The Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality works to catalyze intellectual discussions—at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, and beyond—in which gender and sexuality concerns play important roles.

We are a forum that brings together undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from different departments who share an interest and a need to address and interrogate their research fields from a queer, feminist, or otherwise gender- and sexuality-inflected perspective.

The activities of the program integrate teaching and research on all levels. Most importantly, the program encourages and supports initiatives for research projects, events, and curriculum developments emerging from all parts of the JHU campus—undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty alike.

WGS brings new scholarship into conversation on campus in three main ways. First, the program sponsors a seminar series that brings speakers from academia and the broader community to Johns Hopkins University. Second, we organize workshops each semester around multiyear themes, such as “Affect and Emotion” and “Medical Humanities.” Finally, we bring renowned scholars and public figures to the Homewood campus through our annual Visiting Distinguished Professorship. Recent visiting professors have included Tavia Nyong’o (Yale University), Patricia Williams (Northeastern University School of Law), Fred Moten (NYU), and  and Karen Barad (University of California-Santa Cruz), Joan Wallach Scott (Institute for Advanced Studies), Trinh-Minh Ha (University of California-Berkeley), and Michael Warner (Yale University).

WGS offers an undergraduate minor that enables students to devote a portion of their education to the study of women, gender, sexuality, and related issues. WGS also offers research fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students. Graduate students also have the opportunity to design and teach a course.

Through both interdisciplinary and specialized courses, students are encouraged to develop critical and comparative approaches to the study of gender and sexuality—often in interaction with related issues such as race, class, global health, and violence. Courses in the program are taught by prominent faculty members from across the disciplines and are cross-listed through a variety of departments. New courses are added frequently.