Minors

Academic Minor in Gender and Health
Academic Minor in Gender, Race, and Ethnicity
Academic Minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Sexuality Studies

There are many students to whom various topics in Women’s Studies are central, yet they may be pursuing different vocational paths. Knowledge of these particular Women’s Studies topics will be helpful in a variety of professions. A minor will enable students to gain an academically certified familiarity with issues of either gender and health; gender, race, and ethnicity; or LGBTQS Studies.

The Women’s Studies Program offers three academic minors:

• Academic Minor in Gender and Health
• Academic Minor in Gender, Race, and Ethnicity
• Academic Minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Sexuality Studies (LGBTQS)

An academic minor in Women’s Studies is not open to students concentrating in Women’s Studies. Students wishing to pursue this minor should see a Women’s Studies academic advisor. Advising appointments may be scheduled by calling the Women’s Studies Program Office at 763-2047 or by e-mailing wsp.advising@umich.edu

You may also want to review LSA policies on academic minors. If you are not an LSA student, please be sure to check with your College or School regarding policies.

Academic Minor in Gender and Health

This minor allows students to develop a minor concentration through courses that focus on gender and health across a variety of disciplinary perspectives. At the same time, this minor is designed to focus students’ studies of gender and health from a feminist perspective. The minor provides an opportunity for students to develop their skills in critical analysis as they explore how the social category of gender and conceptualizations of health, health care and health policy intersect.

Coursework on a range of topics allows students to engage critically with the biomedical model of health in order to broaden and deepen their understanding of what constitutes health by exploring, for example, the relationship between health and disease. In all courses students will be challenged to consider the implications of a critical gender analysis of health for health care delivery, the health care professions, and health policy domestically and transnationally.

Requirements for the Academic Minor in Gender and Health

Five courses totaling at least 15 credits.

1. Required foundational course: WS 220 Perspectives in Women’s Health (3 credits)
2. Four courses (12 credits) that focus on gender and health.
   No more than one course (3 credits) can be at the 200-level.
   At least one course (3 credits) must be at the 400 level.
   At least one course at the 300- or 400-level must be a seminar.
   At least one course must be from a transnational, global, or historical perspective.
   
   The following courses may be counted as electives towards the gender and health minor.
   WS 300 Men’s Health
   ** WS 324 Childbirth and Culture
   ** WS 326 Politics of Health and Social Suffering *
   WS 350 Women and the Community (with health placement) *
   WS 342 Special Topics in Gender and Health *
   ** WS 365 Global Perspectives on Gender, Health and Reproduction *
   WS 400 Women’s Reproductive Health
   WS 404 Women, Autobiography, and the Medical Body *
   WS 443 Pedagogy of Empowerment: Activism in Race, Gender, and Health *
   WS 498 Gender and the Individual
   WS 499 Psychology of Women

* courses that meet the upper-level seminar requirement
** courses that meet the requirement for transnational, global or historical perspective.

Please see here for list of courses that meet minor and concentration requirements for fall 08 term.

Please see here for master list of courses that meet minor and concentration requirements.

You may find a worksheet for the Gender and Health Minor here (PDF).

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Academic Minor in Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

This minor is designed to introduce students to a range of feminist scholarship on the intersection of gender with race and ethnicity. Required and elective courses provide students with the opportunity to explore the gendered dimensions of ethnic and racial identifications and power relations. Courses focus on the ways in which gender, race and ethnicity are mutually constituted and experienced in different geographical, social, institutional, and historical locations, and how knowledge, politics, and discourse are constructed differently from different subject positions.

Requirements for the Academic Minor in Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

Five courses totaling at least 16 credits.

1. Required foundational course: WS 240 Introduction to Women’s Studies
2. One course in Feminist Theory: WS 330 Feminist Thought, or WS 422 Feminist Political Theory, or WS 455 Feminist Theory in Anthropology
3. Three electives (9 credits) that focus on women and gender in specific racial and ethnic groups. No more than one course (3 credits) can be at the 200-level and at least one course (3 credits) must be at the 400 level
   
   Please see here for list of courses that meet minor and concentration requirements for fall 08 term.
   
   Please see here for master list of courses that meet minor and concentration requirements.

You may find a worksheet for the Gender, Race and Ethnicity Minor here (PDF).

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Academic Minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Sexuality Studies

This minor is designed to introduce students to the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and sexuality studies. Required and elective courses provide students with the opportunity to explore how various practices, institutions and beliefs intersect with sexualities and sexed bodies, in a range of cultures, geographies, and histories.  Students will have the opportunity to rely upon courses, representing an interdisciplinary array of scholarship, in pursuing the study of sexuality and sexual identities.

Requirements for the Academic Minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Sexuality Studies
effective 1/1/06

Five courses totaling at least 16 credits, to be chosen from the following categories as stated:

1. Required foundational course: WS 245 Intro to LGBT Studies or WS 295 Sexuality in Western Culture.
2. Four electives (12 credits) that focus on LGBTQS issuesNo more than one course (3 credits) can be at the 200-level and at least one course (3 credits) must be at the 400 level.
   
   Please see here for list of courses that meet minor and concentration requirements for fall 08 term.
   
   Please see here for master list of courses that meet minor and concentration requirements.
   

You may find a worksheet for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Sexuality Studies Minor here (PDF).

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