Gender Studies Minor | Westmont College

Today more than ever, the study of gender is a vital, indispensable component of a Christian Liberal Arts education.

Westmont’s interdisciplinary minor provides opportunities for students to explore and analyze the complexities of gender identity across disciplines, methodologies, and cultures. Gender Studies courses guide students to navigate, interrogate, and understand how femininity and masculinity develop and affect all aspects of our lives, including how we live, worship, work, and play together. Faculty shape these courses to live in the tension of what it means for us to bear God’s image in gendered bodies, in particular times and spaces. Small class sizes and internship opportunities allow for lively, dynamic engagement of this fundamental aspect of our human nature.

Gender Studies Minor Flyer

All Majors and Programs

Alumni Stories

Emily Hauck ’15, completed her PhD in Psychology at Fuller Seminary in 2021. Her dissertation is a theoretical analysis of purity culture using Relational Psychoanalysis, and she completed her pre-doc internship in the counseling center at CSU Long Beach. Emily identifies the Gender Studies program as “one of the highlights” of her Westmont career. She says, “The program helped me find my voice professionally, personally, and as a woman in the Church. It also allowed me to enter my field with a specialty that is very needed in our current world.”

Madeline (Celley) Phipps ’14, has worked in Public and Media Relations for Denver University and for Metro Valley RPTA . She credits the Westmont Gender Studies minor with requiring her to think critically about how identity shape our interactions and the mentorship encouraged her to pursue her masters in literature. In her words, “I appreciated the opportunity to take classes in a variety of different subjects, both in my major and outside of it with a shared focal point.”