Minor in Gender Studies
Overview
The Minor in Gender Studies explores concepts of gender and sexuality, femininity and masculinity, non-binary and trans, as well as queer theory, across cultures and social formations. Students in the minor consider the ways in which gender, ethnicity/race, sexuality, religion, and class intersect and are constructed within popular culture, art, literature, new media, and social, political, and economic frameworks. The minor also examines how legal, political, economic, and cultural systems are shaped by assumptions about gender and sexuality.
The Gender Studies Minor is designed to be both interdisciplinary and flexible, providing a complement to most majors. The minor allows students to pursue their unique interests in the field, while ensuring that they have the necessary foundations to understand how gender influences human options, conditions, and experiences.
- Familiarize students with traditions of gender theory and key concepts for analyzing cultural practices and social performances
- Instruct students to critically examine cultural practices that contest and reconstruct issues of identity
- Provide students with an opportunity to use the liberal arts to engage in interdisciplinary work
Requirements for the minor
Six courses including:
- One core course: SOSC/GDR 200 Introduction to Gender Studies
- Five additional courses with a GDR prefix (see list below) OR ones chosen from among approved courses that significantly engage with case studies or practical application of gender studies theory. Students should consult the relevant advisor in the Department of Communications for assistance in determining what courses qualify for the minor in any given semester.
- At least three of these five courses must be 300-level or higher.
GDR courses:
- AH/GDR 365 Visualizing Gender from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages
- CL 261 Sexuality, Eroticism and Gender in Myth and Literature of Greece and Rome
- CMS 280 Intercultural Communications
- CMS 320 Cultural Resistance
- CMS 345 Ecocinema: Environmentalism and Film
- CMS/GDR 353 Women in Film
- CMS 355 Media and Genre: Queer Cinema
- CMS/GDR 360 Race and Gender in Popular Media
- EN/GDR 240 Women Writers
- EN 282 Italian Visions: Perceptions of Italy in Literature
- EN/GDR 303 Race, Class, and Gender in the Victorian Novel
- EN 320 The Art of the Sonnet
- EN/GDR 333 Gender and Literature
- EN/GDR 350 Jane Austen: In Her World and Ours
- EN/GDR 360 Representations of the Female in Literature: 50 Women
- EC/PL 375 Politics of Gender
- IT/GDR 335 Twentieth Century Italian Women Writers
- PH/CMS 320 Posthuman Studies: Philosophy, Technology, Media
- PL/LAW 325 Human Trafficking
- Psychology of Women and Gender (PS 235)
- PS 331 Socio-Cognitive Perspectives on Objectification and Dehumanization
- PS 357 Human Sexuality
- SOSC/GDR 309 Men and Masculinities
- SOSC/GNDR 200 Introduction to Gender Studies
- SOSC 202 Introduction to Sociology
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS FOR ALL MINORS
- No more than one grade of lower than a C- will be accepted in courses applying to the minor.
- In the case of multiple minors, no course may apply to more than one minor.
- No more than three classes may apply to both the major and minor.
- At least four courses must be taken in residence at John Cabot University.
- Requirements for the minor must be completed by the time of graduation.