Since its inception in 1978, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at UD has played a special role in reflecting and advancing the mission of the university, fusing the critical insights and social commitments of feminist scholarship and pedagogy with the holistic, anti-hierarchical, and transformative vision of Marianist education and Catholic social teaching.

Through its curriculum, faculty, and special programming, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program has modeled this fusion in numerous ways:

• integrating the quest for intellectual understanding with the pursuit of social justice;
• appreciating both the gifts and challenges of gender, racial, economic, cultural, and religious diversity and fostering the important critical and creative work of collaboration across differences;
• recognizing the intellectual, spiritual, moral, and physical aspects of both students and faculty as whole persons in ways that promote human dignity and the flourishing of the community;
• attending to the needs of the individual learner with concern for the well-being of the broader community and society.

Expanding on our longstanding minor and thematic cluster, we now offer a major in women’s and gender studies.  In addition to core WST courses, our curriculum includes more than twenty courses offered across the disciplines, with strong representation in both the arts and humanities and in the social sciences. We have special strengths in English, history, philosophy, and sociology.