Program information

Professors Herzig (Gender and Sexuality Studies, chair), Kane (Sociology), and Rand (Art and Visual Culture and Gender and Sexuality Studies); Associate Professors Beasley (American Studies), González Valencia (Art and Visual Culture), and Houchins (Africana); Assistant Professors Ellasante (Gender and Sexuality Studies) and Lim (Politics); Senior Lecturer Plastas (Gender and Sexuality Studies)


The Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies analyzes local and global entanglements of knowledge, power, pleasure, and resistance. Drawing on histories of antiracist, decolonial, feminist, queer, and trans work, courses examine shifting dynamics of privilege, exclusion, and marginalization. The program also cultivates action, practice, and reciprocal engagement with the many communities of which we are part. To study gender and sexuality in these ways is to refute simple assertions about identity in favor of richly detailed accounts of the specific conditions through which particular social positions are maintained and transgressed. Students may choose to either major or minor in gender and sexuality studies.

More information on the gender and sexuality studies program is available on the website (bates.edu/gender).