Gender and sexuality are urgent contemporary issues that impact the culture, politics, and economics of American and international societies and because these issues affect nearly every professional field and avenue of inquiry, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) is a major fully engaged in the critical issues of our moment.
In GWSS, students explore the nature and implications of gender and sexuality across disciplinary, chronological, and geographical barriers, as well as the impact of gender and sexuality in their own lives and in the world around them.
The GWSS major at Morris comprises dedicated GWSS courses and courses from other Disciplines. For this reason, it is recommended students carefully review the academic requirements listed on the Why Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Information page.
The GWSS major encourages students to view their scholarship through a personal lens. Intellectually and critically derived information is seen from an individual point of view, one that takes into account the life experience and aspirations of the student. This adds relevance to the discoveries, and creates a unique synthesis of the public and the personal, of knowledge and narrative.
At the heart of the GWSS Discipline is the strong interaction between intellectual endeavor, personal growth, and transformation of the world outside the self. The call is not to only acquire knowledge, but to apply it. The world is always the litmus test for intellectual findings. In accord with the activist and pragmatic roots of the field, the deeper understanding acquired of the history, culture, and systems of gender are taken out of the abstract and employed in the service of improving lives and creating greater good in the world.
