Feminist Studies

403 Humanities 1
fmstad@ucsc.edu
https://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/

Programs Offered

Feminist Studies Designated Emphasis (suspended)

The feminist studies degree programs at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are dedicated to an interdisciplinary investigation of gender relations and their centrality to social, political, economic, and cultural formations. Initially established as a program in Women’s Studies in 1974 and then a department in 1996, it re-envisioned and defined its epistemological emphasis through feminist analytics and became the first in the nation to change its name to Feminist Studies in 2005. In 2025, the department disestablished, but the degree programs continue (the graduate programs are currently on suspension). The faculty, who represent a range of expertise, are invested in a rigorous analysis of capitalism, racism, and colonialism and its legacies through persistent critique. Rather than conceive of "woman" as an always already known category or an object of study, feminist studies is invested in analyzing how knowledge about gender, sexuality, race and class has been constructed over time and reveals the historical processes through which concepts like equity and justice (including gender and racial justice) acquire meaning.

We offer an undergraduate major, a Ph.D. program, and a designated emphasis, however, the Ph.D. and designated emphasis programs are not currently accepting new applications. The feminist studies degrees provide students with a unique interdisciplinary and transnational perspective by emphasizing theories and practices derived from multiracial and multicultural contexts.