Overview and Learning Goals

Overview

The interdisciplinary Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program (GSWS) combines a variety of scholarly traditions to develop a culture of critical thinking about the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Drawing primarily on the humanities and the social sciences, courses in GSWS explore the social construction of identity and experience as well as how difference, marginalization, and resistance exist within and across cultures and historical periods. In its curriculum and its faculty research, GSWS explores the multiple directions that feminist and queer scholarship and activism take locally, nationally, and transnationally.

Learning Goals

  • Understand and apply precepts: Students explore the foundations of this field of study (1000-level), develop fluency in the ways in which gender and sexuality shape how individuals experience the world (2000-level), and apply their learning and critical thinking to questions of their choosing (3000- and 4000-level).
  • Develop strengths in college-level intellectual engagement: Students read texts closely, deliberate on their meanings on their own and with others, and write and speak clearly and persuasively about them (all levels).
  • Engage theoretically: Students develop fluency in the theoretical constructs of feminist theory and/or queer theory, and then rigorously evaluate and apply those ways of thinking (2000-level).
  • See the classroom as a space of growth: Students explore the processes as well as the products of their learning, viewing differences among us and among the scholars whose work is considered as opportunities for intellectual and personal engagement and growth.
  • Exercise a gendered imagination: Students develop the competence and confidence to use their learning to further their intellectual lives, exercise leadership, and foster change beyond the Bowdoin classroom.

GSWS majors at Bowdoin become engaged, informed, and resourceful readers and writers, capable of critical thinking and cultural analysis.

Curriculum of the Bowdoin Major in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

The GSWS Program takes a theoretically broad and methodologically varied approach to the study of gender and sexuality and their intersections with race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and religion across historical eras and transnational contexts. Courses at every level of the GSWS curriculum focus on reading, writing, speaking, collaborative learning, and the development of critical thinking skills. From first-year writing seminars and introductory courses (1000-level) to theory courses, intermediate seminars, and electives (2000-level), to advanced seminars, independent studies, and honors projects (3000- 4000-level courses), GSWS students gain competence and confidence in their ability to understand, interrogate, and contribute to this interdisciplinary field of study. In addition to core and elective courses taught by the permanent GSWS faculty, faculty from across the campus contribute classes from a wide range of departments and programs.

Options for Majoring or Minoring in the Program

Students may elect to major in gender, sexuality, and women's studies or to coordinate a major in gender, sexuality, and women's studies with digital and computational studies, education, or environmental studies. Students pursuing a coordinate major may not normally elect a second major.  Non-majors may elect to minor in gender, sexuality, and women's studies.

Program Website


This is an excerpt from the official Bowdoin College Catalogue and Academic Handbook. View the Catalogue