The Center for Women’s and Gender Studies is a unique interdisciplinary program that offers courses, degrees and organized events each year. The focus of the program is on understanding women’s experiences from a variety of perspectives as well as the role that gender plays in shaping society. Started by a handful of faculty and students in 1979, CWGS now has over two hundred faculty affiliates from fourteen different schools and colleges who contribute to our programs. Among them are several award-winning teachers and nationally recognized scholars. Our faculty teach many bright and gifted students, who go on to become political leaders, legal advocates, socially oriented writers, teachers, and artists, as well as scientists and engineers dedicated to addressing the problems faced by women, men, and families.
The central mission of CWGS is to further knowledge and understanding of the role of gender and the experience of women in our society. Every year the Center for Women's and Gender Studies brings together scholars and researchers trained in different methodologies and disciplinary traditions around a common theme.
For the 2007-08 academic year, the annual theme will be Gender and Technology.
Read more about our annual theme...
Download our Annual Theme Events Poster
Current News
WGS and Information School Dual MA Degree Officially Approved
The graduate dean and provost have approved the proposal for a dual degree for an MA in Women's and Gender Studies and an MS in Information Studies!
It will be available starting Fall 2007 and should be listed in the 2007-2009 version of the Graduate Catalog in both print and online versions.
Dual MA requirements 
People Spotlight
The 2008 Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize was awarded to Laurie Green, an assistant professor in the Department of History, for her book Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle.
The prize committee said the book "is a highly original contribution to the labor historiography of race, gender and class in an important southern city during the crucial period for civil rights movement mobilization at the grassroots."
A $1,500 cash award comes with the prize named for Professor Philip Taft, who was one of America's first historians of the nation's labor movement.
Laurie Green earned her Ph.D. at University of Chicago. Her central research areas include the politics of race and gender in the twentieth-century U.S.; social movements; cultural studies. Her research was featured on the UT Home Page in January 2006: Marching on Memphis.
Dr. Green teaches modern U.S. history, with concentrations on women and gender in twentieth-century America, the Civil Rights Movement, the South, African- American history and comparative race and ethnicity.
Recent Publications include: Battling the 'Plantation Mentality': Race, Gender and Freedom in Memphis during the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina, May 2007), analyzes political consciousness in the civil rights era urban South, especially new articulations of freedom emerging from the rural-urban migration experience.
Marching on Memphis feature
Department of History: News