Women’s and Gender Center
The Women’s and Gender Center seeks to foster a critical awareness of gender and create an intentional space, accessible to students of all genders, for learning and exploring gender through personal experience, academic inquiry, community building, and discussion. We serve as a resource for women, femmes, and nonbinary students, as well as students who want to deepen their understanding of gender, gender identity, and feminism. We center the stories and experiences of currently and traditionally marginalized genders in our work.
We view the WGC as an extension of the classroom experience and, as such, we strive to create an inclusive community framed by justice, critical thinking, and thoughtful inquiry. We approach our work with a critical transformative intersectional feminist framework, paying particular attention to how those with multiple marginalized identities experience gender and gender-based oppression.
The Women's & Gender Center (WGC) opened on the first floor of the Keefe Campus Center (in room 103) in the spring of 2013 after a student-led initiative won support for the expansion and relocation of the previously established Women's Center. In August 2017, the WGC moved to a new and much larger location in Keefe Campus Center (211). This beautiful new space will allow us to continue growing our programs and services.
The WGC houses the Elizabeth Bruss Memorial Resource Library, which is continuously expanding through acquisitions and donations. Current WGC initiatives include weekly and monthly programming; advising for individuals and student organizations; and activities designed to engage with gender issues in the Amherst curriculum, promote student leadership and foster community organizing and activism.
