Faculty Teaching and Research Group (WSTAR)

The Global Women's Studies program at BYU, a joint program in the College of Humanities, the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences, and the Kennedy Center for International Studies and with faculty affiliates from across campus, is an interdisciplinary forum for the study of women's past and present position in global society. One of its aims is to bring together faculty from myriad disciplines to share their work on topics related to women’s studies as a means of enhancing their teaching and scholarship. The Women's Studies Faculty Teaching and Research Group helps to further its members' training in contemporary theories and practices related to women’s studies.

This forum allows faculty whose work involves the study of women an opportunity to deepen their level of engagement with the latest trends in the field. The research group plans to take an aspect of Women’s Studies each year and focus its activities around this topic so as to encourage sophisticated, sustained, and critical thinking that could enhance teaching and scholarship in multiple disciplines. Topics could include women and media, women and space, women and the body, women and religion, or more focused subjects such as the female brain, female spectatorship, and so on.

We plan to schedule events and activities that involve presentations and workshops conducted by eminent scholars in the field of women’s studies as well as by members of the group. In the fall semester, the group will read one article or essay that has been identified as central to the year’s topic and then invite the author to campus to conduct a workshop that will focus on the pedagogical and practical applications of their work. We will also determine a “book of the year” that we will read in the course of that semester. In the winter semester, we will invite the author of this book to campus to lead a mini-seminar. In both semesters, we will hold one or two meetings in which faculty present their research and scholarship and obtain feedback from the group.

If you would like to present your research to the group, please contact Sara Phenix to schedule a presentation: sara_phenix@byu.edu.