This program is available at the following location:

• Corvallis

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is the multidisciplinary study of gender and women's lives and experiences. Course work explores women's realities in such areas as the political and social sciences, health, psychology, history, literature, and the arts. Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs grew out of the women's movement, involving understandings of discrimination in society and a need to celebrate different women's strengths, contributions, and forms of resistance.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies can be elected as a primary and/or secondary field for the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies degree (MAIS) and as a graduate minor. Areas of specialization include contemporary women's issues; gender, race and class; and global women's issues. The master's program requires a thesis or research report (nonthesis option) and the completion of a core curriculum. This curriculum includes an understanding of how issues of gender, race, class, and other differences among women affect their status in Western and global perspectives. It also emphasizes the relationship between theory and strategies for social change. An internship or field placement in an agency that is concerned with gender issues or women's role and status in society is required and is designed to help students integrate classroom knowledge with practical experience. The graduate program is beneficial for any work experience in which gender is negotiated or women are affected. Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies graduates are employed in human service agencies and programs, advocacy organizations such as battered women's shelters and women's resource centers and community organizing, teaching, business, administration, and cultural work. Many students have used their degree as a preparatory base for doctoral work.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty are drawn from colleges across the university. Many teach Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program courses in their home departments and are involved in research projects that give them different perspectives on the challenges in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. These courses and faculty are not listed in this entry.

Minor Code: 9008

Upon successful completion of the program, students will meet the following learning outcomes:

MA

• Conduct research or produce some other form of creative work.
• Demonstrate mastery of subject material.
• Conduct scholarly or professional activities in an ethical manner.
• Apply intersectional feminist theories, methodologies, and methods to advance effective and ethical tactics for social change through scholarship, creative work, community, and/or institutional transformations.
• Prepare for careers in social justice and social change agencies, higher education and/or doctoral-level study as demonstrated through professional and scholarly activities. 
• Demonstrate substantive knowledge in an area of multiracial, transnational, and queer feminist studies through an original significant contribution to scholarship.

PhD

• Produce and defend an original significant contribution to knowledge.
• Demonstrate mastery of subject material.
• Conduct scholarly activities in an ethical manner.
• Apply intersectional feminist theories, methodologies, and methods to advance effective and ethical tactics for social change through scholarship, creative work, community activism, and institutional transformations.
• Create, participate in, and maintain local, national, and transnational communities of WGSS scholars, educators, and activists through community-minded practices contextualized within historical and current intersecting movements for social justice, both inside and outside of academic spaces.
• Prepare for social justice-focused careers in social change agencies and higher education through professional and scholarly activities conducted in an ethical manner.
• Demonstrate doctoral-level knowledge in an area of multiracial, transnational, and queer feminist studies through an original significant contribution to, and implications for, the discipline of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Consult advisor for additional requirements.

Minor Code: 9008