Gender & Sexuality Studies at NMSU is a specialized, interdisciplinary academic unit, including a major, minor, dual degree options, and a NMSU Global Campus BA, alongside a graduate minor. Your choice to pursue study in G&SS is an affirmation of your commitment to critical and creative worldmaking. Here, you will gain a deep understanding of gender and sexuality studies, developing skills and expertise that are highly sought after across different fields. These include academia and education, creative industries, arts and cultural administration, technology and digital spaces, nonprofit and advocacy work, policy development, healthcare and social services, journalism and media, the legal profession, business, and community mobilization, among others.
Upon fulfilling requirements, learners completing a major, minor, NMSU Global Campus BA, or graduate minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies will demonstrate:
- Interdisciplinary Expertise in Gender and Sexuality Studies: Our program stands at the crossroads of traditional disciplines, offering learners critical pedagogies, engaged learning, and the co-creation of knowledge. This expertise includes mastering theoretical frameworks and methodologies across women's studies, gender studies, LGBTQ+ studies, including queer and trans studies, and intersectionality, enabling them to critically engage with and contribute to discussions and practices that shape identities, communities, societies, and transformative change.
- Worldmaking Critical Thinking Practices: Demonstrate the ability to apply a wide range of critical and creative methodologies, including feminist, queer, and transgender theories, to analyze complex problems related to gender, sexuality, race, society, difference, and social change. Whether you're dissecting historical documents or analyzing current events, you'll be equipped to contribute to groundbreaking research.
- Integrated Inquiry, Research, and Creative Methodologies in Gender and Sexuality Studies: Here, research isn't just about writing papers; it's about sparking change. Engage in a variety of transformative approaches—from ethnography and critical analysis to textual analysis and research-creation projects like digital storytelling and comics inquiry. Plus, you'll have opportunities to participate in special initiatives like the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival, Transnational Solidarity Day, and pursue courses in the MACS concentration in G&SS.
- Communication for Social Impact: Gain skills to engage, challenge, and forge new and different pathways. You'll learn how to articulate complex feminist, queer, and transgender theories in a way that resonates, whether you're presenting at an academic conference, leading a community workshop, or advocating for change in diverse social settings, including the workplace.
- Effective Writing Across Media and Formats: Write powerful essays, create digital content and media-based projects that explore the complexities of social identity, power, difference, and social change.
- Media Literacies and Theory: Critically analyze and engage with different kinds of texts, approaches, and media, understanding their impact on societal constructs and lived experience.
- Advocacy and Civic Engagement: Utilize skills in advocacy and community organizing to effect change in policy and social structures at both local and global levels.
- US, Borderlands, and Global Perspectives: Through US, transnational, and transborder perspectives, explore how gender and sexuality intersect with issues like migration, foodways, and environmental justice. Engage in hands-on projects that prepare you to be a changemaker, from documenting oral histories to participating in community art installations. You'll emerge with a nuanced understanding that empowers you to contribute with informed action on transnational issues, borders, and the Borderlands region.
- Transformative Leadership and Professional Development: We offer an education that exceeds traditional academic boundaries, modeling multiple pathways for research, teaching, and community engagement, including digital initiatives. You'll acquire knowledge, approaches, and skills that empower you to be an agent for positive social change, grounded in research-based practices and critical thinking, generated from decades of feminist, queer, and other socially transformative knowledge projects and movements.
