Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies: Self-Designed Major, Concentration 

Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies is a multidisciplinary program that explores the many facets of gender and sexuality.  We encourage our students to examine and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, explore and honor marginalized experiences and perspectives, and question power at personal, interpersonal, social, structural levels. 

Students in the program pursue critical questions from a range of academic disciplines and learn how activism can promote social change.  We challenge students to consider how complex social identities such as race, social class, age, and ability intersect with gender and sexuality to shape the world in ways that are all at once personal, political, local, and global. Our concentration is an appropriate supplement to any academic major. 

GSWS Statement on The Overturning of Roe v. Wade

June 27, 2022  -  Read the full statement 

Program Highlights

  • 15-20 classes offered per semester and in a range of disciplines 
  • Opportunities to work closely with faculty on groundbreaking research and activist projects  
  • Events on a wide range of topics throughout the year 
  • The capstone experience — an independent project that can take the form of a research paper, an art or performance piece, or an action campaign  
students and a professor in a classroom
Mission

Learn about the guiding intellectual principles and activist practices that inform our work.

Students at a computer
Research

Under the guidance of a faculty member, students conclude the concentration with a capstone experience in their fourth year.

Students in a classroom
Opportunities

From internships to study abroad to the DC and NY Semester programs, opportunities for hands-on learning abound.

Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies News

photo collage, Alpha Sigma Nu recipients
31 17³Ô¹ÏÍø Students Inducted Into Jesuit Honor Society
Thirty-one 17³Ô¹ÏÍø students were inducted into Alpha Sigma Nu,  the Jesuit honor society founded in 1915, at a virtual ceremony held recently. The new inductees exemplify the society’s values of excellence in scholarship, loyalty and service.  Selection to Alpha …
Selina Gallo-Cruz, associate professor of sociology. Photo by Tom Rettig
17³Ô¹ÏÍø Sociology Professor Calls Weinstein Conviction a ‘Public Restaging’ of Women’s Sexual Harassment
Selina Gallo-Cruz, associate professor of sociology at 17³Ô¹ÏÍø and a social movements scholar, was quoted in a recent article for The Christian Science Monitor on how the #MeToo movement and the conviction of Hollywood mogul Harvey …
students work on a farm
Learning Outside the Classroom at 17³Ô¹ÏÍø
Not all education takes place in an academic building — particularly at 17³Ô¹ÏÍø, where outside-the-classroom learning opportunities range from local to global. Whether you’re contributing to community engagement or diving into summer research or spending a …