About

WHAT IS GENDER STUDIES? SCHOLARSHIP TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the complex interaction of gender, race, class and sexuality in social relations, institutions, and systems. Gender Studies UCLA is deeply committed to social justice and offers a multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate program that fosters critical scholarship from diverse intellectual fields in the humanities and social sciences.

Our distinguished interdisciplinary faculty offer classes that range from large lecture courses, like our introductory Gender Studies 10, to small, student research-based senior seminars, like GS187. Popular undergrad courses focus on sexuality, racial and colonial violence, mass incarceration, disability rights. Our grad program also emphasizes intersectionality with particular strengths in transnational feminist studies, Black feminism, Queer and Trans studies, racial violence, issues of Indigenous sovereignty, migration, critical disability studies and critical digital studies and media.

Featured Thematic areas include:

Transnational Feminism

A transnational feminist analysis attends to global circuits of power and investigates imperialism colonialism and racial capitalism and histories of genocide and slavery. The term transnational feminist draws attention to the Global South often overlooked in liberal feminist approaches and includes a consideration of newer forms of globalization. Faculty study, for example, the gendered relations between race, labor, religion, and feminist politics and their interconnections in diverse contexts and sites.

Queer and Trans Studies

Queer and Trans Studies is an interdisciplinary field, emergent since the late 1980s. The focus in the field is on the history and diversity of genders and sexualities with specific attention on the LGBTQ population. Emphasizing a Queer and Trans of color lens, the field is deeply attentive to historical context and to an analysis that is transnational in scope.

Critical Race Feminism

Critical race feminism, like critical race theory more broadly, interrogates race, gender, class and sexuality through a lens of racial justice. The department is home to the Racial Violence Hub (racialviolencehub.com). The Racial Violence Hub creates a virtual community of feminist critical race scholars, artists, activists, and organizations working on issues of racial violence and the state. The Hub’s goal is to foster research, develop critical pedagogies and share resources for anti-violence practices around state violence against Indigenous and racialized peoples.

Data, Power and Racial Justice.

How does data operate in the service of racial regimes? How does it secure gender, race and class hierarchies? We feature courses on race, sex, class and culture online and intersectional Black feminist technology studies. The department houses The Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), a critical internet studies community committed to reimagining technology, championing social justice, and strengthening human rights through research, culture, and public policy. C2i2 initiatives include the Minderoo Initiative on Technology and Power, the Critical Internet Studies Program, Digital Civil Rights, and the Data, Power, and Racial Justice Initiative