Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Department Partnership Collaborations: WGS Partnership Initiative

WGS began a new Department Partnership Initiative in the Fall of 2023. This initiative recognizes that many faculty across the university are teaching courses that correlate to or engage with the kinds of issues and questions that arise in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. WGS is now working with faculty in departments as far-ranging as (but not limited to) Anthropology, Biology, Economics, English, Nursing, Music Education, Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work, so to identify courses offered in their major that would also be great candidates as WGS electives. Many but not all of these courses are available to students in other majors. We call our new WGS electives
“double-dipped” courses as in many cases, they will count twice—once towards the student’s primary major, and then, twice, as a WGS elective. We provide two different models of the “double-dipped” course:
1) Intermediate or upper-level courses designed exclusively for students in a particular major (e.g. Biology; Music Education; Nursing) that now also count as WGS electives, given their substantial inclusion of WGS perspectives (such as gender-related content or feminist approaches to material). These courses are listed under their own primary designator, e.g. NUR or BIO.
2) Intermediate or upper-level courses designed to draw together two groups of majors with different disciplinary backgrounds—so that each group of students has different points of expertise in the course. These courses are cross-listed so to be offered in two majors, e.g. ENG371/WGS 371.

To help facilitate our Department Partnerships, WGS has also undergone curricular modifications in both the major and the minor. Requirements for our major and minor now include more options than ever before, so as to enable students to move through our programs with more flexibility and to take courses that feel especially relevant to the work they are doing in other programs of study! As we build our Department Partnerships, we are finding that our double major and minor are growing, now that more students than ever before can fulfill some of their elective credits through their work in their primary major! Students are additionally reporting that coursework in WGS enhances the work they do in their primary majors
and helps them prepare in new ways for their prospective careers. We are excited about these new electives and
we hope you will be too. See below for our faculty and student interviews about these courses and what they offer!