Women and Gender Studies

The Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) offers a program leading to the Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Women and Gender Studies.

The Master’s Program in Women and Gender Studies (MWGS) focuses on feminist colonial, postcolonial, indigenous, diasporic, and transnational studies as rubrics for studying gender, sex, and feminism. This perspective explores the temporal and geographic processes through which human lives, sexed relations, gendered subjectivities, and sexualities are situated.

The PhD has four emphases:

• gender, sexuality, and queer studies;
• feminist cultural studies;
• feminist studies of technology, science, environment, and biomedicine;
• transnational political economy and development studies.

The program offerings bring feminist scholarship to the tasks of challenging and investigating colonial, postcolonial, and transnational contexts. Central themes of the program include global capitalism, nation and state formation, empire, citizenship, indigeneity, diaspora, and cultural flows, all of which are examined through the lenses of diverse feminist scholarship.

The program welcomes applications from international students.

See also: Collaborative Specialization in Women and Gender Studies.​ Applicants to the Collaborative Specialization in Women and Gender Studies are now required to submit a tailored Letter of Intent separate from the home graduate/degree program. The application deadline for this program is May 30, 2025.