Program / Requirements / Resources / Scholarships
Declaring the QTP Minor
Gender and Women’s Studies has an innovative interdisciplinary undergraduate minor program in Queer and Trans Praxis (QTP) [formerly the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies (LGBT) minor]. Interested students in any major can earn a minor in QTP Studies by completing QTP 101, Theories and Methods in Queer and Trans Praxis, and four upper division elective courses in GWS or QTP. One of those 4 elective courses may be from another department (with GWS approval). To officially declare, please initiate the process with the advisor, Francisca Cázares (fcazares@berkeley.edu).
NOTE: All students who added the QTP (LGBT) minor prior to Fall 2026 should contact the undergraduate advisor, Francisca Cázares, to confirm completion of requirements and/or seek exceptions where necessary.
What is QTP Studies?
The function and spirit of QTP continues our interdisciplinary study of LGBTSTGNCQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, transgender, gender non-conforming, queer, intersex, asexual, and more) identities, communities, and histories, while simultaneously underscoring our explicit interest in queer and trans analytics as critical perspectives on power relations and intersectional frameworks.. The terms queer and trans function not only as umbrella terms for a range of sexualities and genders, but they also function as verbs—as in, queering and transing our analytical frameworks, objects, our politics, and our world. QTP is an orientation toward study itself. Centering queerness and transness in QTP is a declaration of the urgent stakes of our current political moment in the US and the transnational world. Our attention to histories of theoretical, activist, and artistic intervention include early gay and lesbian studies, decolonial and black feminist racial histories of genders and sexualities, as well as other histories of thought that go by many other non-Western names. The shift from LGBT Studies to Queer & Trans Praxis is also reflective of the naming practices used by multiracial and transnational student groups and affective communities at Cal.
The keyword praxis in the minor’s title acknowledges and highlights our consistent goal: to bring theory and practice together. QTP centers the mutually constitutive legacies of queer/trans activist work, artistic work, and theorization which have given rise to what we now call queer studies and trans studies. QTP reflects how these knowledges continue to be produced, how we live our lives today, and the future worlds of possibility burning brightly in our hearts. Like queer and like trans, praxis is also a verb that serves to highlight the primacy of experimentation in our pedagogy, along with the inseparability of theory and practice in our field. QTP courses prioritize reflection and action in order to arrive at deeper understandings and broader relevances to queer and trans life—within and without the university, domestically and transnationally, in the past and out beyond the stars.
Requirements
Students minoring in QTP are required to take QTP 101: “Theory and Methods in Queer and Trans Praxis,” a newly designed seminar capped at 15 students with the aim of forming a community rather than a cohort early in the QTP student’s experience of the minor, rather than at its end. QTP minors receive priority registration for this course, followed by GWS majors and GWS minors. To complete the minor, students must take an additional four QTP upper-division electives for a grand total of five courses.
- A total of five (5) courses are required for the minor.
- All courses must be completed on a letter-graded basis.
- No more than one course can be used to satisfy both the minor and major requirements.
- Students must achieve at least a C average (2.0) in the upper division courses to satisfy the minor.
- You must declare your minor with the GWS Undergraduate Adviser (UA) no later than the semester before your Expected Graduation Term (EGT). If the semester before EGT is fall or spring, the deadline is the last day of RRR week. If the semester before EGT is summer, the deadline is the final Friday of Summer Sessions.
- To officially declare, please initiate the process with the advisor, Francisca Cázares (fcazares@berkeley.edu).
Resources
Scholarships
Each year applications are accepted for the Markowski-Leach Scholarships. These are awards of $1,250 made through the Horizons Foundation in San Francisco for LGBTQ graduate and undergraduate students who plan to attend UC Berkeley, Stanford University, or San Francisco State University. Incoming freshman are eligible to apply. Please see their website for further details and application instructions: http://www.mlscholarships.org
Student Awards
David Getman Memorial Award in LGBT Minor Studies
2025 Awardee: Izzy Tragarz
2024 Awardee: C McManus
2023 Awardee: Ellen Collins
2021 Awardee: Kelly Baird and Tristen Mayer
2020 Awardee: Sara Madani
2019 Awardee: Neena Mohan
2018 Awardee: Zury Chavez