Mission Statement

The mission of the Department of Women's Studies is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary teaching, research, and service in order to facilitate the critical investigation of the status and roles of women in society and to promote research by and about women.

History

The Master of Arts program in Women's Studies at The University of Alabama is an interdisciplinary program working cooperatively with other departments to provide knowledge of the cultural history and status of women, and to conduct research on the forces which shape women's role in society. In 1972 a group of University of Alabama students initiated a project to introduce courses in women's studies into the curriculum. They identified faculty who would be willing to develop courses on women and, by the spring of 1975, a women's studies -- the first in the Southeast -- was launched. The Master of Arts degree program was established, with the first graduate students enrolled, in 1988. The Department of Women's Studies included a core faculty, a graduate adjunct faculty, and participating faculty from almost every discipline.

Facts

• In 1977, The University of Alabama Women's Studies Program became a founder and charter member of the Southeastern Women's Studies Association.
• The M.A. program offers graduate teaching and research assistantships to qualified applicants; recipients are trained in feminist pedagogy and they teach undergraduate Women's Studies courses.
• Opportunities for summer teaching and internships also exist.
• Graduate students have come from every state in the southeast and from as far away as Arizona and California, Maine and New Hampshire, Missouri and Wisconsin among others.
• International students have enrolled from Colombia, Italy, Finland, Germany, Japan, and Thailand.
• Program graduates are employed as lawyers, social workers, college professors, editors, and psychologists. They are directors of university women's centers, and research and development centers.
• Graduates have been accepted into doctoral programs in American Studies, English, Popular Culture, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health, Social Work, Statistics, and Communication Studies.
• Women's Studies encourages its graduates to publish their research and find a wider audience.  Our students have published in the following: Asian Journal of Women's Studies; Feminist Issues; International Journal of Public Administration; Yale Review of Feminism and the Law; Nature, Society, and Thought; as well as Women's Studies Quarterly.
• Faculty participation has grown every year, representing many academic disciplines and five colleges of the University: Arts & Sciences, Business, Communication and Information Sciences, Education, and Law.
• Graduate Students are encouraged to pursue interdisciplinary interests and work with a wide range of university faculty.