GWSS Focus Points

The interdisciplinary scholarship and pedagogical initiatives of GWSS at UW extend across four overlapping focus points. These focus points structure the undergraduate major:

  1. Global Identity Formations
    How are individuals and communities shaped by ideas about difference—race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, immigration, and citizenship in the Global North and South? What hierarchies of power do these ideas delineate?
  2. Decolonizing Empire
    How have historical and ongoing practices of colonialism shaped beliefs about international economic development, militarism, nationalism and communal relationships to place? How have communities in the Américas and Global South produced and invoked feminist theory and practice to resist colonial rule? How have they worked in concert with antiracist, indigenous, and other groups?
  3. Feminist Knowledge Production & Radical Critique
    What are the different histories and strains of feminist theory and practice, and how have they intersected with other modes of critique proffered by collectives organizing around black power, indigenous rights, trans rights, immigrant rights, queer liberation, and other movements? What role have storytelling, visual arts, new media, music, performance, and theater played in challenging emphases on text-based, book learning?
  4. Building Social, Cultural, and Political Movements for Change
    What strategies can we utilize to move from criticism—from simply pointing out what is wrong or problematic—to imagining, articulating, and producing alternative visions? What technological, practical, or methodological tactics can we leverage to articulate these alternate visions of radical justice? 

 

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