Dear Alumni and Friends,
We thank you for supporting the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. Each and every gift makes a significant difference in the lives of our students and faculty and the future of feminist studies.
For the department to realize its opportunities for excellence, it must build upon the base established with state tuition funding by drawing support from alumni and friends. While budgets have faced cutbacks in the time of COVID-19, we are encouraged to report that our enrollments stay strong. Particularly this year, our students continue to find solidarity, collaboration and reimagined futures in our classrooms — virtual or in person.
Part of this experiential learning is to continue developing innovative classroom spaces along with our community partners. Your support will allow us to invest in the following initiatives:
Outreach and Engagement Initiatives
The social justice element of our discipline requires that we make strong connections with our communities through service-learning initiatives and outreach. We have a rich history of activism throughout our department, including change brought forth by faculty, graduate students and undergraduates both on and off campus. Our goal is to enrich these efforts by encouraging our undergraduate students to apply their feminist scholarship through engaging experience with their community. This provides hands-on experience that will strengthen their skills, develop leaders and enhance long-term career opportunities. We have asked local organizations to partner with us on ways we can support their current programs and initiatives:
Inside/Out Courses
These courses bring Ohio State students directly into prisons to learn alongside incarcerated students, who will also earn Ohio State credits. WGSS continues to grow this program through course offerings and administrative oversight. Check out Professor Mary Thomas’ project, the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project, to learn about how this partnership builds prison-to-college pathways.
Feminist Field School
WGSS Associate Professors Jennifer Suchland and Mary Thomas will host, "'This Land': A Feminist Ohio Field School." Students taking the week-long course will travel to several museums and memorials in Ohio to learn about settler colonialism in the state, Indigenous tribes who were pushed out of their lands and how it continues today through the extraction of resources and land use.
*This course was set to launch May 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic. WGSS hopes to host this course in the future.