For the fall 2014 semester, students can expect to see several changes and new course offerings. In addition to the Women's and Gender Studies program changing its name to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, introductory courses will be offered in both Religious Studies and History. As well, the History of Ideas program will be offering a seminar in critical theory that will function as a core course for the program.
In an interview with the Justice, Prof. Wendy Cadge (SOC), who chairs the Women's and Gender Studies program, said that the push to include sexuality in the program's name came from its faculty.

Prof. Thomas King (ENG), who chairs the Sexuality and Queer Studies program, was supportive of the inclusion of sexuality in WGS' name, saying in an interview with the Justice that the program "should have made that move a long time ago."
Cadge said that WGS faculty members are hoping that the name change will help to strengthen its relationship with SQS, which became a minor four years ago. As to whether Cadge sees the two programs combining in the future, she said that "we need to wait and see."

King said that the WGS faculty was concerned about keeping the integrity of the minor despite this change, and that SQS will be a "sustained track within WGS." He said that he does not see these programs combining, but said that "any program over time has to decide if it's still meeting student needs."
King also added that he does not foresee numbers of SQS minors decreasing due to the inclusion of sexuality in the WGS curriculum, but rather that more students would enroll in Women's and Gender Studies due to the inclusion of "non-normative genders or queer sexualities."SQS, he said, "gives students a more concentrated focus on sexuality" and "tends to raise more theoretical questions about what sexuality is." Although he said a "small number" of students declare the minor, "the enrollments in the courses are fairly substantial.
Cadge said that the program had considered several other names for the recent change. Gender and Sexuality Studies is a common name for such programs, she said, but many students and faculty "felt very strongly that 'women' should remain in the name."

"Historically, women have been understudied and underrepresented in a lot of scholarly discourse as well as public life, and a number of people feel that if women are removed from the title of the programs, from the titles of names of courses, it's very easy for them to continue to be ignored or to not have the appropriate amount of attention paid," said Cadge.

Women's and Gender Studies was originally titled Women's Studies, but was changed and voted on by the program faculty in spring 2005, according to Prof. Susan Lanser (ENG).
The new program name will appear on students' diplomas starting in 2015.

According to Cadge, one requirement to major in the program did change-students must now take one elective course that focuses largely on sexuality. The minor requirements, however, did not change, according to the program's proposal to the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.

The History of Ideas program will offer a new course titled "Introduction to Critical Theory," which will be taught by lecturer in the History of Ideas Patrick Gamsby this fall.
According to Prof. David Engerman (HIST), who chairs the program, despite what the course title implies, it is not intended as an introductory class within the program.  

In response to questions about whether or not such courses would be offered in the future, Engerman wrote that "[w]e may offer other courses in the future in circumstances such as those for [f]all 2014." However, he wrote that there are no current plans for Gamsby to offer this particular course again.

The introduction of the course follows accusations of alleged misuse of funds donated for the History of Ideas program, which were chronicled in a Nov. 26 Justice article. The conditions of the donations, given to the University in 1995 and 1999 by the Hannah Oberman Trust as two separate installments, stated that if the program were to be discontinued, the money would have to be redirected to the Cambridge Public Library.

According to the article, in the past 10 years, the History of Ideas program has not offered any of its own courses; it has only offered courses that are cross-listed in other departments. The last time the core course "HOID 127A: Seminar: History of Ideas" was offered was in spring 2003, the article states.

The Religious Studies program will also offer a core course this fall, titled "REL 107A: Introduction to World Religions." According to the program chair, Prof. Marc Brettler (NEJS), the Religious Studies program is "reinstituting [sic] this-we had offered it in the past, but not in the last few years."

Brettler wrote in an email to the Justice that the program stopped offering the course because it "was hard to find the right person to offer it." However, the current demand for the course contributed to its reinstitution, specifically from students and faculty of the International and Global Studies program.

According to Prof. Chandler Rosenberger (IGS) in an interview with the Justice, the request for this course to be offered was "based on strong student interest in the relationship between religion and world affairs.

According to Rosenberger, IGS will fund the adjunct professor who will be teaching this reinstated course, Kristen Lucken.

Brettler wrote that he hopes the course will continue to be offered in the future. "I am very excited that this will happen, and that it will foster greater interest among Brandeis students of the importance of religion to contemporary society and to societies past," he wrote.

The History department will offer an introductory course titled "HIST 10A: Not Even Past" during the fall 2014 semester. Prof. Jane Kamensky (HIST), who chairs the department, described the course in an email to the Justice as an "exciting introduction to the historical roots of modern dilemmas, and to historical thinking more broadly."

Kamensky wrote that the department expects to offer the course annually. Although she wrote that this course will not be required, she wrote that "it will be a good gateway for potential History majors, and for a wide range of other students who want to understand the present and the future by thinking more deeply about the past."

According to Kamensky, the department has offered several introductory surveys of particular times and places, including East Asian history, Latin American history, United States history, world history and a two-term European History sequence. However, the department has not featured an introduction to history "as a way of problem solving and thinking about the world," she wrote. "We thought such an option would serve a diverse array of history-curious students, especially but not only first-years."

The course will be taught by a team consisting of Profs. Govind Sreenivasan (HIST) and Abigail Cooper (HIST), according to Kamensky. Other faculty members will rotate into the course in future years.

According to Kamensky, offering the course was made possible through a grant from the Mandel Center for the Humanities. "The grant from Mandel is small and directed at the team-teaching of this particular course but we have several other new courses debuting in the fall, as we do virtually every semester," she wrote.