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As a GWSS major/minor you will examine gender and sexuality as cultural and social categories that organize and shape human experience. You will also explore how they intersect with other social differences such as race, class, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ability, and age. Sample courses and career paths here. 

Matt Panciera is an associate professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies. He truly enjoys teaching the languages - all levels of Greek and Latin - in addition to a wide range of classical studies courses; everything from Greek tragedy to Roman history. His research focuses on the incredible treasure trove of information found in the Pompeian graffiti scratched into the walls of the ancient city by its beautifully ordinary inhabitants before it was buried under the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He is extremely grateful to have been awarded on three occasions a NEH Summer Seminar for K-12 teachers where they, together with a team of distinguished scholars, explored the topic of of Roman daily life as seen in the Roman novelist Petronius and the archaeological and epigraphical remains of Pompeii. He has also worked on Roman funerary inscriptions including the epitaph of the unforgettable freedwoman, Allia Potestas.

Matt feels fortunate to have been hired on four different occasions by the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome and he is a passionate advocate for teaching and learning on site. He always finds himself experiencing ideas, making connections, and asking questions that would never occur to him without the inspiration of standing in the place where the ancient Greeks and Romans once lived their lives. He is happy to teach a class where the students "nerd out" and dive deep into the Greeks and Romans for their own sake. But ultimately he believes, both for himself and his students, the greatest benefit of spending time with the Greeks and Romans is how much we learn about ourselves and what we want to make of our own world.  

If pressed, on most days he would say his favorite classical authors to read in the original language are Homer and Ovid. He recognizes the beauty of Greek and the genius of so much that came to fruition in Athens in the 5th century BCE—the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the birth of western philosophy, tragedy (Sophocles is his favorite)—but he is more at home in Latin and loves the way that reading Petronius and Pompeian graffiti feels like looking through a window directly at the ancient Romans. His favorite classical building is the Pantheon in Rome and his favorite site is Segesta in Sicily.

Outside of work he loves to cook for his family, visit the Boundary Waters, root for all the Boston teams (but also the Vikings), play golf, and exercise.
  

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In 2025, for Minnesota residents who are first-time full-time students who file the FAFSA and receive the MN State Grant or MN Dream Act.

Lisa Heldke teaches in the philosophy department and the gender, women and sexuality studies program, of which she was a founding faculty member. Among her favorite courses to teach are modern philosophy (which, believe it or not, focuses on the eighteenth century); aesthetics; and gender, knowledge and reality. But her real passion is the philosophy of food, which she holds in the teaching kitchen of the Nobel Hall of Science, where students can cook together each week.

The philosophy of food is not only a teaching passion, it has also been a focus of much of her service work on campus. She is the co-founder of the Kitchen Cabinet, an advisory committee to the Gustavus Dining Service that works to enhance the ways it serves the mission of the College. The committee includes representation from all the campus constituencies, including students.

Food is also the focus of Heldke’s scholarly research; she is one of the first contemporary philosophers to treat food as a serious philosophical topic. She is the author or editor of a number of books in the field, including Philosophers at Table: On Food and Being Human; Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer; Cooking, Eating Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food; and (most recently) Parasitic Personhood and the Ontology of Eating. Her research has led to her being invited to teach each year in a master’s program at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, a kind of “liberal arts college of food” founded by the Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini. Her scholarly work has also garnered her awards from the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the John Dewey Society.

For ten years, she served as director of Gustavus’s Nobel Conference, a role she described as being the “chief learner” for this science-and-ethics extravaganza which is a highlight of the Gustavus academic year, and has brought more than 100 Nobel laureates to campus.

Her newest book project bears the working title “Yurtitude is Experience”; it’s a philosophical exploration of her summertime life in a yurt on the coast of Maine where she lives (mostly) off the grid with her Siberian husky, writing, baking bread in a wood-fired brick oven, and kayaking and sailing in Eggemoggin Reach. Winter finds her and her husky skijoring in the Gustavus Arboretum whenever the snow cover allows. 
 

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Lisa Ortmann, PhD is the Grace and Bertil Pehrson Endowed Professor and Associate Professor of Education at Gustavus. Dr. Ortmann’s education courses prepare future teachers across the grade levels and content areas to build a deep understanding of how children and adolescents learn to read and write, and the research-based methods of teaching literacy for all students. She was awarded the Innovation in Teaching Award from the Kendall Center for Engaged Learning for her “Literacy Histories” project, where education majors critically examine their own experiences of learning to read, write, and use language, identifying the ways their history shapes their teaching. She teaches a First Term Seminar course called “For the Love of Books!” where first-year students follow their curiosity as readers, reflecting on the value of literacy in their lives as citizens of a free and democratic society. Together, students build a reading community that sustains their values, shapes their identities, and expands their worldviews.

Dr. Ortmann’s scholarly work informs, and is informed by, her teaching and professional activities at the College and in the state. Her research areas include teachers’ uses of culturally responsive teaching practices and diverse literature, the instructional methods that support literacies of multilingual adolescent learners, and the impact of instructional coaching models to enhance teaching. Recent peer-reviewed publications include a co-authored study with a former Gustie student, “Developing Responsive Disciplinary Literacies for Student Teaching in Social Studies” in The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and a state-wide study, "Surveying the Landscape: Minnesota's English Language Arts Teachers' Perspectives on Intellectual Freedom" in The Minnesota English Journal.

Dr. Ortmann’s professional service is in partnership with teachers and schools both locally and nationally. She is an engaged collaborator with Saint Peter and Mankato educators to design and facilitate real-world teaching opportunities for Gustie education majors at all stages of the four-year program. She serves the state of Minnesota as the Intellectual Freedom Chair for the board of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English where she provides professional development to English Language Arts teachers across the state. She was selected to serve as a This Story Matters Teacher Corp Member on the National Council of Teachers of English to develop book rationales for teaching diverse literature. She consults and provides guidance on statewide reading initiatives for the Minnesota Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, and for the English Language Arts 2020 Standards development project with the Minnesota Department of Education.

In her moments of free time, you can find Dr. Ortmann outdoors at the lake or in her garden, reading a novel, running with her yellow lab Harley, or cheering loudly at her daughter’s performances and games. She is a passionate educator, who has found a home at Gustavus due to the life-long relationships that are built on campus. Mentoring new teachers into the profession is one of the greatest gifts of her career, especially when they return to campus with their own students.

Dr. Shu-Ling Wang is an associate professor of Economics. She joined Gustavus in 2016 after a two-year appointment at The College of Wooster. Her teaching interests include Intermediate Macroeconomics, Money and Banking, International Finance, Public Finance, and Principles of Economics. As an active instructor in an interactive and interdisciplinary liberal arts environment, she enjoys developing and experimenting with innovative pedagogies to enrich students’ learning experiences. She also values mentoring undergraduate research that fosters critical and independent thinking. At Wooster, she advised several year-long senior independent studies, and at Gustavus, she offers writing-in-the-discipline courses in economics and mentors class-based research projects. In October 2023, her Money and Banking students’ paper titled “The Asian Crisis of 1997” won third place in the Economic Communication category of the Minnesota Economic Association (MEA) Undergraduate Paper Contest. In 2025, Dr. Wang served as a faculty panelist at the MAYDAY! Peace Conference at Gustavus, participating in the teach-in model addressing issues of peace, human rights, and social justice. More recently, she served on the Nobel Conference '63 Planning Committee (theme: AI and Human Agency).

Dr. Wang’s research focuses on Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics, and International Finance. She studies fiscal and monetary policy issues—such as fiscal stimulus, public debt, tax policy, income distributional effects, and monetary policy, using dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with representative or heterogeneous agents. Her papers have been published in the Journal of Macroeconomics, Review of International Economics, and Economic Modelling. She received the Mansergh Faculty Scientific Research Award at Gustavus in both 2022 and 2025. Her recent project examines the debt-financed stimulus effects in a high-debt economy without monetary independence, considering different schemes and speeds of debt adjustment in a two-sector New Keynesian model. Future projects will examine the redistribution effects between savers and hand-to-mouth agents of debt-financing policies. She regularly presents her work at the The Midwest Economics Association, Canadian Economics Association, Western Economics Association, and Liberal Arts Macroeconomics conferences.

In addition to her research, Dr. Wang actively contributes to professional service. She serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Macroeconomics, Economic Modelling, Contemporary Economic Policy, Cambridge University Press, and the Bulletin of Economic Research. She has also served on the steering and program committees for the Liberal Arts Macroeconomics Conference and was a member of the Board of the Minnesota Economic Association. In 2025 she served as a mentor and a panelist for junior women economists at the CeMENT workshop sponsored by the AEA at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Beyond academia, Dr. Wang is a mother of three children. She enjoys architecture, art, photography, and music. Her favorite architects include Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and Zaha Hadid. She is also inspired by the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, and Claude Monet. A musician herself, she plays the piano, violin, and pipa (a Chinese lute). Her favorite composer is Johann Sebastian Bach of the Baroque period.

Ursula Lindqvist, PhD, is Thorstensson, McKnight, Nordstrom Endowed Chair and Professor in Scandinavian Studies and a founder of the interdisciplinary minor in Comparative Literature. She is known for her research in Nordic global cinema and in postcolonial studies, commitment to undergraduate teaching and mentorship, and her leadership within the College and in her field. Before coming to Gustavus in 2013, Dr. Lindqvist directed the undergraduate program in Scandinavian Studies and founded the Scandinavian Languages Program at Harvard University. 

A passion for interdisciplinary teaching and research brought her to Gustavus, where she contributes to programs in Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies; Peace, Justice, & Conflict Studies; African & African Diaspora Studies; Film & Media Studies; Latin American, Latinx & Caribbean Studies; and Comparative Literature. She leads a college-wide grant project, “Storytelling and Sensemaking at a Settler Institution: Walking a Shared Path with Dakota Neighbors,” funded by the Council of Independent Colleges/the Lilly Endowment.

Dr. Lindqvist’s research has focused on Nordic cinema, global literatures, and unsettling colonial narratives. Her first book, Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor: Contemplating the Art of Existence, was published in the University of Washington Press’ Nordic Film Classics series. She also co-edited two global anthologies: A Companion to Nordic Cinema (Wiley-Blackwell) with Mette Hjort, and New Dimensions of Diversity in Nordic Culture and Society (Cambridge Scholars) with Jenny Björklund. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, and African and Black Diaspora. Her most influential work, “The Cultural Archive of the IKEA Store” (Space and Culture, 2009), has been taught at colleges worldwide. Her expertise as a Nordic film scholar has been sought by media outlets such as the New York Times and National Public Radio as well as film festivals and retrospectives. 

In recent years, Dr. Lindqvist’s research has pivoted toward settler history, culture, and decolonization. Her current monograph in progress, Unsettling the Settler Archive, includes a critical examination of the founding story of Gustavus Adolphus College on Dakota lands. She has involved Gustavus students in her research since it began in 2021 and sponsored a student advisee to present at a national scholarly conference in 2023. Dr. Lindqvist recently received external grants to support additional archival work at the Swenson Center for Swedish Immigration Research at Augustana College in Illinois and at the House of Emigrants in Växjö, Sweden, where she gave an invited public lecture in 2024. From this work she developed the college’s first approved Signature Experience (SigX) research course, SCA-290 Unsettling the Archive, to immerse students in archival research and to train them to carry out sensitive, intercultural interviews with Indigenous people, bringing their stories in dialogue with settler archives.

Dr. Lindqvist spent five years as news writer and investigative reporter in the Arabian Gulf, India, and Florida prior to earning her PhD. Her roots are in Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority, and she is bilingual in Swedish and English.
 

Through the Gustavus Political Science Department, students explore government, policy, law, and global affairs. Expect internships, research, active student organizations, and opportunities for leadership.