Women’s studies is now an academic program at the University of New England. The new 18-credit minor in UNE’s College of Arts and Sciences combines existing elective courses in women’s literature, history, sociology, psychology and philosophy with a Senior Capstone course and a new Introduction to Women’s Studies course.*
The new minor was prompted by two factors, according to program co-director Associate Professor of American Studies Elizabeth De Wolfe, Ph.D.: strong student interest and the confluence of relevant UNE resources, including the Maine Women Writers Collection and the teaching specialties of De Wolfe and the program’s other co-director, Assistant Professor of English Jennifer Tuttle, Ph.D.
Resources
UNE’s Maine Women Writers Collection on the University’s Westbrook College Campus in Portland, designated a national landmark, is a pre-eminent special collection of literary, cultural and social history sources by and about women authors, either natives or residents of Maine. De Wolfe, author of Shaking the Faith: Women, Family, and Mary Marshall Dyer’s Anti-Shaker Campaign, 1815-1867, teaches American history; Tuttle, editor of The Crux, a 1911 novel by social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, teaches literature and writing.
The interdisciplinary minor is “a great addition to any liberal arts degree,” said De Wolfe. “The program embodies the liberal arts tradition. It will allow our socially conscious students to apply their knowledge to today’s problems and issues, from domestic violence to women and the environment.”
She further noted that her students had many suggestions for courses, and that future elective courses would include the physical sciences and the health professions.
The new minor is part of a larger plan to expand and diversify the College of Arts and Sciences under the leadership of Dean Jacque Carter, Ph.D.
Fall Courses
Women’s Studies elective courses for fall 2004 are: Growing Up Female: A History of American Girls, Writing and Women’s Health, Women of the West, Contemporary Feminist Theory, Psychology of Gender, and Race, Class and Gender in Sociological Perspective.
*Introduction to Women’s Studies will be offered in the fall of 2005. UNE students may take University of Southern Maine’s similar course, offered at its Saco Center this coming fall.
(Press release issued April 13, 2004) |
