Contact: Amanda Konradi, Associate Professor of Sociology
Office: Fernandez Center, Room 250
Telephone: 410‑617‑5401
Website: www.loyola.edu/academics/gender-sexuality-studies
The Gender and Sexuality Studies minor is an interdisciplinary group of courses anchored by a shared commitment to the study of how gender and sexuality shapes our world and our individual experiences. Students take courses in multiple disciplines to build a program of study that fits within their major and complements their interests and strengths.
The Gender and Sexuality Studies minor provides students with skills necessary to understand the relationship between gender and sexuality and their social world. The minor helps students of all genders and sexualities identify connections between their experiences and the experiences of others throughout history, and across racial/ethnic, economic, and cultural contexts. Students who complete the minor graduate with a greater sense of how sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression intersect with their major interests. As such, the minor complements major study in all academic areas (business, education, engineering, humanities, mathematics, natural sciences, and social sciences) and serves students who go on to work with people, ideas, media, policy, and technology. Students can take courses in a wide range of departments to build a minor that fits with their interests and strengths. Course topics include Gender, Culture, and Madness; American Feminist Theologies; Psychology of Gender; Sociology of Race, Class, and Gender; Queer Theatre and Film; Masculinities; Global Histories of Sexuality; Gender and Sexuality in Latin America; Ethics of Race and Gender; Philosophy and Feminism, among others. Many are Diversity-Justice designated courses, and some fulfill the core. Courses are also available through study abroad. Students who maintain a 3.0 GPA while pursuing the minor will be invited to join the Gender and Sexuality Studies Honor Society, Iota Iota Iota, and receive an honors designation upon graduation.
Gender and sexuality studies courses are helpful to careers and graduate work in law, writing and communications, public policy, non-profit organizations, education, government, and service-oriented professions. The minor also complements and deepens the student's academic major by adding a crucial dimension of the human experience, and attention to diversity and social justice.