Bachelors of Arts in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program (FGSS) is an interdisciplinary program that investigates how gender is embedded in cultural, social, and political formations. The study of feminism, gender relations, and sexuality urges attention to the complex structures of power and inequality, tracing intersections and relationships among sexuality, race, class, age, ethnicity, and nationality. Founded in 1972 as Women’s Studies, this program has been a home for innovative approaches to research in gender and sexuality studies, as well as a site for important theoretical and activist debates among feminists and cutting-edge research for scholars from across the humanities and social sciences. The Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program’s course offerings are built around several assumptions about the study of gender and sexuality. First, understandings of sex, sexuality, and gender are neither universal nor immutable; to study them is to gain an understanding of human behavior, culture, and society across time and space as well as to gain a sense of how these social constructions shape us as individuals. Second, gender and sexuality are best understood when examined in relation to race, class, and nation, so as to reveal how social relations are structured by multiple ways of belonging. Third, even the most current knowledge derived from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences is not impartial, objective, or neutral but instead emerges out of particular historical and political contexts. FGSS graduates are trained in critical thinking, analytic writing, and cultural competencies that enhance their lifelong personal and intellectual growth, as well as their professional development. Graduates of this program have gone on to work successfully in a wide variety of fields, including law, medicine, social policy, arts, international development and aid, media, research, and community activism.