Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies program
Undergrad major Undergrad minorUnderstand how social transformation is possible
Do you want to know how to understand problems of social, economic, racial, and gender inequality? Do you want to be part of the solution?
The Race, Gender and Sexuality Studies program is devoted to empowering students to think critically and intersectionally about race, gender, and sexuality, and to challenge inequitable structures. Alongside our students and communities, we advance critical conversations and movement toward social justice through teaching, research, service, and community engagement, including our pre-college Self Sufficiency Program. Through RGSS, students understand themselves, their place in the world, and how social transformation is possible.
What is Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies?
RGSS is an interdisciplinary program that helps students understand the enormous diversity of the U.S. and a globalizing world, and the structures of inequality on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, and social class that shape this world. Students uncover hidden histories that include experiences of discrimination and marginalization, as well as of resilience, resistance, and coalition building. In RGSS, we work with students to develop research and communication skills to help students creatively use the knowledge and practices of our discipline, preparing them for careers, advanced degrees, and engaged citizenship.
I loved that we had opportunities to choose where to invest our time and energy in the program; I had so many opportunities to tailor assignments to my interests, to write papers about topics that were especially compelling to me.
Carrie Bero
Types of careers
RGSS prepares students for any career. Research shows that programs like ours develop future leaders who know how to advocate for others, and for themselves, in any workplace. RGSS students in any workplace know how to look critically at policies and practices, and ask: how could we do this better by being more inclusive? See testimonials from graduates on our homepage to learn how our grads are using their degrees.
Business positions such as:
- Human resources
- Marketing
- Project management
- All health care fields
- Counseling
- Social work
- Non-profit leadership
- Education
- Government work at all levels
- Community development and organizing
- Policy development and law
What distinguishes UWL's Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program?
This program is applicable to diverse fields and is open to students in any major across campus.
Through the implementation of Inclusive Excellence, UWL pledges to continue to commit human and financial resources that support an inclusive campus that attracts and retains diverse students, faculty and staff and promotes a dynamic learning environment vital for academic excellence and global citizenship.
The department encourages an facilitates student internships, including:
- A long-standing “in-house” internship in the Self Sufficiency Program, designed to improve access to higher education for single-parents and other adults
- In-house internships in the RGSS library, programming, or social media/marketing
- Community internships, including, New Horizons, Bluff Country Family Resources, American Association of University Women, Greater La Crosse Area Diversity Council, Planned Parenthood, and the YWCA.
RGSS faculty are committed to expanding the horizons of students beyond the classroom. Examples include:
- An annual Civil Rights Pilgrimage, open to all students, in January term, exposing students to 10 historic Southern cities and more than 15 museums and historic sites over 10 days, anchored by faculty expertise.
- A summer Study Abroad program to Japan.
- Student mentoring: hands-on approach to helping students plan for academics, careers, and involvement, including links to community mentors.
- Numerous connections to community experts in areas such as gendered violence prevention, some of whom offer “peer review” on student projects.
- Campus programs and invited speakers: RGSS faculty work to bring in speakers from beyond the campus and invite campus leaders to speak on topics of race, gender, sexuality, and class.
- Connections to social justice programs and events across campus: RGSS helps connect students to resources to fuel their passions and meet their needs to create a sense of belonging and involvement, through relationships with areas like the Center for Transformative Justice, the Pride Center, and the Office of Multicultural Student Services.
- RGSS Library: Adjacent to the RGSS office, this historic library of feminist, anti-racist, social justice literature provides a study resource as well as educational displays and a student-friendly study and gathering space.
- Student club: Affiliated with RGSS, the College Feminists provide students as well as the La Crosse community with advocacy on women’s and gender issues, often collaborating with other clubs for educational activities as well as fun socializing.
This semester-long program concentrates on critical reading, writing, and thinking to prepare low-income people, often single parents, for successful college work. Classes meet one night per week and child care is provided. SSP also provides internship opportunities for women’s studies students.
Housed in the Department of RGSS, the Hmong and Hmong-American Studies Certificate offers an excellent opportunity for students to learn about this rich culture and history. Through a set of carefully-structured courses, students use a critical lens to explore topics related to Hmong studies.
Sample courses
ERS 409 20th Century Civil Rights Movement This course explores the modern civil rights movement in the US and the struggle for African Americans and other marginalized groups to gain equal rights in voting, education, employment, housing, and other facets of life in the US. It begins with the MOWM and examines the seemingly completing philosophies of civil rights organizations such as CORE, SNCC, SCLC, BPP, AIM, SDS and other civil rights leaders, and local people in shaping their own destinies. It highlights and interrogates major national and local political struggles and their reciprocal relationships with international political and anti-colonial movements from 1941 to the present. It concludes with exploring the link between convict leasing, prison reform movements, political prisoners, and the prison industrial complex as the New Jim Crow. Prerequisite: ERS 100. (Cross-listed with ERS/HIS; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Fall.
WGS 320 Violence and Gender This course will examine the connections between gendered violence and power distributions within our society using an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective. Three specific types of violence and abuse will be examined in-depth: sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, and sexual assault. Prerequisite: one of the following: WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, or EDS 206. Offered Alternate Years.
WGS 373 Gender and Human Rights This course will provide an overview of transnational women's human rights movements in a variety of locations around the world; locations will vary with the instructor. Included in this overview will be the study of women's political participation as a human rights issue; women's bodily integrity as a human right; violence against women and reproductive sexual health and rights; human rights as a framework for social and economic and gender justice; and human rights as (quasi) legal accountability; UN agreements, treaties and venues of redress. Prerequisite: WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, EDS 206, or ERS 100. Offered Fall - Odd Numbered Years.
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