GWSS visiting speaker K. Barrett

Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies examines gender — along with class, sexuality, and race — as a way to understand society and culture. The major explores questions about women and gender that are transforming knowledge in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Courses from many departments apply to the major.

GWSS visiting speaker K. Barrett

About Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies

Our gateway course into both the GWSS major and minor is Introduction to Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. Once you learn how to map the field of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies, you will advance to the Foundations of LGBTQ Studies course. This course provides an interdisciplinary examination of sexual desires, sexual orientations, and the concept of sexuality generally, with a particular focus on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities. If you decide to major in GWSS, additional upper-level courses in methods and theory will follow.

Every student majoring or minoring in GWSS rounds out the program with a capstone course which offers students the opportunity to study a topic in-depth and to produce a substantial research paper. Topics will rotate and change depending on the expertise and interest of the faculty teaching them.

Finally, all Carleton majors complete a self-directed, advisor-guided senior project known as senior comps. This is your opportunity to study a topic of choice in depth. Examples of recent topics include: anti-rape activism, identities of “at-risk” youth, identity negotiation among Somali Muslim women, gender norms in contemporary children’s bibles, and being lesbian in queer urban China.

Additional opportunities for research exist outside the classroom as well. Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe offers students a unique opportunity to explore feminist and queer theory in practice across Western and East Central Europe.

Requirements for the Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies Major

The GWSS major is a total of 66 credits. It requires:

  • One gateway course
  • GWSS 110: Introduction to Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies
  • One methodology course
  • GWSS 200: Gender, Sexuality & the Pursuit of Knowledge
  • One intermediate course
  • GWSS 212: Foundations of LGBTQ Studies
  • One theory seminar
  • GWSS 312: Queer and Trans Theory (not offered 2023-24)
  • GWSS 334: Feminist Theory
  • One capstone seminar
  • GWSS 398: Capstone: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture (not offered 2023-24)
  • One Senior Project
    •  GWSS 400 (not offered 2023-24) Comprehensive Exercise
  • In addition to the six required courses listed above (36 credits), students must complete an additional five electives (30 credits) from theGWSS Elective/Additional Courses List below. These 30 credits must be spread across at least two disciplines and should include:
    • One 300-level elective and
    • Four any-level* electives (*a max of two 100-level elective courses can count toward the major)    

Please note: a variety of courses are taught by visitors or offered only occasionally. These courses may still be considered. Contact the program director for consideration of other courses to satisfy this requirement. 

Students will plan courses in consultation with the program director or a designated faculty adviser when they declare their major, and review their plan each term. The major they design should provide both breadth of exposure to Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies across fields and depth of study in one discipline (normally at least two courses in one area or from one department).

OCS Programs: You may count up to two 6 credit courses taken on either Carleton or non-Carleton OCS programs toward the requirements of the GWSS major or minor. OCS program courses cannot be substituted for core GWSS courses on campus and will only count towards GWSS electives. Two courses from Carleton’s Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe program can count as two GWSS elective courses. Students will need to get all OCS program courses approved by the director of GWSS.

Requirements for the Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies Minor

The Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies minor offers students the opportunity to complement their major field with an interdisciplinary focus on gender, women’s and sexuality studies.

The GWSS minor is a total of 36 credits. It requires:

  • One gateway course
  • GWSS 110: Introduction to Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies
  • One intermediate course
  • GWSS 212: Foundations of LGBTQ Studies
  • One capstone seminar
  • GWSS 398: Capstone: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture (not offered 2023-24)
  • In addition to the three required courses listed above (18 credits), students must complete an additional three elective courses (18 credits) from the GWSS Elective/Additional Courses List. These 18 credits must be spread across two different disciplines.

Please note: A variety of courses are taught by visitors or offered only occasionally. These courses may still be considered. Contact the program director for consideration of other courses to satisfy this requirement.

OCS Programs: You may count up to two 6 credit courses taken on either Carleton or non-Carleton OCS programs toward the requirements of the GWSS major or minor. OCS program courses cannot be substituted for core GWSS courses on campus and will only count towards GWSS electives. Two courses from Carleton’s Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe program can count as two GWSS elective courses. Students will need to get all OCS program courses approved by the director of GWSS.

Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies Courses

  • GWSS 100 Queer and Trans Memoir

    From Audre Lorde’s biomythography detailing black lesbian life in 1950s Harlem, to Andy Warhol’s famous-for-more-than-fifteen-minutes pop art star diaries, Alison Bechdel’s tragicomic comic books, Chelsea Manning’s whistleblower tell-all, or Carmen Maria Machado’s experimental memoir about same sex domestic abuse, LGBTQ+ autobiographical works provide us with richly subjective, historically situated insights into the lived experiences of queer and trans individuals. Interdisciplinary in scope, this course considers a variety of LGBTQ+ takes and twists on the memoir genre, including photo diaries; video selfies; illustrated works; self-ethnographies; life-as-art performances; stand-up specials; auto theoretical works; and literary or lyrical forms centering on the personal.

  • GWSS 110 Introduction to Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies

    This course is an introduction to the ways in which gender and sexuality structure our world, and to the ways feminists challenge established intellectual frameworks. However, since gender and sexuality are not homogeneous categories, but are crosscut by class, race, ethnicity, citizenship and culture, we also consider the ways differences in social location intersect with gender and sexuality.

  • GWSS 150 Working Sex: Commercial Sexual Cultures

    Why is the sale of sex criminalized? Who participates in sexual labor and for what reasons? What are the goals and tactics of sex worker social movements? Sexual commerce is an integral facet of U.S. society and the global economy, and yet it elicits strong and paradoxical reactions. This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of commercial sexual cultures. Taking a transnational approach, we will examine historical, political, and economic changes in sexual economies and the regulation of commercial sex. Course readings explore how sex workers have collectively organized to resist criminalization and fight for a better future.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • GWSS 200 Gender, Sexuality & the Pursuit of Knowledge

    In this course we will examine whether there are feminist and/or queer ways of knowing, the criteria by which knowledge is classified as feminist and the various methods used by feminist and queer scholars to produce this knowledge. Some questions that will occupy us are: How do we know what we know? Who does research? Does it matter who the researcher is? How does the social location (race, class, gender, sexuality) of the researcher affect research? Who is the research for? What is the relationship between knowledge, power and social justice? While answering these questions, we will consider how different feminist and queer studies researchers have dealt with them.

  • GWSS 212 Foundations of LGBTQ Studies

    This course introduces students to foundational interdisciplinary works in sexuality and gender studies, while focusing on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities in the United States. In exploring sexual and gender diversity throughout the term, this seminar highlights the complexity and variability of experiences of desire, identification, embodiment, self-definition, and community-building across different historical periods, and in relation to intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and other identities.

  • GWSS 233 Feminist Cultural Studies

    Who does popular feminism speak for; what does it stand for? How are earlier feminist movements reimagined, remediated, and rebranded to make feminism “cool” or “empowering”? What gendered subjectivities, knowledges, and practices are constituted—and marginalized? How do new technologies, media, practices of everyday life, and self-representations contribute to the making and unmaking of feminist activism and social change? We use an interdisciplinary approach: scholarship in queer theory, affect theory, Marxism, media studies, cultural studies, and sociology alongside the ephemera of mass culture, to illuminate intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, religion, nationality, and ability and intersectionality’s role in creating new feminist theory and praxis.

  • GWSS 243 Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe Program: Situated Feminisms: Socio-Political Systems and Gender Issues Across Europe

    This course examines the history and present of feminist and LGBTQ activisms across Western and East-Central Europe. We study the impact of the European colonial heritage on the lives of women and sexual/ethnic minorities across European communities, as well as the legacies of World War II, the Cold War, and the EU expansion into Eastern Europe. Reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, “anti-genderism,” sex work, trafficking, and issues faced by ethnic minorities are among topics explored. These topics are addressed comparatively and historically, stressing their ‘situated’ nature and considering their divergent sociopolitical national frameworks.

  • GWSS 244 Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Cross-Cultural Feminist Methodologies

    This course explores the following questions: What is the relationship between methodology and knowledge claims in feminist research? How do language and narrative help shape experience? What are the power interests involved in keeping certain knowledges marginalized/subjugated? How do questions of gender and sexuality, of ethnicity and national location, figure in these debates? We will also pay close attention to questions arising from the hegemony of English as the global language of WGS as a discipline, and will reflect on what it means to move between different linguistic communities, with each being differently situated in the global power hierarchies.

  • GWSS 250 Politics of Reproductive Justice

    Feminist mobilization around reproductive rights in the US has changed in its focus and intensity over the past 50 years. Black American and other transnational feminists have argued about the necessity of distinguishing between reproductive rights and reproductive justice. How has this argument impacted the ideology and collective-change strategies of different feminist communities mobilizing for reproductive rights? What collective-change strategies have they proposed and what obstacles have they faced? This course has a major civic engagement component that requires students to work with feminist non-profit organizations in and around Northfield or in the greater Twin Cities area.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • GWSS 265 Black Feminist Thought

    This course is designed to introduce students to thirty years of black feminist politics, writing, social and cultural analysis, and research. This course begins with a sketch of contemporary thinking about blackness by noted scholars who illuminate the relationship between blackness, black life, systems of sex/gender, biopolitics, and black/queer feminist knowledge production. We go on to historicize the formation of black feminism as a dynamic and fluid area of study within and across the humanities and social sciences. The history of black feminist thought presented in black women’s studies as an inherently decolonial and transformative praxis that centers intellectual radicalism both inside and outside of the academy.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • GWSS 289 Pleasure, Intimacy, Violence

    This is an interdisciplinary course that explores how pleasure, intimacy, and violence are shaped by historic and ongoing processes of inequality in the United States. We will explore how our understandings of sexuality are influenced by discourses and practices of race and race-making in the U.S. by focusing on the relationship between micro-level (interpersonal) and macro-level (societal) violence. The topics of rape, family violence, and intimate partner violence will be examined from a structural vantage point, emphasizing the mutually constituting roles of gender, race, class, and nationality. The concepts of “pleasure” and “enjoyment” are foregrounded throughout the course.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • GWSS 312 Queer and Trans Theory

    This seminar offers students familiar with the foundational terms and concepts in gender and sexuality studies the opportunity to engage in more advanced explorations of relevant topics and debates in contemporary queer and trans theory. Seeing queer theory and trans theory as theoretical traditions that are historically and philosophically entangled but which at times necessarily diverge, the course focuses on “state of the field” essays from Gay and Lesbian Quarterly and Transgender Studies Quarterly as well as works that put gender and sexuality studies into conversation with disability studies, critical race theory, indigenous studies, and critiques of neoliberalism and imperialism.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • GWSS 325 Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Continental Feminist, Queer, Trans* Theories

    Addressing the impact of Anglo-American influences in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, this course examines European, including East-Central European, approaches to key gender and sexuality topics. It raises questions about the transfer of feminist concepts across cultures and languages. Some of the themes explored include nationalism and gender/sexuality, gendered dimensions of Western and East-Central European racisms, the historical influence of psychoanalysis on Continental feminist theories, the implications of European feminisms in the history of colonialism, the biopolitics of gender, homonationalism, as well as Eastern European socialist/communist theories of women’s emancipation.

  • GWSS 334 Feminist Theory

    This seminar explores key feminist theoretical perspectives and debates, using a historical framework to situate these ideas in relationship to philosophical and political discourses produced during specific cultural moments. This seminar ultimately aims to interrogate the positionality of the theorists we study, considering the cultural privileges as well as vectors of marginalization that influence those viewpoints. We follow feminist thinkers as they propose, challenge, critique, subvert, and revise theoretical traditions of liberalism, Marxism, Socialism, radicalism, separatism, utopianism, multiculturalism, postmodernism, queerness, and post-colonialism. We ask: What gets counted as feminist theory? What gets left out?

  • GWSS 391 Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Independent Field Research in Europe

    This is a self-designed project, and the topic will be determined by each student’s research interests. It will build on readings and work by European women and/or sexual minorities, feminist and queer theory, cross-cultural theory and (if applicable) principles of field research. It should be cross-cultural and comparative, and ideally should involve field work. Drawing on skills developed in feminist theory and methodology seminars, students select appropriate research methods and conduct sustained research in two of the countries visited. The progress of each project will be evaluated regularly in relation to parameters established in conjunction with the Program Director.

  • GWSS 398 Capstone: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture

    This capstone seminar reads representations of racial, gender, and sexual minorities in popular culture through the lenses of feminist, critical race, queer, and trans theories. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in the late 1980s to describe an approach to oppression that considered how structures of power act multiply on individuals based upon their interlocking racial, class, gender, sexual, and other identities. This seminar takes up the charge of intersectional analysis—rejecting essentialist theories of difference while exploring pluralities—to interpret diversity (or lack thereof) in forms of art and entertainment, focusing on film, TV, and digital media.

    Not offered in 2023-24

  • GWSS 400 Integrative Exercise

Other Courses Pertinent to Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies

  • AFST 215: Contemporary Theory in Black Studies
  • AMST 225: Beauty and Race in America
  • AMST 260: Sexuality in American Film since 1945
  • AMST 396: AIDS in America
  • ARTH 214: Queer Art (not offered 2023-24)
  • ARTH 220: The Origins of Manga: Japanese Prints (not offered 2023-24)
  • ARTH 240: Art Since 1945 (not offered 2023-24)
  • BIOL 101: Human Reproduction and Sexuality
  • CAMS 225: Film Noir: The Dark Side of the American Dream
  • CAMS 258: Feminist and Queer Media (not offered 2023-24)
  • CLAS 214: Gender and Sexuality in Classical Antiquity (not offered 2023-24)
  • DANC 266: Reading The Dancing Body (not offered 2023-24)
  • ECON 257: Economics of Gender
  • ENGL 217: A Novel Education
  • ENGL 218: The Gothic Spirit
  • ENGL 227: Imagining the Borderlands (not offered 2023-24)
  • ENGL 229: The Rise of the Novel
  • ENGL 319: The Rise of the Novel
  • ENGL 327: Victorian Novel
  • FREN 235: The Human Body in the Francophone World (not offered 2023-24)
  • FREN 241: The Lyric and Other Seductions (not offered 2023-24)
  • FREN 347: Gender and Sexuality in the Francophone World (not offered 2023-24)
  • GERM 221 (not offered 2023-24)
  • GERM 320: Life under Socialism: Culture and Society in East Germany (not offered 2023-24)
  • GWSS 150: Working Sex: Commercial Sexual Cultures (not offered 2023-24)
  • GWSS 200: Gender, Sexuality & the Pursuit of Knowledge
  • GWSS 233: Feminist Cultural Studies
  • GWSS 250: Politics of Reproductive Justice (not offered 2023-24)
  • GWSS 265: Black Feminist Thought (not offered 2023-24)
  • GWSS 289: Pleasure, Intimacy, Violence (not offered 2023-24)
  • HIST 122: U.S. Women’s History to 1877
  • HIST 123: U.S. Women’s History Since 1877
  • HIST 175: Gender and Sexuality in Latin American History (not offered 2023-24)
  • HIST 211: Revolts and Resistance in Early America (not offered 2023-24)
  • HIST 218: Black Women’s History
  • HIST 229: Working with Gender in U.S. History (not offered 2023-24)
  • HIST 236: The Worlds of Hildegard of Bingen
  • HIST 270: Nuclear Nations: India and Pakistan as Rival Siblings (not offered 2023-24)
  • HIST 288: Reason, Authority, and Love in Medieval France (not offered 2023-24)
  • HIST 289: Gender and Ethics in Late Medieval France (not offered 2023-24)
  • IDSC 203: Talking about Diversity
  • LTAM 250: Indigeneity and Power in the Andes: Land, Labor, Knowledge (not offered 2023-24)
  • PHIL 114: Philosophy of Love and Sex
  • PHIL 122: Identity and Leadership (not offered 2023-24)
  • PHIL 257: Feminist Philosophy
  • PHIL 304: Decolonial Feminisms
  • POSC 276: Imagination in Politics: Resisting Totalitarianism (not offered 2023-24)
  • POSC 280: Feminist Security Studies
  • POSC 308: Global Gender Politics
  • POSC 324: Rebels and Risk Takers: Women and War in the Middle East (not offered 2023-24)
  • POSC 339: LGBTQ Politics in America (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 161: The Jewish Bible (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 218: The Body in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 221: Judaism and Gender (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 227: Liberation Theologies (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 232: Queer Religions (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 233: Gender and Power in the Catholic Church
  • RELG 234: Angels, Demons, and Evil
  • RELG 236: Black Love: Religious, Political, and Cultural Discussions
  • RELG 242: Oh My G*d: Christianity and Sexual Revolutions (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 280: The Politics of Sex in Asian Religion (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 283: Mysticism and Gender (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 287: Many Marys (not offered 2023-24)
  • RELG 362: Spirit Possession (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 114: Modern Families: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Family (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 207: Sociology of Gender (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 225: Social Movements
  • SOAN 226: Anthropology of Gender (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 257: Culture and Politics in India (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 313: Woke Nature: Towards an Anthropology of Non-Human Beings (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 323: Mother Earth: Women, Development and the Environment (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 325: Sociology of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction (not offered 2023-24)
  • SOAN 395: Ethnography of Reproduction
  • SPAN 244: Spain Today: Recent Changes through Narrative and Film
  • THEA 228: Performing Women
  • THEA 260: Space, Time, Body, Minds (not offered 2023-24)
  • THEA 270: Art and (Un)Freedom (not offered 2023-24)
  • WGST 112: Introduction to LGBT/Queer Studies (not offered 2023-24)
  • WGST 200: Gender, Power and the Pursuit of Knowledge (not offered 2023-24)
  • WGST 234: Feminist and Queer Theory (not offered 2023-24)
  • WGST 243: Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe Program: Situated Feminisms: Socio-Political Systems and Gender Issues Across Europe (not offered 2023-24)
  • WGST 244: Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Cross-Cultural Feminist Methodologies (not offered 2023-24)
  • WGST 325: Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Continental Feminist, Queer, Trans* Theories (not offered 2023-24)
  • WGST 389: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture (not offered 2023-24)