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Welcome to GCWS

Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, culture, Women, and sexualty

About us

The Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality, hosted by MIT, brings together feminist scholars and teachers from nine Boston area institutions for the purpose of advancing interdisciplinary, intersectional feminist scholarship and teaching in the areas of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.  The consortium is committed to the following:

  • Exploring the intersections of power and identity, including but not limited to gender, race, ethnicity, class, physical ability, nationality, religion, and language

  • Cultivating collaborative intellectual communities across fields and disciplines

  • Supporting innovative pedagogical practices

  • Contributing to the professional development of students and faculty

  • Providing a sustainable model of institutional collaboration

The GCWS offers interdisciplinary, team-taught, graduate-level courses for Masters and PhD students at our member institutions that are led by faculty in a range of disciplines from our member institutions. The Consortium connects scholars through courses, events, and micro-seminars throughout the academic year. It is led by a committed and dedicated Board of Representatives, made up of a faculty representative from each member institution.

Courses and microseminars

Featured
Comedy and Gender in the U.S.: Counterpublics, World-Making, and the Politics of Pleasure
Sep 8
Comedy and Gender in the U.S.: Counterpublics, World-Making, and the Politics of Pleasure

Fall 2021. Wednesdays 3:00-6:00PM. Meets at MIT.

Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender Studies
Sep 14
Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender Studies

Full year course. Tuesdays 5:00-8:00PM. Meets every other week at MIT.

Race, Sex, and the Ethics of Collection in the Peabody Museum
Jan 26
Race, Sex, and the Ethics of Collection in the Peabody Museum

Spring 2022. Wednesdays 4:00-7:00PM. Meets at Harvard Peabody Museum.

Feminist, Queer, and Indigenous Methods
Jan 26
Feminist, Queer, and Indigenous Methods

Spring 2022. Day/time TBA. Meets on Zoom and BU campus

Students

GCWS courses are credit-bearing for Masters and PhD students of any discipline at our member institutions. Students may cross-register for our classes as part of the standard tuition they pay at their home institution. GCWS offers up to six courses per year. Our topic-based courses change each year and our core courses include:

  • Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women’s and Gender Studies,

  • Feminist and Queer Theory

  • Feminist and Queer Methodology

Students must submit an application to be considered for a GCWS course.

Faculty

GCWS courses are taught by faculty of any discipline at our member institutions. Course proposals should explicitly integrate gender analysis with issues of class, race, culture, ethnicity, and sexualities, and consider the practical implications of feminist theory. Courses are designed to open paths to the creation of new knowledge and provide intellectual support for students pursuing feminist work within the framework of traditional disciplines.

Events

GCWS hosts a range of events each academic year that are free and open to the public. Our Campus Feminist Events google calendar highlights events happening on campuses around the Boston area that are connected to our mission. Browse more past events in the archive to learn more about the speakers and topics we have already hosted.

Featured
Feminisms Unbound - Going Viral
Apr 15
Feminisms Unbound - Going Viral
Radical Love across Difference
Apr 9
Radical Love across Difference
Women Take the Reel Film Festival 2021
Mar 19
Women Take the Reel Film Festival 2021
Feminisms Unbound - Global Protests
Feb 18
Feminisms Unbound - Global Protests
Feminisms Unbound - Stillness and (Social) Movement
Nov 19
Feminisms Unbound - Stillness and (Social) Movement
Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women
Oct 27
Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women
Feminisms Unbound - The Neoliberal University and Academic Feminism
Sep 17
Feminisms Unbound - The Neoliberal University and Academic Feminism
Technologies of Resistance: Towards Feminist Futures Panel Series
Jul 30
Technologies of Resistance: Towards Feminist Futures Panel Series

Publications

Learn more about the new published books incorporating Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies written or edited by faculty from our member institutions!

Social Media

In the mid-1990s, experts predicted that India would face the world's biggest #AIDS epidemic by 2000.  HIV prevention programs channeled billions of dollars toward those groups designated as "at risk."  At Risk: Indian Sexual Politics and the Global AIDS Crisis captures this unique moment in which these criminalized and marginalized groups reinvented their categorization and became central players in the crisis response. The AIDS crisis created a contradictory, conditional, and temporary opening for sex worker, sexual minority, and transgender activists to renegotiate citizenship and to make demands on the state.  Working across India and Kenya, Gowri Vijayakumar provides a fine-grained account of the fraught politics at the heart of the Indian AIDS response, ranging from everyday articulations of sexual identity in activist organizations in Bangalore to adapted approaches to HIV prevention in Nairobi. Vijayakumar illuminates how the gender, sexuali
WORKSHOP FOR DISSERTATION WRITERS IN WOMEN'S AND GENDER STUDIES This workshop is designed for feminist dissertators from all disciplines and at all stages of the dissertation process. We will combine theories of interdisciplinarity and intersectionality as well as histories of academic writing and its protocols (as well as its secret rules) with practical instruction in how to become better/more comfortable writers and get more writing done. Readings, which will also cover important related topics such as balancing writing and activism, the racial, sexual and gender politics of the academy, the politics of acknowledgement, feminist voice, women’s anger and self-care, will be varied and total approximately 30-35 pages every two weeks. We will work together to both build a supportive community and to break down the process of a dissertation into short, tangible, manageable activities and task; short writing exercises will include practical training in those tasks. Each semester we
Postcolonial feminism addresses how structural and historical racism and colonialism within politics, economics, and culture impact women of color in the postcolonial and non-Western world. It explores the intersections of colonialism and neocolonialism with gender, sexuality, nationality, race, and class within the various aspects of women's lives. #Feminism #wgss #PostcolonialFeminism #TransnationalFeminism #GenderStudies #FeministStudies #ChandraMohanty
It is still summer but we are looking for a new team member to join us this fall semester! GCWS is looking for a PT Administrative Assistant for the 2021-2022 academic year. This position will support our communication and social media efforts and office projects. More information and application can be submitted on our website.
THE MEDIATED SELF: DOING GENDER, RACE, AND SEXUALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY What does it mean to perform the self in today's media climate, especially if that self lies beyond the white/male/straight hegemonic order? What happens when these marginalized subjects go mainstream? And what happens when the self becomes nothing more than a capitalist commodity, easily exploited or appropriated for monetary or other gain? Taking works by Erving Goffman, Judith Butler, bell hooks, and others as a theoretical foundation and adopting an intersectional approach to the material, this mini-course explores these and related questions. Together, we’ll analyze how selfhood and subjectivity is performed in a variety of media genres, from contemporary memoirs to reality TV to social media. We’ll read literature and essays by Carmen Maria Machado, Ocean Vuong, Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, and Sarah J. Jackson, and we’ll consider new media phenomena like Netflix’s Queer Eye, Harry &a
In Misogynoir Transformed, Bailey delves into her groundbreaking concept, highlighting Black women’s digital resistance to anti-Black misogyny on YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, and other platforms. At a time when Black women are depicted as more ugly, deficient, hypersexual, and unhealthy than their non-Black counterparts, Bailey explores how Black women have bravely used social-media platforms to confront misogynoir in a number of courageous—and, most importantly, effective—ways. Focusing on queer and trans Black women, she shows us the importance of carving out digital spaces, where communities are built around queer Black webshows and hashtags like #GirlsLikeUs.A groundbreaking work, Misogynoir Transformed highlights Black women’s remarkable efforts to disrupt mainstream narratives, subvert negative stereotypes, and reclaim their lives. Moya Bailey shows how Black women actively reimagine the world by engaging in powerful forms of digital resistance at a time wh
COMEDY AND GENDER IN THE U.S.: COUNTERPUBLICS, WORLD-MAKING, AND THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE This course investigates comedy as a strategy for feminist and queer critique, counterpublic formation, and imaginative world-making. Our interdisciplinary approach to the cultural politics of laughter will address satire, carnival, the absurd, joke-telling rituals, the grotesque, farce, camp, the aesthetics of profanity, creative subversion, and transgressive play. Students will have opportunities to do academic and creative projects to engage these phenomena. Our guiding questions will include: how can we understand the tension between the ephemerality of laughter-pleasure and fixedness of gendered and racialized hierarchies? What do theories of comedy offer theories of subject formation, and vice-versa? How does reading laughter help us read mechanisms of oppression? How do controversies over offensive humor function, and what are their stakes? How does a focus on comedy and laughter sharpen c
Hegemony has an ever-growing number of parts and considerations as we come to a greater understanding of society, power, and relationships and how they fit and operate within a societal and historical context and parameters. #hegemony #genderstudies #wgss #masculinitystudies #culturalhegemony
Our 2021-2022 courses incorporate a number of new topics, research, and disciplines. We are excited to work with the faculty who will lead the courses and welcome students from a range of disciplines at our member institutions to take these courses. Courses include: - Comedy and Gender in the U.S.: Counterpublics, World-Making, and the Politics of Pleasure - Feminist, Queer, and Indigenous Methodology - Workshop for Dissertation Writers in Women's and Gender Studies - Race, Sex, and the Ethics of Collection in the Peabody Museum Link in bio for course details and description, how to enroll, and registration requirements. DM or email us with any questions!