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Gender Studies (Minor)

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15

Credit hours

Applicable Everywhere

Identify, evaluate, understand, and analyze our world.

Students pursuing this minor gain a better understanding of gender identity creation and reproduction, the channels by which individuals and society communicate values, normative frameworks of gender and gender-specific acts, and theories of power dynamics inherent in gender definitions.

Program Information

Campus
College of Arts & Sciences
Undergraduate
Minor

Program Objectives

  • Critically evaluate the social construction of gender roles within a variety of contexts
  • Explain gender studies concepts, including the roles of theory and praxis
  • Understand the historical and contemporary intersectionality of gender identities with racial, class, religious, and relational identities
  • Analyze the values, traditions, and practices that create and re-create gender identities
  • Identify the political, social, and economic consequences of gender (students will recognize positions of privilege, disenfranchisement/alienation, and the effects of such power dynamics)
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Coursework & Requirements

  • A minor in gender studies requires a minimum of 15 credit hours of interdisciplinary courses. Students cannot take more than 6 credit hours in any one prefix toward completing the gender studies minor. To earn the minor, students must successfully complete the following:

    Foundations course: GS 201 Introduction to Gender Studies

    6 credit hours from the following core courses:

    • IN 212 Global Problems
    • PH 120 Ethics
    • PH 290 Seminar in Philosophy*
    • PY 168 Human Sexuality
    • RE 240 Theories of Religion: Gender, Power, and Race
    • Another gender-focused course (with the approval of gender studies faculty or department chair)

    *Topic must be feminism or a related topic to count toward the gender studies core.

    6 additional credit hours of upper-college courses from the list below and/or other gender-focused courses that are not regularly offered (with the approval of gender studies faculty or department chair):

    • EN 460 Critical Approaches to Literature
    • HI 335 American Gender and Minority Issues
    • HI 348 Social and Cultural Revolutions in the 1960s
    • PH/PS 310 Social Justice: Theory and Practice
    • PH/PS 350 Law and Morality
    • RE 415 Women in the Book of Genesis
    • RE 425 Gender and Sexuality in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible
    • PS 314 Politics of Development
    • SO 328 Sociology of the Family
    • SO 329 Gender and Sexuality
    • Students will need to submit a plan for completion of the minor to the department chair for approval.

Contact Us

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Amy Sneegas

Assistant, Department of Humanities & University Ministry