At a time when some states and public universities are eliminating gender, sexuality and related studies, Rice University’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality (CSWGS) stands strong as an example of interdisciplinary scholarship and advocacy. Established in 2006 with roots dating to 1992, the center has evolved into a crucial part of Rice’s academic fabric, providing vital insight into the societal structures that affect marginalized groups and preparing students to lead in a world that increasingly demands such knowledge.
“Rice has opportunities that many other schools in conservative states don’t have right now,” said Carly Thomsen, who recently joined Rice’s Department of English as an associate professor and CSWGS-affiliated faculty member. “What does it mean to do feminist studies academic work in this moment? What are our obligations? What are the possibilities? I’m really excited to think about those questions from the position of being a faculty member at Rice.”
The center offers a rich curriculum that enhances students’ effectiveness across career paths from social service to medicine, education and business. Courses run the gamut: Chaucer, Queer Cinema, The American West and Its Others, Psychology of Gender and Feminist Theory are just a few of the offerings this fall.
“We’re related to essentially every major,” said CSWGS director Lora Wildenthal, who is also the John Antony Weir Professor of History. “I tell students, ‘If you’re dealing with people, you’re dealing with gender and sexuality.’”
The interdisciplinary nature of these courses allows students to decode societal norms, making connections between personal experiences and broader issues of social justice.
“I was drawn to this role because it combines a rigorous research environment with community engagement,” said associate English professor Michael Dango, also a new appointment. “Rice’s CSWGS leads among peer institutions in exploring queer and feminist thinking and putting it into practice. Universities have an obligation to become a resource for their communities, and I’m excited about how Rice is leading the way.”
Rice’s commitment to this field of study began long before the center’s formal establishment. As early as the 1980s, faculty members started offering courses that would later become the center’s foundation. After becoming a major then a program, the center was founded in 2006 and Rosemary Hennessy, the L.V. Favrot Chair in Humanities and professor of English literature, stepped up as the center’s first director.
“When I arrived I encountered such an interesting combination of experienced and committed feminist work and a faculty willing to inaugurate something new with the consolidated energy of renewed and established commitment,” Hennessy said. “I was thrilled to be welcomed by feminist faculty like myself attuned to a model of collaborative leadership and eager to launch the center as a hub of groundbreaking curriculum, research and community outreach.”
Rapid and organic growth followed over the next nine years she served as director with the center fully embracing Rice’s outreach to the greater Houston community.
The center works directly with organizations outside Rice through what evolved years ago into CSWGS’ Seminar and Practicum two-semester course sequence. The Seminar and Practicum courses are a popular capstone experience for seniors, who sometimes also choose to complete a two-semester senior thesis.
“We now have a robust public-facing mission,” Hennessy said. “This year we celebrate 100 partnerships with 57 Houston nonprofits and programming that models the reciprocal relationship between academic work and community needs and expertise.”
More than 30 years after it first formed as a listing of relevant courses, CSWGS brings together scholars from various disciplines to offer an undergraduate major, a minor and a graduate certificate as well as postdoctoral fellowships and research opportunities for students and faculty.
“In addition to educating our students, we have a public-facing event program, including the Gray/Wawro Lectures, that contributes to educating the Houston public, and we have a commitment to fostering the research of the faculty who interact with us through assisting with their publications,” Wildenthal said.
Helena Michie, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor in Humanities, a CSWGS founding faculty member and multiple-term center director, led the center through an external review in November 2022 before Wildenthal joined CSWGS as director in January 2023.
“All of 2023 was evaluating, ‘What do we think about their recommendations? How will we respond to them?’" Wildenthal said.
The review underscored the need to strengthen the center’s focus on sexuality studies, an area where student interest was high but faculty expertise had lagged.
“Our program began with a focus on the study of women and women’s lives because they were so often not considered in academic work and elsewhere,” said Brian Riedel, CSWGS’s staff associate director. “We learned more over time and expanded our name gradually to acknowledge that growth, at first to include gender and then also sexuality. I see us continuing to teach and research in these three areas and remaining open to new things as we come to understand more about the diversity of human life.”
In 2024, the center collaborated with the English department to hire two new faculty members, Dango and Thomsen, both experts in queer studies and sexuality studies.
“Built into the English department’s job call was an expectation that people will be doing feminist- and queer studies-informed work,” Thomsen said. “It’s exciting to see an institutional investment in this approach.”
For Thomsen, bringing expertise in feminist and queer theory to Rice is a return to the campus. After earning her Ph.D. in feminist studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Thomsen held a postdoctoral fellowship at Rice, where she began developing her book “Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming.” This work, along with her film “In Plain Sight,” questions the assumption that it is terrible to be LGBTQ+ in a rural place. It also questions the assumption that individual visibility necessarily leads to political rights or liberation. Thomsen researches reproductive justice, food justice, intersectionality and, most recently, pelvic health. Thomsen’s project-based teaching methods encourage students to apply course material beyond the classroom, creating practical and innovative projects such as the first Reproductive Justice Mini Golf Course in Middlebury, Vermont.
Dango is a scholar of contemporary art and literature with a focus on feminist political theory, including theories of aesthetics, violence, 1970s feminism and racial capitalism. His book “Crisis Style: The Aesthetics of Repair” explores the intersection of aesthetic and political categories. His book on Madonna’s “Erotica” examines the fascination she has exerted on queer audiences for so many years and uses her music to introduce queer theory to a broad audience.
“My courses tend to entangle my identities as a scholar of contemporary U.S. art, literature and media and as a theorist of sexuality more broadly, especially the role of sexual violence in relation to racial and class conflicts across the world,” Dango said.
The addition of these scholars has bolstered the center’s curriculum and reinforced its position as a leader in gender and sexuality studies.
“The Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality was already essential to Rice as a comprehensive Research 1 university,” Hennessy said. “I am exceedingly pleased that the dean of humanities, the provost and the president recognize the importance of the center to Rice’s mission by hiring two associate professors who are experts in sexuality studies and who will contribute directly to the center’s work.”
In partnership with the Humanities Research Center, CSWGS was also able to add a postdoctoral associate for 2024-26, bringing Vic Overdorf on board to join Anzi Dong. Both will teach and advance their research while at Rice.
Overdorf, a scholar and teacher of queer history and the carceral state, focuses particularly on the role of medical institutions in gendered subjugation.
“The intersection of gender and science that this position emphasizes is precisely where I know I need to go next with my research,” Overdorf said. “I want to be able to do justice to the stories that I have come to know in my research thus far, and Rice is the perfect place to do this work.”
“I believe my research has the power to render visible the intimate connections among differentially marginalized communities across borders,” said Dong, who explores grassroots feminist politics and queer kinship formations in neoliberal authoritarian China. “I wanted the institution that hired me to also see the value and political significance of my research. I think CSWGS appreciates what I’m doing. My scholarship, activism and teaching efforts are valued by the center, and I feel recognized and supported to continue my work. ”
CSWGS’ postdoctoral program has a reputation nationally as one of the leading fellowships in feminist research, Hennessy said.
“We are exceedingly proud that almost every one of our fellows have moved on to tenure track positions, and some now have achieved tenure at leading universities,” she said.
Curricular reform has always been part of the center’s evolution. Most recently, based on recommendations from the external reviewers, CSWGS merged its LGBTQ+ studies course with its introductory course on women, gender and sexuality to create a new foundational course. The new course, co-taught by Wildenthal and Dong in fall 2024, represents a collaborative effort to ensure a consistent foundation for the curriculum. The center has also created a new lower-level theory course, Theorizing Gender and Sexuality, which is being taught by philosophy professor Elizabeth Brake in fall 2024. The creation of both courses was collectively workshopped by interested CSWGS-affiliated faculty, who created detailed guidelines and aids for all future instructors.
“Every CSWGS major and minor must take both of those classes,” Wildenthal said. “In doing so, we’ve created a grounding in gender studies and sexuality studies together.”
Those students who have declared a CSWGS major, minor or graduate certificate are important to the center, but Wildenthal said it’s also important to serve all Rice students.
“We want them to be culturally literate in this field," Wildenthal said.
This mission is increasingly important as students from diverse backgrounds seek to understand gender and sexuality in a world where these topics are often politicized.
“The stakes feel higher, and I think there’s broader awareness of those stakes,” Riedel said. “We can point to a long record of attempts to shape public opinion using gender and sexuality: Just think of Rosie the Riveter or the Lavender Scare in the U.S., the global debates over the hijab or the one-child policy in China. What is different today — and what keeps the work of CSWGS significant — is that we can use our knowledge of that long record to see present-day manipulations of gender and sexuality for what they are. For example, learning about the history of reproductive technologies and their impact on women’s quality of life changes how I understand debates about IVF or access to sex education.”
As CSWGS adapts to new challenges, it remains a vital part of Rice’s commitment to addressing the most pressing issues of our time through cutting-edge research, innovative teaching and community engagement.
“In the state of Texas where women’s lives and reproductive health, informed knowledge of gender and sexuality and universities as protectors of critical inquiry are all so embattled, the center is more needed than ever,” Hennessy said.
Learn more about CSWGS here.