Women’s and Gender Studies

专业详情

Located within the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and taught in cooperation with Barnard College’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the program in Women’s and Gender Studies provides students with a culturally and historically situated, theoretically diverse, and transnational understanding of feminist and queer scholarship as it engages multiple disciplines.

The program introduces students to key feminist and queer discourses on the cultural and historical representation of nature, power, and the social construction of difference. It encourages students to engage in the debates regarding the ethical and political issues of equality and justice that emerge in such discussion, and links the questions of gender and sexuality to those of racial, ethnic, and other kinds of social difference.

Through sequentially organized courses in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as approved elective courses in a wide range of departments, the degree provides a thoroughly interdisciplinary framework, methodological training, and substantive guidance in specialized areas of research. Small classes taught by our core faculty members and mentored thesis writing give students an education that is both comprehensive and tailored to individual needs.

Graduates leave the program with critical reading, writing, and analytical skills, and gain the tools they need to analyze systems of power operating at personal, national, and international levels. While this prepares some for future scholarly work in the field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies, others take these skills and apply them to careers and future training in a variety of fields, including: law, public policy, social work, community organizing, public health, film, journalism, medicine, and other professions where gender and sexuality are currently being reimagined and there is a need for critical and creative interdisciplinary thought.