The Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSS) concentration
embraces the importance of gender as a fundamental category of analysis across disciplines. The concentration explores how gender and sexuality are intertwined with structures of power and inequality, and considers masculinity and femininity, sexuality, and transgender issues in relation to other analytical frameworks such as race, class, age, and sexual orientation.Requirements + Courses
GSS is committed to the study of issues specific to women and the LGBT community, with added emphasis on understanding disciplinary models of knowledge.
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RequirementsGSS is a concentration, not a primary program of study. In consultation with GSS faculty and program advisers, students may declare a concentration in GSS at the time of their Moderation into their primary program or thereafter at a separate Moderation. Students must fulfill the Moderation requirements of both the primary program and the GSS concentration, which requires at least two courses cross-listed with GSS before Moderation. After Moderation students must take at least one advanced gender studies seminar or tutorial taught by GSS faculty. The Senior Project should focus on some issue related to gender and sexuality studies. -
CoursesCourse offerings are subject to change. Recent courses include Contemporary Queer Theory; Perspectives in LGBT Studies; Sociology of Gender; Gender and Deviance; Women’s Rights, Human Rights; Gay Rights, Human Rights; Feminist Ethics; Woman as Cyborg; LGBTQ in Rural and Urban America; Women Writing the Caribbean; Representing the Unspeakable; Nature, Sex, and Power; Victorian Bodies; Gender and Sexuality in Judaism; Reading Arab Women Writers in Translation; Gender and Politics in National Security; Women and the Economy; and Women’s Bodies / Women’s Voices.
Our Faculty
Coordinator: Robert Weston
Gender Equity at Bard
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The Office of Title IX is dedicated to preventing, responding to, and remedying occurrences of gender-based misconduct throughout Bard College and its affiliated programs. To increase awareness and cultivate a safe and proactive community, the Office of Title IX provides educational and preventative programming for employees and students. -
More than 150 student clubs and organizations are active at Bard. Among these are groups specific to women, the LGBTQ community, and allies, including the Queer Student Association, Women of Color United, QPOC (Queer People of Color), Trans Life Collective, and the Transfem Brunch Club, among others.
NEWSROOM
Psychologist Sarah Dunphy-Lelii Considers the Politics of Sudden Power Transfer Among Chimpanzees
In “The Chimpanzee Wars,” a recent post to Wild Cousins, her Psychology Today UK blog, Associate Professor of Psychology Sarah Dunphy-Lelii engages in a thought experiment about how the state of knowing and of understanding of who knows and who doesn’t know could potentially impact the politics of power transfer within dominance hierarchies of chimpanzees.
Psychologist Sarah Dunphy-Lelii Considers the Politics of Sudden Power Transfer Among Chimpanzees
Among more than 200 Ngogo chimpanzees living in Kibale National Park, Uganda, one undisputed alpha named Jackson ruled for years until internal conflicts split the largest known chimpanzee community into two warring factions—Westerners and Centrallers. After Jackson is killed from injuries sustained in a battle, no younger alpha males step up to seize leadership of the Centrallers. A likely explanation, according to researchers, is that they didn’t know Jackson was dead. Only one Centraller, a potential alpha named Peterson, witnessed his death, and none found his body. Theoretically, Peterson could have used this position to his advantage. “Chimpanzees are socially sophisticated. Their dominance hierarchies are not based solely on physical strength. What we might call politics—the accumulation of social capital through strategic alliances over time—play a significant role in the rise to leadership. Under conditions like this one, between the Westerners and the Centrallers, insight into others’ states of knowledge could be decisive,” writes Dunphy-Lelii. She notes, however, that evidence to date suggests chimps, like Peterson, are not using this information the way humans would.
Post Date: 05-02-2023
Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva Interviewed on Background Briefing with Ian Masters
Ian Masters spoke with Pavlina Tcherneva, associate professor of economics at Bard College, research associate at the Levy Economics Institute, and author of The Case for a Job Guarantee (2020), on his nationally syndicated radio program Background Briefing. In the episode, “As Pundits Warn of Recession and Inflation, We Get the Best Economic News Since 1969,” Masters asks Tcherneva for her take on the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, which added 517,000 jobs in January 2023 and stunned most economists and people who continue to harbor a doomsday mentality about the economy.Bard Economist Pavlina Tcherneva Interviewed on Background Briefing with Ian Masters
According to Tcherneva, two years after the COVID-induced crisis, such good news about low unemployment levels tells us that “public policy has tools. It can act boldly, quickly and bring jobs back.” She points out, however, that these low unemployment numbers also reflect the 5.7 million people who are not looking for work, and 4 million people who are working part-time but would like to have full-time jobs.
“Part of the anxiety still being experienced in the labor market is that the jobs are there but they are not exactly these well-paying jobs with very good benefits and good working conditions. On that front, there is more to be accomplished. Let us remember our minimum wage is still $7.25, and no one can live on $7.25 an hour,” she asserts.
Tcherneva sees the big fiscal policies implemented over the last two years by the Biden administration, which do not overly focus on the financial sector or prioritize tax cuts for the wealthy, as all good news. Still, she advocates for more economic progress. “The question for me is did we come out of the pandemic with better jobs, better conditions for working families than we had going into the pandemic?”
Post Date: 02-14-2023
Professor Pavlina R. Tcherneva: A Just Transition Needs a Job Guarantee
Associate Professor of Economics Pavlina R. Tcherneva says a job guarantee is necessary both for managing the disruptions wrought by global warming and for achieving a smooth, just transition to a low-carbon economy. And since the policy is also wildly popular, it should be a no-brainer for any politician who claims to be serious about tackling the climate crisis. “If ‘decent work for all’ is to become an actionable policy benchmark, access to a living-wage job must be guaranteed to everyone, not merely implied in the text of stimulus packages and other policies,” she writes.Professor Pavlina R. Tcherneva: A Just Transition Needs a Job Guarantee
Post Date: 09-21-2021