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Welcome!
What is Women's Studies?
Women's Studies is an interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that places gender and women at the center of inquiry.
Central to our consideration of gender are the ways class, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, age and ability shape the female and male experience.
Women's Studies raises important questions about gender as a socially and culturally constructed phenomenon that affects personal lives, artistic expression, work, social relationships, institutional structures, and the production of knowledge.
Women's Studies students tend to be people who want to make a difference in the world. Each student's personal goals and intellectual development is of major importance, and we prize our ability to give students individual attention.
Statement from
WSU Women's Studies Department
October 23, 2007
In response to the recent rhetoric surrounding "Islamo-Fascism" week, the Women’s Studies Department at WSU would like to express its concern over some of the racist and sexist assumptions being made about the religion of Islam and the treatment of Muslim women in the U.S. and different parts of the globe. While we fully support freedom of speech, we also believe that violence and hate speech that is disseminated under the guise of "freedom" needs to be challenged and made accountable. To state that the religion of Islam is "fascist" is itself an act of rhetorical fascism and ignores traditions of plurality within Islamic faith. Finally, Muslim women do NOT need to be "saved" by the "first" world; instead, Muslim feminists, in the midst of working on many issues in their communities, have repeatedly said that the urgent task at hand is to work for peace in the Middle East (see Women's Resources on Muslim feminist perspectives). Increasing militarization in Iraq and Afghanistan only exacerbates the feminization of poverty in these locations and makes conditions for women worse. Burkhas are not the enemy—bombs are. |
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