Gender and Sexualities Studies, BA

Co-Directors: Dawne Moon, Ph.D. and Joshua Ezra Burns, Ph.D.

The interdisciplinary Gender and Sexualities Studies (INGS) major and minor promote a critical, feminist, and intersectional understanding of gender, sexuality, and power in a global context and across disciplinary boundaries. In addition to fostering human understanding, they provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary for just and equitable leadership in professional, civic and religious roles.

Students gain the knowledge and skills for understanding and recognizing:

  • How gender has shaped the world around us and the ways we make sense of it.

  • How gender and sexuality intersect with race, class, ethnicity, disability, religion, region and other societal markers.

  • How sexism and heterosexism have operated in a dynamic with other systems of structural oppression in historical and contemporary contexts.

  • The various meanings and categories that different societies assign sex and sexuality in different historical eras and how they shape people’s lives.

  • The diversity of gendered experiences, accomplishments and perspectives within the categories of woman, man, intersex, transgender, nonbinary, Two-Spirit and others throughout the gender spectrum.

  • How to embrace gender and sexual diversity and work for justice in any sector of society.