Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor provides a multicultural, multiracial, and multi-generational look at the evolution of women’s experiences. Students explore politics, sexuality, health, and education through a multidisciplinary curriculum.

The goals of the program are fundamental to all human endeavors:

• To work toward educational equity.
• To develop a curriculum and a community that is free of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and all forms of discrimination.
• To create awareness of the worldwide contributions of women.
• To establish an educational environment that encourages personal and academic growth.

Read these testimonies from students who recently completed the WGS minor!

Students interested in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor can use two ENG courses for their minor and can petition to have a third ENG course count toward the minor. English professors often teach Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the department houses many courses that contribute to the minor:

• ENG 132: Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Lit.
• ENG 221: Jane Austen: Early Woman Novelist, Modern Media Property
• ENG 272: Women & Violence in Cont. World Texts
• ENG 275: Archetypal Women in Myth & Literature
• ENG 277: American Women in Literature
• ENG 359: Feminist Film Theory
• WGS/ENG 274: Women, Writing and Rhetoric
• WGS/ENG 276: 19th Century Women’s Literature
• WGS/ENG 278: Women Writers Around the World
• WGS/ENG 279: U.S. & Canadian Women Writers
• WGS/ENG 323: Native American Women Writers

Students can also ask professors within the English department do WGS 310 (required for the minor), 370, 380, or 390 as Individualized Instruction courses. If you focus on gender in a course not on the minor’s grid sheet and can make a case for why that course should count toward your minor, you can petition the minor’s advisory board.