The Program

The Five College Queer, Trans, and Sexuality Studies certificate provides undergraduate students an opportunity to pursue a course of study that critically examines the relationship between sexual and gender identities, experiences, cultures and communities in a wide range of historical and political contexts. Working across disciplines, students take courses in a variety of fields. The certificate also leads students to investigate how non-normative and normative genders and sexualities intersect with other social categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, class and nationality.

Requirements

To obtain a Five College certificate in Queer, Trans, and Sexuality Studies, students must successfully complete a total of seven courses, with at least 21 credits. These courses should include:

• One intro/survey/topics/foundational course in queer/trans/sexuality studies
• One intro/survey/topics/foundational course in critical race/transnational studies
• Five courses that demonstrate study in more than one of the following areas: the Fine Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Engineering
• At least one of these five courses is at the 300-level or above

For courses to count toward the certificate, they must have:

• Significant queer/trans/sexuality studies content through reading and/or writing (i.e., a student can do a term paper focused in queer/trans/sexuality studies to enable a course to count that otherwise would not have significant enough content)
• Sexuality studies courses are expected to challenge the assumption that heterosexuality is natural and normal and should not be using “gender” as shorthand for “women” or for “women and men” (i.e., not treating gender as a binary).