About
Appalachian State University’s Graduate Certificate (12 hours) and Graduate Minor (9 hours) in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies are designed for students who seek training at the graduate level in gender, women’s, and/or sexuality studies and formal recognition for completing this training successfully. Both programs of study take an interdisciplinary approach to questions of power, knowledge and social justice. They are generally pursued in addition to a master’s degree in another area to provide evidence of additional specialization.
Whether a student chooses a career in education, policy, health care, counseling, social work, government, law, journalism, human resources or advocacy, the graduate certificate or minor offers a space for critical reflection on how feminist theorizing might transform scholarship.
Both the graduate certificate and minor enhance a student’s main graduate program of study and provides a competitive edge for those wanting to continue graduate work in the gender, women, and sexuality field at the PhD level or pursue a career that addresses issues pertaining to women, gender diversity, sexuality or social justice more broadly. The 9-hour minor is ideal for students whose main graduate program of study offers fewer elective hours.
More Information
Program Website
Courses
Graduate Bulletin and Course Catalog
Application Essentials
Required Entrance Exam: None
Required number of references to specify in the online form: None
Supplemental Information: Resume (Required upload for application submission); letter explaining your education background and academic and career interests and plans, with an emphasis on how GWS coursework will enhance, complement or advance your current education and/or career plans (upload on the Additional Information page in the online application).
Application Deadlines
- Spring: 11/1
- Summer Session 1: x
- Summer Session 2: x
- Fall: 7/1
Why Appalachian?
- You will participate in a critical, engaged interdisciplinary learning environment and study cutting-edge work in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWS).
- The program offers a foundation of 6 core hours of GWS courses and 6 hours of graduate courses in other disciplines. This enables a student to work with the GWS program director and the graduate director in their home department to tailor their specialization in GWS in accordance with their chosen M.A. program and their professional goals.
- You will be able to choose graduate courses (including a GWS graduate feminist theory course and a GWS graduate seminar) that provide a foundation of knowledge about feminist theory, gender, and sexuality in national and transnational contexts, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to questions about power and inequality and gender, race, sexuality, and other categories of identity.
- You will have an opportunity to consider how the interdisciplinary field of GWS has transformed scholarship in traditional fields.
- You will have an opportunity to apply concepts and theories in GWS to social justice issues.
Location
On campus
Careers
Graduates apply the GWS credentials to a number of fields, including:
- Education
- Policy
- Health Care
- Counseling
- Social Work
- Government
- Law
- Journalism
- Human Resources
- Advocacy
- Social Justice Work
Graduates also are accepted into Ph.D. programs.
Contacts
Dr. Dylan McCarthy Blackston
Program Director
blackstondm@appstate.edu