As an MSU Denver Online student, you receive all benefits of in-person students, including 24/7 tutoring and mental health support, plus dedicated Success Coaches for your online journey.
Declare a fully online major and you can get up to $1000 per semester in scholarships that are not need based.
The Gender, Women, and Sexualities Studies program uses no-cost readings for most required courses, so you save on textbooks every semester.
The online Gender, Women, and Sexualities Studies B.A. teaches you to analyze how systems of power shape people’s lives and to act on what you learn. You’ll build skills in critical analysis, research, writing, policy analysis, and ethical reasoning that translate directly into work across nonprofits, public agencies, education, healthcare, and advocacy.
The curriculum is grounded in intersectional, transnational, and decolonial scholarship. You’ll examine how gender, race, sexuality, class, ability, and global power structures intersect in contemporary issues like healthcare access, reproductive justice, immigration, climate change, education policy, and movements for abolition. Every major completes an internship, on-site or fully remote, that puts theory into practice and builds a professional network before graduation.
At many universities, gender studies courses are taught by faculty borrowed from other departments. At MSU Denver, the majority of your lower- and upper-division courses are taught by faculty who specialize in gender, women, and sexualities studies. They publish in the field, design the curriculum, and are prepared to mentor majors from your first introductory course through your senior experience.
Their expertise spans transnational sexualities and queer Latin American studies, queer and trans of color critique, decolonial and critical race feminisms, Black feminism and African Diaspora literature, feminist interventions in global politics, and the intersections of gender, religion, and law. Faculty are accessible. Students in the program consistently say they’re treated as collaborators and that faculty work alongside them.
The Gender Institute for Teaching and Advocacy (GITA) sponsors nine scholarships specifically for students in the Gender, Women, and Sexualities Studies program. Awards support students with a range of backgrounds and goals, including activism, financial need, migrant family experience, survivors of violence, and degree completion.
GITA also offers scholarship tutoring, where staff help you identify and apply for awards inside the department and across the university.
Foundations of the Field. Build a working vocabulary in feminist, queer, and trans studies and learn how the field developed across activist, academic, and global movements.
Power, Privilege, and Intersectionality. Examine how gender, race, sexuality, class, ability, and citizenship interact to shape access, opportunity, and lived experience.
Feminist and Queer Theory. Engage the major theoretical traditions that drive contemporary scholarship and activism, from foundational feminist thought to queer theory and decolonial critique.
Research Methods for Social Change. Learn feminist and queer research methods and apply them to questions you care about in communities, institutions, and policy.
The program also gives you space to specialize and engage with issues that shape contemporary life.
Bodies, Health, and Reproductive Justice. Study how gender and sexuality shape healthcare access, embodiment, and movements for reproductive autonomy.
Transnational and Decolonial Perspectives. Look beyond U.S. borders to understand how gender and sexuality operate in global contexts, migration, and movements for decolonization.
Social Justice, Activism, and Advocacy. Examine the histories and strategies of feminist and queer organizing and develop your own capacity for advocacy and leadership.
Gender, Sexuality, and Law. Study how legal systems shape gendered violence, victim advocacy, human rights, and structural inequality, and how feminist legal frameworks push for change.
