Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study and academic field devoted to gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis. This field includes Women's studies (concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics), Men's studies, and LGBT studies. Sometimes Gender studies is offered together with Study of Sexuality. These disciplines study gender and sexuality in the fields of literature and language, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, cinema and media studies, human development, law, and medicine. It also analyses race, ethnicity, location, nationality, and disability.

Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one". This view proposes that in gender studies, the term "gender" should be used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female in its entirety. However, this view is not held by all gender theorists. Other areas of gender study closely examine the role that the biological states of being male or female have on social constructs of gender. Specifically, in what way gender roles are defined by biology and how they are defined by cultural trends. The field emerged from a number of different areas: the sociology of the 1950s and later (see Sociology of gender); the theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and the work of feminists such as Judith Butler.

Alain Finkielkraut (b. June 30, 1949, Paris) is a French essayist, and son of a Jewish-Polish manufacturer of fine leather goods who had been deported to Auschwitz and survived. He currently teaches at the École polytechnique as professor of the "history of ideas and modernity" in the department of humanities and social sciences. Author of a number of books, Finkielkraut is among some of France's "public intellectuals" who often appear on talk shows and publish columns in the French media. Finkielkraut advocates what in France is known as a humanist standpoint; although his supposed (self-declared) humanism has been challenged at many times during his career and frequently deemed quite the opposite of humanism, especially by anti-conservative and liberal activists. Sixty researchers and professors at the École polytechnique are known to have signed a petition to protest his alleged colonial views, although others have come to his defense and accused his protestors of attacking Finkielkraut because of his Jewish heritage.^{[citation needed]}

Bettina Rheims (born December 18, 1952, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine) is a French artist and photographer. She is the daughter of Maurice Rheims, of the French Academy. Her sister Nathalie is an actress, writer and film producer. Her son Virgile Bramly is an actor.

After having been a model, a journalist, and opening an art gallery, she began to be a photographer in 1978 at the age of 26. Initially she did many commissioned works such as albums covers for Jean-Jacques Goldman and photos of various stars.

From 1980 she devoted herself solely to photography. She made a series of photographs of strip-tease artists and acrobats, which were shown 1981 in two personal exhibitions, at the Centre Pompidou and at the Galerie Texbraun in Paris. Encouraged by this success, she worked on a series of stuffed animal portraits, which were exhibited in Paris and New York.

At the same time she took portrait images for worldwide magazines and advertising campaigns (Well and Chanel), created her first fashion series, worked on cover sleeves, and film posters, and in 1986 directed her first advertising campaign.

Robert William Jensen (born July 14, 1958) is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin College of Communication. He joined the faculty in 1992 after completing his Ph.D. in media law and ethics in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in media law, ethics, and politics.

In his research, Jensen draws on a variety of critical theories. As a strong feminist, Jensen has focused much of his work on the radical feminist critique of pornography and of masculinity. He also has written about white privilege and institutional racism.

In addition to teaching and research, Jensen writes for popular media, both alternative and mainstream. His opinion and analytic pieces on such subjects as foreign policy, politics, and race have appeared in papers around the U.S. He also is involved in a number of activist groups working against U.S. military and economic domination. He also works on progressive community projects in Austin, TX.