315 William L. Harkness Hall, 203.432.0845
http://wgss.yale.edu
Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Chair
Rod Ferguson

Director of Graduate Studies
Dara Strolovitch

Faculty
For faculty listings, see Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies under Degree-Granting Departments and Programs in this bulletin.

Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is an interdisciplinary program that critically interrogates gender and sexuality as categories of inequality, difference, subjectivity, and identification. Gender (the social and historical meanings of distinctions across sexes) and sexuality (the domain of sexual practices, identities, discourses, and institutions) are studied as they intersect with class, race, nationality, citizenship, religion, ability, and other axes of power, difference, and zones of experience. The introduction of these perspectives into all fields of knowledge necessitates new research paradigms, organizing concepts and analytics, and critique.

The Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is open to doctoral students currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Yale whose research engages the foregoing questions and approaches.  Interested students are encouraged to (1) email the WGSS director of graduate studies (DGS) to indicate their intention to pursue the certificate and (2) submit the application linked on the website, ideally during their first year in their Ph.D. program. The application may be updated as requirements are completed.

Students who wish to receive the certificate must fulfill the following requirements:

1. complete WGSS 600, Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies;
2. complete two WGSS-titled or substantively themed electives;
3. enroll in and attend WGSS 900, the WGSS Working Group and Colloquium, for two sequential semesters (preferably in the same academic year);
4. present a research paper at a meeting of the WGSS Colloquium or a similar venue; and
5. fulfill a pedagogy requirement. The pedagogy requirement can be fulfilled by teaching or serving as Teaching Fellow for a WGSS-titled course; because opportunities to do so are limited, however, certificate students may also fulfill the pedagogy requirement by designing a syllabus for a WGSS-related course that they hope to teach in the future. Certificate students may also petition to fulfill this requirement if they serve as Teaching Fellow for a non-WGSS course that contains a substantial amount of WGSS-related content. Certificate students electing this last option should submit the syllabus and a brief justification (three to five sentences) that explains how gender and/or sexuality or WGSS-related frameworks were featured in the class and/or how they foregrounded it in their discussions sections.

These requirements should be met in consultation with the DGS. Students who fulfill these expectations will receive a letter from the DGS indicating that they have completed the work for the certificate.

Courses