Prospective Students
Concentrations
A unique feature of the Wisconsin PhD program in GWS is that all students complete a 15-credit concentration (mostly) outside GWS. The concentration may be in a traditional discipline (e.g., History or Political Science) or an interdisciplinary area (e.g., Gender and Health, or LGBTQ+ Studies). Pursuing a concentration provides students with expanded opportunities in the academic and non-academic job markets and enables them to acquire relevant research skills. For more information, see the Concentration tab for our most current requirements.
- Health
- History
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Visual Culture, Art, and Performance Studies
- Individualized Concentration
The Health Concentration provides Ph.D. students with theoretical and methodological training at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and health. The concentration equips students with key intersectional feminist, LGBTQ+ studies, and critical race frameworks as well as the methodological tools necessary to conduct cutting-edge research on gender, sexuality, and health in the US and transnationally. Concentration faculty offer particular strengths in the history, politics, and practices of reproductive health and healthcare; sexual coercion and abuse; gendered aspects of human and nonhuman health; health and environmental racism; medical history and history of science; global and planetary health; psychological and environmental anthropology; political theories of care and health; the politics of birth and birthwork; reproductive justice, abortion, contraception, and legacies of population control; sociology of medicine and reproductive healthcare, and the sociology of race, class, gender, and health. This concentration offers three options or areas of specialization: 1) Gender and Health: Quantitative or Qualitative Social Science Approaches; 2) Gender and Health: Qualitative Approaches in Health and Humanities or 3) Dual Degree in Public Health.
Students interested in the formation and experience of gender and sexuality in the past should consider pursuing the History Concentration. This concentration introduces students to the historical construction of sex, gender, and sexuality; contexts for understanding norms of gender and sexuality at particular times and places; historiographical trends that inform our understanding of gender and sexuality in the past and methods and archives that ground historical inquiry. Students are required to take five 3-credit courses (15 credits) that focus on women, gender, or sexuality and that are appropriate to their research interests. Other historical courses that provide historiographical training in fields outside of gender history may also be appropriate.
This concentration draws on GWS faculty strengths in LGBTQ+ studies. It trains students in gender, race, crip, and sexuality studies with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ inquiry and with potential specializations in queer, queer-of-color, trans, trans-of-color, crip and crip-of-color, Black, Indigenous and Diasporic queer, crip and/or trans modes of theorization, analysis, and critique. Depending on the student’s interests and career plans, training in this concentration might have a disciplinary or interdisciplinary orientation and/or from science/health, social science, humanities and arts arenas. The concentration’s five required courses, totalling 15 credits, are designed to: 1) cultivate training in theory and method: 2) provide students with a topical area of emphasis; 3) furnish students with an elective area of emphasis and 4) expose students to materials that will support their dissertation research.
The Political Science Concentration provides Ph.D. students with theoretical and methodological training at the intersection of gender and politics. The concentration equips students with the gender, sexuality, and/or intersectional theoretical frameworks as well as the methodological tools (qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods) necessary to conduct cutting edge research on gendered political processes in the U.S. and cross-nationally. Students are expected to complete three core gender and politics graduate course credits, five professional development and methodology graduate course credits, and six to seven elective course credits.
The Psychology Concentration provides students with the theoretical and methodological tools to conduct psychological research. The main approach is quantitative although a focus on qualitative methods is available. Students may specialize in social, clinical, or developmental psychology or develop expertise across these areas. Core faculty conduct research on exciting topics including sexual violence, trauma, and sexuality. Students who successfully complete this concentration will acquire key skills and credentials for the academic and non-academic job markets.
This concentration trains Ph.D. students at the intersections of feminist, gender and sexuality studies and visual culture, art and performance studies. It comprises training in theory, method, and practice (including curation) that draws on disciplinary and interdisciplinary courses in the Visual Culture Ph.D. minor (through the Center for Visual Cultures and the Department of Art History), the Program in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies (administered by the Department of English), the Department of Art History, and the Department of Communication Arts. The concentration’s five required courses, totalling 15 credits, balance the need for training in theory, practice, and method with each student’s need to cultivate an area of specialization.
Students who pursue this concentration may also take courses, with their advisor’s approval, in visual culture, film, media and performance offered by key partner units. These units include: African Cultural Studies; African-American Studies; Asian American Studies; Asian Languages and Cultures; Chicana/o Studies; Design Studies; English; French and Italian; German, Nordic, and Slavic; Landscape Architecture; Material Culture Studies Program and Spanish and Portuguese.
Students may choose to pursue an individualized concentration if they cannot find a pre- specified concentration that aligns with their research interests and career aspirations. Individualized concentrators must successfully demonstrate that their proposed plan of study cannot reasonably be completed within an already established concentration. Students are required to work with their GWS faculty advisor to design the right breadth and depth of coursework that meets their specific research needs and career goals.