Main Content
About the Major
The Ethnic, Gender, and Labor Studies major examines how communities form and are transformed, with a focus on the relationship between social class, race and ethnicity, and gender. This major has a special focus on African-Americans, Latino/as, Native Americans, Asian Americans, the multiracial working class, and Women and Gender Studies.
Through a wide variety of courses in the social sciences and humanities, students explore historical roots of various communities and analyze movements to facilitate labor and community organizing, coalition building, conflict resolution, group empowerment, and movements for social change.
Learning Outcomes
As a student in Ethnic, Gender, and Labor Studies, you will develop the following skills:
- Learn to assess socially meaningful identities in a variety of cultural and critical contexts, and to communicate across social boundaries in a multi-cultural world.
- Learn how to integrate and link ethnic, gender and labor studies.
- Develop comparative research and critical thinking skills for understanding the range of lived experiences in local and global communities and to understand how power operates in society.
- Develop research and writing skills in an integrative learning approach including a range of humanities and social science perspectives.
- Understand various analytical and/or rhetorical frameworks related to various areas of study within ethnic, gender and labor studies and relevant to the world of work, civic engagement and community development.
You will have access to available internships and directed study that allow focus on areas of greatest interest
Career Options
Combined with internships, independent studies and seminars, EGL graduates are well-prepared to pursue a range of careers in private and public employment, in community organizations, non-profit and human resource management, and in business and labor unions.
This major also prepares students for graduate studies in law, criminal justice, education, public administration, social work, in fields of human rights, urban policy, history, sociology, political science and anthropology.
Labor Studies Option
The Labor Studies option offers courses on the experience of work and workers in modern market economies. Courses focus on the political, economic and social developments that shape working life, along with workers' impact on society. Topics include unions and the labor movement, social class and inequality, the changing nature of work, international political economy and workplace culture. Labor Studies takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding these issues and emphasizes the connections between race, class, and gender in an economic context.
Gender Studies Option
The Gender Studies option offers courses that focus on gender roles and gender identity from a variety of theoretical approaches. These courses not only investigate the concepts of gender and sexuality, but also explore the ways in which these concepts intersect with such diverse phenomena as society, politics, literature, globalization, music, economics, art, poverty, communication, race, film, work, and popular culture. Gender Studies includes Women's Studies, Men's Studies, and Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Studies and emphasizes interdisciplinary scholarship.
Ethnic Studies Option
The Ethnic Studies Option allows students the opportunity to study race and ethnicity through an interdisciplinary lens. Students interested in this option take courses using an ethnic specific approach (i.e. African American, Chicano/Latino, Asian American, Native American), as well as courses using a comparative approach to examining the contributions of people from diverse racial and ethnic groups to various areas of study including economics, gender studies, history literature, politics, and sociology within global and local contexts.
