Gender Studies

About the Program

The Gender Studies Program approaches liberal arts learning from an interdisciplinary perspective and addresses gender, sexuality, and culture as inseparable from variables such as race, ethnicity, class, regional identity, age, and religion.

Students who earn a minor in Gender Studies 1) develop critical understandings of gender, sexuality, and culture using interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary lenses; 2) develop critical understandings about the interrelatedness of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, and religion; 3) apply understandings to scholarly work and to life decisions; and 4) articulate understandings about issues of gender to peers and to a public.

The five-course sequence for minors begins with an introductory course in which students explore the importance of gender in the organization of social life and in the construction of personal identity. Three elective courses follow, which expand students’ knowledge of gender in specialized courses. Students integrate their studies in the capstone course, the Gender Research Seminar, through the definition and implementation of their individual research projects and through discussion of interdisciplinary issues, ideas, and theories in the history and cultures of gender.