The women’s studies program this summer was renamed gender studies to better reflect its curriculum and attract a wider group of students, program coordinators said.

The name change, approved by the Board of Trustees on June 12, reflects a trend among universities, including Northwestern, according to Alex Owen, NU’s gender studies director.

“It’s not that the focus on women has disappeared, but that now women’s studies scholars and other academics are becoming so much more focused not only on women but (also on) men (and) what concepts like sexuality mean,” said Owen, who replaced Fran Paden as director of the program Sept. 1.

Owen said she also hopes to expand the number of classes that explore different sexual orientations. She would like the gender studies program to generate more of its own queer studies courses and for other departments to offer more classes as well, which could count toward the gender studies adjunct major.

The titles of previous women’s studies courses now include the word “gender” instead of “women,” and some courses will have to widen their focus.

For example, Prof. Phyllis Lassner has reworked her class Gender and War in the Twentieth Century, previously called Women and War in the Twentieth Century, to include books written by men and to pay attention to men’s role in war. In addition to reading “Not So Quiet,” Helen Zenna Smith’s 1930 novel about female ambulance drivers in World War I, her students also will watch “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which tells the story of men in war.

While Lassner appreciates the challenge of integrating the two perspectives, she said losing the focus on women in war concerns her.

“The vicious glamour of war gets more attention than the roles of women, which are more pacific,” said Lassner, who has taught the class for the past 15 years.

She also is worried about losing the comfortable environment in gender studies classes that previously allowed women to be themselves. But she hopes that the change will allow both men and women to feel comfortable discussing these issues together.

Weinberg junior Kat MacFarlane, chairwoman of the Undergraduate Liaison Committee that worked with students and administrators to discuss the program’s changes, said it’s important to include all perspectives in courses studying women.

“If you’re talking about inequality, you can’t only look at those who are oppressed,” MacFarlane said. “You have to look at those who are privileged as well.”

She said she also hopes the change brings to the classes a range of perspectives, specifically those of men.

MacFarlane persuaded her friend Sean Lindo to be one of five men out of 80 people in a women’s studies class Winter Quarter.

“It made it a little bit intimidating to speak up,” said Lindo, an Education junior, who said he hopes his schedule allows one or two more gender studies classes before he graduates.