Women’s studies is an interdisciplinary field that takes the study of women and gender as its subject. The women’s studies program has three purposes:

-- It introduces students to the experiences and achievements of women, and their treatment by society here and now, as well as in earlier historical times and in other geographical places.

-- It examines gender as a social construct by taking it as the primary focus of analysis and raising questions about its impact on traditional disciplines. This enables students to examine the content of other courses in new ways.

-- It promotes interdisciplinary understanding of women’s experience by requiring students to take collateral courses in several academic areas in the humanities and the social sciences and by providing an integrative seminar.

For a minor in women's studies, students usually take WS 101, Introduction to Women's Studies and WS 301, Seminar in Women's Studies, and select four courses representing at least three different disciplines other than their major, from the following: