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Join a diverse community of students and faculty committed to exploring how gender shapes our social and political lives. In the Women, Gender, & Representation (WGR) program, students from across the country and world take transformative courses that tackle gender justice issues that matter to them. Courses include sexual health and rights, queer and trans lives, race and ethnic studies, gender in music and literature, gender minority histories, and practices of inclusive social change.

Mark your calendars! The application for our Precollege Programs opens on December 10.

Program at a Glance

Dates

July 20–August 2, 2025

Cost

Tuition: $4,864
Deposit: $1,216
Application Fee: $50
International Student Application Fee: $75

Courses

Reproductive Justice
Women in Rock
Play Like a Girl: Gender in Sport
And more!

Courses

Instructor

Anna Baeth

Course Description

Play Like a Girl: Gender in Sport explores questions about gender and the involvement of all women, trans, and nonbinary people in sport, physical activity, and exercise in the United States. Drawing from various texts, podcasts, videos, current events, and our especially our own experiences, we interrogate the histories of gender in sport and physical education and use critical feminist and queer theories to decipher the ways sport creates, supports, and resists dominant ideologies of inequality. This course will focus on the creation and legacy of women's sports, patterns of inclusion and exclusion in sport with particular attention to women of color, trans, and nonbinary athletes, and the social construction of gender, race, and sexuality in sport. This course is experiential and students may be asked to participate in some light activity that will be accessible and available for every body.

Instructor

Sydney Curtis

Course Description

In this course, we will use embodied ways of learning to facilitate rest in tandem with rigorous engagement with the history of Black womens’ right to rest and traditions of rest as resistance. Using The Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey’s Rest as Resistance: A Manifesto as our guide, we will embark on an embodied experience of rest as a political praxis. In partnership with concurrent WGR courses, students in this course will closely examine sources of unrest in multifaceted forms throughout the world, and critique the ways that these forces impact our bodies. We will explore the Black feminist ethics of care to trace the origins of self care from diasporic womens’ experiences and conceptions of labor in enslavement, to and through our current practices and experiences of self-care and/or “commercialized rest”. Through movement, meditation, conversation, and reflection, we will excavate the authentic and necessary rest practices that strengthen our ability to persist and thrive –while we continually examine and critique the social structures that perpetuate our restlessness. We will further explore expressions of radical interiority from artistic, astrological, secular, spiritual, and religious lenses, to engage and learn with transcendent sources of rest. By the end of this course, students will have a radical understanding of the history and practice of rest!

Instructor

Fiona Maurisette

Course Description

This class is for students who recognize that we need a paradigm shift and want to change the world. What kinds of futures have you been made aware of through science fiction and fantasy texts, and how can you use your analyses to change the world? In this class, you will be a world builder. This interdisciplinary course examines feminist science and speculative fiction narratives as political texts that critique society’s racial and gender hierarchies. By analyzing science and speculative fiction texts, you will find inspiration for your own constructions of the future. Your words will push the boundaries of what others believe is possible. You will produce a project about how to make our world better. Join others in suspending disbelief and believing in your power to promote change. Writers may include Adrienne Maree Brown, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. LeGuin, Nalo Hopkinson, Shirley Jackson, N.K. Jemisin, and Sheree Renée Thomas.

We want to foster an open and welcoming community of thinkers and learners. This class will support you in sharing your ideas and thoughts while keeping in focus that not everyone in the class has the same background.

Instructor

Kate Dugan

Course Description

What does it mean to live in a Post-Roe world? What is the history of reproductive justice? What are the legacies of protest movements for and against access to reproductive health care? This course will examine histories of sexual and reproductive health movements. We will study the UN’s reproductive justice framework and how it empowers global conversations about bodily autonomy. We will explore Smith College’s Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History, which is a rich archive of the history of movements for reproductive health, including Loretta Ross papers, the Activist Life Oral History Project, the Black Women’s Health Imperative Records, the National Latina Health Organization Records, and several personal archives of well-known feminist thinkers and activists. Students will leave this course with well-informed curiosity about how historical conditions, social movement materials, and critical questions shape the possibilities for reproductive justice.

Instructor

Tanya Pearson

Course Description

The cultural narrative of popular women musicians offers a unique view from which to study American history. In this course, students will explore the Women of Rock Oral History Project, a collection of digital interviews and written transcripts documenting the lives and careers of women-identified musicians, analyze their oral testimony, and identify emerging threads, topics, and themes. Students will gain an in-depth knowledge of the history of women in rock, develop a greater understanding of their impact on culture, society, and politics, gain a greater sense of women’s lives and the pervasive ways in which women musicians address societal issues, and develop and refine skills in critical thinking, discussion, and writing. We will use multiple digital tools and conduct group research with the Women of Rock Oral History Project narrators.

Instructor

To be determined

Course Description

To be determined

Program Details

Overview

The Women, Gender, and Representation program provides high-school-aged students with a life-changing experience. Students selected for this program demonstrated open-mindedness and commitment to exploring gender in history, contemporary social and political issues, and forms of cultural representation. By the end of the program, students will have a college-level experience that introduces them to future college, career, and personal pathways committed to gender-inclusive and just communities. 

Course material and topics range each year, but include the following: women’s histories; queer histories; sexual health and reproductive justice; gender in social spaces of athletics, politics, education, and other fields; and visual and literary art forms as expression and critique. 

Students receive important information, skills, and a network of friends and mentors as they return to their high school lives and prepare for their college experiences, including the opportunity to receive recommendation comments for college application processes.

Smith Precollege Programs are open to students entering 9th–12th grade in the fall of 2025. Smith is a residential women’s college. Our Precollege Programs offer a Smith experience for high school students. Review our Codes of Conduct for students and parents/guardians to ensure that this program is the right fit for you. College credit is not offered.

Tuition

Tuition: $4,864
Deposit: $1,216

Application Fees

Application Fee: $50
International Student Application Fee: $75

To learn more, see the Apply to Summer Programs webpage.

Schedule

Admission to Smith Precollege Program does not guarantee enrollment in a specific course. Enrollment in a program course is a separate action that will be completed in May. Classes are held Monday–Friday.

Morning Classes

Afternoon Classes

Play Like a Girl: Gender in Sport

 

Global Reproductive Justice

 

Shaping a New World: Race, Gender, Feminism, & Science Fiction for a Better Tomorrow

Women of Rock

 

Rest as Resistance: Black Feminism & Radical Interiority



Queer Sexual Ethics

Instructors

Anna Baeth

Women, Gender & Representation

Instructor in Precollege Programs for Women, Gender & Representation

Sydney Curtis

Women, Gender & Representation

Instructor in Precollege Programs for Women, Gender & Representation

Sydney Curtis

Kate Dugan

Women, Gender & Representation

Instructor in Precollege Programs for Women, Gender & Representation

Amy Howe

Women, Gender & Representation

Academic Director for the Women, Gender & Representation Precollege Program

Precollege Programs instructor Amy Howe

Fiona Maurissette

Women, Gender & Representation

Instructor in Precollege Programs for Women, Gender & Representation

Tanya Pearson

Women, Gender & Representation

Instructor in Precollege Programs for Women, Gender & Representation

“Coming here definitely made me feel like I was home away from home. All my counselors and classroom assistants were so kind and welcoming, open to conversations, and always cheered me up. I learned to be more confident in complimenting others and accepting others’ compliments of me. I loved the after-class activities; they were so fun and connected me with friends.”
Joan, 12th grade

Learning in Community

Courses are discussion-based and focused on shared group learning. Faculty not only share their expertise and passion, but also model forms of inquiry, community engagement, and a commitment to transformative student learning. Students learn how to critically and creatively reflect on their lived experiences as they learn about new concepts, ideas, and cultural histories. 

Explore Another Program
“These two weeks helped me meet new people and create new connections and also gave me a taste of how college life is.”
“This has been a dream come true! from classes to campus to friends and teachers, everything about my experience at WGR has been lovely and I'll never forget it.”

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