Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies: Self-Designed Major, Concentration 

Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies is a multidisciplinary program that explores the many facets of gender and sexuality.  We encourage our students to examine and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, explore and honor marginalized experiences and perspectives, and question power at personal, interpersonal, social, structural levels. 

Students in the program pursue critical questions from a range of academic disciplines and learn how activism can promote social change.  We challenge students to consider how complex social identities such as race, social class, age, and ability intersect with gender and sexuality to shape the world in ways that are all at once personal, political, local, and global. Our concentration is an appropriate supplement to any academic major. 

GSWS Statement on The Overturning of Roe v. Wade

June 27, 2022  -  Read the full statement 

Program Highlights

  • 15-20 classes offered per semester and in a range of disciplines 
  • Opportunities to work closely with faculty on groundbreaking research and activist projects  
  • Events on a wide range of topics throughout the year 
  • The capstone experience — an independent project that can take the form of a research paper, an art or performance piece, or an action campaign  
students and a professor in a classroom
Mission

Learn about the guiding intellectual principles and activist practices that inform our work.

Students at a computer
Research

Under the guidance of a faculty member, students conclude the concentration with a capstone experience in their fourth year.

Students in a classroom
Opportunities

From internships to study abroad to the DC and NY Semester programs, opportunities for hands-on learning abound.

Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies News

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Blog: Students Describe Impact of Community-Based Learning
WHO’S BLOGGING The Community-Based Learning interns: Rachel Greenberg ’15, an English major with a women’s and gender studies concentration from Irvine, Calif.; Jake Medina ’16, an economics major from Avon, Conn.; Cindy Nguyen ’15, a philosophy and political science double …
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Blog: Garcia ’15 Spends Semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina
NAME Kelly Garcia ’15 HOMETOWN Chelsea, Mass. AREAS OF STUDY Psychology major with women’s and gender studies concentration WHERE SHE’S STUDYING University of El Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina WHY SHE CHOSE ARGENTINA “It seems like the perfect program for …
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28 Holy Cross Students Inducted into Jesuit Honor Society
Twenty-eighty students from the class of 2014 at the College of the Holy Cross were inducted into Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit honor society, on October 27. Alpha Sigma Nu seeks out students at Jesuit institutions of higher learning who …