Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Minor

Sponsoring departments: American Studies; English; Psychology; Sociology

Director: Jillian Crocker, Sociology Department

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, reconstruction, and perpetuation of asymmetrical gender, sex, and sexuality systems and their connections to other operations of power and inequities. Explorations of how gender, sex, and sexuality intersect with race, ethnicity, class, and disability include the imperial and globalizing contexts shaping these systems of power.

Considering historical, contemporary, and transnational perspectives, the WGSS minor investigates and critiques how ideologies of gender, sex, and sexuality have influenced and been influenced by social and cultural systems; literature and the arts; economic and political systems; law and public policy; and health, medicine, science, and technology. The program’s critical, intersectional lens closes gaps in traditional higher education resulting from the historic exclusion of marginalized groups from many fields of study.

This program of study empowers students through a feminist critique of social, cultural, and institutional structures that enables them to think more critically about their own lives and inspires them to work as active agents for social justice. The knowledge and skills attained through the WGSS minor are valuable in a wide range of fields, including: Social Services, Social Work, & Public Policy; Education, Health, & Legal Professions; Communications, Human Resources, & Business; Science, Technology, & Research; Art, Literature, & Media Production; and Community & Non-Profit Advocacy, Leadership, & Management.