Gender and Sexuality Studies

Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSST) is an interdisciplinary program that focuses on gender and sexuality as categories of analysis. Courses in GSST range widely in focus and content. However, what these courses share is a recognition, shaped by feminist and queer perspectives, of the ways in which gender and sexuality function as part of a dynamic system, one that shapes identity, structures knowledge, and determines the distribution of social and political power. Courses in GSST can include a variety of different topics and directions, including the following:

• Explore how concepts of manhood and womanhood shape divisions of labor, family structure, social identity, civil law, sexual mores, and political rights.

• Study the roles, contributions, and/or representations of women or QLGBT people and cultures and make use of critical frameworks for analyzing these roles, contributions and representations.

• Study the history of sexuality, including the emergence of sexual identities.

• Examine how gendered structures affect access to privilege and opportunity and how gender is encoded in power relations

• Analyze how gender is mediated by other categories of identity and positioning, such as class, race, sexual orientation and ethnicity