The Women and Gender Studies programs at Mason are designed to give you a firm grounding in the theory and methodology of gender and help you better understand men, women, the relationships between sex and gender, the impact of sex, race, class, disability and sexual orientation and more.
Connect with a research-minded faculty that will lead your exploration through topics such as women’s roles in social, political and economic life, women’s roles in history, women and the media and feminist theory. Acquire the tools to envision other alternatives to conventional stereotypes.
Our undergraduate program consists of an interdisciplinary minor with an optional focus in LGBTQ studies. The graduate program offers two options for students, a graduate certificate and a concentration in Women and Gender Studies through the Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) program.
Christine Hernandez, program coordinator of women and gender studies, was named "Outstanding New Professional" by the American College Personnel Association's Standing Committee for Multicultural Affairs (CMA) and the "Outstanding Emerging Professional" by the Standing Committee for Women. Each year the organization presents awards to professionals that have demonstrated success in their area of expertise and whose work is in alignment with its core values.
“The goal of this project is to study the design, implementation and dimensions for a new kind of school that is quietly emerging across the United States,” says Erin Peters Burton, co-principal investigator of the project and assistant professor of science education and educational psychology in Mason’s College of Education and Human Development. “Because this type of study has never been done before, no one really knows what an ‘inclusive STEM-focused school’ looks like and what works.”
The Gender, Power, and Violence course will focus on gender based violence in several institutions in the United States. Specifically, the course will explore the military, fraternities, sports, the Catholic church, and prisons- highly masculinized and sex segregated institutions. The class explores the ways in which structures create an environment that ripe for gender violence.
