Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Rainbow flag at parade.
 

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies Program

Contact

WGSS Program Director

Overview

The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program offers an interdisciplinary and multicultural series of courses that explore and question the intersections of gender, sexuality, culture, ethnicity, social class and race. Courses are taught by faculty members from various departments and fields of study and provide a critical framework to explore the significance of gender (along with race, sexuality, and class) in the shaping of women’s and men’s lives. The program focuses on the recovery of women’s contributions in a variety of fields, on women’s and men’s roles in society across cultures, and especially on critical questions about gender neutrality in the shaping of culture.

The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program complements any course of studies and prepares you well for any career in the arts, sciences and technology, health professions, business, law, social and community service, and education.

Careers

For what jobs, careers, and professions is an education in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies highly beneficial? For what is it an excellent complement? Find out here.

24

Faculty members from across RIT contribute to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

30

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses offered

5

2 Minors and 3 Immersions offered:

Gender, Art, and Media
Queer and Transgender Studies
Women’s and Gender Studies

Fall 2021 Speaker Series

Series Overview

The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program is pleased to announce its Fall 2021 Speaker Series.

A poster showing the speaker lineup for the Fall 2021 Conversations Series. The names, dates, and times will follow.

September 30, 2:30p.m. - 3:45p.m.
Gwynn Thomas, Chair, Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, University at Buffalo

October 14, 2:30p.m. - 3:45p.m.
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Chair, Comparative Women’s Studies, Spelman College
 
October 27, 2:30p.m. - 3:45p.m.
Shannon Winnubst, Chair, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University
 
November 15, 2:30p.m. - 3:45p.m.
Alicia Decker, Head, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University

View Past Speakers

Latest News

  • June 16, 2021

    portrait of new liberal arts dean Anna Westerstahl Stenport.

    RIT names Anna Westerstahl Stenport new dean of College of Liberal Arts

    Stenport is currently a professor of global studies and chair of the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. She was selected as the RIT dean following a nationwide search and will begin her new leadership role Sept. 1.

  • April 7, 2021

    Alumna Celeste Brown

    Difference Makers at RIT: Alumna Celeste Brown

    The Division of Diversity & Inclusion is highlighting women whose work makes a positive contribution to the RIT community, including Sociology and Anthropology alumna Celeste Brown, who works as the Head Coach for Women's Ice Hockey.

More School News  

Faculty / Staff

Silvia Benso headshot
Silvia Benso
Professor
Department of Philosophy
College of Liberal Arts
Director, Women's and Gender Studies Program
sxbgsl@rit.edu
585-475-4116

Past Directors

Silvia Benso headshot
Silvia Benso
Professor
Department of Philosophy
College of Liberal Arts
Director, Women's and Gender Studies Program
sxbgsl@rit.edu
585-475-4116
Elena Sommers headshot
Elena Sommers
Principal Lecturer
Department of English
College of Liberal Arts
Provost's Faculty Associate for Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
ersgla@rit.edu
585-475-4417
Lisa Hermsen headshot
Lisa Hermsen
Caroline Werner Gannett Prof Humanities
Dean’s Office
College of Liberal Arts
Department of English
Professor
lmhgsl@rit.edu
585-475-4553
Uli Linke headshot
Uli Linke
Department Chair
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts
uhlgss@rit.edu
585-475-4389

Minors and Immersions

In the gender, art, and media immersion students explore how gender issues and identities, in their intersections with culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, age, and (dis)abilities, are represented and portrayed in various artistic, literary, and media forms. By engaging with cultural texts and productions from both historical and contemporary perspectives, the immersion introduces students to critical analysis and knowledge-building methods drawn from fields such as women's and gender studies, feminist theories, critical race studies, queer studies, social justice work, and activism. The immersion teaches students to analyze gendered images as they appear in arts and media, recognize power inequalities and stereotypes in gender representations, and acquire the conceptual skills to critique and improve current conditions of artistic, literary, and media production and consumption in view of increased gender equity and fairness. The immersion complements any course of studies in a number of art and media-related fields such as art and literary criticism, art curation and exhibition, journalism and photojournalism, media studies, filmmaking, literature, photography, advertising and marketing, public relations, social services, and more.

Learn More about Gender, Art, and Media Immersion 

In the gender, art, and media minor students explore how gender issues and identities, in their intersections with culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, age, and (dis)abilities, are represented and portrayed in various artistic, literary, and media forms. By engaging with cultural texts and productions from both historical and contemporary perspectives, the minor introduces students to critical analysis and knowledge-building methods drawn from fields such as women's and gender studies, feminist theories, critical race studies, queer studies, social justice work, and activism. The minor teaches students to analyze gendered images as they appear in arts and media, recognize power inequalities and stereotypes in gender representations, and acquire the conceptual skills to critique and improve current conditions of artistic, literary, and media production and consumption in view of increased gender equity and fairness. The minor complements any course of studies in a number of art and media-related fields such as art and literary criticism, art curation and exhibition, journalism and photojournalism, media studies, filmmaking, literature, photography, advertising and marketing, public relations, social services, and more.

Learn More about Gender, Art, and Media Minor 

The queer and transgender studies immersion is an interdisciplinary set of courses whose primary concern is the critical study of cultures, creative expressions, histories, economic structures, and socio-political and legal institutions as they impact the formation of queer and transgender identities and the lives and experiences of people in the LGBTQ+ community.

Learn More about Queer and Transgender Studies Immersion 

The women’s and gender studies immersion allows students to explore the significance of gender as it intersects with racial, ethnic, religious, national, class, sexuality, and dis/ability-based identities, past and present. The immersion introduces critical analysis and knowledge-building methods drawn from fields such as women's and gender studies, feminist theories, critical race studies, queer studies, social justice work, and activism. Courses build knowledge about the personal, social, cultural, economic, and historical dynamics that inform gender and intersecting social categories. It provides valuable skills and experiences applying these different lenses to real-world interactions with diverse individuals and communities, to current social challenges that impact multiple parties, and with an eye to improving equity and fair outcomes for everyone concerned.

Learn More about Women’s and Gender Studies Immersion 

The women’s and gender studies minor provides a critical framework to explore the significance of gender—as it intersects with racial, ethnic, religious, national, class, sexuality, and disability-based identities, past and present. Course builds knowledge about the personal, social, cultural, economic, and historical dynamics that inform gender and intersecting social categories. The minor builds fluency with critical analysis and knowledge-building methods drawn from women's and gender studies, feminist theories, critical race studies, queer studies, social justice work, and activism. The minor also provides valuable skills and experience applying these different lenses to real-world interactions with diverse individuals and communities to current social challenges that impact multiple parties, and with an eye to improving equity and fair outcomes for everyone concerned. Students will learn how to analyze and question power relations in all their rich complexities, locally, and globally.

Learn More about Women’s and Gender Studies Minor 

Courses

WGST-200
Foundations Of Women And Gender Studies
Credits 3
Women’s and Gender Studies is the academic manifestation of feminism. This interdisciplinary course interrogates the social constructions, political systems, and historical rhetorics that have produced and maintain hegemonic power structures. In this course you will examine key feminist, queer, and critical race writings and discourses, study the rise of feminist thought, and consider the history of women’s activism and the women’s rights movements from Suffrage to the present day. The course will also consider the application of feminist theory made visible through the rise of new and intersectional social identity movements.
WGST-205
Feminist Practices of Inquiry
Credits 3
This course aims at introducing students to the diverse ways in which feminist and gender studies practitioners (scholars, writers, artists, and activists) have critically analyzed, challenged, and creatively reinvented predominant methods, models, and practices of knowledge production in various areas of the natural and social sciences, the medical arts, the humanities, and the visual and performing arts. Questions to be considered include: What constitutes feminist practices of inquiry? How do feminist research practices approach issues of objectivity and subjectivity? How does one formulate a feminist question? What key questions guide feminist researchers and how can we apply those questions to a variety of research topics? How do feminist practices of inquiry intersect with race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexualities, identity-formation processes, (dis)abilities, age? How do feminist research practices produce transformations, emancipation, and increased fairness of representation?
WGST-210
Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies
Credits 3
This introductory course examines a broad range of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues within the historical, psychological, racial, theological, cultural, and legal contexts in which we live. Students will learn the historical and theoretical foundations of LGBTQ+ studies as well as the contemporary implications for family, work, religion, and law for LGBTQ+ people and the mainstream society. Students will have the opportunity to compare the regulation of sexual orientation across different gender, racial, and socioeconomic communities.
WGST-361
Queering Gender
Credits 3
This course begins with the concept that sexuality, gender and gender identity is neither fixed nor innate. Many people who adopt a definition or expression of gender different from society often identify themselves as queer. The study of this movement is referred to as queer theory. This course examines the concepts of sex, gender, and gender expression of straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic classes within the context of the larger society in which we live. Students will explore the unique political, legal, and interpersonal challenges faced by those embracing queer identity as well as the diversity of gender identities and expressions.
WGST-449
Topics in Women’s and Gender Studies
Credits 3
This variable topic course examines one or more themes, figures, movements, critical questions or issues in the areas of women's and gender studies. The topic for the course is chosen by the instructor, announced in the course subtitle, and developed in the syllabus. Topics in WGST can be taken multiple times provided the topic(s) being studied has changed.
WGST-459
Topics in LGBTQ+ Studies
Credits 3
This variable topic course examines one or more themes, figures, movements, critical questions or issues in the areas of LGBTQ+ studies. The topic for the course is chosen by the instructor, announced in the course subtitle, and developed in the syllabus. Topics in LGBTQ+ Studies can be taken multiple times provided the topic being studied has changed.
WGST-206
Queer Looks
Credits 3
In this course we examine representations of queer sexuality in art, film and popular culture beginning in the repressive 1950s, followed by the Stonewall Riots of 1969. We situate the birth of gay liberation in the U.S. in the context of the civil rights struggles, feminism and the anti-war movement. We turn to the work of Andy Warhol that looms over the post-war period, challenged subsequently by the onset of AIDS and the work of General Idea and Act-Up, on the one hand, and the more graphically provocative work of Robert Mapplethorpe, on the other. We examine the diversification of the queer community as transgendered identity asserts itself and the opening of popular culture to issues of diverse sexual identities. We explore expressions of queer sensibility outside of North America and Europe. We turn finally to the issue of gay marriage, both in the U.S. and abroad.
WGST-235
Women, Work, and Culture
Credits 3
In this course, we analyze historical and contemporary patterns of gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and the organization of work. Using the theoretical perspectives we analyze the work historically undertaken by women in societies and its relationship to broader political and economic structures. While our primary focus is on the U.S., we will also conduct a cross-cultural analysis of gender and work in developing and industrializing societies. Specific issues include gender discrimination (e.g., wage discrimination, sexual harassment), sexuality, reproduction, and women organizing to control their work and working conditions.
WGST-237
Psychology of Women
Credits 3
The purpose of this course is to examine the psychology and lives of girls and women. In addition to the influence of culture, biological and genetic differences will be highlighted for each of the different topics. The topics covered include gender stereotypes, the development of gender roles, gender comparisons, love relationships, sexuality, motherhood and violence against women.
WGST-240
Human Sexuality
Credits 3
This course provides an overview of human sexuality through the lenses of biology and psychology. What causes sexual behavior and why do some individuals display different sexual behaviors than others? Human sexual physiology, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are highly diverse. Coursework will examine the ways in which human sexuality varies among individuals, across groups, and throughout the lifespan. Multiple explanations for sexual behavior will be considered, drawing from evolutionary psychology, learning theory, social psychology, and biology. Atypical and harmful sexual behaviors will be addressed as well. Throughout the course, students will learn how social science research techniques have been used to expand the field of human sexuality and how empirical inquiry can differentiate myths from facts.
WGST-245
Prostitution and Vice
Credits 3
This course will examine prostitution and vice in the United States and globally. Through empirical scholarship, various issues will be examined including issues faced by sex workers including crime, victimization, health and safety, and law and policy issues. Quality of life issues for communities will also be examined.
WGST-246
History of Women in Science and Engineering
Credits 3
Using biographical and social-historical approaches, this course examines the history of women's involvement in science and engineering since the birth of modern science in the seventeenth century; the historical roots of gender bias in the Western scientific enterprise; and the influx of women into science and engineering since the mid-to-late 20th century. Cross-listed with women's and gender studies.
WGST-250
Domestic Violence
Credits 3
This course focuses on domestic violence in the United States and globally. Various types of domestic violence will be examined, including intimate partner violence, child abuse, and elder abuse. The course will also examine criminal justice responses to domestic violence, including police, court processing of domestic violence cases and punishment of domestic violence offenders.
WGST-255
Seminar on Sexual Violence
Credits 3
This course focuses on sexual violence in the United States and globally. Various types of sexual violence will be examined, including incest, elder abuse, and male victimization. The course will also examine criminal justice responses to sexual violence, including police, court processing of sexual violence cases and punishment and treatment of sexual offenders.
WGST-265
Women and Crime
Credits 3
This course deals with women as criminal offenders and as victims of crime, focusing upon theories about women in crime, types of crimes committed, patterns of criminality and the treatment of women offenders. Also examines the role of women as law enforcement officers, judges, lawyers and correctional officers in the criminal justice system.
WGST-282
Women, Gender, and Computing
Credits 3
Popular attention often focuses on a few prominent women in computing history, such as Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and the ENIAC programmers. But many more women were part of this history: as inventors, programmers, operators, and users of information and communication technologies. Investigating their legacies, we will discuss in this course how computing turned into an increasingly masculine field, what it meant for women and men to work in a male-dominated field, how the gendering of computing technologies and algorithms affected the identities and lives of their users, and how gender intersected online and offline with other dimensions of diversity, such as class, race, and ability. This course provides the theoretical concepts and historical overview that allow for a historically informed discussion of women, gender, sexuality, and computing today.
WGST-290
American Women's and Gender History
Credits 3
This course surveys women’s history in the United States from the colonial period to present. The course moves chronologically and thematically, focusing on the diversity of women’s experiences across race, class, and geography as well as the construction of dominant gender norms. Topics include Native American, African American, and Euro-American women in colonial America; the Industrial Revolution and the ideology of domesticity, Women in the American West; women’s paid and unpaid work; sexuality and reproduction; women’s activism; and women’s experiences of immigration and family life.
WGST-291
The History of Families and Children in the U.S.
Credits 3
The family is at the center of contemporary political debates involving social policies, gender roles, citizenship, marriage, and the role of the state. Politicians and commentators frequently invoke a mythical American family, one that is conflict-free, independent, and unchanging. These idealized depictions mask a far more complicated and richer historical reality of the development of family structures in the U.S. This course will examine both the diverse experiences of actual families in the American past, including queer families, and changing ideologies about the family and childhood. Students will have the opportunity to write a history of their own family, or to complete an alternative research paper.
WGST-309
Feminist Theory
Credits 3
This course examines the main currents in contemporary feminist thought. Feminist theory explores the nature and effects of categories of sex and gender upon our ways of living, thinking and doing, while also challenging how gendered assumptions might shape our conceptions of identity and inquiry more generally. Different conceptions of sex and gender will be discussed, and the course will investigate how these concepts affect our lives in both concrete and symbolic ways. Special attention will be paid to how gendered assumptions color our understanding of knowledge production, experiences of embodiment and emotion, public and private activities, and the nature of ethical decision making.
WGST-318
Philosophies of Love,Sex, and Gender
Credits 3
Love is indeed one of the most central concerns in everyone’s life; yet, we spend very little time thinking conceptually about love in its various forms, aspects, implications, nuances, benefits, detriments, and harms. In this course, we will examine views from classical, medieval, modern, and contemporary thinkers on various kinds of love, including some controversial versions of it; we will consider the relation of love in its various forms to desire, emotions, physical intimacy, seduction, sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, and the construction of personal identity; and we will analyze how the various forms of love affect and are affected by gender norms, roles, and images.
WGST-330
Performing Identity in Popular Media
Credits 3
This class is a critical, theoretical, and practical examination of the constitution and performance of personal identity within popular media as it relates to identity politics in everyday life. Through lectures, readings, film, and critical writing, students will examine elements of personal identity and diversity in popular media in order to foster a deeper understanding of how identity is constructed and performed in society.
WGST-335
Women and the Deaf Community
Credits 3
Deaf history, as a field, has often neglected the story of deaf women. Scholar Arlene B. Kelly has recently asked, Where is deaf herstory? This course seeks to correct that gender imbalance in deaf history. We will study deaf women's history. This will include a consideration of deaf-blind women, as well, as women like Helen Keller were often the most famous deaf women of their era. But this course also seeks to look at the role of hearing women in deaf history. Hearing women dominated the field of deaf education in the late nineteenth century. They had a tremendous impact on the lives of deaf children and the events of deaf educational history. Hearing women were also important figures in deaf history as mothers. As mothers of deaf children, hearing women were frequently asked to behave as teachers in the home. Their embrace of this role often led them to endorse oral education, and oppose the sign language. Hearing mothers in this way were pitted against their adult deaf daughters, who frequently went on to learn sign language against their mothers' wishes. The historically complex relationship between women and the deaf community will be explored in this course.
WGST-342
Gender, Science, and Technology
Credits 3
This course explores the importance of gender within Western science and technology. It considers how masculine and feminine identities are socially and culturally shaped, how sex and gender are being significantly transformed, and how rethinking gendered practices may help make science and technology fairer and more responsive. Cross-listed with women's and gender studies.
WGST-351
Gender and Sexuality in Hispanic Studies
Credits 3
This course introduces students to the study of gender and sexuality in cultural production from the Hispanic world. Students will read, view, and discuss diverse works from a variety of historical periods and geographical regions that deal with gender identity, sexuality, and interrelated social movements. This course refines students' skills through discussions, presentations, and writing exercises on readings, lectures, and film screenings. Students will also develop research skills as they complete a project on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor. The critical approach that will inform this course is feminist thought.
WGST-357
Communication, Gender, and Media
Credits 3
This course examines the relationship between gender and media communication with specific attention to how gender affects choices in mass media and social media practices. Students explore how gender, sexual orientation, sexuality and social roles, affect media coverage, portrayals, production and reception. They consider issues of authorship, spectatorship (audience), and the ways in which various media content (film, television, print journalism, advertising, social media) enables, facilitates, and challenges these social constructions in society. The course covers communication theories and scholarship as it applies to gender and media, methods of media analysis, and topics of current interest.
WGST-375
Women/Gender/Art
Credits 3
This course examines the role of women in the visual arts as both images makers and subject matter in order to see how gender plays a role in the conceptualization of creativity and art. Among the topics to be discussed are: the construction of femininity and gender in the patriarchy; art as an ideological practice; women, art, and society; art history, art education, and art evaluation; women artists and their contemporaries.
WGST-383
Traumatic Images
Credits 3
This course investigates visual culture and its imagistic response to life's crises. Problems of identity and identification will be explored and confronted through works of photography, painting, mixed media, new media and film of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Beginning with the late 19th Century vogue for images of hysterical women, crippled black-sheep family members and dead loved ones (as corpses and as ghosts), we then move on to consider the last century's fascination with pain and suffering, disease and violence, struggle and survival and then the 21st century's emphasis on terrorism. Specifically, we will focus on the gendering of images and imaging as disturbing pictures work to defy the formal and theoretical distinction between private and public, personal, and collective experience and manage the often conflicting responsibilities to self, family, religion, race, nation, and society.
WGST-384
Art of Dying
Credits 3
This course explores the experience of dying a profoundly human and universal experience as it is represented by artists who are themselves facing immanent death. The unique and deeply personal process of each dying artist is crucially informed by social, cultural and historical as well as artistic contexts. The course will focus primarily on visual artists and writers living with and dying of disease - such as AIDS, cancer and cystic fibrosis as well as mortality and age. Topics such as aesthetics, artistic media, representation, grief, bereavement, illness, care-giving, aging, and the dying process will be considered within the context of issues of race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and community values. Some of the artists covered will be Jo Spence, Hannah Wilke, Elias Canetti, Bob Flanagan, Herve Guibert, Tom Joslin, Laurie Lynd, Audre Lorde, Charlotte Salomon, Keith Haring, Frida Kahlo, Bas Jan Ader, Ted Rosenthal, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Keith Haring, Eric Steel, Derek Jarman, Eric Michaels, and David Wojnarowicz. We will also explore some of the critical theory of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, and Ross Chambers.
WGST-388
Gender and Contemporary Art
Credits 3
This course traces the historical development of women’s activism in the art world from the 1970s to the present. We will interpret how this art activism, which artists and scholars alike have referred to as the feminist art movement, has examined how gender informs the ways art is made, viewed, conceptualized in history and theory, and exhibited in museums and visual culture, in a range of cultural contexts. We will also analyze how current artists, critics, and curators continue to build on this history, in particular how they use the concept of gender intersectionality to develop a variety of new creative practices, theories, modes of exhibition and social engagement.
WGST-414
Women and Gender in Literature and Media
Credits 3
This variable topic course examines one or more themes, figures, movements, or issues associated with the representation of women and gender in literature and media, and/or associated with the historical, cultural, and theoretical questions provoked by women as producers and consumers of media and texts. The topic for the course is chosen by the instructor, announced in the course subtitle, and developed in the syllabus. The course can be taken multiple times provided that the topic being studied has changed.
WGST-451
Economics of Women and the Family
Credits 3
Women make choices concerning marriage, fertility and labor market participation on the basis of many factors, including government policies targeting those decisions. This course uses economic theory and empirical research in order to describe the changing demographic profile of families, poverty, and the labor force and to explore how economic theory and practice fit into the larger social science goals of describing human behavior by focusing on women and on the family.
WGST-481
Women in Politics
Credits 3
A study of feminist thought as it applies to the political, economic and social status of women and how it has been expressed through the women's political movement. Students study a number of public policies as they apply to and affect women and examine the opportunities for women to participate in the political process.
ANTH-325
Bodies and Culture
Credits 3
Our bodies are more than mere physical entities; they are conditioned by culture, society, and history. We will take a comparative approach to the cultural construction of bodies and the impact of ethnic, gender, and racial ideologies on body practices (i.e. surgical alteration, mutilation, beautification, surrogacy, erotica). We will critically investigate the global formation of normative discourses of the body (regarding sexuality, AIDS/illness, reproduction, fat/food) in medical science, consumer culture, and the mass media. The course features discussion, writing, and project-oriented research, encouraging students to acquire a range of analytic skills through a combination of text interpretation and research.
ANTH-425
Global Sexualities
Credits 3
By exploring issues of gender and sexuality in a global context, students will be introduced to anthropological perspectives on the experience of men and women, as gendered subjects, in different societies and historical contexts, including colonialism, nationalism, and global capitalism. In turn, we will explore how cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity are configured by race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Course materials are drawn from an array of sources, reflecting various theoretical perspectives and ethnographic views from different parts of the world.
ARTH-577
Displaying Gender
Credits 3
This course brings together two of the most significant strains of recent art historical scholarship: the study of gender in representation and the critical examination of exhibitions and museums with particular focus given to key examples of curatorial practice from the late 19th century to the present day. Through readings, possible museum visit(s), class discussions, and guided individual research, questions of gender in exhibitions will be considered in relation to other aspects of identity including sexuality, race, and class.
GRDE-322
Women Pioneers in Design
Credits 3
This course will center on the contributions made by Modernist women designers. Emphasis will be placed on their unheralded pioneering efforts. Exemplars from the field will be presented, set in a historical context. Lectures are complemented by guest speakers, videos, participatory exercises, discussion, and critical essay writing.
MEDS-355
Introduction to Global Health
Credits 3
This introductory course will evaluate the modern challenges of global health from a multidisciplinary perspective. The key concepts of global health will be discussed, including various health determinants, human rights, healthcare systems, culture’s impact on health, environmental concerns, nutrition, communicable and noncommunicable diseases, women’s health issues, child and adolescent health, injuries, natural disasters and complex humanitarian emergencies, poverty’s impact on health and more. Students will be expected to be active learners, lead classroom activities on certain days as part of group research project presentations, and actively participate in discussions.
SOCI-246
Gender and Health
Credits 3
This course examines connections between gender and health that are both conceptual and empirical. Students will explore the causes of gender-based differences in health outcomes through case studies of sexual and reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS epidemics and violence. Students will also examine global gender and health trends. The course concludes with an examination of gender inequity in health care and policy implications of these inequities.
SOCI-355
CyberActivism: Diversity, Sex, and the Internet
Credits 3
Sociologists look to cyberspace to test theories of technology diffusion and media effects on society. This course explores the Internet’s impact on communities, political participation, cultural democracy, and diversity. How have digital technologies and electronic information flows shaped or diminished inequalities of gender, sex, and race? For instance: new electronic technologies have pushed the cultural and physical boundaries of how we have sex; with whom we have sex; and with what we have sex and/or have observed having sex, such as sex toys and avatars. The sociological implications of this new technology depend on economic, legal, and policy decisions that are shaping the Internet as it becomes institutionalized. The course analyzes such new forms of cyber-democracy with a focus on issues of gender, sex, and race.

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Student Resources

Here you can find resources related to women’s and gender studies such as award opportunities, links to graduate programs, and campus, local, and national organizations.

See Resources for the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program  

Mary C. Sullivan Awards

The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program offers two student writing awards, named in honor of the contributions and continued work of Dr. Mary C. Sullivan, Religious Sisters of Mercy.

Dr. Mary Sullivan and student award winner

  • The Mary C. Sullivan Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Writing Award recognizes an outstanding essay (typically between 5-10 pages in length) that addresses a topic of importance to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Topics might include difference, patriarchy, power, politics of representation, bodies, sexual harassment and sexual violence, global women’s health, feminist history, gender identities, sexuality, transgender concerns, critical race and ethnic studies, intersectionality, activism, resistance, social justice movements, disability studies, environmental justice, equity, pay gaps, women in science, women’s art and literary practices, and other topics central to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies’ myriad investigations into the relations between gender, racial, ethnic, sexual, and other identities, power, and their social, cultural, and political experiences and possibilities in different contexts.
     
  • The Mary C. Sullivan Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Knowledge-Building Award recognizes an outstanding research or community-based knowledge-building project that puts women’s, gender, and sexuality studies methods, knowledges, or lines of critical inquiry into practice (creatively, practically, or analytically) to raise awareness or to work towards increasing equity at RIT or another chosen community.  As part of the submission, students need to provide a written account of their project (approximately 4-5 pages in length) supported with credible sources and using MLA or APA format that explains a) the project’s aims, b) the target audience, c) the methodology used to complete the assignment, and d) a justification for how the project puts women’s, gender, and sexuality studies approaches or concerns to work in a specific context.
  • Open to currently enrolled RIT undergraduate students for work completed in any College of Liberal Arts course or any Women’s and Gender Studies course outside the College of Liberal Arts. The work must have been completed for a course taken in either spring, summer or fall 2020.
  • Administered by the CLA Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.
  • Annual nomination (by faculty) in Spring semester.
  • Winners are presented their awards at the Henry and Mary Kearse Distinguished Lecture and Student Writing Award Ceremony.
  • Cash prizes are awarded for the best work in each category.
  • Deadline for submission: January 27, 2021.
  • Nominated written essays and/or written accounts of knowledge-building projects from the Women’s and Gender Studies or College of Liberal Arts course must be submitted by the instructor with a brief written rationale for the nomination. Please note that knowledge-building projects must be accompanied by a written account (see the Knowledge-Building Award description for details). Each student nomination material should be submitted as one file. 
  • Instructors should email to WGSS Director, Silvia Benso (silvia.benso@rit.edu) and to WGS Co-Director, Chris Henry Hinesley (chhgsm@rit.edu):
    1. the nominated student essay or project with accompanying written account (with writers’ names removed from all pages); 
    2. a cover sheet indicating the title of the essay or project, the student’s full name, the student’s university I.D. #, and the name and semester of the course for which the work was completed.
    3. a brief statement (250 words max.) from the nominating instructor describing why the essay or knowledge-building project was selected for nomination.
  • These materials must be received by 5:00 p.m. on January 27, 2021.
  • Instructors may submit more than one paper and/or project to the competition.

Please specify if the submitted work is being considered for other awards.

2021

Franke Abbey
“What ‘Bloodchild’ Asks of Us” written for ENGL 320 Genre Fiction: Science and Speculative Fiction (taught by Dr. Laura Shackelford).

2020

Lauren Burke
“Maternal Mortality in the United States: A Sociological Perspective” written for SOCI 322 Society, Environment, & Health (taught by Dr. Anthony Jimenez).

2019

Anna Leah Bowman
“Communication Dynamics and Patient Experience” written for UWRT 150 (taught by Luke Daly).

Emily Israel-Paniccia
“Juvenile Sex Offenders” written for WGST/COMM 255 Seminar on Sexual Violence (taught by Stacy DeRooy).

2018

Christine McCullough (Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Major)
“Defining DH: Intersectionality in the Digital Humanities” written for WGST/PHIL 309 Feminist Theory (taught by Evelyn Brister).

Mary C. Sullivan, R.S.M., is a Sister of Mercy living in Rochester, New York. She has taught in elementary and secondary schools and colleges. Dr. Sullivan has been a much-esteemed first female Dean of the RIT College of Liberal Arts from 1977-1987, Chair of the Academic Senate, an English Department Chair, and a committed teacher and scholar of language and literature. She received the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1995-6 and received the RITirees Award in 2005 in honor of her exemplary service over her 33 years at RIT. She is Professor Emerita of Literature and Dean Emerita of the RIT College of Liberal Arts. Dr. Sullivan continues to model this impressive combination of scholarship, teaching, writing, leadership, and community activism, which we hope to recognize and promote through the Mary Sullivan Awards for RIT’s students who continue exceptional work along these lines in their College of Liberal Arts coursework.

Dr. Sullivan is the author and editor of the following books: Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy (University of Notre Dame Press, 1995, 2000); The Friendship of Florence Nightingale and Mary Clare Moore (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841 (The Catholic University of America Press, 2012); and A Shining Lamp: The Oral Instructions of Catherine McAuley (The Catholic University of America Press, 2017).

Make a gift to the Mary C. Sullivan Award fund on the giving page.

Moving Forward: Suffrage Past, Present, and Future

RIT celebrates the 19th Amendment, Equal Rights, and the Power of Voting through a series of initiatives focused on the history of women’s voting activism; the problems and questions that the 1920 expansion of voting rights opened and left unsolved; and the work that remains to be done to continue expanding political representation and participation for all women. 

Learn more 

Indigenous Land Acknowledgement

RIT is built on the traditional territory of the Onöndowa'ga:' or “the people of the Great Hill.” In English, they are known as Seneca people, “the keepers of the western door.” They are one of the six nations that make up the sovereign Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

The WGSS Program honors the land on which RIT was built and recognizes the unique relationship that the Indigenous people have with their land. As, through our Program, we endeavor to achieve dignity, respect, justice, equality, peace, and reconciliation for all, we are mindful of the histories of violence, genocide, colonization, and assimilation of Indigenous people that also took place on this territory and we are grateful for the opportunity to live, work, and share ideas on this land.