Our numerous on-campus organizations offer a particularly high number of opportunities to try your hand at leadership roles and work collaboratively with others to achieve the common good, thus applying what you learn in the classroom. You will also find a class environment that favors the exploration and discussion of viewpoints that have historically been trivialized or silenced.
The Women’s Studies minor at Converse features an introductory course designed by a team of seventeen Converse professors from fields as diverse as history, physics, literature, religion, philosophy, psychology, art, and biology.
The women’s studies minor will enhance Converse students’ ability to understand themselves and their place in the global community by encouraging them to analyze the assumptions that are an essential part of language and cultural symbols. This program will foster awareness of women’s roles and the image of women in various cultures. Introduction to Women’s Studies sets the stage for our program, which then gives you the freedom to choose from a menu of courses from varied disciplines so that you can best reach your personal goals.
Degree Offered
- Women’s Studies minor
About Women’s Studies
Women’s Studies is an interdisciplinary program that looks at women and gender from multiple perspectives such as race, class, sexuality and age. Focused on the history of ideas about women both here and abroad, our courses examine how societies organize the ways in which we perceive ourselves and others. Our program offers you new lenses through which to examine topics as varied as public policy and your own relationships.
While encouraging you to analyze what it means to be gendered, Women’s Studies also redresses the under-representation of women in various fields. Depending on your personal interests, you can learn more about the contributions of women in fields as diverse as literature, the visual arts, history, religion, philosophy, psychology and sports.
Service Learning
Though our minor does not require that you participate in service learning, students in WST 200 have designed final projects that had as a component volunteering at a rape crisis center or at a women’s clinic or for a confidence-building program for girls at the YMCA.
Class Excursions
Students in art history courses featuring women artists have been to see exhibits at the High Museum and at the Greenville and Columbia Art Museums. Students in Women in American History courses have conducted original research and created exhibits for the Spartanburg Public Library.
Independent Research
Students have the opportunity to create research projects for their major that are women focused. A creative writing major, for example, who also studied women’s studies and traveled to Italy, wrote a series of short stories with Italian mothers as protagonists. A student whose primary interests were in psychology and entrepreneurship completed a research project on women entrepreneurs in Ghana.
The minor consists of 21 credit hours, including WST 200 and six elective courses. The electives may come from any field, and are typically featured by the departments of art, English, French, history, psychology, the physical sciences, politics and religion, though any course that is women focused also qualifies. A student also has the option of seeking out a professor who has the time and inclination to work with them on a Directed Independent Study course that has gender as a main component of its focus. In this case, a syllabus should be presented to the Co-directors of the Women’s Studies Program for final approval.
Sample Courses
- Human Sexuality
- Women in Early American History
- Francophone Women Writers of Africa and the Caribbean
- Psychology of Women
- Gender and Politics
- Women and Religion
- Victorian Women Writers
Programs
Converse offers over 100 majors, minors, certificates, and graduate programs across 2 campuses and online.