Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies trains students already enrolled in graduate degree-granting programs and those admitted to the free-standing certificate program as interdisciplinary feminist researchers. Students who complete the WGSS Certificate program will be able to 1) map out histories of feminist thought and social movements; 2) apply feminist, queer, and trans theories in their writing and research; and 3) develop interdisciplinary problem-based methods applicable within and beyond the university.Since its emergence as a distinct field of inquiry within the academy, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has sought to intervene in disciplinary knowledge paradigms by raising questions about how we come to know what we know, who gets to speak and for whom, and what counts as legitimate fields of inquiry. The WGSS Certificate program invites students to question the methods and histories of traditional disciplines and to interrogate the categories through which knowledge is produced (including, but not limited to, “women,” “gender,” and “sexuality”). Through these self-reflexive engagements, students who complete the certificate will be better equipped to execute innovative gender- and sexuality-focused research projects and participate in the interdisciplinary transformations defining the twenty-first century.The WGSS Department has over 50 associated faculty members from more than 15 different programs in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and health sciences. Our certificate program is designed to allow students working toward degrees in fields like Art, Music, English, History, Philosophy, Psychology, or Sociology to build intellectual community with other feminist researchers on campus and to work with faculty who have expertise on gender and sexuality across the disciplines. As such, the WGSS Certificate affords graduate students with an unusually rich interdisciplinary experience.Admission to The Graduate Certificate Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is open to any full-time, fully matriculated graduate student enrolled in a Stony Brook graduate degree-granting program. We are currently not accepting non-matriculated students.