Students can earn a dual-title master’s degree (M.A./M.S.) or a dual-title Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS).
The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) graduate program at Penn State is a nationally and internationally recognized interdisciplinary program committed to the intersectional, transnational, and feminist analysis of gender, power, and social inequality. Through innovative teaching, research, and professional training, the program brings together faculty and graduate students from across the University to address pressing social, political, and cultural questions.
The WGSS graduate program deploys interdisciplinary feminist approaches to knowledge production, pedagogy, and community engagement. Faculty and graduate students pursue diverse research agendas that link WGSS to multiple departments and colleges across Penn State, fostering a vibrant intellectual community grounded in social justice.
University Partnerships
The WGSS graduate program currently partners with fourteen departments across Penn State:
Art Education; Communication Arts and Sciences; Comparative Literature; Curriculum and Instruction; English; French and Francophone Studies; Geography; History; Mass Communications; Media Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; Psychology; and Rural Sociology.
These partnerships are central to the interdisciplinary strength of the WGSS graduate program.
Graduate Degree Options
The WGSS graduate program offers three options:
- Dual-Title MA/MS Degree
- Dual-Title PhD
- Graduate Minor
The master’s and doctoral dual-title degree programs, along with the graduate minor, have enabled WGSS to build a graduate program recognized for its intellectual rigor and interdisciplinary depth. The dual-title structure provides graduate students with distinctive scholarly and professional opportunities, allowing them to integrate feminist, gender, and sexuality studies into advanced training in their home disciplines.
Faculty, Research, and Graduate Training Environment
The WGSS graduate program is housed in the College of the Liberal Arts, with central offices located on the third floor of Willard Building on Penn State’s University Park campus. The program draws on a highly diverse, interdisciplinary group of faculty who are deeply committed to excellence in research, teaching, and service, with a shared focus on social justice.
Graduate students in WGSS work with feminist scholars from a wide range of fields, including African Studies, African American Studies, Art Education, Communication Arts and Sciences, Comparative Literature, English, French and Francophone Studies, Geography, History, Italian, Mass Communications, Media Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Rural Sociology, Spanish, and more. As a result, students in the WGSS graduate program come from five colleges across the University: Arts and Architecture, Liberal Arts, Earth and Mineral Sciences, Education, and Communications.
Through strong institutional relationships with partner PhD-granting programs and a broad network of affiliate or courtesy faculty, the WGSS graduate program offers exceptional depth and breadth of expertise. Students receive rigorous training in analyzing and challenging sexism, homo- and transphobia, ableism, classism, and racial oppression, while developing critical and analytical skills, creative approaches to problem solving, and the ability to articulate productive socio-political alternatives.
Graduates of the WGSS program have been highly successful in securing academic positions, as well as professional, policy, and research-oriented careers.
History of the WGSS Graduate Program
Penn State has a long-standing commitment to women’s education. In 1871, the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, now Penn State University, became the first college in Pennsylvania to admit women to degree programs on a regular basis and was among the first land-grant institutions in the nation to do so.
More than a century later, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies graduate program at Penn State has developed into a thriving interdisciplinary program ranked among the best in the country. WGSS is one of only a small number of universities in the United States to offer a dual-title graduate degree program in the field.