WGSS began by recognizing how sex and gender inform academic disciplines and affect the politics of knowledge production. We make explicit the ways in which gender and sexuality, in connection with other categories such as race, class, ability, and age, construct our understandings of the world.

We analyze the ways public discourse relies on gender and sexuality to conceptualize such issues as war and militarism, policy, the environment, education, healthcare, economics, the media and popular culture. To explore these issues, we emphasize the following: race, transnational feminisms, sexuality and social change. We promote transformative thinking and activism toward ending oppression and working for freedom and justice.

Georgia State University’s Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) has been chartered since 1994 although its history reaches back to the 1970s when a small group of committed feminist faculty members began meeting to address women’s issues. Today, WGSS offers a cutting-edge academic program focusing on:

• Sexualities, Queer, and Trans Studies
• Transnational WGSS
• Social Change and Applied WGSS
• Black Feminist Thought

We offer an undergraduate major and minor, a rigorous Master of Arts degree, and a graduate certificate for students in graduate programs across the university wishing to develop a WGSS specialization. Many students go on to careers in non-profit management, social services, public policy, law, marketing, and the private sector. A small but significant number of our students pursue work in the creative fields as artists, musicians, poets, journalists, or filmmakers. Our students pursue graduate studies in law, public health, social work, or doctoral studies in WGSS or other academic disciplines.

The Institute serves as the tenure home of five core faculty members and draws on the knowledge, expertise, teaching, and service of more than 50 affiliate faculty from across the university. Collectively, our faculty’s research, scholarly, and creative activity spans the globe, including the United States, Africa and the African diaspora, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on issues related to Black Feminist thought, Afro-Latinx studies, globalization, sexualities, spiritualities, politics, violence, and culture, as well as local and transnational articulations of feminism and womanism. Both theoretical engagement and the translation of theory into action are valued in our program and incorporated into our classes. As part of their degree programs, students can complete internships, take practicum courses, participate in service-learning, or engage in other forms of experiential learning.