Why Women's Studies?

• Through their engagement with interdisciplinary coursework and faculty from 18 different departments in five colleges, our students learn to ask cutting-edge questions and to conduct high quality research.
  
• Students who have completed the dual-title degree or the graduate minor will have a competitive edge as more academic and professional positions require knowledge of feminist theory, women, and gender.
  
• Women's Studies students are a part of a supportive community for discourse that connects personal and larger cultural and political issues.
  
• The Women's Studies Department gives graduate students unique opportunities for teaching and mentoring in a program that is committed to critical and engaged pedagogy. Graduate teaching assistantships are available in addition to opportunities to co-teach upper-level and cross-listed courses with faculty recognized for outstanding teaching.
  

The student’s doctoral committee must include at least two members who are Women's Studies-affiliated faculty. The Women's Studies affiliated faculty members on the student's committee will administer a portion of the student's comprehensive exams focusing on feminist theory, feminist methodology, global feminism and feminist studies in the student's discipline.

A dissertation on a women's studies topic is required of students in the dual-title degree program. The student's committee must approve the topic of the dissertation.

Admission requirements
for PhD Dual Degree

The Women's Studies Department at Penn State offers both a graduate minor, for students in any discipline, and dual-title Master's or Doctoral degrees in Women's Studies and one of the disciplines listed to the right.

In order to be admitted to doctoral candidacy in the dual-title degree program, students must meet the Ph.D. candidacy requirements specified by the
co-operating department. (Click on links, to the right, to view program descriptions and requirements in each discipline.)

In addition, the student will be required to present a portfolio of work in Women's Studies, including a statement of the student's interdisciplinary research interests, a program plan, and samples of writing that indicate the student's work in Women's Studies.

Art Education

Curriculum and Instruction

English

French

Geography

History

Philosophy

Rural Sociology

Political Science

Psychology