Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Affiliation

The Department of Gender and Women's Studies invites UK faculty with expertise and interest in Gender and Women's Studies to become a member of the Department's Affiliated Faculty.  Becoming a part of GWS Affiliated Faculty enables you to 1) teach courses that fulfill elective requirements for our Undergraduate Minor and/or our Graduate Certificate; 2) supervise student research in GWS; and 3) serve on Departmental Committees.

Procedure and Expectations for Faculty Affiliation

Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Affiliation is open to any full-time faculty member at the University of Kentucky. The procedure for affiliating as Gender and Women's Studies Faculty is quite simple.  First, please read the material that follows which contains (1) the Gender and Women's Studies Mission Statement, (2) a statement of the Commitments of the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, (3) Guidelines for Gender and Women's Studies courses and directed studies. If, after reading these materials, you do want to affiliate, please email the needed materials to gws@uky.edu and cc michelle.deltoro@uky.edu

Materials to be sent to the Executive Committee:
1. completed application form- Faculty Affiliation Application Form
2. if you have published in some area of Gender and Women's Studies, a copy of a relevant publication;
3. a current curriculum vita;
4. copies of sample syllabi for courses you have taught (if any) that might be appropriate for the Gender and Women's Studies Undergraduate Minor and/or the Gender and Women's Studies Graduate Certificate. 
       
Upon affiliation the Department requests that you:
1.  Update your CV periodically.  So that our files stay current, please make a note to e-mail an electronic copy of your CV to Michelle Del Toro (michelle.deltoro@uky.edu) every time you fill out an FMER evaluation.
2.  Send GWS your Syllabus:  When you have a course on our list in a given semester, please send us an electronic copy of the syllabus as early in the semester as possible.  E-mail it to Michelle Del Toro.
3.  Participate Actively: We ask that you do one of the following every two-three years:  serve on a committee (Graduate, Undergraduate, Interdisciplinary, or an Ad Hoc committee); teach a course that we can include on our list; or present your GWS-related research in our Research Matters series.  

Gender and Women's Studies Department Mission Statement and Committment

The Gender and Women's Studies Department aims to serve the University and the Commonwealth through promotion of equity and commitment to excellence.

We are committed to research and teaching about the lives, cultures, perspectives, and activities of women globally. We believe that what are commonly referred to as "women's issues" are societal issues that affect all individuals.

While understanding women's experience, resources, strategies and contributions to society is central to the GWS mission, equally important is the exploration of gender as a construct that permeates human experience, thought, and history. We recognize that men's lives are gendered and that gender relations occur simultaneously with other hierarchal social relations and inequalities including those based on ability, age, class, ethnicity, family composition, race, region, religion, sex, sexual orientation and the inequitable distribution of resources in and among countries and groups globally.

In the service of this mission, we are committed to the development of a multi-disciplinary, integrative, theoretically diverse curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels; support of critical research, teaching and public programming in Gender and Women's Studies; and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration among both faculty and students.

Guidelines for Gender and Women's Studies Courses and Research Projects:

Given the mission of the Gender and Women's Studies Department as articulated in the Gender and Women's Studies Department Mission Statement (see above) and given the Commitments of the Gender and Women's Studies Department (see above), it is understood that Gender and Women's Studies courses and research projects aim to:

1. assist students in (a) analyzing systems of subordination and domination related to women and gender and their various sexual, racial, ethnic, class, and other forms; (b) exploring how patterns of thought, the production of knowledge, social interactions, and social organization have contributed to the perpetuation and/or weakening of these hierarchical patterns; and (c) understanding ideologies that liberate and empower as well as subordinate and/or demean particular groups of people;

2. sensitize students to differences, including, but not limited to, those based on ability, age, class, ethnicity, family composition, gender identity, race, region, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and the distribution of resources in and among countries and groups globally;

3. reflect current feminist scholarship on women and gender and current feminist theory, including, but not limited to womanist, lesbian, and queer theory;

4. incorporate pedagogies that stress collaborative and active learning and that facilitate critical habits of mind;

5. focus on women and/or gender, exclusively in a research project, substantially in an undergraduate course and predominantly in a graduate course;

6. use women authors and authors who celebrate the lives and contributions of women whenever possible;

7. assist students in being personally/intellectually engaged people with the power to be responsible for their own lives and to contribute to the larger community using analyses and critical perspectives developed in Gender and Women's Studies courses and research projects.