Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

• Undergraduate Director - Carolyn Peterson | peterscl@ucmail.uc.edu

• Graduate Director - Valerie Weinstein | weinstve@ucmail.uc.edu

• Head of Department - Anima Adjepong | adjepoaa@ucmail.uc.edu

• Business Manager - Amanda Hogeland | hogelaar@ucmail.uc.edu

WGSS is the hub of queer and feminist interdisciplinarity at the University of Cincinnati. Our core faculty and impressive roster of affiliates engage an expansive range of scholarship including health, cultural studies, family, legal studies, immigration, global governance, diaspora, postcolonial, and transnational studies, all with sustained attention to how received knowledge and transformative politics around gender and sexuality and their intersections with other aspects of identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, citizen status, religion, age) shape these fields.

A degree in WGSS from UC, whether at the graduate or undergraduate level provides students with a chance to develop deep critical thinking abilities, expansive and creative approaches to research and knowledge creation, management capabilities and diverse writing skills. Importantly, they develop these skills with a transnational feminist perspective, preparing them to be agents of change in a global world.

Our vision is to create an intellectually robust transnational feminist community comprising students, staff, and faculty who are committed to and engaged in the work necessary to dismantle supremacist cultures in our disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields, personal lives, social institutions, and the various spaces which we occupy. 

Our mission is to nurture interdisciplinary transnational queer and feminist scholarship, and liberatory pedagogies, and promote creative political engagement; empower students with the tools to evaluate and transform the conditions under which we live, while preparing them for fulfilling employment after graduation; and facilitate a culture of feminist community, collaboration, pleasure and joy at the University of Cincinnati. 

Undergraduates can pursue a WGSS major (BA) or minor, and a certificate in LGBTQ Studies. Learn more about our undergraduate programs! 

Our most popular graduate program is the Master of Arts. We typically accept between 8 and 10 graduate students each year. Additionally, graduate students can pursue a joint degree (MA/JD) with the law school or explore one of our other double degree programs (MA/PhD). We also offer a graduate certificate program. Learn more about our graduate programs!