Georgetown University offers a wide variety of graduate courses that teach students to critically engage with the most pressing issues of our time using a gender lens. In Fall 2025, many of such classes will be offered across the university—including several new classes.
Fall 2025 Graduate Courses
These graduate classes count towards the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) Graduate Certificate in Gender, Peace and Security. Certificate students will have priority access to required courses. For inquiries about certificate courses, please contact Dr. S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana, sao32@georgetown.edu.
Gender, International Security and Development (MSFS 5600 / GOVT 5669; CRN: 40002)
Professor: S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana
Time: Monday, 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Location: Car Barn 201
This class contextualizes gender issues and asks the question: how would we think about international peace, security, development approaches, and design intervention strategies if gender was treated as a central consideration in international affairs and peacebuilding programming? To answer this question, the class will explore both conceptual considerations related to gender and its practical application. This is a required course for the Gender, Peace and Security certificate.
Gender and Security Toolkit (MSFS 7610/ GOVT 5636; CRN: 38227 )
Professor: Aapta Garg
Time: Tuesday, 5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Location: White-Gravenor 209
This advanced seminar will teach you concrete skills for ensuring gender is considered in peacebuilding, security, and development fields. The course will explore critical skills—from gender mainstreaming and gender analysis to gender-sensitive budgeting, research, monitoring & evaluation, and advocacy. The course will enable students to capably serve as gender focal points and learn how practitioners have successfully advanced gender in their diplomacy, development, and defense work. This is a required course for the certificate.
Forgotten Women in Mass Crimes (MSFS 6610; CRN: 43275)
Professors: Patrick Desbois and Andrej Umansky
Time: Thursdays, 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Location: St. Mary’s G40
Why is violence against women and girls are so frequently forgotten or “silenced” in mass crimes and genocide? Why are acts of violence against women and girls so frequently obliterated from the Holocaust narrative? From the Roma genocide narrative? From Guatemala’s mass violence history? From ISIS’ terrorist narrative before the courts of law? From news emerging from Ukraine? Do ground investigations have the capacity to reveal the crimes against women, or are they choosing not to? This course will investigate these questions, especially taking into account the field investigations of Fr. Patrick Desbois and his team. Students will learn how to conduct forensic investigations of violence against women in the scope of genocide and mass crimes.The course is co-taught by Fr. Desbois, a forensic anthropologist and author of The Holocaust by Bullets and The Terrorist Factory and Dr. Andrej Umansky, a historian and lawyer will teach during this class. It will include mid-term and final exams. Class participation and preparation are essential.
Gender and Migration in Europe (GEST 5402; CRN: 38457 and ISIM 5402; CRN: 46092)
Professor: Joyce Mushaben
Time: Tuesdays, 12:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Location: Car Barn 317
Created at a time when women were traditionally excluded from the exercise of power, the European Union is now generally characterized as the most “gender-friendly” political institution on the planet. The “feminization” of migration is not a new phenomenon, but existing EU policies have exacerbated the problems of physical insecurity, economic disadvantage and social exclusion confronting female migrants over the last decade. This course analyzes a complicated web of labor migration patterns, refugee flows, family unification trends, asylum policies and human-trafficking challenges intricately connected to globalized production and consumption chains. It addresses the “securitization” of border controls introduced in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, relegating women’s rights as human rights to the back burner in violation of the EU gender acquis. We begin by differentiating among various types of migration, and the double-jeopardy to which male-normed legal categories subject women, children, ethnic /religious minorities and LGBTI groups. Drawing on interdisciplinary sources, we explore the role of international norms, expanded Treaty provisions and national backlash in the EU’s efforts to establish common migration, integration and asylum policies, with special attention to the reform efforts of the EU’s first female Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen.
Gender and Sexuality in S Asia (ASST 4045; CRN 41654)
Professor: Cecilia Van Hollen
Time: Tuesdays, 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Location: Intercultural Center 203
This course provides students with an introduction to anthropological approaches to the study of gender and sexuality in South Asia through ethnographic books, articles and documentaries. We will explore how cultural ideas about gender and sexuality are constructed, maintained, and challenged in the South Asian context, keeping in mind South Asia’s global connections from the colonial period to the present. Key topics of the course include the intersections of gender/sexuality, work, and migration; gender, class and caste; LGBTQ+ identities and activism; gender/sexuality and nationalism; gender/sexuality and religion; gender/sexuality, politics and law; and gender, health and the body.
Gender and Terrorism (SEST 6544; CRN 46058)
Professor: Devorah Margolin
Time: Mondays, 5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Location: Intercultural Center 210B
Women have often been overlooked and understudied within violent extremist movements. From Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers to Chechnya’s Black Widows to the Al Khansaa Brigade of ISIS, women have played critical roles in terrorist organizations across the globe for decades. As men often take on more prominent and violent roles within terrorist groups, women’s contributions to violent extremism can often be underplayed, underexplored, and misunderstood. Despite the constant repetition of narratives surrounding women’s inherent peacefulness, research has shown that women involved in violent extremism provide logistical support, lend reputation to a cause, facilitate recruitment, and increase group stability. Moreover, gendered approaches to recruitment, processes of radicalization, and the roles that women can play in preventing violent extremism (PVE) and countering violent extremism (CVE) processes are less understood. From theoretical foundations to policy implications, this course will address pressing terrorism threats to national and international security with an often overlooked gender lens.
This course will explore gender dynamics in radicalization, conflict (as victims and perpetrators), and disengagement. Gender is a social construct that defines relationships between and among the sexes, and gendered beliefs (overt and implicit) lay at the heart of many terrorist groups that seek to determine appropriate behavior for both men and women. This course will explore how groups use gender dynamics to recruit, mobilize, and utilize men and women for their own strategic advantages. By better understanding women’s participation and gender dynamics in violent extremism, academics and practitioners are better able to leverage this knowledge into well-informed policy and actionable strategies to counter and combat it.
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and Power-Based Violence (GOVT 5668; CRN: 42493)
Professor: Veronica Quinonez
Time: Thursdays, 5:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Location: Intercultural Center 209A
This course will examine various forms of power based violence including intimate partner violence, stalking, and sexual violence as it impacts Indigenous Americans. We will review theories about frequency and prevalence of power based violence in Indigenous communities of the Americas and larger historical contributors to violence against Indigenous Americans. We will later evaluate current systems and policies that exist in relation to power based violence and how these institutions can help or hinder Indigenous survivors. By the end of the course we will focus on Indigenous-led solutions, organizations, and perspectives to end violence. The course culminates in a final project where students are asked to analyze an existing Indigenous led program, policy, law, etc rooted in violence prevention or intervention.
(En)gendered Security (SEST 6639; CRN 47785)
Professor: Mariya Omelicheva
Time: Thursdays, 6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Location: Walsh 491
This course is designed to illuminate the multiple and complex intersections of gender with security. It advances and assesses three arguments. First, gender is conceptually and theoretically necessary to thinking about security itself and central questions of security, to include war, conflict, and peace. Second, gender is indispensable in explaining the complex cause-and-effect relationships over a range of security issues. And, third, gender is important from the policy standpoint for devising sustainable and effective approaches for making the worl a more secure place for everyone, regardless of their social identity. By engaging the UN Women Gender and Security Toolkit as an organizing concept, the course proceeds through a series of topics dedicated to security sector governance, military, defense and gender, security sector reforms and gender, justice, and gender, law enforcement and gender, border management and gender, and intersectionality of gender with other social markers, such as race and social class. By highlighting the complexities of integrating the findings of gender studies into policy, the course will be of interest to both practitioners and students of security studies, gender studies, and IR in general.
Empowerment and Resistance: Social Movements in Action (MSFS 6655)
Professor: S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana
Empowerment and resistance are powerful forces that have shaped social and political change throughout history. Marginalized communities—including women, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and LGBTQ+ groups—have long organized to challenge systems of oppression and fight for justice, equity, and representation. While research shows that peace and stability thrive when marginalized voices are included in decision-making, persistent challenges such as political polarization, rising authoritarianism, and colonial legacies continue to obstruct meaningful progress.
Empowerment and Resistance: Social Movements in Action delves into these dynamics, exploring how social movements have emerged as transformative agents in resisting oppression and advancing rights. By examining both historical and contemporary movements, this course highlights the strategies, setbacks, and triumphs of resistance efforts across diverse cultural and political contexts. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the intersectional forces that shape social movements and develop practical skills to support justice and equity in an era of mounting anti-democratic pressures.
While this is a graduate-level seminar, advanced undergraduates will be accepted with instructor approval to create a more dynamic and interdisciplinary classroom environment.
Undergraduate Women, Peace and Security Courses
In addition to graduate courses, the University also offers a variety of undergraduate courses that engage with gender, peace, and security. We recommend these classes as a starting point, though Georgetown offers many wonderful options.
- Gender, International Security, and Foreign Policy, Professors S. Ayse Kadayifci-Orellana (CRN:38818)
- Violence/Gender/Human Rights, Professor You-me Park (CRN: 2260)
- Psychology of Gender, Professor Deborah Stearns (CRN: 47257)
- Sociology of Gender, Professor Kathleen Guidroz (CRN: 47154)
- Gender and the Law, Professor Tricia Hoefling (CRN: 45227)
- Decolonizing Feminism, Professor Safoura Nourbakhsh (CRN: 47164)
- Gender, Politics, and Performance, Professor Brady Forrest (CRN: 47163)
- Women, Poverty, and Reproduction, Professor Tricia Hoefling (CRN: 45229)
- Muslim Women and the West, Professor Shenila Khoja-Moolji (CRN: 47389)
- Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation, Professor Anthony Jenkins (CRN: 28740)
