Gender Studies at Northwestern is a dynamic, interdisciplinary program that draws upon faculty and courses from more than twenty departments and across several schools - including the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Communication, the Law School, the Medical School, and the School of Music. We are the home of an adjunct major and minor for Northwestern undergraduates, as well as a Certificate in Gender Studies for graduate students. In addition to our many affiliated faculty, Gender Studies includes eleven core faculty members with joint appointments in Gender Studies and their home discipline. Gender Studies faculty teach courses and pursue research in the history and theory of gender, in feminism, and in sexuality studies, including gay, lesbian, and queer studies.
The many approaches, methods, and topics in Gender Studies at Northwestern are united in their focus on gender, sex, and sexuality as key but often under-examined categories in history, scholarly study, and daily life, while also attending to questions of identity and sexual politics in ways that do not take for granted the particular sex/gender categories of the modern Western world.
Recent courses in Gender Studies cover a wide array of topics and disciplinary perspectives: from Gender and Health to Gender and the Law; from sexuality in Renaissance Europe, to Gender and modernism, to "Indian Women in a Global World"; from performance studies, to economics, gay and lesbian history, autobiographical writing, sociology, feminist theory, philosophy, and queer theory - among many others. Gender Studies courses thus offer information and analysis of culture, society, history, and politics, often from a transnational and international perspective. We offer a full range of courses, from freshman seminars to graduate courses. Each year a number of undergraduate majors choose to write honors theses in Gender Studies.
Gender Studies hosts a wide range of lectures and events each year, including a series of Colloquia (organized by the Gender Studies Undergraduate Board), and an Edith Kreeger Wolf Lecture. We are also the home of the Gender Studies Reading Group and the Doctoral Colloquium in Gender Studies, launched in 2005-06.
