WOMEN’S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES
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Sexuality and Gender Studies Minor

Sexuality and Gender Studies Minor

The undergraduate minor in Sexuality and Gender Studies addresses human sexuality and gender as they have been conceptualized and investigated by diverse disciplines: humanities (including history and cultural studies), behavioral and social sciences, biological sciences, and visual and performance arts. This minor helps students interrogate how gender identity and sexuality intersect with race, ethnicity, nationality, class, disability, age, religion, and other identities to create structural, institutional, and ideological inequalities and oppressions. Courses in the minor require students to explore scholarship and research on sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender across the lifespan, across cultures, and throughout history. Developing students’ critical skills in a variety of disciplines, courses in the minor cover theories of sexuality and gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movements, the history of sexual norms, queer theory, transgender theory, gender identities and erotic orientations in the arts, among other classes.

See this program's listing: Undergraduate Bulletin

Professor in Charge

Tracy Rutler
Director of Undergraduate Studies
344 Willard Building
University Park, PA 16802
trl5393@psu.edu

Advisor

Julianna Chaszar
127A Burrowes Building
University Park , PA 16802
Email: jxc50@psu.edu
Office Phone: (814) 863-8559
Schedule an appointment: starfish.psu.edu

18 CREDITS REQUIRED FOR THE MINOR

Prescribed Courses (6 credits)

Please note that both ENGL/WMNST 245 and HDFS/WMNST 250 are offered as on-line courses through World Campus. 

Additional Courses (12 credits)

Students may choose any course listed below as supporting coursework, provided they fulfill the following requirements:

  • Choose at least three credits from humanities and the arts
  • Choose at least three credits from the sciences
  • Choose at least two 400-level courses

In order to fulfill the interdisciplinary nature of the minor, students must study both in arts and humanities and in sciences. With the permission of the professor in charge of the minor Tracy Rutler, tlr5393@psu.edu) one-time “Special Topics” courses and other classes that focus substantively on gender and sexuality may be substituted for courses listed below. Please be prepared to provide a syllabus or other documentation of the course content when requesting such substitutions.

A. Sexuality studies in humanities and the arts (all courses are 3 credits unless noted):

B. Sexuality studies in the sciences (all courses are 3 credits unless noted):

Becoming a Major

You can declare the minor in Sexuality and Gender Studies through your Student Center in LionPATH. You can view a tutorial.