{shortcode-02e152eb501c04abbce4fea90c8e19a88dae5c6f}

When it comes to Women and Gender Studies, the University should take a lesson from the technical school down the river.

Yes, we’re talking about MIT. The school’s Program in Women and Gender Studies offers three separate, broad-ranging feminist theory courses: MIT WGS.101: “Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies,” MIT WGS.301: “Feminist Thought,” and MIT WGS.303: “Gender: Historical Perspectives” — all core foundations.

Harvard’s Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, on the other hand, offers only one, by our assessment: its sophomore tutorial, a semester-long course geared toward concentrators.

Crucially, the tutorial aims to teach “a shared vocabulary and texts foundational to studies of sexuality and gender.”

It’s hard to create a good introduction to theory — harder still when the course has to cover both gender and sexuality. Professors must make the hard choice of which of the many important authors merit inclusion and which ones don’t. Without a standalone feminist theory survey, those necessary cuts snowball into glaring gaps in the knowledge students acquire from studying WGS.

We compiled a list of the 12 of 16 WGS undergraduate courses hosted at Harvard on offer this 2025-2026 academic year with available reading lists. (The four that did not allow for non-enrollees to view reading lists were: WOMGEN 1215: “RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Power,” WOMGEN 1208: “Gender & Sexuality in Korean Pop Culture,” WOMGEN 1400E: “Queer Ethnography,” and WOMGEN 1209: “Dangerous Words: Feminist Debates on Speech, Harm, and Representation.”)

Some of the most astonishing gaps in content included the absence of Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” and Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex.”

WGS should — at the very least — regularly offer a survey of feminist theory that represents and accepts as legitimate a broad range of texts.

Broad, feminist-specific survey courses exist elsewhere at Harvard. In years past, the Government department has offered GOV 1029: “Feminist Political Thought,” which counted for WGS credit and provided a rare opportunity to explore this content.

The lack of introductory courses is a structural problem in the humanities. Especially since WGS is a committee — not a department — it may lack the resources, infrastructure, and faculty to form robust foundational classes.

Unlike other committees, though, it would appear WGS can hire its own faculty rather than rely solely on joint appointments. Despite this power, the absence of fundamental courses prevails — suggesting that part of the problem stems from a broad trend in the humanities that prioritizes hyper-niche, new research over foundational texts.

There’s no reason WGS shouldn’t offer courses like WOMGEN 1215 and WOMGEN 1208 so long as there are students to fill them. But we’d be willing to bet that an introductory survey centered on gender studies that gives a fuller view of feminist theory would also fill seats, if only because it would help students contextualize and appreciate specialized topics.

The lack of broad-ranging introductory courses also leaves some measure of ideological diversity to be desired. Relying on a one-semester tutorial to cover the basics of both gender and sexuality theory leaves less popular — but equally important — authors out. Available syllabi from surveyed WGS courses this academic year include authors Angela Y. Davis and Judith Butler, typically associated with left-wing gender theory, but do not include, for example, Camille A. Paglia or Andrea R. Dworkin, who seem less aligned with the WGS’s version of feminism.

Increased diversity of thought in WGS syllabi would do the necessary work of destigmatizing gender studies as a discipline. Even at an overwhelmingly liberal institution like Harvard, concentrating in WGS is seen as less than serious. A broad, intellectually heterogeneous survey course would make WGS accessible, ideologically diverse, and more open to every stripe of feminist and non-feminist alike.

In addition, as new feminist theories, such as the burgeoning sex-realist movement, emerge, exposure to a broader range of feminist theory could allow WGS students to more readily understand and engage with said heterodox ideas.

WGS hardly has to revere republican motherhood, “The Great Feminization,” or the hard-right gender essentialism of “From Radcliffe to Ruin” to represent a fuller (and potentially conservative) range of feminist thought.

If WGS wants to present students — as we believe they should — with alternative feminist viewpoints, they could also consider explicitly pursuing diversity of thought among its faculty. After all, a course about sex-realism would be more authentic when taught by someone who actually subscribes to its claims. Otherwise, a forced counterargument can seem like a straw man rather than an invitation to agree.

Harvard students deserve a foundational theory course that sets them up for success. Until then, we will be venturing to the far-flung feminist paradise of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to enroll in “Feminist Thought.”

Amelia F. Barnum ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Winthrop House. Isabel C. Hogben ’29, a Crimson Editorial comper, lives in Greenough Hall.