The curriculum of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is centered around the following learning goals:

  • Understand and critique the formation of categories of gender and sexuality as they function in social, economic, cultural and/or political contexts and as they intersect with other categories of difference such as race and ethnicity.
  • Communicate effectively using gender analytics as a tool for academic research, for creative production, for collaborative work, and/or for practices of social change.
  • Know the complexity and variety of differently gendered lives and livelihoods around the globe.
  • Recognize stereotypes and the naturalization of hierarchies of difference through analyzing power dynamics from the micro to the macro level.
  • Identify the politics of issue framing and knowledge production.

Honors students (10-15 percent) will complete independent research and present it to a public audience.