Who we are
Founded in 1976, as the Curriculum in Women’s Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As of July 1, 2009, we officially became the Department of Women's Studies. Our goal is to offer courses and programming that take full account of the broadest spectrum of issues concerning women and gender in the U.S. and globally. As a discipline, Women's Studies expands the process of knowledge production to include consideration of gender, race, class, and sexuality, offering in so doing a methodology that is interdisciplinary, multicultural, and feminist. As a rigorous academic unit, Women’s Studies at UNC has a highly-published faculty who represent a broad range of academic fields including History, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Media Studies, Literature and Literary Theory, and Comparative Literature. Faculty research and teaching interests extend across the globe encompassing western Europe and the Middle East, eastern Europe, Africa and India, Latin America, the United States, and the Caribbean.
What we offer
The Department of Women’s Studies offers an undergraduate major and minor and a graduate minor. Some of our most recent courses include “Women, Art, and Activism in America,” “African American Women in the Media,” Women and Textile Production Across the Mediterranean,” “The International Politics of Sexual and Reproductive Health,” “Women and Film,” and “The Archaeology of Sex and Gender.” In addition 100 affiliated faculty across campus working in a wide range of academic areas including African/African American Studies, History, Asian Studies, English, Political Science, and Sociology teach over 120 cross-listed courses in twenty-seven departments. Our students bring to the classroom backgrounds in the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences, creating a vibrant and exciting classroom dynamic.
Women's Studies also seeks to create an extracurricular environment that supports and fosters the intellectual achievement of faculty and students interested in women and gender and of all female faculty and students whatever their interests. Our long-standing internship program provides unique opportunities for off-campus learning in local agencies for all Carolina undergraduates. Through an extensive program of interdisciplinary lectures, we bring to the general public and the university community information and intellectual debate focused on issues of women and gender locally and around the world. Our unique Women in Science Program provides a forum discussion of issues affecting women a scientists while also providing guidance and crucial role models for young women interested in science.
So, what can you “do” with a B.A. in Women's Studies?
Here is a partial list of the kinds of things our graduates have gone on to do:
publishing/editing political lobbying naval service public relations filmmaking psychology divinity school medicine |
law and social work |
substance abuse counseling |
© UNC Chapel Hill 2007