Threshold Concepts in Women's and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing, Thinking, and Knowing

Threshold Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing, Thinking, and Knowing is a textbook designed primarily for introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies courses with the intent of providing both a skills- and concept-based foundation in the field. The text is driven by a single key question: "What are the ways of thinking, seeing, and knowing that characterize women’s and gender studies and are valued by its practitioners?" Rather than taking a topical approach, Threshold Concepts in Women’s and Gender Studies develops the key concepts and ways of thinking that students need in order to develop a deep understanding and to approach material like feminist scholars do, across disciplines. This book illustrates four of the most critical concepts in women’s and gender studies: the social construction of gender; privilege and oppression; intersectionality; and feminist praxis, and grounds these concepts in multiple illustrations.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. The Social Construction of Gender 3. Privilege and Oppression 4. Intersectionality 5. Feminist Praxis

About the Author :
Christie Launius directs and teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She has taught the introductory course for almost 20 years at six different institutions. She is also active in the field of working class studies; she edits Working Class Notes, the newsletter of the Working Class Studies Association, and became president of the association in 2014. Holly Hassel has taught women’s studies and English at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County, one of the two-year campuses of the University of Wisconsin Colleges for over a decade. Her work on teaching and learning in women’s studies has been published in multiple books and journals. She is associate editor of the journal Teaching English in the Two-Year College.

Review :
Threshold Concepts in Women's and Gender Studies is an accessible and innovative textbook that introduces students to foundational concepts within the field by using cutting-edge feminist scholarship and relevant examples from current events, everyday life, and popular culture. The structure of the text encourages students to internalize these concepts and produce new ways of seeing, thinking, and knowing, as the title promises. This book is a treasure for students and professors alike. -Angela Fitzpatrick, Women's and Gender Studies, Coastal Carolina University A book of this kind has long been needed within women's and gender studies. Students and teachers will be energized by its fresh approach, which emphasizes key concepts and broad methodologies, equipping students with the tools necessary to do feminist cultural analysis. I applaud the authors for their pedagogical innovation. - Dr. Desiree Henderson, English, University of Texas Arlington Every page illustrates that the book is a response to the field's signature pedagogies, informed by pedagogical content knowledge, grounded in current research on learning, and focused on helping students learn to do the work of feminist scholars. With this one book, teaching and learning in WGS has taken five steps forward. -Nancy Chick, English, Vanderbilt University In Threshold Concepts in Women's and Gender Studies, Christie Launius and Holly Hassel make a striking contribution to the ways in which we teach introductory courses in Women's and Gender Studies. Avoiding the topic-based approach to focus instead on foundational concepts, their unique text combines clear articulation of complex ideas with topical examples and applications, providing a critical lens through which students might examine, understand, and affect the world around them. Accessible to students for its jargon-free style and logical structure in which each concept builds upon the next, the text will also be invaluable for instructors, in particular those who may (as many of us do) lack formal training in the field. Instructors will find especially helpful the authors' careful attention to how students learn; each chapter's inclusion of learning roadblocks, questions for evaluations of prior knowledge, and discussion/writing prompts serves to position learning as an active and engaged process. In addition, as a text and not a reader, Threshold Concepts offers a practical solution to the rising cost of textbooks by allowing instructors to choose their own supplementary readings. I am eager to use this book in my own WGST classroom and plan to recommend it enthusiastically to my colleagues! -Shawn Lisa Maurer, English and former Director of Women's and Gender Studies, College of the Holy Cross