The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences is designing six new courses for its LGBT and sexuality studies minor, as the two-year-old program tries to gain momentum and eventually build up a major.
Though only six Columbian College students have declared minors in LGBT and sexuality studies, the program’s leader Dan Moshenberg said faculty are seeing increasing interest and are hopeful to create a major by adding courses on an annual basis.
When the program launched in 2010, student sponsors hoped to see a major within two years.
The 18-credit minor encompasses about 16 courses that examine sexuality studies in departments like women’s studies, sociology and psychology. Majors typically require at least 40 credits in the field and require more faculty hires. He said he could not detail what the new courses would entail, because they are still in the planning stages.
Moshenberg said more students and faculty would need to buy into the minor before it takes the leap to a major, and hopes to put forward a formal plan for the program's future this spring. The minor is housed in the women’s studies departments.
He said the program also needed to entice more professors to build up courses for the potential major, but most focus primarily on their own department.
“You have a lot of people who are interested but can’t get released from their departmental chores,” he said.
Dan Ullman, Columbian College’s associate dean for undergraduate studies, said GW is holding back on an expansion, awaiting student demand for a major before making significant faculty hires or adding courses.
“It takes faculty to teach those courses, and if those courses are only going to have five to seven students in them, that’s a very expensive program for the college to run,” he said. “We have to see if there is a substantial demand.”
Senior Sally Kaplan, a political science major, said she signed up for the LGBT and sexuality studies minor because she was involved in nonprofit groups in D.C. that advocate for gay and transgender issues.
"Carving out a bigger space for queer studies is essential if GW wants to recruit or attract more progressively minded students," she said.
The minor launched with much fanfare in 2010, a signature piece of the student organization Allied in Pride’s push to expand LGBT-focused student life and academic offerings.
Former Allied in Pride president Michael Komo, now a first-year student at GW Law School, said he thought the minor would continue to grow.
“What we wanted to do two years ago was lay the groundwork for LGBT scholarship to be established at the University and continue to grow, which it definitely has,” said Komo, who rallied administrators to add the minor when he was a Student Association senator in 2010. He was the first student to declare the minor.
First, it was taking money from labor unions to establish an archive to keep a record of their wonderful achievements at the Gelman Library. Now we have the possibility of a major in LGBT studies (every parents wish for their child). Unless the intention is to make GWU the MSNBC of Universities these trends are damaging to the GWU brand. Is it really necessary to study and celebrate the crystal meth Craigslist hook-up culture in San Francisco? Are other points of view offered?
Ken,
I am sorry that you are so closeted yourself that you are hateful of the gays. Get off Grindr, and maybe you will be able to realize that being gay is not a “culture” but something you are born with. Maybe you happen to enjoy crystal meth and Craigslist hook-ups, but for god’s sake leave San Francisco and MSNBC out of this!
Sincerely yours,
Tonisha L. Philips
http://www.Lis4Latrice.com
P.S. Get a life, hobby, and maybe a friend or two.
P.P.S. #tonisha
I’d like to teach a course on how to tap your foot in an airport bathroom, and the challenges of having a wide stance! It can have a lab component where we meet in the Marvin Center too!
Senator Larry Craig
Ok Senator. Before my long nails goes into ya face, let me explain suttin. you are from Idaho, unless u gonna comment on how KFC can improve its mashed potatoes then do me a favor and bud ya self out of my face and my new employment center.
with much luv and a lil hate,
Tonisha
Ok Senator. Before my long nails goes into ya face, let me explain suttin. you are from Idaho, unless u gonna comment on how KFC can improve its mashed potatoes then do me a favor and bud ya self out of my face and my new employment center.
with much luv and a lil hate,
Tonisha
Tonisha what are you even saying?
Is it the stated goal of this University to establish itself as the most left leaning University in the country? Getting a degree from this University is expensive. Why not have a stated goal of encouraging the highest academic standards so that the degree is valuable to existing students and past graduates.
Unless you are going to work for MSNBC or the DNC most employers will not be impressed with Labor Union archives and LBGT studies. Do you really wish to see a Catholic University graduate beat out a GWU graduate for a job opening?
If it were the most left leaning university, that’s news to me. Seems more like a fascist police state, with the weed busts, writeups for drinking, a secret police force demanding to see your papers…uh I mean…GWorld card…sounds like Soviet Russia to me.
At least at UCal Berkeley, the campus cops could care less what substances you are consuming. Straight, gay, bi, full blown orgy in the group showers, it’s all good. GW is far from that.
I don’t really see the point of having an LGBT major or minor when so much of Women’s Studies focuses on sexuality, to the point where there are debates in the field about whether or not that should be incorporated into its name. And what could a graduate do with the degree? What jobs would require the qualifications conferred upon a person with an LGBT Studies degree?
1) a human fire hydrant
2) a porn actor
3) HELLO…a FABULOUS designer
4) a leather bear
5) a member of The Village People
6) a BDSM master or slave
7) manager of the ladies shoes department
Personally I did a good amount of bi and lesbian studies late at night with Cinemax. Just sayin’.
I think it’s incredibly unfair that people who are neither in the program nor educated on gender or sexuality based issues are purporting that it is an illegitimate or worthless degree. My relationship with the LGBT studies program has gotten me jobs and internships in DC because my education has been tailored toward precisely the sort of advocacy I want to do. Not only that but queer studies encompasses everything from social theory to globalization to domestic and international politics to history to law to policy etc. GW is striving to create an academically diverse and open minded community. Those of you who speak ill of a program you know nothing about and a group of students whose intellect you think is not valuable are simply ignorant to a whole world outside of your small box of white, privileged friends who only study business or international affairs because you think it’s the only way to get a job or make a profit. Some of us are here to expand our minds, not our wallets.
A lot of good that will do you when you’re playing a guitar outside a Metro station for spare change, while your classmates that studied more concrete and grounded programs are walking by you…on their way to work.
Either that or you’re a spoiled kid with a wealthy Mommy and/or Daddy to fund your idealistic whims.
It’s pretty presumptuous of you to imply that I wont have a job, since I already do, and it’s generally just rude to assume my, or anyone’s education is a result of their parents’ financial situation. Many of us are here on scholarship because we worked hard and we understand that our education is a truly privilege and not something we expected to be handed to us by our parents or anyone else. And to define any academic field that doesn’t gear itself toward a singular job path as ungrounded or not concrete is reflective of your obvious ignorance to the world of academia itself. nothing you learn in any class is indicative of what life is like in an actual job. College exists to help us learn to think, to act, to grow, to understand, to discern, to ask. We build on our skills and we open our minds.
Yeah, that’s pretty interesting, considering that I studied accounting and use it at work every day.
and did all the rest of your math, science, english, foreign language, and writing classes also teach you how to sit at a desk and be an accountant? probably not, since those classes aren’t actually required or designed for you to learn accounting. so maybe college was just a waste if accounting classes were the only ones that seemed to help you learn how to do your job.
Who said I sit at my desk all day as an egghead accountant? I don’t, and I’m not. I’m a private client retail financial manager, which means I need to know that English to communicate with my clients in writing and verbally. My poli-sci classes help me with understanding the myriad financial regulatory laws out there pushed by FINRA, FDIC and all the other alphabet agencies. And the foreign language I studied helps me to communicate with a large foreign-based investment bank whose employees are my clients.
Senator larry craig was arrested in a men’s bathroom for lewd and lascivious acts. Just a contextual reminder for everyone.
So what I see har is that LGBT/women studies majors are just a liberal, yankee version of the MRS. degree down south. at least in the south the girls look good
the “liberal yankees” won the civil war and later eradicated slavery.
just saying.
Ah so your mention of MRS degrees and southern belles was NOT intended to mislead or distract a reader (red herring) into drawing irrelevant conclusions (ignoratio elenchi) about the idea that southern belles are all good looking and are out for their MRS degrees (mind projection fallacy/reification/hypostatization fallacies) so that you could change the topic to instead focus on the ludicrous comparison and false analogies (another fallacy)? Further, how useless do you consider a degree in LGBT studies to be for someone who is committed to pursuing a career in LGBT legal matters and political advocacy? i struggle to see the logic in an argument which is predicated on devaluing a program that is perfectly tailored to groom students for careers and jobs in a sizable yet specialized field of interest in DC and all over the world.
ouch, im tempted to just keep poking away and enjoy your responses but I think we are at an impasse. No matter what you say I will still think creating an LGBT major/minor/etc. is not a good use of time or resources, if you want to go into law/political advocacy you need to learn the basics of law (aka law school) or marketing/public policy to help you learn better how to advocate, specializing in LGBT should come later, take some classes sure but putting extensive financial resources behind such a nebulous category isn’t optimal. And you assumed I thought a MRS degree is bad…unforgivable sally, unforgivable
classic red herring ms. kaplan, classic. last time i checked my argument was in regards to the uselessness of a LGBT degree and the stunning looks of southern belles, not the civil war. obviously im glad the yankees defeated slavery, your assumptions are misleading as was your attempt to change the topic