The undergraduate minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies is designed to help undergraduate students develop substantive methodological and theoretical expertise in the interdisciplinary field of Gender and Sexuality Studies. This training is intended to supplement their work in their primary department and to support students whose undergraduate work engages in gender and sexuality studies.

Students can begin submitting applications to the GSS minor in the spring of their sophomore year and up through the spring of their junior year.

Application requests will be reviewed by the GSS Undergraduate and Graduate Administrator, who will then advise interested students of the requirements.

There are no prerequisites for this minor.

• Students interested in pursuing the minor generally apply to the program 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. 
  • 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.

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 Shital Asarpota at [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.