Women & Gender Studies
Welcome to Women & Gender Studies
Joint Graduate Program in Women and Gender Studies
The Joint Master of Arts in Women & Gender Studies (WGSMA), offered cooperatively by Mount Saint Vincent and Saint Mary's Universities, emphasizes the interdisciplinary basis of Women and Gender Studies, its community linkages, and its grounding in feminist theories and methods. WGSMA allows graduate students access to a diverse and large faculty with strong research profiles in the study of women, gender, and sexuality in a range of areas, including: cultural and media studies; literary studies; social history; feminist, political, and queer theory; education and knowledge production; health and body studies, religion and spirituality; urban and rural studies; law, regulation, human rights, and social justice; masculinity; race, ethnicity, and class; paid and unpaid labour; the creative arts; migration, citizenship, and formal politics; youth, children, and girlhood studies; and community activism. Faculty and students are trained in and work through multiple disciplinary and interdisciplinary frameworks, and our program offers the exceptional graduate opportunity for extensive individual attention. Consider these numbers: WGSMA has over 50 permanent faculty members and approximately 40 students. The program is enriched by its location in Halifax as Atlantic Canada's cultural and educational capital, access to a variety of library collections and faculty at multiple universities in the city and province, by the presence at MSVU of the Nancy's Chair in Women's Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Gender, and by the Joint Program's links with active local, national, and international feminist communities.
The Joint MA in Women & Gender Studies offered cooperatively by MSVU and SMU sends hearty CONGRATULATIONS to our Fall 2011 WS-WGSMA GRADUATES!
SMU
Jane Gavin-Hebert
REGISTRATION FGSR 9000 - FOR SMU WGST STUDENTS:
*** Students entering the program after 2004 MUST register in FGSR 9000 in every semester until program completion.
*** Registering for FGSR 9000 will ensure the maintenance of your status in the program.
*** Students must register for FGSR 9000 in every semester as well as for their course work. This isn't a "course" it's a program registration code that maintains your status. This has implications for the release of your funding as well as for the repayment of your student loans AND if you don't register for this course you'll owe money for the missed semester when you come back the next semester.
*** Students will register ONCE for their WGST thesis courses, after which they roll over as IPs.
*** During the time you're writing your thesis you CONTINUE to register for FGSR 9000 in every semester.
Saint Mary's University Women and Gender Studies Undergraduate Program (WMST)
The Saint Mary's Women and Gender Studies program offers an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree and an Honours degree, as well as a minor for students majoring in other disciplines.
Courses in Women and Gender Studies lead to a fuller understanding of how gender and intersecting variables of power shape individuals and groups, cultures, ways of knowing, and struggles for social justice and change. This involves scrutinizing not just how gender shapes and has shaped everyday practices, but also how sexual norms, racism, class, geo-politics, ableism, and age-related power shape people's lives in conjunction with gender. Students in the program learn feminist theories and methods with which to critically analyze and work to transform the norms and forms of domination that socially construct women in oppressive ways, and that discourage or reward practices of femininity and masculinity that hinder all genders from participating fully in society.
Women and Gender Studies programs and departments throughout Canada and internationally are widely recognized as playing an important role in broadening and problematizing our definitions of knowledge and helping to amend the bias and narrowness of many academic disciplines and social practices and institutions beyond the academy. Governments and many large and small institutions and organizations acknowledge the need to work towards gender, sexual and related forms of equity; our graduates demonstrate their expertise in this area through a range of practical and professional applications of their knowledge.