Senior Seminar, and should represent the student’s best work. Most importantly, these papers should clearly demonstrate both the skills-based and content-based learning outcomes of the program.
Not every individual paper in the portfolio has to meet every content-based and skill-based learning outcome, but the portfolio as a whole should clearly demonstrate all of them.
Portfolios will be evaluated by the Women’s and Gender Studies Steering and Curriculum Committee. Each student learning outcome will be assessed as “exceeding expectations,” “meeting expectations,” or “fails to meet expectations.”
Women's and Gender Studies
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Sage Hall, Room 3003 or 3464
835 High Ave, Oshkosh, WI 54901
Contact Information
Ula Lukszo Klein | Director
Phone: (920) 424-0892
Email: kleinu@uwosh.edu