Women and Gender Studies examines the importance of gender and feminism in relation to issues such as race, class, sexuality, labor, colonialism, and globalization. Students study how bodies, families, communities, and nations are gendered in specific cultural and historical contexts and investigate connections to their own lives, roles, and contributions. The expertise of the department lies in interdisciplinary, intersectional, and transnational studies of power. Students are taught to draw from a range of theoretical and methodological approaches in their study of women and gender. Courses consider global structures of power and histories of racism in relation to local, regional, national, and transnational feminist practices. The department also provides analysis and debate of exciting works by feminists who confront and transform various institutions and arenas, including politics, law, non-profit groups, non-governmental organizations, health and medicine, sexuality, pedagogy, labor struggles, and cultural productions. The goals of the department include: the development of conceptual, analytic, and critical thinking skills in relation to gender and feminism in a transnational framework; the ability to integrate academic studies in women and gender studies into personal and professional goals; the development of skills to formulate and implement theoretically-informed political, cultural, and community action; the ability to analyze gender from an interdisciplinary perspective, using a range of methodological tools; an historical understanding of gender in relation to structural inequality, social movements, and labor struggles; and the ability to critically examine representation and cultural production through a feminist lens.