Bachelor of Arts in Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies

Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies
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Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies offers you the skills to critically and actively engage with the world. In this interdisciplinary field, you will integrate theory and practice to transform social relations, representations, knowledges, institutions, and policies. It utilizes gender, along with race and class, as a category of analysis, helping you investigate the role that gender and sexuality play in our history, literature, art, politics, education, sports, health and family. The integrated BA degree program is comprised of courses from a broad array of disciplines in five different colleges, and provides a strong foundation in the humanities and social sciences.

Our courses offer deeper insight into issues of oppression and create awareness of sexism, racism, and other biases. Our faculty teach you to expand your way of thinking, broaden your perspective, analyze difficult material, build convincing arguments and understand how gender interactions affect the business environment, as well as the cultural, emotional, familial, institutional and political impact.

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Curriculum & Requirements

Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies Major, Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) is an interdisciplinary field that integrates theory and practice with the aim of transforming social relations, representations, knowledges, institutions, and policies. GWSS works toward these goals by producing and disseminating knowledge through research, teaching, and activism. The interdisciplinary field provides students with the skills to critically and actively engage with the world around them.

Through the GWSS major at EWU, students examine gender and sexuality as they intersect with other socio-political categories and relations of power, such as race, indigeneity, class, nationality, religion, age, and ability.  Issues of justice, social and economic transformation, and agency are central at all levels of the curriculum.  The major is comprised of courses from a broad array of disciplines and interdisciplines and provides a strong foundation in the humanities and social sciences.  

The interdisciplinary major is designed to foster personal and intellectual development, cultivate civic engagement, and provide a sound foundation relevant for employment in a variety of occupations within academia, the private sector, the professions, government, and the nonprofit sector.

Note:

  • students must complete at least 25 credits of this major at Eastern Washington University;
  • two years of a single high school foreign language or one year of a single college-level foreign language is required for this major.

​Note: this 45 credit major requires the completion of a minor (minimum of 15 credits) for a total of 60 credits.

Required Foundation Courses
GWSS/HUMN 101INTRODUCTION TO GENDER, WOMEN'S AND SEXUALITY STUDIES5
GWSS 150GENDER, SEXUALITY AND POWER5
Introductory Course–choose one5
INTRODUCTION TO LGBTQ+STUDIES
GENDER, REPRESENTATION AND POPULAR CULTURE
GENDER, HEALTH AND MARGINALIZATION
Intermediate Course–choose one5
TOPICS: ISSUES IN GENDER
BODIES, SOCIALIZATION AND CULTURE
TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS
Required Upper-Division–choose one5
FEMINIST THEORIES
QUEER THEORY
Required Electives15
The elective courses may be GWSS courses cross-listed with at least two other disciplines/programs. Students who want to do an internship or directed study may include 1–4 credits from GWSS 495 or GWSS 499 as elective credits.
Required Senior Capstone
GWSS 490SENIOR CAPSTONE5
Total Credits45

Catalog Listing

Sample Courses

GWSS 250. GENDER, REPRESENTATION AND POPULAR CULTURE. 5 Credits.

Satisfies: a BACR for humanities and arts.
Students will apply a critical lens on the representation of gender in popular cultural mediums including film, TV, music, the Internet, social media, video games, and magazines. Employing intersectional theory, other social categories are considered including but not limited to, sexuality, race, ability, and class.

Catalog Listing

GWSS 326. BODIES, SOCIALIZATION AND CULTURE. 5 Credits.

Cross-listed: CDST 326, DSST 326.
Notes: CDST students only: CDST 300.
Pre-requisites: ENGL 201 or equivalent.
Satisfies: a university graduation requirement–diversity.
This course examines cultural beliefs about gender, sex, sexuality, and the body. Experiences throughout our lifetimes impact ways that we learn to embody gender, express sexuality, and live in our bodies. We use intersectional feminist approaches to consider the variety of lived, embodied experiences and social effects of categorizing bodies.

Catalog Listing

GWSS 415. FEMINIST THEORIES. 5 Credits.

Cross-listed: HUMN 415, PHIL 415.
Pre-requisites: GWSS 101 or upper level GWSS or PHIL course.
Feminist theories developed to explain women’s subordinate position in society and current trends in feminist thought. Includes psychoanalytic feminism, feminist literary criticism and cross-cultural views of feminism.

Catalog Listing

GWSS 420. QUEER THEORY. 5 Credits.

Cross-listed: PHIL 420.
Pre-requisites: any upper division GWSS or PHIL course.
This course examines the emerging field of queer theory. Queer theory questions the stability of various identity categories, suggesting instead that all performances of sex, gender, and sexuality are influenced by cultural, historical and political factors.

Catalog Listing