Gender and Sexuality Studies

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder is an interdisciplinary program encompassing more than 20 courses in a dozen departments, involving the academic investigation of sexuality in established fields such as literature, history, theatre, law, medicine, economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, and the arts. With its interdisciplinary approach, LGBTQ Studies interweaves complex theories and analysis into the study of sexuality and gender. Through the certificate program and the guidance of faculty advisors, students are given an opportunity to integrate a wide variety of courses offered in the arts, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, to extend and deepen their knowledge and understanding of societies and cultures and to relate that understanding to lived experience.

The LGBTQ Studies program posits sex and sexuality as central analytical categories within many different fields of inquiry. This emerging discipline scrutinizes the cultural production, dissemination, and vicissitudes of sexuality while attempting to decipher the meanings inscribed in the practices and discourses of sex. We may say that LGBTQ Studies does for sex and sexuality what women's studies does for gender. It has grown out of women's and gender studies, cultural studies, and the post-1969 discourse on the politics of sexuality both in the public sphere and the more limited arena of scholarly endeavor.

A minor in LGBTQ Studies will enable you to devote significant study to the experiences of people who do not conform to culturally dominant identities of sexuality and gender: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer. Such an endeavor is profoundly interdisciplinary by nature and draws on university resources and faculty expertise in a wide array of disciplines. In this minor, you will have the opportunity to analyze the experiences of LGBTQ people on their own terms, as well as through critical perspectives on sexuality and gender as complex social, cultural, biological, and historical phenomena. For lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGBTQ) people, the twenty-first century has been marked by especially rapid social and political changes. Diverse issues of LGBTQ law, health, media, psychology, activism, and cultural production have risen to prominence nationally and globally, making the lives of LGBTQ people increasingly central to all social analysis. The City University of New York is committed to engaging these historic changes by offering students the opportunity to develop careers in this dynamic and emerging field of inquiry.