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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Holy Cross Junior Earns Prestigious Truman Scholarship
College of the Holy Cross student Victoria Mousley ’17, a psychology major with a self-designed minor in deaf studies and a concentration in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies from Jericho, Vt., was selected as a 2016 Harry S. Truman Scholar. …
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Holy Cross Professors Honored for Exemplary Scholarship and Student Academic Advising
Two faculty members at the College of the Holy Cross—Ann Marie Leshkowich, professor of anthropology, and Andrew Futterman, professor of psychology and former chair of the Health Professions Advising Committee—are the recipients of the College’s Mary Louise Marfuggi Faculty Awards. …
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Six Faculty Members Promoted at Holy Cross
Six members of the College of the Holy Cross faculty have been promoted to the rank of professor. Josep Alba-Salas, of the Spanish department, earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in linguistics from Cornell University, his M.A. in comparative literature from …