The women’s studies department at Wichita State University in Kansas will now be known as the department of women’s, ethnicity, and intersectional studies.
“The overlapping of experiences in people’s lives is very important when you are studying women, or when you engage in women’s studies or ethnic studies,” said Chinyere Okafor, professor and former head of the department. “It’s very important for all of them to go together.”
The department was founded in 1971, making it the second oldest women’s studies department in the United States, according to the university. Later it became the department of women’s studies and religion.
The rebranded department is the academic home for analyzing gender in relationship to and situated within forms of power in society such as race, class, sexuality, domestically and geopolitical and national in terms of the world in which the U.S. sits. According to the department, students learn to think critically about social institutions – family, work, education, media, the state – and images and ideology – cultural commonsense, ideas about what is accepted as natural and dominant concepts of knowledge and reality. Students and faculty investigate change in women’s lives emerging in different national and cultural contexts as well as the women’s professional and domestic contributions to culture and society.
Dr. Okafor has taught at Wichita State University for 21 years. She holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. She also earned a master’s degree in African studies and English from the University of Sussex in England.