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.
- Health
- History
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Visual Culture, Art, and Performance Studies
- Individualized Concentration
The health concentration provides PhD students with theoretical and methodological training at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and health. The concentration will equip 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. There are three options for this concentration: 1) Gender and Health: Quantitative or Qualitative Social Science Approaches, requiring 15 credits of graduate work; 2) Gender and Health: Qualitative Approaches in Health and Humanities, requiring 15 credits of graduate work; or 3) Public Health, requiring completion of a Master of Public Health degree (MPH). Students who complete the MPH while enrolled in or prior to enrolling in the Gender and Women’s Studies PhD Program will automatically fulfill the health concentration for the latter. Some courses taken in the GWS PhD Program may meet elective requirements for the MPH degree. Separate application and acceptance to the MPH program in the School of Medicine and Public Health is required.
Students interested in the formation and experience of gender and sexuality in the past should consider our concentration in history. This concentration will introduce 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. In addition to the required course (History 752), students should select courses that focus on women, gender, or sexuality. 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 and trains students in gender, race, crip and sexuality studies with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ inquiry and 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, the training might have a disciplinary or interdisciplinary orientation and draw from science/health, social science, humanities and arts areas or be more focused on one or more of those. The five required courses cultivate training in theory and method while also providing for four carefully chosen electives, moving from broad to targeted (though not necessarily taken in that order): (1) topical area of emphasis, (2) sub-specialization, and (3) ideally related directly to dissertation research.
The political science concentration provides PhD students with theoretical and methodological training at the intersection of gender and politics. The concentration will equip students with the feminist and LGBTQ+ 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 US and cross-nationally. Students are expected to complete 8 credits of graduate work in the political science department that include courses on the profession of political science, research methods, a 3 credit core course in either feminist political theory or gender and politics, and 6-7 credit hours of additional, graduate-level elective classes in political science.
The concentration in Psychology will provide students with the tools – both methods and theory – to conduct psychological research. The main approach is quantitative, although qualitative methods are also possible. The student might choose to specialize in one of the relevant areas of Psychology – social, clinical, or developmental – or develop expertise across these areas. The Core Faculty conduct research on exciting topics including sexual violence, trauma, and sexuality. This concentration should provide the student with additional credentials for the job market, whether in academia or outside academia.
This concentration trains Ph.D. students at the intersections of feminist, gender and sexuality studies and visual culture, art and performance studies. It will comprise 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. With advisor permission and depending on the student’s area emphasis, students take courses in visual culture, film, media and performance offered by such key partner units as African Cultural Studies; Afro-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. The five required courses balance the need for training in theory and method with both training in practice and pre-dissertation work in the cultivated area of specialization. The student might elect to attain a Ph.D. minor as part of this concentration, which would involve taking the two required seminars for the Visual Culture Minor (Afro Amer/Art Hist 801 and Afro Amer/Art Hist 802) and an elective or practicum as the required third and, thereby, have this clearly legible job market credential on their transcript.
Students have the option to design an individualized concentration if they cannot find a pre-specified concentration that aligns with their interests and career aspirations. Individualized concentrators must successfully demonstrate that their proposed plan of study cannot reasonably be completed within an established concentration. Students are required to work with their GWS faculty advisor to design the right combination and depth of coursework that meets their specific career goals. Overall, an individualized concentration should consist of 15 credits of graduate work.
An established concentration may also be tailored, with approval from the faculty advisor, to a student’s specific interests by replacing a required course with one not on the list of courses that defines the concentration.