Learning Goals

1. The relationships among sex, gender, and sexuality:  an understanding of normative and non-normative alignments of sex, gender, and sexuality, or their mobility in relation to one another, as well as the psychic component of sexuality.
2. Intersectionality, or how gender, sexuality, race, class, and nation are mutually constitutive categories of identity.
3. Power:  an understanding of the different levels at which power operates in modern societies, in particular the institutional and the discursive (i.e., the discourses that regulate the production of gender and sexual identities).
4. Agency and resistance:  these are integral to the operations of power and counter the stereotype of a monolithic group of oppressed victims.
5. History:  historicizing gender and sexuality prevents false generalizations and underscores the cultural and historical variability of gender and sexual identities.
6. In addition, the Program also expects majors to understand and be able to apply feminist and queer theory, the two dominant approaches to the study of gender and sexuality.
7. Finally, it expects majors to know how to engage critically with complex visual and written texts, as well as to communicate clearly, coherently, and effectively in written and oral expression.