Lafayette College, the highly rate liberal arts educational institution in Easton, Pennsylvania, has announced that its Women’s and Gender Studies program will now focus more on issues of sexuality. The program’s name will now be Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
The program defines sexuality studies as “inclusive of and pertaining to LGBTQ+ and heterosexual identities, as well as issues of sexuality more broadly in social, cultural and global contexts.” Mary Armstrong, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies and English and chair of the new program stated that “sexuality in its broadest sense has always been part of women’s studies.”
It is important that the program acknowledges an understanding of gender not as “not a fixed binary, and includes sexuality as separate and not necessarily a function of gender. We wanted the new name to show our commitment across all these issues,” Dr. Armstrong added.
Professor Armstrong joined the faculty at Lafayette College in 2009. She holds a Ph.D. in women’s studies from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.