Gender Studies Program

Coordinator: Professor Carey Kaplan
Assistant Professor: Patricia Delaney

The Gender Studies Program fosters critical awareness of the reciprocal relationship between gender and culture—that is, between the ways in which culture conditions and constructs perceptions of femininity and masculinity and how these perceptions interact with other cultural formation. Gender Studies examines these processes in their historical and contemporary manifestations, in Western and non-Western societies, and in the ethnic, and socio-economic groups that constitute these entities.

An interdisciplinary program, Gender Studies draws from a wide range of faculty and courses, including fine arts, liberal arts, humanities, social and natural sciences and pre-professional programs. Since much of culture is grounded in constructions of gender, issues examined in courses may encompass sexual identities and orientations, intersex and transgender issues, social practices, gender-influenced cultural productions and historical change. Courses across the curriculum may consider such matters as how biology intersects with culture, how gender creates and maintains structures of power, how aspects of the humanities are gender-inflected, and how gendered identities affect personhood. The purpose of such academic exploration is to expand curricular possibilities that enable students to comprehend more fully the complex factors that shape their experiences of themselves, others and the world. Service learning and active engagement in contemporary gender issues are essential aspects of the Gender Studies Program.

Students can take a variety of courses at Saint Michael’s or, with permission of the coordinator, take courses through our exchange program in Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont.