Cornell University Registrar

Program Description

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Gay, & Transgender (LGBT) Studies is devoted to the study of sexuality and its importance to the organization of social relations, literature, art, and embodied life. It is primarily concerned with the representations and lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects, even as these subjects remain stubbornly and productively difficult to define once and for all. LGBT Studies is an interdisciplinary program, and it is likewise open to a variety of perspectives on the stability of its constituent identity categories.

Indeed, central to the curriculum is a sense that sexuality varies across time and place, serves political ends, and cannot be thought in isolation from gender, class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, and physical ability. LGBT Studies emphasizes both the diachronic differences in the constitution of sexualities (how sexuality is different in different historical periods) as well as the synchronic ones (how sexuality takes shape within particular texts, periods, or populations).

This is a minor field. Application for admission is made only to the major fields. After matriculation, a student may select minor subjects from the major or minor fields.

Graduate Minor Requirements

For students in graduate research degrees, earning a “minor” in a specific subject or concentration is not explicitly linked to the completion of coursework but is instead defined by the student’s special committee. Faculty serving on the student’s special committee each represent a concentration. Because many graduate faculty are active in more than one graduate field or academic discipline, students and faculty should be clear about which concentration will be represented when a committee is formed.