Taking Women’s and Gender Studies from Theory to Practice

Serving a cohort of at least 100 majors and minors in any given semester, with more than 60 faculty and staff, the WGS program at the College of Charleston plays a pivotal role in shaping feminist knowledge production in the South. While the department is rooted in the belief that critical reflection about gender and sexuality leads to important conceptual outcomes—like helping students better understand the intersectional nature of identity, power, and resistance in the construction of human societies—it also prioritizes learning outside the classroom. Experiential learning is accordingly integral to the WGS experience, with students required to participate in internships, original research, and other hands-on projects to fulfill degree requirements.  

A $100K grant from Mellon will allow WGS to transform the program’s annual expo celebrating the culmination of these hands-on experiences, “Feminism in Motion,” from a half-day event to a multi-tiered initiative. The initiative will enhance paid internship programs, support the student-run podcast, award mini-grants for experimental student projects, and organize a “Teaching with Intent” faculty seminar to incubate new WGS courses.  

The grant will also pave the way to enriched collaboration—both within academia with the development of the South Carolina Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium, and in the wider Charleston community through the WGS Community Leader-in-Residence, which connects students to community members with expertise in applying feminist principles to their justice work.

Already, the grant has helped launch a new interdisciplinary programming series, “Land, Body, and History,” which explores these vectors of knowledge from global Black feminist and Indigenous perspectives. WGS student researchers and interns will develop resulting insights into a digital public history project that, as explained by WGS director Lauren Ravalico, will become “an essential tool for thinking through social justice in the Carolina Lowcountry.”