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The Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Sonoma State University centers the vision of feminism as articulated by bell hooks, as a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and
oppression. [1]  Our department enables students to explore the social, political, and cultural dimensions of gender and inequity. Our field empowers students to use an intersectional feminist
analysis to engage in building a more equitable world. It compels us to envision and commit to transformative action.

Program Learning Outcomes

The Women & Gender Studies Department, through its Women & Gender Studies major, minor, and Queer Studies minor has the following program learning outcomes:

1)    Intersectionality: Critically examine and articulate how gender intersectionally structures identities, interactions, structures, and systems in relation to race, class,
sexuality, ability, nation, and other forms of power and difference.  (SSU Core Value: Diversity and Social Justice)
2)    Institutionalization of Gender: Identify how and why gender is embedded in and influences culture and major social institutions and systems such as: family, health care,
law, education, religion, the workplace, the media, settler colonialism, carceral systems, white supremacy, the nation-state, transnational capitalism. (SSU Core Values: Diversity
and Social Justice; Connectivity and Community Engagement)
3)    Power and Justice: Demonstrate how people have critiqued, navigated, resisted, and sought to transcend dominant formations of social constructions of gender in different
historical and cultural contexts– from the level of the personal to the transnational. (SSU Core Values: Diversity and Social Justice; Adaptability and Responsiveness)
4)    Feminist Thought and Communication: Engage in feminist oral, written, and digital communication skills to speak and act collaboratively across social difference, appreciate
complex phenomena through multiple lenses, and effectively facilitate challenging conversations.  Evaluate feminist research, knowledge production, and theory.  Design
and conduct community-based research using feminist methodologies. (SSU Core Values: Diversity and Social Justice; Connectivity and Community Engagement)
5)    Feminist Praxis: Participate in feminist praxis that joins theory, research, and experience. Through a required internship, students apply themes and categories of
analysis from Women’s and Gender Studies to their lives and the world. (SSU Core Values: Diversity and Social Justice; Connectivity and Community Engagement)