Society and Culture
About Us
What is Women's and Gender Studies?
The Department of Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) is a hub for feminist research, social justice studies, and engaged citizenship at the University of Alberta. Our award-winning teachers and researchers offer a wide variety of exciting classes to students from across the University.
Women's and Gender Studies is a field of study that encourages students to ask big questions about the way that gender impacts how we think, how we live, and how we understand ourselves and others. Though the field historically focused on the lives of women, in the contemporary Women's and Gender Studies classroom, an emphasis is placed on the ways that gender, race, class, age, sexuality, ability, and size work together.
Core faculty conduct research in the areas of:
- Feminist legal studies
- Feminist philosophy
- Gender, migration, and settlement
- Higher education in Africa
- Animal and environmental ethics
- Trauma and cultural memory
- Gender and medieval history
- Gender, history, and film
- Indigenous pedagogy and resilience
- Gender and cultural informatics
- Feminist print culture
