Pembroke Center

Undergraduate Concentration

In the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, students have the freedom to design their own pathway through the concentration. GNSS students receive individual guidance and advising from a core group of faculty who work closely with them through every stage of the concentration.

Undergraduate Concentration

In the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, students have the freedom to design their own pathway through the concentration. GNSS students receive individual guidance and advising from a core group of faculty who work closely with them through every stage of the concentration.

Concentration Overview

A student presents their capstone project.Gender and Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary concentration that examines the construction of gender and sexuality in social, cultural, political, economic, and scientific contexts. Each concentrator develops a well-defined topic or question and works closely with an advisor to design a program that rigorously investigates their focus area and supplements it with foundational courses in the relevant disciplines. 

Graduates of GNSS have focused on topics such as intersex healthcare, trans memoir, queer archival practice, incest in the postbellum South, racial disparities in reproductive healthcare, sex positivity in the #MeToo era, comparative models of sex education, garment workers and environmental justice, and LGBTQ+ migration. Introductory and methodology courses in the discipline appropriate to the concentrator's research area provide knowledge of the principles grounding their research methods in order to deploy disciplinary tools or challenge disciplinary boundaries with intentionality.

I enjoy working with Gender and Sexuality Studies students because of how much they care about social justice and how hard they work to bridge feminist theory and practice. GNSS students are willing to ask hard questions about the changing and enduring dynamics of gender, sexuality, and race in everything from human trafficking and reproductive health inequities to social media and popular culture. Their coursework and experiences in GNSS prepare them to pursue careers in the arts, journalism, the legal and medical professions, nonprofit organizations, and the corporate world.

Wendy Allison Lee Director, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, and Associate Director of the Pembroke Center
 
Wendy Allison Lee