Interdisciplinary Gender and Sexualities Studies

The interdisciplinary gender and sexualities studies (INGS) major and minor promote a critical, feminist, intersectional and cultural understanding of gender, sexuality and power in a global context and across disciplinary boundaries. They can help you to better understand the world around you and provide you with the knowledge and skills necessary to be a leader for justice and equity in your career as well as the rest of your life.

Students gain the knowledge and skills for understanding and recognizing: 

  • How gender has shaped the world around us and the ways we make sense of it; 
  • How gender and sexuality intersect with race, class, ethnicity, disability, religion, region and other societal markers; 
  • The diversity of gendered experiences, accomplishments and perspectives within the categories of woman, man, intersex, transgender, nonbinary, Two-Spirit and other categories throughout the gender spectrum; 
  • The various meanings and categories that different societies assign sex and sexuality in different historical eras and how they shape people’s lives; 
  • How sexism and heterosexism have operated in a dynamic with other systems of structural oppression, in both historical and contemporary contexts;
  • How to embrace gender and sexual diversity and work for justice. 

Our Program

If you’re interested in gender and sexualities studies, it’s easy to fit our programs in with other majors and minors because our classes are taught in so many departments!

Begin your gender and sexualities studies major or minor with a multidisciplinary introductory course that prepares you for one of the broadest areas of study at Marquette. Define your own emphases as you design your course of study. Majors take two or more courses from the humanities, two or more from the social sciences and the rest from those fields or anywhere in the university. Then, integrate your academic experiences and test your ideas in the real world — where you’ll make valuable contacts — in our innovative capstone course. 

Some of the classes you'll take:

  • Perspectives on Women in Society
  • Women and Men in Cross-cultural Perspective
  • Introduction to Schooling in a Diverse Society
  • Feminist Philosophy
  • Psychology of Prejudice
  • Mass Media and the American Family
  • Psychology of Gender Roles
  • Race, Gender, Medicine

For a complete listing of required courses for the program in gender and sexualities, please visit the Marquette University Online Bulletin at this link.