The certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies represents an area of concentration that supplements the undergraduate departmental major.

• Students interested in pursuing the certificate generally apply to the program in their sophomore year after completing the introductory course, GSS201, which provides a background for advanced study and suggests the rich variety of feminist and LGBT scholarship being conducted today. Interested students need not wait until after completing GSS201 to apply to the certificate program and may take this course at any time during their studies. Students can take GSS 201 as late as their senior year if they have to. 
• Students are encouraged to take at least one course from at least three of the following thematic clusters. At least one of the courses may not be used to satisfy the requirements for the student’s concentration. (You may use all but one of your GSS courses to satisfy the requirements of your concentration; at least one course must be outside your concentration.)
  • Transnational/Global Perspectives
  • Gender, Race, and Ethnicity
  • Bodies, Sexualities
  • Culture and Representation
  • Politics and Social Change
  • Historical Perspectives
• Students must take one additional 300- or 400-level GSS course.
• A total of five courses are required for the certificate.
• A maximum of one of the five required courses may be taken with the pass/drop/fail (PDF) grading option. 
• Certificate students’ independent work must incorporate issues related to Gender and Sexuality Studies.  Students can fulfill this requirement in several ways. For those concentrating in humanities or social science disciplines, the senior thesis and at least one junior paper must incorporate issues related to GSS.  For students concentrating in disciplines in which it is difficult to incorporate GSS-related questions into junior papers and theses (including fields such as science or engineering), students can fulfill this requirement by submitting two revised GSS-related course papers for review by the Director.

Courses offered by GSS are open to all Princeton students. All students seeking this certificate must be currently enrolled at Princeton University as part of a degree-granting department. Students seeking the certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies should email Lauren Romano at [email protected]. Note: students are not required to fill out a formal application for the certificate program; the email to Ms. Romano suffices.

The certificate program is only available for the Class of 2024 and select members of the Class of 2025. 

You must fill out the Undergraduate Self-Reporting form. The form requires you to:

• The courses that count towards your requirements
• Your independent work

Once the form is complete, you must send it to [email protected]. You must also send your independent work abstract and bibliography along with the form.

This will need to be done by Dean's Date.