Our Mission

The William Paterson University Race & Gender Project seeks to create an environment on campus that is welcoming, inclusive, and supportive for all its members.  The Project recognizes that racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism can be challenged as well as reinforced through institutional policies and pedagogical practices.  It therefore works to engage these issues through campus-wide discussion.

     The Race & Gender Project provides faculty development resources for those who wish to better integrate issues of race and ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality into their work. It offers assistance to teachers of General Education courses that fulfill the "Racism and Sexism” requirement as well as to teachers of other courses who see these issues as essential to their discipline.

     To these ends, the Project organizes pedagogy workshops, brings in speakers to address the University community, and runs intensive training sessions for new and continuing instructors. It seeks to promote the integration of theory and practice across the curriculum and in campus culture.

History of the Race & Gender Project

"Racism and Sexism in a Changing America," as the course was originally called, was created by faculty in the Women's Studies Program and the Department of African and Afro-american Studies as part of a revision of the general studies curriculum as approved by the William Paterson Senate in 1981. The first section of the course was offered in the Spring of 1982. In May of 1984, Leslie Agard-Jones, J. Jordan, Vernon McClean, and Paula Rothenberg led a two-week workshop in which they and thirteen other faculty members discussed how to teach this new course that was now part of the General Education requirement. The following Fall, these "core faculty" and others began participating regularly in afternoon pedagogy workshops.

The course, originally team taught, was one of the first such courses in the country and out of it grew the first edition of Paula Rothenberg's influential textbook, Racism and Sexism: An Integrated Study (St. Martin's Press, 1988). The Race & Gender Project has been directed in turn by Paula Rothenberg, Susan Radner, Charley Flynt, J. Jordan, and Bob Rosen.

The course has evolved over the years to include greater emphasis on the politics of sexuality and on a wider range of people of color. The official Course Description for "Racism and Sexism in the U.S." details the course's goals and approaches. Two other courses, "Women's Changing Roles" and "Justice and Racism," also fulfill the William Paterson University racism and sexism General Education requirement. Course Descriptions for these are also available on this web site.