Program Requirements and Opportunities

Students may complete a minor or concentration in Gender and Sexuality. Students may submit an application to major in Gender and Sexuality through the independent major program. 

The Program in Gender and Sexuality is an interdisciplinary, Bi-College program that can be integrated with any major or pursued independently. Students graduate from the program with a high level of fluency and rigor in their understanding of the different ways issues of gender and sexuality shape our lives as individuals and as members of larger communities, both local and global.

Students choosing a concentration, minor or independent major in gender and sexuality plan their programs in consultation with the Gender and Sexuality coordinator on their home campus. Members of the Gender and Sexuality steering committee serve as their individual mentors. All students in the program take the core course, "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sex and Gender." Other courses in the program allow them to explore a range of approaches to gender and sexual difference: critical feminist theory; women's studies; transnational and third-world feminisms; the experiences of women of color; gender and science; the construction of masculinity; gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, and transsexual studies; the history and representation of gender and sexuality in a global context.

Concentration and Minor Requirements

Six courses distributed as follows are required for the concentration:

• An introductory course (including equivalent offerings at Swarthmore College or the University of Pennsylvania).
• The junior seminar: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sex and Gender (alternating fall semesters between Bryn Mawr and Haverford).
• Four additional approved courses from at least two different departments, two of which are normally at the 300 level. Units of Independent Study (403) may be used to fulfill this requirement.
• Of the six courses, no fewer than two and no more than three will also form part of the student's major.

Requirements for the minor are identical to those for the concentration, with the stipulation that no courses in gender and sexuality will overlap with courses taken to fulfill requirements in the student's major.

Neither a senior seminar nor a senior thesis is required for the concentration or minor; however, with the permission of the major department, a student may choose to count toward the concentration a senior thesis with significant content in gender and sexuality. Students wishing to construct an independent major in gender and sexuality should make a proposal to the Committee on Independent Majors.

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