Gender, Sexuality, Theology, and Ministry Certificate

Program Code: D-GTM-C
Degree Designation: Certificate
Department: Divinity School
Website: divinity.duke.edu/academics/certificates/gender

Program Summary

The certificate in gender, sexuality, theology, and ministry (GSTM) can be earned within the MDiv (residential and hybrid), MTS, and ThD degrees and enables students to make the study of gender, sexuality, theology, and ministry a core component of their theological education. It fosters a collaborative environment for teaching, research, service learning, and dialogue.

The GSTM program creates a network, community of discourse, and intellectual space—at Duke Divinity School and beyond—where questions of gender and sexuality are privileged in the academic study and practices of theology, ministry, and lived religion. The program examines intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, and asks what these questions mean for the church and for the common work.

Students in the certificate program take elective courses in the Divinity School or Department of Religious Studies and in Duke’s Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies that use gender and sexuality as primary lenses. They also design and execute independent research or contextual learning project and present their work in a senior colloquium.

The work of the GTSM program also extends beyond the certificate into developing new courses that use the study of gender and sexuality as a primary analytical lens, fostering scholarship and academic dialogue across fields and positions, bringing guest lecturers to the Divinity School, sponsoring training in pastoral responses to domestic violence, and encouraging the community to engage with students’ work at the senior colloquia.