A Guide to Teaching Introductory Women’s and Gender Studies: Socially Engaged Classrooms

This book provides a practical, evidence-based guide to teaching introductory Women's and Gender Studies courses. Based on the findings of a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project that analyzed 72 Intro students’ written work, the authors equip instructors with key principles that can help them adapt their pedagogy to a range of classroom environments. By putting student learning at the center of course design, the authors invite readers to reflect on their own investments in and goals for the introductory course. The book also draws on the authors’ combined decades of teaching experience, and aims to help instructors anticipate the emotional, intellectual, and interpersonal challenges and rewards of teaching and learning in the introductory WGS course. Chapters focus on course design, including identifying desired learning outcomes (in terms of course content, skills, and dispositions or habits of mind); choosing course materials; pedagogical activities; andassessing student learning. 

This book will be an invaluable resource for experienced WGS instructors and those seeking or planning to teach it for the first time, including graduate students and high school teachers.

Holly Hassel is Professor of English at North Dakota State University in Fargo, ND. Previously, she taught writing and women's and gender studies at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County, a two-year college, for 16 years. She is the co-author, with Christie Launius, of Threshold Concepts in Women's and Gender Studies, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2018).

Christie Launius is Associate Professor and Head of the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department at Kansas State University. With Holly Hassel, she is co-author of the introductory textbook Threshold Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies. 

Susan Rensing is Teaching Associate Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Kansas State University. She has taught multiple sections of the introductory WGS course every semester for the last 13 years and has been recognized for her distinguished teaching.