We examine feminist and queer thought in a variety of global and historical contexts. Faculty specialize in literature, history, anthropology, film, and politics.
Students explore and analyze the creation, meaning, function and perpetuation of gender in human societies.
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SWAGS theses are interdisciplinary. Recent graduates have worked on projects such as the poetry of Alice Fulton, queer activism on the internet, and public health and abortion rights, among others.
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Founded in 1986 by prominent feminist scholars on campus, the department grew out of the intellectual and political excitement generated by women's and gender studies, broadly, and the growing presence of women at Amherst College.
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Our faculty and students work closely with the WGC, which promotes learning about and exploring gender through personal experience, academic inquiry, community organizing, activism, and discussion.
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The Queer Resource Center serves as the hub of the queer community on campus. The Center provides numerous events, resources and leadership opportunities for all students at Amherst College.
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The Center initiates and supports collaborative projects dedicated to engaged, critical feminist scholarship from diverse perspectives.
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SWAGS majors go on to graduate school at top universities, and work in fields ranging from academia, to journalism, to medicine, to the law.
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Amherst College mourns the passing of Martha Saxton, Professor of History and SWAGS and Elizabeth W. Bruss Reader, Emerita, on July 18, 2023.
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Congratulations to our co-winners Sofia Hincapie-Rodrigo '24 (SWAGS/Political Science) and Mica Nimkarn '24 (SWAGS/Anthropology)!
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Congratulations to Andres Valenzuela '23, winner of the David Kirp '65 Stonewall Prize!
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Congratulations to Melanie Schwimmer '23, winner of the Rose Olver Prize!
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The podcast, hosted by Nichelle Carr ’98 and launched by the College last fall in collaboration with WC1 Studios and Zeldavision, has been recognized among “the best of the internet" as the 2023 People's Voice Winner in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion category and 2023 Webby Winner in the Best Limited Series category.
Formerly based in Ashfield, MA, Paris Press was a small, lesbian-led literary press that published the experimental and often overlooked work of women writers. Between 1993 and 2018, the Press printed original poetry chapbooks, assembled anthologies, and resurfaced plays, memoirs, and novels that had gone out of print. Published authors include Bryher, Virginia Woolf, Zdena Berger, Emily Dickinson, and Muriel Rukeyser among others.
Archives and Special Collections acquired press director Jan Freeman’s archive in 2018. The collection consists of nearly 80 linear feet of paper records (including letters, early manuscripts, study guides) and several terabytes of digital material that reflect the responsibilities and challenges of operating a small press.
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Professor Rose Olver of Psychology and SWAGS was interviewed in 2008 as part of the Friends of the Amherst College Library: Oral History Project to capture on video interviews with members of the Amherst community whose involvement with the college has been long-standing and whose reminiscences seem likely to be of historical significance.
This course will explore the analytical power and limits of “queering” a range of topics from politics to the family to disability to the state. We will consider how trans studies has created new areas of scholarly inquiry, from an explosion of interest in trans history to a reconsideration of the relationship between women’s rights and gender liberation.
What can we learn about MLK and Malcolm X and from Magneto and Professor X? What can we learn about gendered and racialized depictions within comic books? As a catalyst to encourage looking at history from different vantage points, we will put comic books in conversation with the history of race and empire in the United States.
Bombay cinema, popularly known as “Bollywood Cinema,” is one of the largest film industries in the world. This course focuses on Bollywood cinema and its local and global offshoots to think about questions of gender, sexuality and agency.
SWAGS faculty are available each week to meet with students. Their offices are located in various buildings across campus.
Students delve into the social, economic, legal and political conditions that influence reproduction through a variety of classes across the five colleges. Students graduating in May 2020 should submit documents to their RHRJ advisor by April 20.
Students critically examine the relationship between sexual and gender identities, experiences, cultures and communities in a wide range of historical and political contexts through a variety of classes across the five colleges.
The Rose Olver Prize is for the senior thesis that best analyzes the construction of gender. The David Kirp 1965 Stonewall Prize is for student work on some facet of LGBTQ+ experience.
