University of Maryland The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Home

Harriet Tubman Day

Our new name reflects shifts in the field, our faculty’s areas of expertise, and our programmatic and curricula changes on becoming the new home for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program in 2013. Our new name also signals our newly revised B.A. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as well as our revised certificates in LGBTQ Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and our minors in Black Women’s Studies (jointly offered with the Department of African American Studies since 2005) and LGBTQ Studies.

Recognized by the US government in 1990, Harriet Tubman Day celebrates Tubman's heroic work towards the abolishment of slavery in the United States. WGSS's Harriet Tubman Day programming brings together Tubman scholars and artists to honor the legacy of the department's namesake.

D.C. Queer Studies

In conjunction with the official start of the LGBTQ Studies Program at the University of Maryland in 2003, the department launched an LGBT Studies Speaker Series. In 2006, a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area formed to discuss new works in the field and to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Queer/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines and across institutions. That group, the DC Queer Studies Consortium, was integral to the inception of the first DC Queer Studies Symposium in 2008. The DC Queer Studies Consortium has since dissolved, but the UMD Department of Women’s Studies and LGBT Studies Program have continued to organize a spring lecture or symposium.

Indigenous Futures Lab

The Indigenous Futures Lab is a hub of Indigenous research, evaluation, and relationship-building where we center Indigenous knowledges to build futures of co-flourishing. Opened in October, 2023 the lab aims to co-create Indigenous futures through Indigenous-led scholarship and activism through engaging events and brand new research projects. To learn more about lab events and projects and get involved, visit the homepage by clicking the button below.