Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies

campus shot of wide walkway and spring buds on trees

Housed in the School of Arts & Sciences, the Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies program (GSWS) facilitates critical campus-wide curricular and co-curricular examinations of gender and sexuality. Our motivating goal is to encourage students, faculty and staff to interrogate interlocking systems of oppression, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ethnocentrism and colonialism, to learn about their impact on campus and around the world and to practice resisting them.

Along with deploying a diverse set of feminist pedagogies, research methodologies and campus conversations, GSWS supports a curriculum that addresses topics such as histories of gender activism, gender, sexuality and their relationships to the law, religion, reproduction and reproductive technologies, marriage and relationships, war and violence, popular culture, literature, labor and the workplace, technology, social media, mental health, globalization and transnational experiences.

For more information, contact GSWS Co-Directors Lindsay Davis and Rebecca Moody.

2024-2025 GSWS Courses

2024-2025 GSWS Courses by Term

Minor in Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies

Find out about the courses required to minor in Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies

GSWS Program Information

Core GSWS courses include:
  • HU 1500: Introduction to Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies (A23 and C24)
  • HU 2501: STEM-inism (C24 and D24)
  • HU 2502: Global Feminisms (B23)
  • HU 2901: Topics in Sexuality and LGBTQ+ Studies (C24)
Inquiry Seminars that count toward a GSWS HUA requirement include:
  • HU 3900: Power of Manifestos (B23)
  • HU 3900: Queer Cinema (C24)
  • HU 3900: Religion, Power, Inequality (C24)
  • HU 3900: Feminist Killjoys (D24)
Additional courses that can count toward GSWS requirements include:
  • EN 1257: Introduction To African American Literature And Culture (B23, D24)
  • HI 1333: Introduction to American Histories of Protest and Power (B23)
  • HI 2318: Topics In Law, Justice And American Society (A23)
  • HI 2900: Topics in Gender and History: Women & Socialism (A23)
  • HI 2900: Topics in Gender and History: Black Women in the U.S. (D24)
  • HI 3312: Topics In American Social History: Mental Health (D24)
  • INTL 2910: Topics In Global Studies: Gender and Sexuality in Asian Religions (B23)
  • PSY 1402: Social Psychology (C24)
  • PSY 1412: Mental Health (D24)
  • PSY 2407: Psychology Of Gender (B23)
  • PSY 2408: Health Psychology (D24)
  • PY/RE 2716: Gender, Race, Class (C24)
  • RE 2721: Religion & Culture (A23)
  • SP 3529: Caribbeanness: Voices Of The Spanish Caribbean (D24)
  • TH 3200: Special Topics in Dramatic Literature: Contemporary Plays (B23)
Lindsay Davis
Lindsay Davis
Assistant Professor of Teaching, Humanities & Arts

I am a broadly trained interdisciplinary scholar of 19th and 20th American history and critical feminist studies. Along with Dr. Rebecca Moody, I serve as the co-founder and co-director of the Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies (GSWS) program. My scholarly and pedagogical interests vary widely, ranging from reproductive justice to sexual harassment law to the intersection of feminist theory and STEM. 

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Rebecca Moody
Rebecca Moody
Assistant Professor of Teaching, Humanities & Arts

My research centers around religion in North Africa and the Middle East with a focus on Islam; I approach the study of Islam through its representation in visual culture. My first book project, an outgrowth of my dissertation, focuses on recent fiction film by Moroccan women filmmakers as oblique forms of resistance to dominant narratives about Muslim women. My research tends to be very interdisciplinary: I draw on religion, cultural studies, feminist theory, film theory and affect theory.

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Crystal Brown
Crystal Brown
Assistant Professor, Social Science & Policy Studies

Crystal H. Brown earned her Ph.D. in Political Science with a focus in the subfields of Comparative Politics, International Relations, and U.S. Foreign Policy at the University of Oregon. She also has a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include comparative immigration and integration policies, human rights, refugees, race/ethnicity and politics, and international security studies.

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Francesca Bernardi
Francesca Bernardi
Assistant Professor, Mathematical Sciences

I am an applied mathematician working in the fields of small-scale fluid mechanics and microfluidics. My research includes both mathematical modeling and physical experiments. In particular, I am interested in particle and solute transport in small-scale systems, such as municipal water filtration facilities. I am the PI of the FMNTS Lab - Small-scale Fluid Mechanics and Transport Lab hosted at LEAP.

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Zoe Reidinger
Zoe Reidinger
Associate Teaching Professor, Biomedical Engineering

My areas of interest and enthusiasm lie in biomaterial fabrication and tissue engineering. Bringing this enthusiasm to the classroom is easy with WPI’s focus on undergraduate education and project-based learning. My goal as an instructor is to lead students to higher levels of thinking and understanding by slowly increasing the depth of the course to engage more complex learning behaviors.

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