Gender Studies Minor

Requirements of the minor:   Completion of 6 courses (20-24 credits) including either GENS 200 (Intro to Gender Studies) or SOAN 205 (Gender and Society), and GENS 390, (Gender Theory).  In the interests of intellectual breadth and interdisciplinarity, no more than 2 courses from any single department may count toward the Gender Studies Minor.  At least one course must be taken in the Arts and Humanities. 

Students declaring a Gender Studies minor should contact Dr. Brenda DeVore Marshall, Professor of Theatre and Communication Arts (Ford Hall T105, x2290) for approval of their course of study and graduation check sheets.

The Gender Studies minor offers sustained academic examination of gender as an analytic category informing and shaping human experience.  Gender Studies establishes the distinction between biology and culture, sexuality and gender, and explores the socially constructed meaning given to differences between males and females, assessing the impact of those meanings upon the organization of our cultural, economic, political, and aesthetic experiences.  The courses encompassed within this minor examine how gendered identity and meaning are produced and reproduced, institutionalized, resisted, changed, and enacted.  They illuminate gender relations and how those relations become codified within the social order through such institutions as the family, the work force, education, and the arts.  Gender Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor drawing upon and synthesizing the contributions made to our understanding of gender and sexuality by history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, biology, economics, communications, the arts and humanities.

The following courses are likely candidates for inclusion in the Gender Studies minor: