On the first day of my Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies (G&SS) course at Bryn Mawr this semester there were so many students in attendance that we had to start stealing chairs from other classrooms. After two hours, all seventy-five of us crammed into a room meant for a small discussion course, and my professor made a note to contact the Registrar’s office to get a second section approved for the spring.
I was surprised to find that this class wasn’t unique; according to Professor Bridget Gurtler, who’s been teaching similar G&SS classes at Bryn Mawr for the last ten years, it’s not unusual for her classes to be oversubscribed by 30 to 40 students. And it’s not just Gurtler’s courses either. Sharon Ullman, the previous chair of the G&SS department, had been teaching over-enrolled courses since she came to Bryn Mawr in 1992. “The reality is there’s a huge interest [in these types of courses],” Ullman explained.
Despite this interest, Bryn Mawr remains the only Seven Sisters college that does not offer a Gender and Sexuality Studies major, other than an independent one. Students can only minor or concentrate in the G&SS program.
“We are very much in the minority in top liberal arts colleges in not having a [G&SS] major,” Ullman pointed out. Considering over 400 colleges and universities now have one, it is strange not only because Bryn Mawr is up there with the elite liberal arts colleges, but also because you would think a historically women’s college would prioritize a department that used to be referred to as “Women’s Studies.”
Professor Anita Kurimay, the current G&SS program director, explained that regardless of interest from students, the Bryn Mawr administration is ultimately in charge of allocating resources to departments, and historically their priorities have been elsewhere.
The Gender and Sexuality Studies—or Feminist and Gender Studies Program, as it was known before its name-change in 2005—was initially created as a bi-college program. The Haverford and Bryn Mawr programs split around 2017 due to scheduling issues, though neither school has ever offered a major. After the split, Haverford was the first to hire a full-time faculty director explicitly for their G&SS program, something Bryn Mawr has yet to do. “I was a little jealous honestly,” confessed Ullman, about Haverford’s hiring.
Because G&SS classes are spread throughout every single Humanities and Social Science department, along with Biology, the popularity of these courses is less obvious. But rest assured, it is there.
“This is not some tiny fringe thing,” explained Ullman. She has seen the program flourish since she came to Bryn Mawr, but explains that because the G&SS program is so uniquely interdisciplinary, it is can be more difficult to easily see the intense interest. However, since 2010, over 10,000 students have taken a G&SS course at Bryn Mawr.
Those numbers are only growing, considering the “fall of Roe V Wade skyrocketed interest” in G&SS courses, Kurimay has noticed.
Ullman, Kurimay and Gurtler ultimately agreed that now there is more than enough student interest in G&SS for it to be considered for a major.
However, in order to be considered, a program must have established, usually tenured, faculty and enough resources to prove they would be able to support the higher academic demands of a major. Non-major programs like the G&SS program are rarely given those kinds of resources and often rely on interim faculty or professors from other departments to teach their courses.
“It’s a vicious circle,” Kurimay remarked, as the only way for a program to obtain more resources is to prove they already have enough.
Even once the Bryn Mawr faculty members are able to propose and garner interest for a major, ultimately it is the administration that makes the final call. “Colleges have their own sense of what kind of positions they are going to grant the green light to,” Kurimay explained, and in years past the G&SS program hasn’t been a priority. Other programs have been turned into majors in the interim, such as the Education major that was added earlier this year.
Luckily, priorities change, and this decades-long push to create a G&SS major is finally gaining some traction. The overturning of Roe V. Wade—among many other salient gender and sexuality conversations permeating the political world right now—has made students and professors more vocal about their necessity of G&SS courses, and the administration has no doubt noticed.
Five years ago the previous Bryn Mawr provost, Professor Mary Osirim, gave the G&SS steering committee the go-ahead to begin proposing a major. This process was derailed by Covid, like so many other things, but is picking back up where it left off.
The G&SS steering committee, led by interested faculty like Kurimay, has drafted a proposal to be submitted to the administration later this academic year. They are cautiously optimistic that their proposal will be accepted and there will be a Gender and Sexuality Studies major within the next year or two.
