The courses help include women in the standard curriculum and promote research about the now lost or neglected history of women's culture and of significant women. One goal of women's studies is to help create a new, humanistic curriculum which releases both men and women from stereotyped roles and expectations and encourages them to develop their full individual potentials. The department provides interdisciplinary courses and specialized courses are currently offered in many departments of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Students may earn a minor in women's studies. This program, which concentrates on critical reading, writing and thinking, prepares low-income parents for successful college work.
Classes meet one night per week and child care is provided.
Nine credits must also be taken from approved courses in other departments. Consult the women's studies department for a complete course listing. This course provides an introduction to women's social roles and contributions and to how gender roles are created, transmitted, interpreted, and institutionalized through family and kinship, education, the media, work, government, and the health care system. It offers a critical perspective on scholarship which omits or distorts female experience, and provides interdisciplinary and integrated approaches to the study of women and gender in society. An examination of how women have expressed female experience in a variety of forms, including fiction, autobiography, oral traditions, and song.