Acquire an intersectional understanding of the complexities and paradoxes surrounding issues of gender and sexuality in the Netherlands.
Program Highlights
- Examine the intersections of gender and sexuality with race, class, and religion.
- Choose to do independent field research or an internship.
- Learn from experts in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Rotterdam.
- Spend two weeks in Morocco.
- Enjoy access to specialized archives and research centers in the Netherlands.
- Explore Amsterdam.
- Participate in an optional volunteer project.
Please visit the SIT Study Abroad website for details on program courses (including syllabi), educational excursions, and housing.
Independent Study
During the final four weeks of the program, you can choose to use your new language and cultural skills and the academic knowledge you have acquired to complete an Independent Study Project (ISP) on a topic of interest to you. The ISP is most often conducted in Amsterdam, but another approved location is possible as long as it is relevant to the project.
Sample topics:
- Negotiating religion and homosexuality
- Interracial relationships in the Dutch postcolonial context
- Intergenerational dating strategies
- Black feminist activism in the Netherlands
- Dating strategies of older lesbian women in the Netherlands
- Multicultural approaches to sex education
- Female body images in media and their effects on women’s self-perception
SIT internships are hands on and reflective. In addition to completing the internship, you will submit a paper processing your learning experience on the job and analyzing an issue important to the organization you worked with, and/or you will design a socially responsible solution to a problem identified by the organization.
Sample internship sites:
- Preparing exhibitions and doing research at the International Gay and Lesbian Archive and Information Center
- Providing support work at PROUD (Dutch Union for Sex Workers)
- Assisting men’s emancipation in Amsterdam at grassroots organization Emancipator
- Promoting sexual education for all at international platform Love Matters
- Researching and writing Wikipedia entries about female role models, artists, and scientists and about feminist organizations or gender equality at Atria Knowledge Institute for Emancipation and Women’s History
Key Topics of Study
- Sexual politics in a multicultural society
- Homonationalism in the Netherlands
- Sex and gender education: policies and methods in the Netherlands
- Feminist and sex-positive activism in the Netherlands
- Gender roles and women’s movements in Morocco
- Trans* issues, human rights, and health
- Gendered and racialized aspects of labor migration in a global and neo-liberal context
- How identity is affected by gender, sexuality, race, religion, and class, both as experienced and as perceived
Money Matters
Be sure to discuss how study abroad costs are handled at your school with your study abroad advisor.
SIT tuition and room and board fees include the following:
All educational costs, including educational excursions
- All accommodations and meals for the full program duration
- Transportation to and from the airport, and on all educational excursions
- Health and accident insurance
Scholarships:
- SIT awards nearly $1.6 million in scholarships and grants annually.
- All scholarships and grants are need-based.
- Awards generally range from $500 to $5,000.
- The SIT Pell Grant Match provides matching grants to all students receiving Federal Pell Grant funding when it is applied to an SIT Study Abroad semester program.
- Contact the financial aid and/or study abroad office(s) at your college or university to learn if your school’s scholarships and grants and federal and state aid programs can be applied to an SIT Study Abroad program.
Contact SIT Study Abroad