Graduate Minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Studies

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).

Students will designate a member of their special committee, drawn from the list of LGBT field faculty, to guide research in the minor area of LGBT Studies, recommend classes, and attest to competency in LGBT Studies at the time of the A-Exam and dissertation defense. That committee member will inform the LGBT Studies DGS of their student's progress in fulfilling minor requirements. Fill out the LGBT Studies Graduate Minor application form here: 

LGBT Studies graduate minor application

Upon completion of the minor and graduate degree requirements, the student will be awarded an LGBT Studies Graduate Minor Certificate.

Director of Graduate Studies is Kate McCullough.

This is a minor field. Application for admission to the Cornell Graduate School is made only to the major fields. 

Biddy Martin Graduate Prize

Submissions may consist of an essay, poem, article, thesis chapter, music recording, artwork...anything created during your time at Cornell. 

For more information and a list of past winners, please click here

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