Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates
The Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies helps students to better understand the relationship between knowledge and power.
Our program emphasizes individual and collective empowerment, helping students recognize the creativity, solidarity, and care that sustain and deepen resilience. Born out of student activism and student demand, the courses within the major draw on histories of anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, queer, and trans work to examine shifting dynamics of privilege, exclusion, and marginalization. By studying gender and sexuality in these ways, students refute simple assertions about identity in favor of richly detailed accounts of the specific conditions through which particular social positions are maintained and transgressed. The program also cultivates action, practice, and reciprocal engagement with the many communities of which we are part.
Contact Us
Matt Von Vogt, Academic Administrative Assistant
4 Andrews Rd
Pettengill Hall
Phone: 207-786-8296
mvonvogt@bates.edu
What You Will Learn
To understand how gender and sexuality shape and are shaped by other aspects of social life
To recognize patterns of historical inequity and pathways to social change
To integrate theoretical concepts, empirical research, and lived experience
To develop capacities for connection and engagement, including reflection on your own distinctive positionality
To hone skills in listening, speaking, and writing, including the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively and ethically
To cultivate action, practice, and reciprocal engagement with the many communities of which we are part
Life After Bates
Our alumni have impacted the world as video game designers and as immigration attorneys, as teachers and as surgeons, as corporate executives and as choreographers, and in innumerable other ways.
94%
of 2020-2024 Bates graduates are employed and/or attending graduate school — settled into their next opportunity within 6 months of graduation.
Selected Places of Employment/Service
- IBM
- UPS Global Business Services
- Ropes & Gray LLP
- Gerson Lehrman Group
- Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP
- Fulbright
- International Republican Institute
- Bloomsbury Publishing plc
- Chelsea Green Publishing
- JSI Research & Training Institute Inc.
Selected Graduate Schools
- Tufts University School of Medicine
- University of Maine
- University of Colorado
- Miami University
- Antioch University
- Boston University
- Columbia University
- University of Pennsylvania
- American University
- George Washington University
Why Study Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates?
As a GSS major at Bates, you’ll be part of a vibrant, close-knit community in which you’ll have the opportunity to follow your own specific academic interests with the support and encouragement of engaged faculty and peers. All majors complete a thesis of their own design, working closely with a faculty advisor and with feedback from the entire faculty program committee. GSS enrolls and graduates a disproportionate number of first-generation and low-income students, and maintaining support for these students is a priority of the department.