Volumes have been written about Queen Elizabeth I of England, but there’s relatively little about one of the most telling facets of her leadership—her gender identity. “I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king,” she would say.

History is replete with leaders who have asserted their masculinity, their femininity, or both for political or social stature.

“Look at Margaret Thatcher,” says Richard Godbeer, professor of history and director of the recently renamed Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) program in the College of Arts and Sciences. “This was a woman who went to a voice therapist to deepen her voice when she decided to stand for party leader.”

Gender and sexuality, it turns out, are intricately woven throughout just about every discipline, from history and anthropology to economics and science. It is the mission of the WGS program to ensure that academia doesn’t omit these important human characteristics. The program, which administers an undergraduate major and minor, grew out of the University’s Women’s Studies program, introduced in the 1980s. More than a name change, UM’s program and similar programs nationwide have been broadening over the past decade to encompass not only female but also male, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender perspectives on myriad academic topics.

“Many younger scholars see themselves engaging in gender studies rather than in women’s studies because they’re interested in men as well as in women as gendered beings and the ways in which men and women relate to each other,” explains Godbeer, who has authored books on magic and religion in early New England, the Salem witch trials, and sex in early America. He is in the process of completing a book about masculinity and platonic male love in colonial America.

“One of the fascinating things about this topic is the way in which a society that condemned sodomy exalted and honored love between men. After the American Revolution, there were literally hundreds of pieces in newspapers about how important male love and friendship was to the survival of the new republic,” Godbeer says.

This fall the WGS program unveils an updated curriculum, with new core courses such as Queer Studies; Gender, Sex, and the Law; and Interpreting Bodies. There are many other courses offered throughout the University that are cross-listed with WGS, and Godbeer notes that a growing number of faculty members are working on gender-related topics.

“Affiliated faculty for Women’s and Gender Studies should be the entire faculty,” he says. “It’s not clear to me how one can teach in any discipline without taking gender into consideration.”

In addition to promoting interdepartmental alliances, the program is reaching out to other institutions. An initial step was the first Graduate Student Conference on Gender and Sexuality this spring, which gave graduate students in various disciplines at UM, Florida International University, and Florida Atlantic University a chance to present their research in seminars attended by their peers.