Gender, Sexuality, and Womens Studies Program
Director: Susan Amatangelo
Stein 457
Email: samatang@holycross.edu
Associate Director of Concentrations: Susan Cunningham
Smith 331
Email: scunning@holycross.edu
Academic administrative assistant: Karen Todd
Smith 329
Email: ktodd@holycross.edu
Lihua Wang, visiting assistant professor in sociology and anthropology, teaches a Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies class.
Gender, Sexuality, and Womens Studies Mission
Gender, Sexuality, and Womens Studies is an interdisciplinary academic concentration that uses gender and sexuality as central frameworks for exploration, analysis, and action. The program affirms the commitment among its students and faculty to promote social justice and deconstruct assumptions about gender and sexuality that reproduce inequality.
Guiding Intellectual Principles
- We respect the intrinsic dignity of all people.
- We honor our history in Womens Studies and indebtedness to feminist methods and theories.
- We embrace diverse pedagogical approaches that deconstruct binaries and bring marginalized experiences and perspectives to the center of inquiry and analysis.
- We commit to shared exploration and investigation of interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, and transnationality.
- We interrogate power at personal, interpersonal, social, and structural levels.
- We engage in pluralistic dialogue and collaborative decision making that is respectful of difference.
Activist Practices
- Discernment: Whose voices are least likely to be heard and how might we dismantle the power structures that silence them?
- Equity: How might we transform unjust social relations that are personal and political, local and global?
- Empowerment: How might students and faculty personalize activism in relation to our own interests, talents, and social location?
- Solidarity: How might we ally with affinity academic programs, student organizations, and other college initiatives?
GSWS Statement on The Overturning of Roe v. Wade
On June 24, the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, which has prevented states from outlawing abortion since 1973.
The Gender, Sexuality, and Womens Studies concentration condemns the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The right of all pregnant people to control their bodies is a fundamental right and a foundational principle of intersectional feminism. Abortion access has narrowed substantially over the past decades in many states; overturning Roe v. Wade increases the harm to those who seek to make informed decisions about their reproductive and overall health, their family planning, and the course that their life will take. The decision places poor people and people of color in particular in jeopardy. studies show that Overturning Roe v. Wade also further jeopardizes the ability for pregnant people of color to access quality healthcare and to establish healthcare relationships that advance their reproductive freedom and overall well-being.
Abortion bans also threaten the mental and physical health of people who are pregnant by choice. They endanger people whose pregnancies cause life-threatening complications; People seeking medical treatment for miscarriages and stillbirths may find themselves prosecuted on suspicion of having induced an abortion. This is a particular concern in a country in which and Black people face increased scrutiny from law enforcement and discrimination in the criminal justice system. In states with abortion bans, people whose doctors have told them that their fetuses have no chance for survival outside the womb may be forced to continue with those pregnancies, causing them grievous psychological harm.
The overturning of Roe vs. Wade also signals the potential erosion of other rights, as Justice Thomas wrote that
As the 17勛圖厙 mission statement notes, critical examination of fundamental religious and philosophical questions is integral to liberal arts education. In accordance with our mission to consider our responsibility to those without power or privilege, GSWS upholds the dignity and autonomy of all women, girls, and pregnant people and stands in solidarity with all those who seek comprehensive reproductive justice.