GCWS offers interdisciplinary, team-taught seminars to students enrolled in graduate programs at our member institutions. Courses are designed to open paths to the creation of new knowledge and provide intellectual support for students pursuing feminist work within the framework of traditional disciplines. more »
Courses proposed through the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies extend and enhance the course offerings available to graduate students enrolled at member institutions and provide faculty with a unique opportunity for professional growth. more »
This writing prize is dedicated to the ‘Mother Board’, the seven feminist intellectuals who together conceptualized and brought the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies into existence in 1988. It is an annual award honoring graduate student research and writing in the field of Women’s and Gender Studies. The prize submission deadline is April 15th, 2012. more »
The Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology brings together feminist scholars and teachers at nine Boston area institutions devoted to graduate teaching and research in women's studies and to advancing interdisciplinary women's studies scholarship.
Our mission is to advance the field of Women's Studies. For the twenty-first century, Women's Studies needs to develop new scholarship and theory across disciplines and attend to the integration of theory and practice as well as pedagogical innovations. A new Women's Studies agenda must address the shifting global context of women's social and economic lives, the effects of poverty and war, the implications of technology and a deteriorating environment, and the interconnected dynamics of race, class, sex, gender and power across cultures.
In pursuit of this mission, the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies provides graduate courses, promotes faculty development, builds intellectual community, and offers a model of institutional change.
The Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14N-211
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617-324-2085
Faith Smith
Associate Professor
African and African American Studies and English
Brandeis University
GCWS Board of Directors Co-Chair
Faith Smith is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and English at Brandeis University and is the GCWS Board Co-Chair. A native of Jamaica, her research interests are gender, nationalism and culture in the Caribbean. Smith recently published the book Sex and the Citizen (U. of Virginia Press, 2011), a multidisciplinary collection of essays that draws on current anxieties about "legitimate" sexual identities and practices across the Caribbean to explore both the impact of globalization and the legacy of the region's history of sexual exploitation during colonialism, slavery, and indentureship. She has been a member of the GCWS Board on two occasions and this is her third year as Board Co-chair.