Hilary Pamperin ’06 was one of the first students to graduate with a women’s and gender studies minor in May 2006, after a recent board decision launched the new specialization.

Pamperin is among many students already studying under a growing list of faculty members whose academic interest and expertise in women’s and gender studies have helped usher in the new minor. Conversations proposing the new specialization began in the early 1990s and several courses have been designed and offered to students since that time. Those courses, and others under development, will be included in the program.

Students will be required to take Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies; Feminist Theory; and Women, Gender and Imperialism. In addition, they will be able to take electives like Feminist Theology; Gender and Culture; and Latin American Women’s History.

The interdisciplinary minor adopts gender as a primary category of analysis and studies women’s past and present contributions, analyzing how women’s and gender issues intersect with class, race, ethnicity, sexual identity and more. Courses in the minor will make use of teaching and research methods specific to the field and will blend well with Catholic and Norbertine traditions, which call for establishing a more just, equitable and sustainable world.

Michael Marsden (Academic Affairs) says, “The new minor will allow St. Norbert College to focus existing faculty strengths and interests, and expand upon them for the development of a truly exciting interdisciplinary program. This new academic focus will assist us in exploring issues central to contemporary society and in better preparing our students and ourselves to deal with them in a responsive and responsible manner.”

The first women’s studies program was founded in 1970 at San Diego State University and today more than 800 colleges and universities in the U.S. have adopted the minor. At St. Norbert, the establishment of the current minor was spearheaded by a group of faculty members working under the leadership of Karlyn Crowley (English). Other members of the working group included Steve Bellin (English), Cheryl Carpenter (Sociology), Linda Beane Katner (Modern Foreign Languages), Bola Delano Oriaran (Education), Jason Pierceson (Political Science), Bridget Burke Ravizza (Religious Studies), Victoria Tashjian (History) and Gratzia Villarroel (Political Science). The group hopes the minor will draw more attention to issues of human dignity related to gender.

Pamperin, an English and philosophy major, says the new minor has the potential to impact the way students think about gender, no matter how liberal or conservative their beliefs are. “It will most definitely enhance the St. Norbert goal for diversity within the liberal arts atmosphere,” she says. “I can’t wait to come back to the campus and see how the minor has developed in the future.”

Karlyn Crowley, director of the new program, says students tell the faculty how the courses have given them deeper understanding of both their personal and academic lives. She cherishes those moments in which students integrate their personal and academic learning and suddenly achieve a new level of awareness that leads them to re-examine long-held values and perceptions.

Crowley remembers that, when she took her first course in women’s studies, “the lens of gender allowed me to comprehend and see things in my everyday life and academic life that I had no language for previously.” That first course in women’s studies allowed her to recognize her intellectual potential and discover a passion for teaching and for promoting social justice issues.

She believes that numerous graduate programs already expect students to have a more sophisticated understanding of gender. Because it is a norm at most schools to have such programs, she says, students in graduate school are expected to have knowledge of basic concepts related to gender in their field. In her discipline of English, for instance, feminist literary criticism has been a central part of how we have thought about texts for 30 years now. A deeper understanding of gender will also help students prepare for the workplace, where understanding of diversity is a key to professional success, say faculty. 

By Gratzia Villarroel
Associate Professor of Political Science

Women's and Gender Studies

Phone: (920) 403-3119
Fax: (920) 403-4086
E-mail: wmgs@snc.edu