Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

WGSS department image

329 Minné Hall
507.457.5460
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies website
Mary Jo Klinker, Director

Faculty

Mary Jo Klinker, Assistant Professor; BS, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire; PhD, Washington State University; 2013 -

Why Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies?

The minor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies brings three fields of inquiry into conversation in order to engage critical analyses ranging from the personal to the global at the intersections of sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, and ability.

Women’s Studies: foregrounds the lived experience and material conditions of women
Gender Studies: highlights the social construction of masculinities and femininities
Sexuality Studies: focuses on sexual behaviors, expressions, identities, and politics

It is integral to understand women’s studies, gender studies, and sexuality studies as having distinct disciplinary histories and as overlapping and transformational when taught in relation to one another.

The curriculum intentionally draws from these three fields to approach problems of sex, gender, and sexuality from various critical angles.

Learning Outcomes

Intersectional Feminist Inquiry and Histories

Students will:

Analyze gender as it intersects with other relations of power such as race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender expression, class, nationality, religion, geography, ability, and age.
Understand a range of past and present major issues pertaining to gender, such as:
- race and citizenship
- GLBTQ politics
- reproductive and sexual politics
- media representation
- understandings of masculinities and femininities
- racialization of gender and sexuality
- gender and violence
- identity politics
- immigration
- civil rights
- human rights
- sex discrimination
- changing families
- environmental issues labor
- health disparities
- gender and science
- war and peace
Critically examine those things that they have been told are “common sense” and/or “natural.”
Decenter dominant social, political and historical narratives.

Engaging Social Justice

Students will understand how to make social change by:

Understanding their responsibilities and rights as citizens in local and global contexts
Recognizing and accessing community networks when working for social change
Advocating for praxis: bridging theory and action

Analytical Foundations

Students will use written and oral skill to analyze and respond to ways that institutions foster and/or eradicate social inequalities.
Students will use theoretical and scholarly language to critique dominant ideologies.
Students will demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain a scholarly argument based on diverse evidence and methodologies.

Pass/No Credit (P/NC) Courses

Except for independent study, students must take all courses in the minor on a grade-only basis.

General Education Intensive Requirements

Students may use intensive courses to satisfy both General Education Program (GEP) and major requirements. Intensive courses will usually be in the student’s major or minor program. The following are offered as GEP intensive courses in the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program:

Intensives

Writing (△)

Intensive courses that can be used to satisfy major/minor requirements are identified in the lists of required courses and electives.

Programs

Minor

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WOMS) - Minor