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Honors

IHN student Kirsten Metter and her advisor Sarah Frisch smiling with Kirsten's award

The Honors Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is available to both our Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies majors and to non-majors.

Honors theses may be comprised of either a research paper or a creative project.

Honors students are advised by Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Affiliated Faculty. We recommend preparing for one's Honors Project as early as possible by taking courses in your area of interest and by building relationships with potential faculty advisors.

For more information on the requirements for our Honors program, visit our bulletin entry

For important dates and deadlines for the 2025-2026 application year, visit our cohort dates document.

Applications to the honors program should be submitted to the Student Services Manager.  Applications consist of a thesis proposal, current transcript, and application form. There are two application deadlines for 2025-2026. Priority applications are due March 14, 2025 and regular applications are due May 9, 2025. Priority applications will be considered for available funding opportunities.

Download the Honors proposal form

Admission and Requirements for FGSS Majors

Admission

The honors program offers an opportunity to do independent research for a senior thesis. It is open to students with a grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 or better in course work in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, or demonstrated academic competence. Students should begin the application process by consulting with the Program Director or the Associate Director as early as possible in the junior year, preferably by the end of Winter Quarter.

During the application process, students design a project in consultation with their proposed thesis advisers and the Associate Director. A proposal describing the project and the number of units to be taken toward the honors directed project must be submitted to the program office for final approval. All projects must have a primary focus on gender or sexuality.

NOTE: FEMGEN 199A, B, C (Honors Seminar) and FEMGEN 105 (Honors Work) units do NOT count towards the 63 units for the major or the 30 units for the minor.

Requirements

  1. Students enroll for 2-3 units per quarter in FEMGEN199AFEMGEN199B, and FEMGEN199C Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Honors Workshop.
  2. Students in the honors program also enroll for FEMGEN105 Honors Work with their respective advisers, for an additional 2-3 units each quarter.  The combined number of units in 199 and 105 must be at least 12 units and a maximum of 18.  
  3. A semifinal draft of the thesis is due on April 17 of the senior year.
  4. The final thesis must be submitted by May 1. The completed thesis must be submitted with the Thesis Completion Form, which requires the adviser's signature of approval. Creative projects must include a section of critical analysis.
For Majors in Other Departments

Interdisciplinary Honors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for majors in other departments or programs, as distinguished from honors for students pursuing a major in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, is intended to complement study in any major. Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minors who wish to pursue honors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies should apply through the process for non-majors. 

Admission

The Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies honors program is open to students majoring in any field with an overall GPA of 3.5 or better or demonstrated academic competence.

Students must complete the following with a grade of 'B+' or better:

  • Either FEMGEN 101 Introduction to Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies or FEMGEN 103 Feminist and Sexuality Theories and Methods Across the Disciplines, and two other FGSS courses that relate to their research topic.

Students should begin the application process by consulting with the Program Director or the Associate Director as early as possible in the junior year, preferably by the end of Winter Quarter. During the application process, students design a project in consultation with their proposed thesis advisers and the Associate Director. A proposal describing the project and the number of units to be taken toward the honors directed project must be submitted to the program office for final approval. All projects must have a primary focus on gender or sexuality.

Requirements

  1. Students enroll for 2-3 units per quarter in FEMGEN 199AFEMGEN 199B, and FEMGEN 199C Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Honors Workshop.
  2. Students in the honors program also enroll for FEMGEN 105 Honors Work with their respective advisers, for an additional 2-3 units each quarter.  The combined number of units in 199 and 105 must be 10-15 units over the course of senior year..
  3. A semifinal draft of the thesis is due early in Spring Quarter of the senior year.
  4. The final thesis must be submitted by the Monday of the 6th week of the Spring Quarter. The completed thesis must be submitted with the Thesis Completion Form, which requires the adviser's signature of approval. Creative projects must include a section of critical analysis.

Undergraduate Advising and Research Office

The Undergraduate Advising and Research (UAR) office provides information and guidelines about grant and fellowship support for Honors theses and other undergraduate research projects.

Honors Theses: Research or Creative

Theses

Research Theses

Because FGSS is an interdisciplinary department, our honors theses vary widely in style and method. Some students perform close readings of texts—historical, fictional, visual, and spacial--and situate those readings in the context of a broader academic conversations. Students in the social sciences may conduct research involving human subjects via surveys, interviews, and field observations; these research projects may be qualitative or quantitative or may take a mixed-methods approach. Still other projects are historical or theoretical in nature. Whatever a student's discipline, FGSS offers mentorship and guidance to complete a thesis that is academically viable in both the world of sexuality and gender studies and in the student's home department.

Through managing their thesis projects, students develop skills in research methodology and analysis in addition to expertise in their research topic. Students work closely with their research advisors and FGSS honors cohort. They also attend weekly FGSS workshops and lectures geared toward refining various aspects of their projects. These weekly check-ins facilitate students' exchange of ideas, adherence to a realistic timeline, and self-awareness of their research methodology.

Creative Theses

The creative honors thesis in FGSS offers students from all disciplines the opportunity to build a creative project around an insight, idea, quandary, or mission associated with feminism, gender, and/or sexuality. This project will build on rigorous academic research in the domain of FGSS addressed by the project. Creative theses may be in any medium and must be accompanied by an academic paper that articulates the implicit argument of the project, the academic literature on which the project builds, and the other creative projects with which it is in conversation. Creative thesis writers will work closely with their advisors and with their peers in FGSS to develop their project's intention, form, and scope. Past creative projects have included short story cycles, novellas, poetry, memoir, graphic storytelling, and film.

Students interested in completing a creative honors thesis with FGSS should meet with potential advisors and with FGSS honors faculty to discuss possible structures of their thesis and to develop a plan that would meet FGSS requirements while staying true to the guiding intentions of the project. The proposal submitted to the honors program should be understood as a "pitch" that will necessarily evolve over the course of the honors year. Students will benefit from mentors in FGSS and a tight-knit group of peers who will help to keep the project on track and will challenge the author to grow as a scholar and artist. FGSS encourages creativity and welcomes the opportunity to work with students on projects that exceed the traditional purview of honors theses.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an FGSS honors thesis?
What kind of theses can you write?
Who is eligible to write an FGSS honors thesis?
What is an example of an FGSS honors thesis?
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2024-2025 FGSS Honors Thesis Projects

A selfie of Syd in a dorm room, wearing a baby blue collared blouse and carrying a puple totebag.

Syd Gavela

Divine Femininity in the Digital Age: Postfeminism, Aesthetic Entrepreneurship, and the Politics of Empowerment

Born and raised in Southern California’s Inland Empire, Syd (they/she) is a queer, mixed-race, soon-to-be college graduate representing the Andean diaspora (Pomasqui, Ecuador). Their academic and creative interests explore decolonial and Indigenous feminisms, gendered and racialized labor, and digital culture. You can find them drinking matcha, practicing yoga, or vibing to neo-soul playlists. Syd carries the love, resilience, histories, and sacrifices of their ancestors with them wherever they go. Their thesis examines digital content promoting the "divine feminine" on the video sharing platform, YouTube. By examining content creators Teal Swan, Jillz Guerin, and Tam Kaur, they trace how divine femininity functions as both a historical ideology and a distinct postfeminist phenomenon. Drawing upon theories of aesthetic entrepreneurship and postfeminist sensibility, they argue that divine femininity represents a spiritualized and commodified mode of femininity that reinforces neoliberal, racialized, and gender-essentialist hierarchies. Rather than challenging dominant power structures, digital divine feminine content recasts colonial gender roles in the language of self-care and personal transformation, offering a commodified sense of empowerment that reproduces the logics of colonial racial capitalism.

Eva stands in front of a green treeline with a wooden ladder leaning against a tree behind them

Eva Jones

Feminism’s Woman Question: Investments and Disinvestments from the Category of ‘Woman’ across Late Twentieth-Century Feminist Thought

Hailing from the valleys and gorges of Oregon, Eva Astrid Jones’s curiosities pool at the feet of contemporary and historical feminist movements, searching for inspiration and stories in lesbian histories of gender transgression and solidarity. During her time at Stanford, Eva engaged in anti-sexual violence organizing efforts and cooperative living communities. They work at the Clayman Institute of Gender Research, where they worked under Dr. Susan Stryker to support the newest edition of Transgender History, amongst other projects. Eva is receiving a Bachelor’s of Arts and Science, having studied Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies concentrating in Queer and Feminist Histories, as well as, Freshwater Systems Engineering. Next year, she will work towards completing her graduate studies in Hydrology at Stanford. “Feminism’s Woman Question: Investments and Disinvestments from the Category of ‘Woman’ across Late Twentieth-Century Feminist Thought” interrogates the ideological struggle over the category of woman in late twentieth-century feminist thought. Through a comparative analysis this paper traces how different feminist traditions alternately invested in woman as a foundational political subject or disinvested from it as a patriarchal constriction. The project reveals how the movement’s shifting boundaries redefined not only who could claim feminism, but what political work feminism was imagined to do. As the category of woman became an increasingly stable identity rather than a construct to be dismantled, feminism’s earlier commitments to collective liberation were displaced. In turn, feminist rhetoric became vulnerable to co-optation by neoliberal and right-wing projects, while marginalizing those whose legitimacy as women remained contested. By excavating these tensions, this thesis insists on the political urgency of renewed engagement with the unresolved tensions at the heart of contemporary feminist politics: what is woman to feminism?

Chana stands next to a big tree trunk in a small courtyard.

Chana Lanter

The Yoetzet and Her Halakha:Discursive Practice of Female Experts in Jewish Law

Chana Lanter is a senior from Los Angeles studying Philosophy and Religious Studies with minors in Linguistics and Translation Studies. She is pursuing an interdisciplinary honors in FGSS; the focus of her research is yoatzot halakha (female Orthodox Jewish experts in menstrual purity law). Broadly, a yoetzet halakha communicates community women’s legal questions to rabbis, where the yoetzet and the rabbi work toward an answer, and then the yoetzet brings said answer back to the woman in a way that she can understand. Chana's thesis explores how yoatzot manage the different discursive environments of the rabbinic sphere and the public sphere. Chana is grateful for all the support she has received throughout the project. She especially wants to thank her advisor Ari Kelman and the Stanford Humanities Center.

Lyn stands smiling in front of a tree-lined backdrop and wears a black and red scarf around their shoulders.

Lyn Loth

Eating Taro

Lyn Lee Loth is majoring in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Biology. Their thesis, Eating Taro ញាំត្រាវ, is a collection of experimental poetry named after the Cambodian idiom “to gossip”–when your mouth becomes hot and swollen after eating the taro root, you can’t help but speak the truth. In the wake of the Khmer Rouge Genocide, mass execution, familial fracturing, and the gendered migration where women stay behind to rebuild, Lyn gossips with Cambodian women in an attempt to grapple with the impossibilities of grief, absence, and state violence. They carry the ongoingness of their kin (in life & death, across diaspora & beyond) and the fight for collective liberation in their work.

Sofia stands in front of a white backdrop and wears a light brown silk button-up.

Sofia Penglase

Campus Sexual Violence, Institutional Betrayal, & COVID-19: A Quantitative Analysis ofthe Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Campus Sexual Violence Reporting

Sofia Penglase (she/her) is majoring in Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Public Policy, with a minor in Human Rights. Her thesis explores the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on campus sexual violence reporting through a quantitative analysis using Clery Act data. She argues that student trust in institutions of higher education declined after the pandemic, affecting students’ willingness to report campus sexual violence. Her thesis was inspired by her work in sexual violence education at the Stanford SHARE Title IX Office. Her thesis advisor is Dr. Marcia Stefanick. Sofia will be attending Yale Law School in the fall. 

A selfie of Erick standing in front of a tall bush with orange flowers and a palm tree in the background.

Erick Ramirez

“No blacks, dirty bodies”: Representations of Black Men in Drummer’s Formative Years (1975-1980)

Erick Angelo Ramirez (he/him) is a senior pursuing a B.S./M.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Biology. His thesis examines representations of Black men in the formative years of Drummer magazine, a foundational gay leather publication launched in 1975. Through analysis of editorial content and personal advertisements, Erick argues that Drummer reproduced racialized sexual tropes—the Mandingo, the Black Brute, the Violable Black Body, and the Dirty Black Body—that rendered Black men as sites of projected white desire based on enduring racial stereotypes that marked them as hypersexual, threatening, abusable, and uncivilized. While Drummer styled itself as a space of sexual liberation, Erick shows how whiteness remained centered in its erotic imagination.

Sarae stands smiling in an outdoor walkway lined on either side with sandstone arches.

Sarae Sinville

Unearthing Roots: Stories of Midwives and Plants as Reproductive Medicine

Sarae Sinville (she/her) is a Human Biology major specializing in sexual and reproductive health. Her thesis, Unearthing Roots, examines the tension between Black reproductive traditions and the systemic racism underlying reproductive healthcare in the United States. Inspired by the Reproductive Justice framework, Sarae’s research centers the lived experiences of Black southern midwives, explores the erasure of Black women in medicine, and highlights the vital role of herbalism and community care. Her work concerns Black birth workers, their legacies, and their contributions to medicine. Her project is meant to challenge a system that continues to criminalize and endanger Black bodies.

Olivia poses under the covered arcades of Main Quad in a white linen blouse.

Olivia Ziegler

The Trap of Survivorhood

Olivia Ziegler is an artist and educator majoring in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Olivia’s creative honors thesis, “The Trap of Survivorhood,” dissects the impact of individualism in approaches to sexual violence through a hybrid style piece, weaving critical analysis with personal narrative. The thesis implicates individualism— whether guiding institutional support (or lack thereof), defining societal attitudes or motivating readers’ own actions — as a key force in ensuring that efforts to support victims and address sexual violence at large are ultimately inadequate. Olivia hopes readers are left with a clarity and discomfort that compels them toward collective care and action.

2022-2023 FGSS Honors Thesis Projects

Luke Babbitt

Luke Babbitt (he/they) is a senior pursuing a B.A. in Political Science and an M.S. in Computer Science. Their thesis measures the social motivations behind gender assignment before birth, at birth, and in early childhood. From a sociologist’s perspective, Luke’s research seeks to diagnose gender assignment as a social norm — meaning it is a decision made due to normative expectations and sanctions rather than independent preference. His thesis also analyzes our obsession with the gender binary in early childhood and explores alternative models of parenting. Before we can change gender assignment, we first must understand it. His thesis is for non-binary and transgender youth and adults everywhere.

Kirsten Mettler

Kirsten Mettler is majoring in political science with a minor in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. She is pursuing a creative thesis, writing a speculative fiction short story collection on the intersection of technological evolution and gender-based violence. Her project is inspired by policy work she conducted at AccessNow and ChildFund International on issues of online privacy, content moderation, social media, gaming, digital harassment, and nonconsensual image sharing. She thanks Michelle Dauber for her mentorship, and her thesis advisor is Sarah Frisch. Mettler will be attending Harvard Law School in the fall.

2021-2022 FGSS Honors Thesis Projects

Muhammad Yusuf Khattak

Muhammad is a senior studying philosophy. His thesis is an effort to draw on phenomenological critiques of artificial intelligence in order to generate an ethical framework for its governance. The thesis first attempts to diagnose the type of reasoning narrow AI systems engage in and how that might be more adept at dealing with certain problems over others. Despite great progress in the field, he aims to argue that the strictly statistics-driven framework embedded in AI has some serious limitations. Muhammad's hope with this paper is to introduce a new perspective to current conversation about ethics and tech, separate from predominant instrumentalist point of view. His advisors are Adrian Daub and Gabrielle Jackson. 

Matthew Haide Zheng

Matthew Haide Zheng (he/they pronouns) is a double major in Political Science and Human Biology, also completing the Interdisciplinary Honors program in FGSS. Matthew thesis is an ethnography of LGBTQ+ political power in Washington, D.C. In summer 2020, Matthew conducted over 50 interviews spanning 75+ hours with LGBTQ+ individuals, groups, and organizations in the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House, government affairs-lobbying firms, the nonprofit sector, and grassroots activists all in the D.C. metropolitan area. Using this ethnographic data, his thesis aims to break novel ground in studies of the LGBTQ+ movement, scholarship on LGBTQ assimilation/radicalism, and the measurement of political power more generally. The project is supported by the Franz Boas Summer Grant from the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. His thesis advisors are Margaret Levi and Sylvia Yanagisako

Authors Publication Year Title Publisher
Sofia Penglase 2025 Campus Sexual Violence, Institutional Betrayal, & COVID-19: A Quantitative Analysis of the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Campus Sexual Violence Reporting
Syd Gavela 2025 Divine Femininity in the Digital Age: Postfeminism, Aesthetic Entrepreneurship, and the Politics of Empowerment
Lyn Loth 2025 Eating Taro
Eva Jones 2025 Feminism’s Woman Question: Investments and Disinvestments from the Category of ‘Woman’ across Late Twentieth-Century Feminist Thought
Olivia Ziegler 2025 The Trap of Survivorhood
Chana Lanter 2025 The Yoetzet and Her Halakha: Discursive Practice of Female Experts in Jewish Law
Sarae Sinville 2025 Unearthing Roots: Stories of Midwives and Plants as Reproductive Medicine
Erick Ramirez 2025 “No blacks, dirty bodies”: Representations of Black Men in Drummer’s Formative Years (1975-1980)
Kyla Figueroa 2024 Boomerangs: A short story collection on Stockton, CA, education, and performing marginalized identities
Daania Tahir 2024 Girlhood? A series of personal essays and satirical sketches on (brown) girlhood
Shuvi Jha 2024 Illuminating Shadows: The Integration, Challenges, and Resilience of AI Ghost Workers in the Indian Economy
Malavika Kannan 2024 Rooted in the Soil: Environmental Visions in Dalit Women’s Autobiographies
Gabriella Garcia 2024 Surprise, Arizona
Luke Babbitt 2023 Gender in the Cradle: Evaluating Gender Assignment as a Social Norm
Kirsten Mettler 2023 TL;DR Pixel Dick: A speculative science fiction short story collection on gender-based violence in the digital age
Muhammad Khattak 2022 Against Techno-Chauvinism: Why Technology Cannot Solve Ethical Problems
Matthew Haide Zheng 2022 The Hill Beyond Community: A Political Ethnography of Queer Networks, Power, and Spectacular Intimacy in Washington, D.C.
Claire Margot Dauge-Roth 2021 Choose Your Own Beast: Short Stories
Julia Belle Adams 2021 Masculinity Syndrome: A Novel
Christina Misaki Nikitin 2021 Queer Urban Memoir: Towards a Critical Ethnography of Black Queer Musicians in Cape Town
Eunice Jung 2021 Undesirable Girls: The Politics of Love, Self-Making, and Desire in Dropping Out of School to Work
Ashe Huang 2020 Asian, Female, Future: Yellow Embodiment in the Posthuman Age
Lucy Arnold 2020 Early History of Marriage, Labor, and Sex Migration Dynamics in the U.S.
Tabor Hoatson 2020 Politicizing Substance Addiction in Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Communities
Mehr Kumar 2020 The Complaining Party: a collection of poetry and prose