Welcome

In Memory of Marjorie H. Stern

On April 23, 2013 Marjorie Stern passed away at the age of 94.  She was a founding member of the Women’s Right’s Committee of the American Federation of Teachers' and of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, an educator, an appointed member of the City of San Francisco’ Commission on Aging, and a respected honoree of numerous organizations for her efforts for women, educators, and seniors.  She is honored in the Hall of Fame of San Francisco State University.

In 1983 Ms. Stern founded the Marjorie Hefter Stern Scholarship to encourage women in higher education and to support students on campus who were engaged in social change.  For 27 years, she generously supported two student awards, one each for undergraduate and graduate students.  Many of the recipients of her award were Women and Gender Studies department’s graduate and undergraduate students.

WGS would like to express our sincere gratitude and condolences to Ms. Stern’s family and friends.

Announcing WGS 2013 Summer Classes

WGS 160.01 Gender, Politics, and Citizenship (Session R3)

T, TH: 1:15-5:15 pm; July 15, 2013-August 16, 2013
Julietta Hua

WGS 200.01 Introduction to Women and Gender Studies (Session R1)

T, TH: 1:15-5:15 pm; June 10, 2013-July 12, 2013
Kasturi Ray
 

Annual Fundraising Campaign

We need your support today!  Help us continue providing excellent programming for our students!  Make a donation today and receive as a thank you this beautiful print commissioned for our 40th Anniversary. i

To give, click here: http://wgsdept.sfsu.edu/giving-wgs

About Women and Gender Studies

The Women Studies Department at SFSU was founded in 1976 as part of a movement to bring feminism and studies of identity into the university. At that time, most similar programs were called “Women’s Studies.” The apostrophe can imply that the discipline belongs to women rather than has women as its object of study. The program at SFSU chose to identify women as our object of study, not as the owners of the field. The Women Studies Department at SFSU is unique in its use of the construction “women studies.”

Today, who and what constitute “women” is a complex topic. Since the 1970s, woman of color feminism, post-structuralism, transgender studies, and intersectional feminisms have transformed how, why, and who we study as “women.” An added emphasis on “gender” in the name of the department follows curricular, activist, and research changes to the field. “Women and Gender Studies” suggests that “women” is a contested category of identity, always subject to a multiplicity of determinants, including race, ethnicity, nation, class, sexuality, and ability.

The expansion of our name does not signal a shift in our departmental mission. The content of our courses will not change. They will continue to include identity-based studies of women and men in transnational and multicultural contexts alongside deconstructive approaches to the categories of analysis (gender, race, nation, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and able-bodiedness) that frame our teaching and scholarship.