Women's Studies

The Emory Department of Women’s Studies supports a generous and pluralistic understanding of scholarly research on women and gender in relation to other aspects of identity, including race, ethnicity, religion, class, disability, nationality, and sexuality.

Emory was the first university to offer the Ph.D. in Women's Studies, establishing its program in 1990. It remains the only WS PhD program supported by a private institution.

Our program emphasizes a wide interdisciplinary range of comparative feminist theories and empirical perspectives as well as grounding in traditional disciplines. Our program supports several distinctive interdisciplinary areas of study:

• Feminist and queer theory
• Race, difference, and justice
• Health, science, and embodiment theory
• Transnational, postcolonial, and political economies

The PhD program offers a great deal of flexibility in shaping a student’s curriculum and generative mentorship from diverse faculty. All students admitted to the PhD program receive full  funding for five years. We also offer a graduate certificate in WS for PhD candidates from other programs at Emory.