Academic Program Proposal

Date Proposal Activated	Institution and Proposal	Degree Awarded	Academic Program Name	Objection Deadline	MHEC Final Action	Final Decision Date
	St. Mary's College of Maryland Proposal	Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)	Women, Gender, and Sexuality	3/17/2019	Approved	4/10/2019
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program Description
The Bachelor of Arts in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSX) offers a cross-disciplinary area of inquiry that investigates the social, psychological, biological, and cultural construction of gender, as well as the ways women and men locate themselves within gender systems. Because femininities and masculinities vary as a result of cultural, historical, political, and institutional forces, gender inquiry helps students understand the multiple ways gender and gender relations are socially constructed, and how these understandings of gender in turn shape virtually every aspect of our everyday lives: political institutions, law, the economy, the family, education, work, literature, the arts, media, philosophy, religion, and sexuality. <br> <br>Due to the inherently culturally diverse manifestations and understandings of gender and sexuality in history and in the present, this WGSX major will be  structured as an interdisciplinary course of study across a college academic curriculum that balances the following elements: disciplinary grounding in the theories, methods, and critical approaches to gender and sexuality inquiry and analysis; introductory and advanced coursework in the field; and intentional breadth across disciplines that provides students insight into the multiplicity of cultural formations and bodies of knowledge informing identities and cultural systems of sex, gender, and sexuality. <br> <br>Courses in the WGSX cross-disciplinary curriculum identify gender as a fundamental category of analysis in theory and practice. The WGSX Program encourages students and faculty to make connections between academic knowledge and experience outside the classroom through activism, sponsored lectures and workshops, and community events. <br>