As a field of inquiry, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS) asks students to make the personal political; to interrogate how larger structural inequities engender (inter)personal possibilities. Our classes ask students to think with queer, indigenous, black, and dis/abled life-worlds to imagine alternative ways of being. We believe that knowledge of shared exclusions has the potential to prompt new coalitional relationships between Berea’s women, femme, and gender non-conforming students and its students of color, thus advancing the College’s Fifth and Sixth Great Commitments in new, intersectional ways. WGS students are encouraged to build worlds premised on the abolitionist work of John G. Fee and others whose commitments to equity are definitive of Berea College’s promise to “[make] of one blood all peoples of the earth.” The department offers both a major and minor.

WGS students learn to operationalize feminism in personal as well as professional contexts, gaining experience through a monthly Colloquium Series and labor positions available through the department and at the bell hooks center. We also work with the Office of Internships and Career Development to place students in organizations that do social justice work. Students who elect to participate in an internship may use that experience to waive one of their concentration requirements. We likewise work with the Center for International Education to coordinate course substitutions for majors and minors who take classes in the study of women, gender, and/or sexuality abroad.

Students attend graduate school in a variety of humanities and social science disciplines; social, legal, and/or non-profit work; marketing, communications, and journalism; college and university administration; development; public relations and advertising; lobbying and political campaigning; healthcare; and business, to name a few.

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