Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies


Women’s, Gender and Sexuality
An invigorating introductory course and disciplinary distribution requirements give students a sound theoretical orientation to defining and articulating concepts and practices in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Course offerings across the disciplines — psychology, English, Romance languages, political science, philosophy, sociology and anthropology — allow students to draw connections between their major fields of study and the evolving work of scholars of gender and sex. Students are encouraged to think broadly about the role of women, gender and sexuality across many dimensions of human life.
Many of our students come to W&L with an interest in gender justice and LGBTQ+ rights and want to pursue their interests via a combination of courses, co-curricular opportunities and activism on or off campus. Many others become interested in questions about gender and feminism during their time at W&L, either because they get interested in the topic through their academic coursework or because they are seeking to understand gender relations on campus. WGSS sponsors and hosts numerous events every year so students can interact with guest speakers, faculty and each other.
The WGSS capstone requirement allows students to pursue their particular interests with the kind of intensity that turns classroom competence into an abiding passion.
Our faculty encourage students to see their studies as relevant to their everyday lives and important for understanding and responding to social justice issues. Students do just that — in a math student’s investigation into why so few women study math in college, in a fraternity member’s paper analyzing how his fraternity brothers’ drinking habits shape male privilege, or in a missionary’s daughter’s attempt to better understand how a feminist might read the Bible.
Opportunities
- Amnesty International
- Gender Action Group
- Multicultural Student Association
- Project Horizon
- Queer Liberation Alliance
- Student Association for International Learning
- Sexual Health Awareness Group
- SPEAK
- Women in Technology and Science
Outcomes
Our students enter a wide variety of careers. Some pursue a Ph.D. in English, history or gender studies, while others attend medical school, law school or work in public policy, nonprofits or the business world. Alumni say that the WGSS program has helped them better understand and navigate the world around them and engage with it as citizens, activists and professionals.
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Hannah Denham ’20 was co-editor-in-chief of the Ring-tum Phi, the student newspaper. She interned at the Washington Post in summer 2019 and won a Randolph Hearst Foundation Journalism Award for her reporting. She completed a capstone on debates over co-education in W&L student media. She is now a reporter for the Washington Business Journal.
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Chase Isbell ’21 was an LGBTQ+ peer counselor and editor-in-chief for The Vigil, an online student journal that serves as a platform for underrepresented students, and co-editor-in-chief for Ampersand, a student-run literary and arts magazine. Chase was also vice president of the Queer Liberation Alliance, the LGBTQ+ rights organization on campus, and received the prestigious Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award for the Class of 2021.
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Beverley Xia ’22 is co-president of the Gender Action Group. She has worked to raise awareness on campus about the Equal Rights Amendment, and she helped organize events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in America.
News
Read MoreSample Courses
Gender and Politics
This course investigates the gendered terms under which women and men participate in political life. Attention is given to the causes of men's and women's different patterns of participation in politics, to processes that are likely to decrease the inequalities between men's and women's political power, and the processes by which society's gender expectations shape electoral and institutional politics. The different effects of gender on the practice of politics in different nations are compared, with a special emphasis placed on advanced industrial democracies.
Women, Art & Empowerment
This seminar explores female artists from the late 18th century through the present whose depictions of women have directly challenged the value system in art history that has traditionally privileged white heterosexual male artists, audiences, collectors, historians, curators, etc. Lectures, discussions and research projects address multicultural perspectives and provide a sense of feminism's global import in a current and historical context.
Age of the Witch Hunts
This course introduces students to one of the most fascinating and disturbing events in the history of the Western world: the witch hunts in early-modern Europe and North America. Between 1450 and 1750, more than 100,000 individuals, from Russia to Salem, were prosecuted for the crime of witchcraft. Most were women and more than half were executed. In this course, we examine the political, religious, social and legal reasons behind the trials, asking why they occurred in Europe when they did and why they finally ended. We also explore, in brief, global witch hunts that still occur today in places like Africa and India, asking how they resemble yet differ from those of the early-modern world.
Social Inequality & Fair Opportunity
An exploration of the different range of opportunities available to various social groups, including racial, ethnic and sexual minorities, women and the poor. Topics include how to define fair equality of opportunity; the social mechanisms that play a role in expanding and limiting opportunity; legal and group-initiated strategies aimed at effecting fair equality of opportunity and the theoretical foundations of these strategies; as well as an analysis of the concepts of equality, merit and citizenship, and their value to individuals and society.
Philosophy of Sex
This course explores questions related to contemporary conceptions of sexuality and its proper role in our lives. Questions addressed include: What is the purpose of sex? Are sexual practices subject to normative evaluation on grounds of morality, aesthetics and/or capacity to promote a flourishing human life? We consider the relation between sex and both intimacy and pleasure, viewed from the perspective of heterosexual women and men, and gay men and lesbians. What are our sexual practices and attitudes toward sex? What should they be like?
Campus Sex in the Digital Age
This class explores how the cell phone has impacted hooking up and dating at college, with particular attention to Washington and Lee University as a case study. We discuss the development of campus sexual culture in America and the influence of digital technology on student sociality. Students use open-source digital research tools to analyze data they collect on the mobile apps they use to socialize with each other on campus. As a digital humanities project, students work in groups to post their analyses on the class WordPress site.
Meet the Faculty
At W&L, students enjoy small classes and close relationships with professors who educate and nurture.


























