Womens Studies

The Denison Women's Studies program offers approximately 26 courses throughout the college and provides both a major and a minor. A major requires completion of 32 hours in Women's Studies; a minor requires 24 credit hours. The program is unique for its breadth and depth at a college of Denison's size, and the University is recognized nationally for its educational leadership in requiring a Women's Studies or Minority Studies course of all its graduates.

Mission Statement

The Women's Studies Program at Denison University takes its mission to be three-fold.

We intend to foster a critical awareness of and intellectual sensitivity to:

• women's issues, the role of gender, and the relationship between gender and other politicized aspects of "identity," including race, class, age, religion, sexuality;
• methods inflected by the interdisciplinary of women's studies; and
• real-life implications of the field-how the academic study of women's issues and gender is informed by and has the power to transform real lives, both others' and our own.  

Laura C. Harris Symposium

Schedule of Events--Fall 2008

Women’s Spaces, Women’s Places

bell hooks – OPENING CONVOCATION

September 11, 2008 8:00pm – Swasey Chapel

Belonging:  A Culture of Place

Known as a feminist thinker, bell hooks urges an end to the degradation and exploitation of black women, arguing that this is an integral step in alleviating white supremacy. She claims "the moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others."

Formerly known as Gloria Watkins, hooks decided to use a pseudonym both to honor her grandmother (whose name she took) and her mother, but also because she felt the name Gloria had become associated with an identity that was not completely hers and that using a pseudonym allowed her to reclaim her voice and identity.

Her rage toward the "white capitalist patriarchy" led hooks to begin writing her first book Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism when she was 19. Recent publications include The Female Search for Love, Salvation: Black People and Love, and Where We Stand: Class Matters. Her writings cover a broad range of topics on gender, race, teaching and the significance of media for contemporary culture. She states the "Function of art is to do more than tell it like it is -- it's to imagine what is possible."

hooks earned a bachelor of arts degree from Stanford University in 1973 and went on to earn a master of arts degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1976 and a doctorate from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1983. Currently a scholar at the City College of New York, hooks maintains that intellectual work need not come from academia, and that being in academia is often an impediment to true intellectual thought.

Melissa Raphael - In conjunction with The Goodspeed Lecture Series

November 5, 2008 4:30pm – Slayter Auditorium

Sexuality, Idolatry and the Hiding of God's Face: A Post-Holocaust Perspective on the Representation of Jewish Women in Modern Jewish Art

Professor Melissa Raphael-Levine teaches Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. She has published numerous articles in the fields of religion and gender and feminist theology, specializing in the sacred/profane distinction in Western religion, Feminist Thealogy (sic) and Jewish Theology. She is the author of Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness (Oxford University Press, 1997); Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality(Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); Introducing Thealogy: Discourse on the Goddess (Sheffield Academic Press: 1999) and The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust (Routledge, 2003), shortlisted for the Koret Jewish Book Award in 2004.  She is currently working on a study of Jewish theological aesthetics.

Professor Raphael is an Honorary Research Scholar at the University of Wales, Lampeter and sits on the International Board of The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. She is a member of the European Society for Women in Theological Research and an Associate Member of the Centre for Comparative Studies in Religion and Gender, Bristol University. She is also a member of The Institute for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and The American Academy of Religion. Professor Raphael also sits on the national committee of the Association of University Departments of Theology and Religious Studies.  Professor Raphael is a delegate of the British Government on the International Task Force for Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research.

All events are free and open to the public

Contact Us

Knapp Hall, Room 210

740-587-6297

Sandy Runzo, Chair
runzo@denison.edu

Beth Jeffries , Academic Secretary
jeffriesb@denison.edu

Mailing Address:
Women's Studies Program
Denison University
P.O. Box 810
Granville, Ohio 43023