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Undergraduate programs

Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Undergrad major Undergrad minor

RGSS is an interdisciplinary program that helps students understand the enormous diversity of the U.S. and a globalizing world, and the structures of inequality on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, and social class that shape this world. Students uncover hidden histories that include experiences of discrimination and marginalization, as well as of resilience, resistance, and coalition building. In RGSS, we work with students to develop research and communication skills to help students creatively use the knowledge and practices of our discipline, preparing them for careers, advanced degrees, and engaged citizenship.

Social Justice

Undergrad minor

Social justice is fairness as it relates to rights, opportunities, and access to resources within society. This includes questions of housing, healthcare, political representation and participation, the economy and more.

Hmong & Hmong-American Studies Certificate

Undergrad certificate

Hmong-Americans are first-generation refugee immigrants from Laos and their descendants. Since 1975, Hmong Americans have established communities across the country. According to the Pew Research Center, 327,000 Hmong people live in the U.S. as of 2019. In Wisconsin, Hmong people make up the largest Asian American ethnic group. 

Featured courses

  • Hmong Americans
    RGS 362 | 3 credits
    This is an introductory course to Hmong American history, culture, and contemporary life. The course reviews Hmong history within the context of U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1975 and examines the sociocultural transformations that have been taking place in Hmong American communities across the U.S. since 1976. (Cross-listed with ANT/RGS; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Occasionally.
  • Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class
    RGS 100 | 3 credits
    This course provides an introduction to how race, gender, sexuality, and class have been intertwined and coexisted over time to produce and reproduce social inequalities in the US, in the context of a globally connected world. It explores the key concepts, theories, and historical experiences that form the basis of scholarly work in comparative race, gender, sexuality, and class studies. The creation, transmittal, interpretation and institutionalization of racial, gender, sexual, and class identities are examined through a human rights framework. Offered Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer.
  • RGSS Senior Capstone
    RGS 490 | 3 credits
    This senior capstone course is designed as a culminating experience for students completing a major in race, gender, and sexuality studies or a Hmong and Hmong-American studies certificate. This course has three content foci: 1) Students apply what they have learned throughout their major in RGSS. Alone or in groups, students research, explain, and develop a means for addressing a social phenomenon through application of the material acquired in their courses - particularly those in RGSS. This culminates in a presentation and paper to be given before an audience that may include RGSS faculty, CASSH faculty, and UWL students. 2) Students analyze the ways race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality have played and continued to play in liberating oppressive roles in social, political, or cultural institutions. 3) Students identify and learn about careers such as journalism, marketing, community and housing development, media, health and medicine, community and union organizing, social work, and a wide variety of positions in federal, state, county, and local governments. Prerequisite: ERS 100, RGS 100, or WGS 100; concurrent enrollment in one of the following: RGS 335, RGS 336, RGS 340, or RGS 377. Offered Spring.
  • Topics in Queer Studies
    RGS 310 | 3 credits
    This course offers students the opportunity to explore contemporary and historic issue through the lens of Queer studies and builds on the current Introduction to LGBT studies course in order to expand students' understanding of Queer history, activism, and/or theory. The course takes an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach through which students can build understanding of the connections between Queer studies and other fields. Department approval is necessary to apply more than three credits toward the RGS major/minor. Repeatable for credit - maximum nine. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Offered Annually.
  • Race, Gender, and Sport
    RGS 314 | 3 credits
    Sport has long occupied a place at the heart of American culture and society. Organized athletics have also served as symbolic sites of protest, power, and inclusion for the nation's populations marginalized, oppressed, and discriminated against based on their racial, gender, and sexual identities. This course will explore the terrain of American sport in the twentieth century as a way to understand the profound impact that the phenomenon of athletic competition has had in the development of American race and gender relations. We will pay particular attention to how the racial, gender, and sexual identities of African American, Native American, Latino/a, and Asian American athletes shaped the purposes, participation, and meaning of sport. Moreover, we will delve into the events, icons, and cultural meanings of sports over the last century. Prerequisite: ERS 100 or RGS 100 or WGS 100. Offered Occasionally.
  • Gender, Sexuality, and Social Change in Religion
    RGS 316 | 3 credits
    This course examines the various gender roles, norms, mobility, restrictions and empowerment that people experience within religious traditions, for example: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Global case studies and engaging narratives focused on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and religion will be considered. Special attention will be paid to feminist laypersons and religious leaders who are reformulating traditional understandings and practices, and in turn, negotiating their agency within secular and spiritual spaces. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, RGS 150, WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, SOC 110, SOC 120, EDS 206. (Cross-listed with RGS/SOC; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Occasionally.
  • Violence and Gender
    RGS 320 | 3 credits
    This course will examine the connections between gendered violence and power distributions within our society using an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective. Three specific types of violence and abuse will be examined in-depth: sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, and sexual assault. Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Offered Alternate Years.
  • Sex/Work
    RGS 328 | 3 credits
    In this course, students explore the topic of sex work. While course material will focus primarily on sex work in the United States, students also engage in comparative analyses in the international context. Participants in this course learn about the various types of labor that comprise sex work, as well as the different social, theoretical, feminist, regulatory, political, and legislative understandings and approaches to these forms of labor. Students also learn about the impacts that these understandings and approaches have on those engaged in these forms of labor and society more broadly, particularly as it relates to questions of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, RGS 150, WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, WGS 212, EDS 206, POL 205, PUB 210, SOC 110, SOC 120, SOC 150. Offered Fall - Odd Numbered Years.
  • Gender and Human Rights
    RGS 373 | 3 credits
    This course will provide an overview of transnational women's human rights movements in a variety of locations around the world; locations will vary with the instructor. Included in this overview will be the study of women's political participation as a human rights issue; women's bodily integrity as a human right; violence against women and reproductive sexual health and rights; human rights as a framework for social and economic and gender justice; and human rights as (quasi) legal accountability; UN agreements, treaties and venues of redress. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, RGS 150, WGS 100, WGS 130, WGS 150, EDS 206. Offered Fall - Odd Numbered Years.
  • 20th Century Civil Rights Movement
    RGS 409 | 3 credits
    This course explores the modern civil rights movement in the US and the struggle for African Americans and other marginalized groups to gain equal rights in voting, education, employment, housing, and other facets of life in the US. It begins with the MOWM and examines the seemingly completing philosophies of civil rights organizations such as CORE, SNCC, SCLC, BPP, AIM, SDS, NCAI, YLP, RG, NOW, NBFO, the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis, STAR and other civil rights organizations, leaders, and local people in shaping their own destinies. It highlights and interrogates major national and local political struggles rooted in racial, gender, and sexual identities and their reciprocal relationships with international political and anti-colonial movements from 1941 to the present. It concludes with exploring the link between convict leasing, prison reform movements, political prisoners, and the prison industrial complex as the New Jim Crow. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, WGS 100, EDS 206, HIS 210. (Cross-listed with HIS/RGS; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Spring.
  • The Disability Experience in the Contemporary World
    RGS 353 | 3 credits
    Disability studies is a field of study which offers a critique of commonly held assumptions regarding oppressive binaries such as normal/abnormal, disabled/non-disabled, rational/irrational, human/subaltern, white/racialized, civilized/savage - binaries that are justified by claiming that they are rooted in irrefutable "scientific" fact. This course aims at fostering a critical conversation among race, class, gender and sexuality studies, transnationalism (or global studies) and disability studies. Offered Alternate Years.
  • 20th Century Civil Rights Movement
    RGS 409 | 3 credits
    This course explores the modern civil rights movement in the US and the struggle for African Americans and other marginalized groups to gain equal rights in voting, education, employment, housing, and other facets of life in the US. It begins with the MOWM and examines the seemingly completing philosophies of civil rights organizations such as CORE, SNCC, SCLC, BPP, AIM, SDS, NCAI, YLP, RG, NOW, NBFO, the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis, STAR and other civil rights organizations, leaders, and local people in shaping their own destinies. It highlights and interrogates major national and local political struggles rooted in racial, gender, and sexual identities and their reciprocal relationships with international political and anti-colonial movements from 1941 to the present. It concludes with exploring the link between convict leasing, prison reform movements, political prisoners, and the prison industrial complex as the New Jim Crow. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, WGS 100, EDS 206, HIS 210. (Cross-listed with HIS/RGS; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Spring.
  • International Development and Culture Change
    ANT 307 | 3 credits
    In an increasingly global world, what does it mean for cultures to change? What does it mean for cultures to stay the same? This course examines what "development" means to people in different cultures, and how the concept of development is itself a product of colonialism, the Cold War, and the current focus on what has been called the neoliberal global economy. The goals of the course are 1) to provide students with a comprehensive study of what economic, social, cultural, and political development has meant over time, and 2) to illustrate the benefits, limitations, and consequences of "progress" and "development" in the lives of people all over the globe. Course examples will come from topics such as conservation, sustainability, and the environment; the preservation of indigenous peoples' ways of life; tourism and its effects in a global world; gender and development; disaster response and reconstruction; and the roles of social movements, development aid, and non-governmental organizations in international development. Offered Occasionally.
  • Search for Economic Justice
    ECO 212 | 3 credits
    Through a mixture of face-to-face, online, and experiential methods, students will explore, examine, and compare and contrast the concept of economic justice from several theoretical perspectives including Amartya Sen, John Rawls, and Fredrich Hayek. From there the course will explore human rights and economics, the role of formal and informal institutions and the role of globalization. Students will be exposed to examples of women's rights and how the expansion of personal justice relates to economic development. Lastly, students will be exposed to data and other tools used to measure economic justice, freedom and individual rights through an analysis of different databases on human rights and institutions. Students may only earn credit in one of the following: ANT 212, ECO 212, ENG 212, PHL 212, POL 212. Offered Occasionally.
  • Urban Policy
    PUB 332 | 3 credits
    An in-depth analysis of the forms, functions, and problems of urban governments with special attention to metropolitan areas. Field work and the materials of contemporary urban politics will be used. Prerequisite: POL 102 or junior standing. Offered Fall.
  • Law and Society
    SOC 313 | 3 credits
    This course examines the law as a social construction. This involves exploring the notion that the civil and criminal law, deviance and criminal behavior, and various actors in the legal and criminal justice arenas are not to be taken for granted as natural, inevitable, and objective but rather, as rooted in social and political forces. Thus, this course explores the historical development of the law, social change, inequalities in the application of the law, why we obey or fail to obey the law, and heavily debated contemporary US laws. Prerequisite: SOC 110 or SOC 120 or SOC 202 or ANT 101. Offered Annually.