Course Archive

2023-2024 Courses

1000 Level Courses

GSWS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND WOMEN'S STUDIES
This course is an introductory and interdisciplinary survey of the diverse and changing roles of gender, sex, and sexuality in contemporary society. Together we will tackle several questions over the course of the year, including: How do gender and women's studies contribute to our thinking of particular issues, institutional practices, and changing global dynamics? How do principles of feminist thought allow us to navigate controversial issues, including those related to tensions or exclusions in resistance movements? What are the possibilities and responsibilities of local and international feminist interventions for social justice?

We will explore, among other topics, the following: challenges to the sex- and gender binary, including transgender, non-binary, and intersex identities; intersectionality and solidarities across gender, race, class, and ability; constructions of masculinities and femininities; the operation of state power on gender, sexual, and other minorities; colonialism and Indigenous resistances; and activism and protest, including through literature and art. Above all, in this class, we will strive to make connections between our everyday lives, global structures, and the work for gender equality, equity, and freedom.

Fall/Winter 1020E 001 Laura Cayen 2 hr class plus 1 hr tutorial Previous course outline
Fall/Winter 1020E 002 Kim Verwaayen 2hr class plus 1 hr tutorial course outline

GSWS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
This course is an interdisciplinary half-year course that will introduce students to the field of sexuality studies. It will examine this field through several different approaches: theoretical, literary, visual, cultural and historical. The aim will be to explore questions of identity and representation as they relate to sexuality: how are sexual identities formed? Are they essential or constructed? Who controls representations of sexuality? Why do we think of certain sexualities as normal and others as deviant? Within this context, we will analyze how certain expressions of sexuality are socially excluded and devalued in the name of a sexual norm.

Fall 1021F Cornel Grey 2 hr class plus 1 hour tutorial Course outline

GSWS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE, CHANGE
The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in struggles for social justice, economic empowerment, education, health, poverty alleviation, human rights, environmental protection, peace-building, good governance and political representation. A variety of case studies and examples will be used to highlight the ways in which women and other marginalized groups organize and agitate for change, resist oppression and theorize the concept of justice.

Winter 1022G Larissa Costa Duarte Asynchronous Online Previous course outline

GSWS 1023G GAY LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: BEYOND ADAM AND STEVE
Modern gay identities are defined by their integration into liberal capitalism and multicultural democracy. A once marginalized group now benefits from unprecedented social mobility. This course will survey the impact of a shifting market and new federal policies on topics like the social politics of gay spaces, gentrification, art and culture and more. Students will gain a historical understanding of gay culture and an interdisciplinary set of texts to analyze an ever multiplying set of identities that fit within gay culture. By the end of this course, students will be introduced to topics in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory and gender studies and have a set of critical tools to approach these topics from music studies, political theory and sociology.

Winter 1023G Jacob Evoy Course outline

GSWS 1024F INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
This introductory course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights. The course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social difference and relations of power; as well, we will examine arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion, the rights of minoritized groups, and the politics of affirmative action. Towards these goals, we will take up readings about these issues from disciplines such as: anti-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. This also includes discussions of relevant case studies that highlight contemporary debates. Therefore, from different vantage points, the course examines some of the following questions: How are equity, diversity and human rights shaped by political and state interests? What are (some of) the limits and possibilities of institutionalized, liberal approaches to equity and diversity? What are human rights and what does it mean to have such rights? And how are these rights contested and protected?

Fall 1024F Kate Korycki Previous course outline

GSWS 1030G INTRODUCTION TO BLACK STUDIES
Black Studies is comprised of the knowledge production practices and worldviews among African and African descendant peoples across the globe. It is rooted in rich histories, cultures, and philosophies that have given rise to anti-colonial, anti-racist, the Negritude, Pan-African and civil rights movements, including #BlackLivesMatter. This survey course introduces students to foundational debates, ideas, and practices in the Black intellectual tradition. With an emphasis on interdisciplinarity, course materials include book chapters, journal and magazine articles, music, film, art, and poetry. We will locate contemporary topics (e.g., identity, aesthetics, gender, race, sexuality, and popular culture, etc.,) in historical frameworks, with a focus on resilience and resistance in Black life. The purpose of the course is to deepen our understanding of how social, political, economic, and cultural issues are taken up in the Black intellectual-activist tradition.

Winter 1030 Erica Lawson Course outline

2000 Level Courses

GSWS 2160B INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Intimate Relations focuses on how expectations of intimacy and relationships rely on particular understandings of love, sex, sexuality and bodies to shape how we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings. The course considers how intimacy (sexual, maternal, familial, affectionate) is understood in relation to history, philosophy, health, society and popular culture. No prerequisites.
Winter 2160B Lauren Auger Course outline

GSWS 2161A/B WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. No prerequisites.

Fall and Winter 2161A/B Nikki Edwards Online Asynchronous

GSWS 2162A THE BODY
We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society's difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body. No prerequisites.

Fall 2162A Lauren Auger

GSWS 2163A SEX, HOW TO: SEX EDUCATION, ITS HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES
Sex education is a controversial topic; should we even be teaching people how to have sex or how not to have sex? This course traces the history of sex education and its many controversies as well as looking at contemporary sex education practices both locally and in an international context. No prerequisites.

Fall 2163A Nikki Edwards Online asynchronous

GSWS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION
This course is designed to give students an introduction to the role played by fashion in the construction of gendered identities (in addition to learning about fashion history, fashion in relation to sexuality, and fashion as identity). Topics to be covered include: what clothing can tell us about empire, gender, sexuality, class, race, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics and globalization; fashion as art; drag queens and kings; fashion and sustainability; fashion journalism; the metrosexual; the history of the stiletto; veiling; and fashion subcultures such as goth and punk. We will also examine the trends of athleisure, anti-fashion, slow fashion, and normcore.Although the focus of much of the course will be on 深夜福利站 fashion, we will also look at Asian and African designers and influences (Harajuku fashion, Pei and Yamamoto; hip-hop andThe Black Panther), as well as indigenous fashion. No prerequisites.

Fall 2164A Jacob Evoy Online asynchronous

GSWS 2167B QUEER(ING) POPULAR CULTURE
How are Queer individuals represented in popular culture? Images of 2SLGBTQ+ individuals in media, including news, film, and television, produce particular ideas of queer identity. This course examines the historical and contemporary presence of queer individuals within popular culture and popular culture produced for and by 2SLGBTQ+ people. No prerequisites.

Winter 2167B Amy Keating Course outline

GSWS 2168B FROM DU BOIS TO BLACK PANTHER: BLACK POPULAR CULTURE  NEW COURSE!
Black popular culture is concerned with pleasure, enjoyment, and amusement and is expressed through aesthetic codes and genres. Drawing on literature, film, music, visual art, and television, this course examines examples of popular culture created by and for Black individuals to consider Black cultural values, beliefs, experiences, and social institutions.

Winter 2168B TBA Online asynchronous Course outline

GSWS 2170B AFROFUTURISM  NEW COURSE!
Coined in 1994 by Mark Dery, the term Afrofuturism refers to a Black aesthetic centred around imagining futures for Black people. Students will encounter Black writers, musicians, artists, and filmmakers, from Octavia Butler to Sun Ra to Janelle Monae to Jordan Peele, whose work envisages Black futures.

Winter 2170B Katrina Younes Course outline

GSWS 2171B OUT OF LEFT FIELD: GENDER AND SPORT (previously 2246A)  NEW COURSE!
This course examines sport from a critical feminist perspective. We will examine commonly held assumptions about the human body, while considering how gender, race, sexuality, and culture, among other topics, influence our understanding of sports as well as how athletes are positioned as celebrities and their impact on popular culture.

Winter 2171B Cornel Grey Online asynchronous Course outline

GSWS 2203G FUTURE SEX: SEX AND SCIENCE FICTION
Beginning with cutting edge contemporary practices, from sex reassignment surgery to virtual reality, this course will look at the ways in which we imagine the future of gender and sexuality. The focus will be primarily on science fiction texts that provide interesting alternatives to present-day ideas about sex and sexuality.

Winter 2203G WG Pearson Online asynchronous Previous course outline
GSWS 2205G MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
In emphasizing the social construction of manhood and masculinity as constitutive of the enormous capital that men command, this course aims to advance a critical view whereby such concepts are seen not as impenetrable bastions of historically oppressive power, but as privileged nodes that have been instrumentalized within discursive ideological networks. Through an examination of diverse media sources (literature, film, art, critical journalism, news articles, music, etc.) and their treatment of issues like guy culture, male body image, homosociality, aggression, family, success, and male sexuality, this course encourages the centrality of critical reflection in understanding the oftentimes violent negotiation of masculinity across various intersectional sites, and how those dynamics are refracted in men's relationships with themselves, other men, women, and institutions. No prerequisites.
Winter 2205G Christian Ylagan Course outline

GSWS 2212G GENDER AND THE FUTURE OF WORK NEW COURSE!
This course mobilizes intersectional, decolonial, feminist, and anti-capitalist scholarship to understand transformative changes to paid and unpaid work, caused by multiple factors such as technology, demographics, climate change, pandemics, and globalization, and their effects upon gender equality and social justice.

Winter 2212G Bipasha Baruah Course outline

GSWS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
(Required 2nd yr. theory course)

An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives.Prerequisite(s): GSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G.

Fall/Winter 2220E Kim Verwaayen and Lauren Auger

GSWS 2225F INTRODUCTION TO GIRLHOOD STUDIES
In this course, we will consider what it means to be a girl and how the concepts of girl and girlhood have been constructed across a variety of geographic and historical contexts, as well as how the intersections of race, class, gender, and ability have influenced these concepts. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including literature, history, we specifically consider girlhood through a feminist lens and examine how definitions of girl and girlhood shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, and futures.

Fall 2225F Andrea Burke Previous course outline

GSWS 2230F INTRODUCTION TO THE BLACK/AFRICAN DIASPORA NEW COURSE!
This course is an in-depth exploration of the Black Diaspora, focusing on the histories, experiences, and cultural productions of Black people throughout the world. This course begins with an examination of the historical and cultural contexts of the Black Diaspora, including the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, and migration. We will analyze literature, music, film, and visual art, examining how these cultural productions reflect and shape the experiences of Black people across the world. We will also explore the ways in which Black people have used cultural production as a form of resistance and liberation. Pre-orCorequisite(s): and 0.50 course from    or 0.50 of any first-year essay course in Arts and Humanities, Social Science, or Media, Information, and Technoculture. Students can request special permission from the department to enroll in this course without the prerequisites!

Fall Cornel Grey course outline

GSWS 2240F FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. No prerequisites.

Fall 2240F Alison Lee

GSWS 2243F #ME TOO: THE POLITICS OF RAPE CULTURE AND FEMINIST RAGE  NEW COURSE!
In this course, we will trace the development of the #MeToo movement through a variety of of mediums including, but not limited to, music, public speeches, social media, popular culture, and scholarship. We will examine how the #MeToo movement changed, and continues to change, on a world-wide scale, law and public policy pertaining to issues such as sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and coercion. We will explore key topics of the #MeToo movement through interdisciplinary feminist perspectives, and by looking at how such issues unfold in, for example, the workplace, schools, and the online sphere.

Fall 2243F Katrina Younes Course outline

GSWS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women's health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women's Health; Representing Gender and Women's Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women's Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women's Health; and Women, Work and Health. No prerequisites.

Fall/Winter 2244 Jessica Polzer

GSWS 2264G FAT IS FEMINIST: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND WEIGHT  NEW COURSE!
Fat shaming discourses are pervasive, permeate popular culture, and have a real impact on people's lives. This course will demonstrate that modern fat phobic discourses have origins in the historical stigmatization of black women's bodies during the Atlantic Slave Trade. Students will learn about how discourses othering fatness and black bodies were core tenets of the Protestant Revitalization and Temperance Movements. These Movements molded modern beauty standards that value white and thin women's bodies over all others. These beauty standards permeate our modern popular culture. While bigger women may be represented in the media, this representation often reinforces fat shaming discourses. However, some women in the arts, like Lizzo and Melissa McCarthy, challenge dominant beauty standards and celebrate their bodies. This course will demonstrate that the fashion industry particularly excludes folks who do not fit the white and thin body ideal. We will consider how terms like small, medium, large, extra-large, and plus size reinforce fat shaming discourses. Students will gain an understanding of how beauty standards have changed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, yet how being thin remains the ultimate feminine beauty standard.

Winter 2264G Lauren Auger Course outline

GSWS 2270A WOMEN, LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE
This course is an introduction to various areas of law which affect women in specific ways. It will examine laws relating to sex discrimination, employment, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, abortion, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, pornography and prostitution. It will explore topical debates in these various areas of law and how law can be used as a strategy for bringing about social change.No prerequisites. Antirequisite(s): GSWS 2260.

Fall 2270A Katrina Younes Previous course outline

GSWS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production.No prerequisites.

Fall/Winter 2273E Laura Cayen

GSWS 2274G INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 4460F/G if taught in Winter 2013; Women's Studies 3343F/G if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 1020E or 1.0 from 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/G and 1024F/G.

Winter 2274G Elric Paauw Course outline

GSWS 2283G DESIRING WOMEN
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites.

Winter 2283G Lauren Auger Course outline

WS 2290F INDIGENOUS FEMINISMS: POLITICS, RESISTANCE, AND CULTURAL RESURGENCE NEW COURSE!
Students explore Indigenous feminist frameworks and epistemologies to understand the participation of Indigenous women in social, political, and environmental movements. This course examines issues relating to the historical and contemporary experiences of Indigenous women feminists nationally and internationally. This course also considers Indigenous feminist analyses and Indigenous women's issues.Antirequisite(s):Indigenous Studies 2807F/G.Prerequisite(s):Indigenous Studies 1020E or GSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G or GSWS 1030F/G, or special permission from the Program.

Fall 2290F Renee Bedard Thursdays 10:30 - 1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2291G INDIGENOUS WOMEN IN THE ARTS IN CANADA: CULTURAL TRADITIONS, SURVIVAL, AND COLONIAL RESISTANCE NEW COURSE!
One of the main objectives of this course will be to unravel how human beings become categories that expand beyond the seemingly binary divide between the sexes, the races and the have and have-nots. We will consider the real-life experiences of women or two-spirit peoples through an examination of texts from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, among others. In addition, our examination of popular culture, such as films, television shows, music videos, and clips from the internet, will provide thoughtful, and often provocative, examples of the complex representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality in our society.Antirequisite(s):Indigenous Studies 2682F/G, Art History 2634F/G.Prerequisite(s):Indigenous Studies 1020E, GSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G,or GSWS 1030F/G, or 1.0 from Art History 1640 or the former VAH 1040 or two of Art History 1641A/B, 1649A/B or the former VAH 1041A/B VAH 1045A/B, or 1.0 course or special permission from Program.

Winter 2291G Renee Bedard Course outline

GSWS 2414B BLACK LIVES AND EXPERIENCES  (NEW COURSE!)
Black populations in the Black Diaspora defy simple characterizations. In this course, we will examine the experiences of Black people through an ethnographic exploration of their lives. The close analysis of ethnographic monographs and articles will illuminate the ways in which race, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability, nationality, and other factors, shape the everyday for Black people in different cultural contexts. An additional focus will be a consideration of the experiences of Black anthropologists as ethnographers and scholars who are broadening anthropological discourses. No prerequisites

Winter 2414B  Andrea Allen Tuesdays 1:30-4:30 pm

GSWS 2415B HIP HOP FEMINISM NEW COURSE!
This course examines the roles of women in hip hop, and the cultural discourses surrounding them. Students will take into consideration elements of hip-hop culture, its malleable media forms, its origins, history of production and reproduction, and interdisciplinary, transnational, and intersectional approaches to the study of this cultural form. In doing so, throughout the term, students will analyze the production and creation of hip-hop by and featuring Black women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We will utilize texts including scholarly articles, music videos, visual albums, films (documentary and fiction) and social media networks to better grasp the commodification and politics of Black Studies and hip-hop feminism.

Winter 2415B Katrina Younes Course outline

GSWS 2710G MARRIAGE: FEMINIST AND QUEER PERSPECTIVES
This course covers five themes: the history of marriage, primarily in the West; the transition from arranged marriage to companionate marriage; feminist attempts to render marriage egalitarian; capitalism and the growth of the wedding industrial complex; queer perspectives on both heterosexual and same-sex marriage. No prerequisites.

Winter 2710G Kate Korycki

3000 Level Courses

GSWS 3133F LESBIAN LIVES AND CULTURES
This course will explore what it means to identify as a lesbian today. With the move away from identity politics and the ascendance of queer as a challenge to identity categories, it will consider the place of lesbianism in contemporary North American culture and more globally. Attention will be paid to a variety of aspects of lesbian lives and to contemporary forms of lesbian experiences in relation to their historical antecedents. Themes will include intersectionality, activism, sex, literature, art and politics. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E orGSWS 2273E or permission of the Department.

Fall 3133F Chris Roulston Previous course outline

GSWS 3173G INTRODUCTION TO QUEER THEORY
What is queer theory, where did it come from, how is it changing? Examining key foundational texts in queer theory, the contexts for its emergence, and debates over its contemporary usefulness and direction, students in this course will trace the development of queer theory and investigate its current applications.Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E, or permission of the Department.

Winter 3173G Kate Korycki Previous course outline

GSWS 3320G INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND FEMINIST METHODOLOGIES (NEW REQUIRED COURSE)
This course introduces students to gender studies and feminist research methodologies from a variety of disciplinary traditions and theoretical perspectives. Students will learn about and begin to apply specific methodological issues, including ethics, archival work, researcher positionality, and the practices and politics of data collection, interpretation, and reporting.Antirequisite(s):BOTH GSWS 3321F/G and GSWS 3322F/G. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter 3320G Susan Knabe Previous course outline

GSWS 3324F CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES
From black face performances, appropriation of cultural and spiritual practices, and its centrality in economic and other forms of social inequalities, race and racism persists. In this course, we will ask: What is race and its formations? How does it shift and change over time? Why do we remain so deeply invested in race/racism but are afraid to talk about it? And how is race debated and contested in the twenty-first century? We will explore these, and other questions, with sources from across disciplines (e.g., sociology, feminism, anthropology, literature), as well as in popular culture/media, and in liberation and anti-colonial movements. The course does not offer definitive answers about race, but rather explores its historical roots and contemporary manifestations. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 3324F Erica Lawson Previous course outline

GSWS 3325G FEMINIST EMBODIED THINKING NEW COURSE!
In this course we will ask how we come to know the world? Calculative thinking that sees the world as a storehouse of resources has brought the earth to a point of climate catastrophe. It also separates us from the particular worlds we experience, from the relational worlds, the ones our bodies connect. Thinking that does not assume mind/body dualism and instead comes out of lived experience clearly differentiates from calculative thinking which prioritizes efficiency. Drawing from theories and methodologies such as critical phenomenology, authoethnography, critical race and critical disability feminisms, we follow the insight that thinking follows experience. We will focus on concrete, experiential and relational approaches to thinking, such as autoethnographical writing, recording environmental sounds, creating images, and perceiving alongside artworks.We will bring our embodied contact with the world in dialogue with feminist, Indigenous, and decolonial texts. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E,or permission of the Department.

Winter 3325G Helen Fielding Course outline

GSWS 3331G - IN YOUR SKIN: SEXUALITIES AND PERFORMANCE  NEW COURSE!
(cross-listed with Theatre Studies 3211G)
This course examines the relationship between sexuality and performance. Students will examine play texts and performance and study such topics as drag, transgendered roles and representation, and the role of gender and sexuality in the interpretation of a text or performance. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Winter 3331G Devereux Course outline

GSWS 3357G FEMINISM AND FEELINGS NEW COURSE!
This course takes an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to explore how emotion, feeling, and affect variously function constitutively in relation to knowledge production, subjectivity, community formation, and activisms in feminist thought and movement. Together we will explore, among other topics and issues, the historical and gendered devaluation of feeling and emotion in western colonial logics; the gendered dimensions of affective labour/care work; the role of felt theory in anti-colonial and decolonial work; the work that archives of feeling do in transforming conventional understandings of trauma and its impacts; queer-feminist de-pathologization of bad feelings pleasure politics as a project for Black feminist liberation; intersections between the personal, the political, and the public, including as articulated in the Public Feelings Project (Feel Tank) and relations between activist fatigue and feminist hope. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E,or permission of the Department

Winter 3357G Kim Verwaayen Course outline

GSWS 3362F FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE
Violence against women was a virtually invisible social problem until it was brought to light by feminist activists some 40 years ago. Since then, there have been a number of political and scholarly controversies surrounding this issue. Although this course focuses on Canada, it will also examine key aspects of these debates in Canada and the United States, as well as in other parts of the world. These theoretical issues will also be connected with practice, that is, with the front-line work that is undertaken in the community to counter gender-based violence, particularly male violence against women. Prerequisite(s): or permission of the Department.

Fall 3362F Katherine McKenna Course outline

GSWS 3440F GENDERED BLOOD: CRITICAL MENSTRUAL STUDIES NEW COURSE
This course considers menstruation and menstrual equity movements through interdisciplinary, intersectional, and cross-cultural perspectives, particularly work to de-stigmatize periods. Students will deconstruct essentialist narratives and include gender non-binary menstruators. Topics may include menstrual leave, environmental impact of disposable products, period-tracking apps and menstrual management technologies, and reduction in period poverty. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 1020E or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G, or GSWS 1030F/G, or special permission from the department.

Fall 3440F Laura Cayen Course outline

GSWS 3450G BLACK JOY NEW COURSE!
Why is it a revolutionary act for Black people to experience joy? What are representations of Black joy? A hashtag, a mandate, and an ideal, Black joy occupies an important but at times unspoken space in the imaginations of Black people. In this interdisciplinary course, we will examine how enjoyment is experienced by Black populations and communities. We will consider examples of Black joy from different cultural contexts and its representation in popular culture, literature, cultural studies, history, and ethnography.The course will also interrogate how gender, sexuality, disability, and class shape the ways in which Black people experience joy in the world.We will discuss Afrofuturism, Audre Lorde, Black eroticism, Black Girl Magic, Carnival, and Janelle Monae, among other topics.Ultimately, this course will demonstrate how Black joy represents modes of resistance, renewal, and healing for Black people around the world.Pre or Corequisite(s): or . Students can request special permission to enroll in this course without the prerequisites.

Winter 3450G Andrea Allen

English 3915E THE LIVES AND LITERATURE OF BLACK NORTH AMERICANS  NEW COURSE!
Through reading a variety of genres (poetry, autobiographies, fiction, histories, speeches, letters, legal briefs), we consider what it means to be Black in North America. We ask: how do the experiences of Black Canadians and Black Americans compare? How do Black Canadian and Black American authors influence, engage, and respond to one another? How do the histories of each nation affect Black authors? In analyzing this rich body of literature, we contemplate the diverse experiences, including joys and sorrows, struggles and successes, of Black North Americans. The course includes field trips to local Black history sites and engagement with Black community organizations, including the Fugitive Slave Chapel at Fanshawe Pioneer Village, the Black Mecca Museum, and the London Black History Coordinating Committee.

*This course will count toward the Black Studies Minor. If interested in taking this course, please reach out to Dr. Green-Barteet, Undergraduate Chair of GSWS.

Fall/Winter 3915E Miranda Green-Barteet and Alyssa MacLean

4000 Level Courses

GSWS 4461G GENDER RELATIONS IN POST-CONFLICT SETTINGS: UNDERSTANDING DIVERSITY AND DYNAMICS
This course aims to explore women's roles in conflict and post-conflict scenarios with a gender and feminist approach. We begin by looking at the intersection of gender, conflict, and post-conflict. The course covers the analysis of the difficulties faced by women, sexual minorities, and people with disabilities in the aftermath of conflicts, with a particular focus on how they have been systematically oppressed. This includes exploring social issues such as human trafficking, poverty, sexual and gender-based violence and violations of reproductive rights. Through this gendered approach, students will comprehend the various actors and intricate processes involved in post-conflict reconstruction processes, as well as how these affect decisions, mobility, (re)settlement, and post-conflict experiences.Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department

Winter 4461G Course outline

GSWS 4462F CULTIVATING CARE: CARE ETHICS AND INTERDEPENDENCE
In this seminar, students will explore various perspectives on care to engage critically with, redefine and relocate what care is, and who participates in care and all its affective qualities. Toward this aim, students will engage with academic and non-academic writing, films, and creative outlets that exhibit interdisciplinary fields of knowledge and methodology. Drawing on feminist, queer, trans, disability, Black, POC and Indigenous writings, the course highlights the power and limitations of care, as well as its material, ethical, and affective formations.The course begins by identifying care as a viable tool for surviving the precarity of our worlds, with the latter part of the course guiding students in building a foundation for fostering a critical and intersectional engagement with care as theory and practice. Prerequisite(s): or permission of the department.

Fall 4462F Jacob Barry online synchronous Course outline

GSWS 4463F SCREENING SEX
This course examines the representation of sexuality in film and video with a specific focus on the history of representation of queer identities in film. The course will begin by considering early cinema's representations of gay men and lesbians, including the production of particular stereotypes, and the effects of the Production Code on Hollywood, particularly in contrast to European cinemas. We will then look at post-Hays Code American film-making (both Hollywood and independent), at British, Canadian and Commonwealth filmmaking, at the rise of independent film and video in North America, and the challenge posed by New Queer Cinema in the 1990s to such still stereotypical Hollywood representations as In and Out and The Birdcage. Along the way, we will consider specific themes, such as coming out, representations of youth, intersections with race and class, and AIDS. The course will finish by looking at films that avoid the mainstreaming of certain types of queer representation (as is the case with films like Milk, Brokeback Mountain, The Kids are All Right and A Single Man), and the effects such films have on the viability of independent queer film making. The final films will thus emphasize the contemporary directions of queer film-making outside of Hollywood. Prerequisite(s):  or  or  or permission of the Department.

Fall 4463F WG Pearson Course outline

GSWS 4464G GENDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
This course will focus on the linkages between gender, economy, environment, human development, race, class, sexuality, environmental racism and environmental justice. We will examine key contemporary environmental issues such as climate change, food security, the green economy, low-carbon development and degrowth; access to water, sanitation, and energy; pollution; and biodiversity conservation from feminist perspectives. Feminist and queer theory will also be used to question and destabilize binary categories such as natural/unnatural, nature/culture, normal/abnormal as they relate to our understandings of the environment.The course will explore how racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, colonialism, imperialism, and other forms of oppression have shaped and continue to shape environmental discourses. Course materials will include academic and non-academic literature (including policy and journalistic literature), activist texts, case studies, fiction, and film. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E,or permission of the Department.

Winter 4464G Course outline

GSWS 4607F HISTORY OF WOMEN AND GENDER RELATIONS IN AFRICA
In the past African women were powerful leaders, strong economic contributors and respected members of their extended families. This course will examine these historical roles as well as factors that undermined African women's status and changed gender relations, such as slavery, economic forces and colonialism.Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 4607F Katherine McKenna Course outline

2022-2023 Courses

1000 Level Courses

GSWS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND WOMEN'S STUDIES
We will explore, among other topics, the following: challenges to the sex- and gender-binary, including transgender, non-binary, and intersex identities; intersectionality and solidarity across gender, race, class, and ability; constructions of masculinities and femininities; the operation of state power on gender and sexual minorities; colonialism and Indigenous resistances; activism and protest, including through literature and art.

Come join us as we discuss these topics through conversations about sex testing in the Olympics; K-pop and boy bands; racism on dating apps like Tinder and Grindr; Uber, the gig economy, and mommy blogs; reproductive rights for trans folks; the recently released report from the inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA People; incels, rape culture, and misandry; self-care and emotional labour.Course outline

Fall/Winter 1020E 001 Laura Cayen Tuesdays 1:30 - 3:30pm plus 1 hour tutorial
Fall/Winter 1020E 002 Laura Cayen

Thursdays 4:30 - 6:30pm plus 1 hour tutorial

GSWS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
This course is an interdisciplinary half-year course that will introduce students to the field of sexuality studies. It will examine this field through several different approaches: theoretical, literary, visual, cultural and historical. The aim will be to explore questions of identity and representation as they relate to sexuality: how are sexual identities formed? Are they essential or constructed? Who controls representations of sexuality? Why do we think of certain sexualities as normal and others as deviant? Within this context, we will analyze how certain expressions of sexuality are socially excluded and devalued in the name of a sexual norm.

Fall 1021F Cornel Grey Wednesdays 1:30-3:30pm plus 1 hour tutorial Course outline

GSWS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE, CHANGE
The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in struggles for social justice, economic empowerment, education, health, poverty alleviation, human rights, environmental protection, peace-building, good governance and political representation. A variety of case studies and examples will be used to highlight the ways in which women and other marginalized groups organize and agitate for change, resist oppression and theorize the concept of justice.

Winter 1022G Bipasha Baruah Asynchronous Online Course outline

GSWS 1023G GAY LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: BEYOND ADAM AND STEVE
Modern gay identities are defined by their integration into liberal capitalism and multicultural democracy. A once marginalized group now benefits from unprecedented social mobility. This course will survey the impact of a shifting market and new federal policies on topics like the social politics of gay spaces, gentrification, art and culture and more. Students will gain a historical understanding of gay culture and an interdisciplinary set of texts to analyze an ever multiplying set of identities that fit within gay culture. By the end of this course, students will be introduced to topics in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory and gender studies and have a set of critical tools to approach these topics from music studies, political theory and sociology.

Winter 1023G Jacob Evoy Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 1024F INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
This introductory course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights. The course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social difference and relations of power; as well, we will examine arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion, the rights of minoritized groups, and the politics of affirmative action. Towards these goals, we will take up readings about these issues from disciplines such as: anti-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. This also includes discussions of relevant case studies that highlight contemporary debates. Therefore, from different vantage points, the course examines some of the following questions: How are equity, diversity and human rights shaped by political and state interests? What are (some of) the limits and possibilities of institutionalized, liberal approaches to equity and diversity? What are human rights and what does it mean to have such rights? And how are these rights contested and protected?

Fall 1024F TBA Tuesdays 10:30 to 12:30 pm Previous course outline

GSWS 1030G INTRODUCTION TO BLACK STUDIES (NEW COURSE!)
Black Studies is comprised of the knowledge production practices and worldviews among African and African descendant peoples across the globe. It is rooted in rich histories, cultures, and philosophies that have given rise to anti-colonial, anti-racist, the Negritude, Pan-African and civil rights movements, including #BlackLivesMatter. This survey course introduces students to foundational debates, ideas, and practices in the Black intellectual tradition. With an emphasis on interdisciplinarity, course materials include book chapters, journal and magazine articles, music, film, art, and poetry. We will locate contemporary topics (e.g., identity, aesthetics, gender, race, sexuality, and popular culture, etc.,) in historical frameworks, with a focus on resilience and resistance in Black life. The purpose of the course is to deepen our understanding of how social, political, economic, and cultural issues are taken up in the Black intellectual-activist tradition.

Winter 1030G Erica Lawson Thursdays 1:30-3:30pm Course outline

2000 Level Courses

GSWS 2140 WOMEN IN CANADIAN HISTORY: CHANGING ROLES AND DIVERSE SOCIAL REALITIES
A survey of Canadian women's history from first European contact to the 1960s, with a focus on the realities of women's lived experience as recorded through biography. No prerequisites.

Fall/Winter 2140 Katherine McKenna Online

GSWS 2160A INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Intimate Relations focuses on how expectations of intimacy and relationships rely on particular understandings of love, sex, sexuality and bodies to shape how we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings. The course considers how intimacy (sexual, maternal, familial, affectionate) is understood in relation to history, philosophy, health, society and popular culture. No prerequisites.

Fall 2160A Lauren Auger Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2161B WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. No prerequisites.

Winter 2161B Nikki Edwards Online Course Previous course outline

GSWS 2162B THE BODY
We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society's difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body. No prerequisites.

Winter 2162B Cornel Grey Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2163A SEX, HOW TO: SEX EDUCATION, ITS HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES
Sex education is a controversial topic; should we even be teaching people how to have sex or how not to have sex? This course traces the history of sex education and its many controversies as well as looking at contemporary sex education practices both locally and in an international context. No prerequisites.

Fall 2163A Nikki Edwards Online course Course outline

GSWS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION
This course is designed to give students an introduction to the role played by fashion in the construction of gendered identities (in addition to learning about fashion history, fashion in relation to sexuality, and fashion as identity). Topics to be covered include: what clothing can tell us about empire, gender, sexuality, class, race, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics and globalization; fashion as art; drag queens and kings; fashion and sustainability; fashion journalism; the metrosexual; the history of the stiletto; veiling; and fashion subcultures such as goth and punk. We will also examine the trends of athleisure, anti-fashion, slow fashion, and normcore.Although the focus of much of the course will be on 深夜福利站 fashion, we will also look at Asian and African designers and influences (Harajuku fashion, Pei and Yamamoto; hip-hop and The Black Panther), as well as indigenous fashion. No prerequisites.

Fall 2164A Jacob Evoy Online course Course outline

GSWS 2165B GENDER MIGRATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
This second-year course engages with feminist and interdisciplinary approaches in order to understand the connections between gender, migration and climate change. It is critical to engage with all three, as they intersect in complex ways to shape the experiences of populations globally. This course will therefore engage with interdisciplinary theories and literature drawn from gender, migration, climate change and feminist studies to help students develop broader ways of thinking about the intersections of these phenomena. No prerequisites.

Winter 2165B Judy Bae Mondays 4:30 - 7:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2167B  QUEER(ING) POPULAR CULTURE
How are Queer individuals represented in popular culture? Images of 2SLGBTQ+ individuals in media, including news, film, and television, produce particular ideas of queer identity. This course examines the historical and contemporary presence of queer individuals within popular culture and popular culture produced for and by 2SLGBTQ+ people. No prerequisites. 

Winter 2167B Amy Keating Mondays 4:30 - 7:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2205G MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
In emphasizing the social construction of manhood and masculinity as constitutive of the enormous capital that men command, this course aims to advance a critical view whereby such concepts are seen not as impenetrable bastions of historically oppressive power, but as privileged nodes that have been instrumentalized within discursive ideological networks. Through an examination of diverse media sources (literature, film, art, critical journalism, news articles, music, etc.) and their treatment of issues like “guy” culture, male body image, homosociality, aggression, family, success, and male sexuality, this course encourages the centrality of critical reflection in understanding the oftentimes violent negotiation of masculinity across various intersectional sites, and how those dynamics are refracted in men’s relationships with themselves, other men, women, and institutions. No prerequisites. 

Winter 2205G Christian Ylagan Mondays 1:30 - 4:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
(Reqiuired 2nd yr. theory course)

An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G.

Fall/Winter 2220E  Kim Verwaayen and Lauren Auger Thursdays 10:30am - 1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2233G MARRIAGE: FEMINIST AND QUEER PERSPECTIVES (NEW COURSE!)
This course covers five themes: the history of marriage, primarily in the West; the transition from arranged marriage to companionate marriage; feminist attempts to render marriage egalitarian; capitalism and the growth of the wedding industrial complex; queer perspectives on both heterosexual and same-sex marriage. No prerequisites. 

Winter 2233G WG Pearson Wednesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm  Course outline

GSWS 2240F FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists’ calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. No prerequisites.

Fall 2240F Alison Lee Wednesdays 10:30 am - 1:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2243F SPECIAL TOPICS: READING THE RAINBOW: LGTBQ+ YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE (NEW COURSE!)
Much has changed in the landscape of 2SLGBTQIA+ adolescent literature since the publication of John Donovan’s young adult novel, I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip (1969), arguably the first text with queer content written for and read by teen audiences. Originally a niche genre of literature, 2SLGBTQIA+ young adult (YA) novels have become cornerstone texts in the field, reaching a previously unthinkable degree of admiration and celebration in both academic and popular contexts. How can 2SLGBTQIA+ YA literature push us to better appreciate different ways of existing, surviving, and thriving in heterocentric, patriarchal, and antiqueer cultures? To what extent can different branches of (queer) theory assist us in unpacking and examining the literary and radical potentiality of this increasingly mainstream subset of YA literature? In order to effectively answer these questions, we will draw from different queer approaches— including queer temporality, queer of color critique, and queer narratology—to examine a variety of recent 2SLGBTQIA+ YA texts. No prerequisites

Fall 2243F Jeremy Johnston Thursdays 4:30 - 7:30pm  Course outline

GSWS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women’s health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women’s Health; Representing Gender and Women’s Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women’s Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women’s Health; and Women, Work and Health. No prerequisites. 

Fall/Winter 2244 Jessica Polzer   Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2260 WOMEN, LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE 
This course is an introduction to various areas of law which affect women in specific ways. It will examine laws relating to sex discrimination, employment, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, abortion, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, pornography and prostitution. It will explore topical debates in these various areas of law and how law can be used as a strategy for bringing about social change. No prerequisites. Antirequisite(s): GSWS 2270A/B. 

Fall/Winter 2260 Katrina Younes Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2263F INTERSECTIONS: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY
One of the main objectives of this course will be to unravel how human beings become categories that expand beyond the seemingly binary divide between “the sexes,” “the races,” and the “haves and have-notes.” Instead, we will consider the real-life experiences of “Muslim women” or “two-spirit people” through an examination of texts from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, among others. In addition, our examination of products from popular culture, such as films, television shows, music videos, and clips from the internet, will provide thoughtful, and often provocative, examples of the complex representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality in our society. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 1020E or 1.0 from GSWS 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/G and 1024F/G. 

Fall 2263F Kate Korycki Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm  Course outline

GSWS 2264G THE WORKING WORLD: GENDER, SEX, AND THE FUTURE OF WORK (NEW COURSE!)
Drawing on diverse literature from political economy, economics, and feminist media studies, this course investigates the relationships among gender, sex, and labour within capitalist societies, particularly in the digital age. We will begin by examining the political economy of gender and girlhood, exploring the economy through a feminist lens, and navigating the foundations of social reproduction theory to understand gender’s place within a capitalist system. In the course’s second unit, we will explore the intersectional layers of gender, race, sexuality, and class, covering topics such as “Black Political Economy,” “Gender Capital,” how masculinity operates under neoliberalism, “Trans Work,” and “Queer Workerism.” Finally, we will turn to the future of gender, sex, and labour in the digital age, examining topics such as sex work and sexualized labour within digital cultures; the intersections of gender, consumerism, and authenticity; gender, labour, and social media; and we will conclude the course by reviewing feminist critiques of the new ideologies of work. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 1020E or 1.0 from 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/G and 1024F/G.

Winter 2264G Jeremy Johnston  Thursdays 4:30 - 7:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production. No prerequisites.  

Fall/Winter 2273E Laura Cayen Mondays 10:30 - 1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2274G INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 4460F/G if taught in Winter 2013; Women's Studies 3343F/G if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 1020E or 1.0 from 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/G and 1024F/G. 

Winter 2274G TBA Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm Previous course outline

WS 2275F HETEROSEXUALITIES
This course is interested in the interdisciplinary study of heterosexualities. Topics covered will include: social and historical productions of (hetero)sexualities; cultural performances of (hetero)sexualities; heterosexual pleasures and dangers; heterosexed pornographies and sex-work; erotic (hetero)sexual power play; and heterosexualities that cross the boundaries of (cis)gender, race, age, ability, class and nation. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 1020E or 1.0 from 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/G and 1024F/G. 

Fall 2275F Lauren Auger  Wednesdays 4:30-7:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2283G DESIRING WOMEN
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites.

Winter 2283G Lauren Auger Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm Course outline

3000 Level Courses

GSWS 3163G CONTEMPORARY QUEER TOPICS
This course investigates topics in contemporary queer life, including same-sex marriage, gay and queer radicalism and the fight for sexual liberation, the growth of assimilatory politics and its consequences, homonationalism and pink-washing, homophobia and bullying, the role of religion, and the globalization of LGBT human rights rhetoric and politics.Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E, or permission of the Department.

Winter 3163G Jacob Evoy Thursdays 10:30am - 1:30pm

GSWS 3311F FEMINIST WRITING MADNESS (NEW COURSE!)
This course explores feminist approaches to madness from across various critical perspectives, disciplines, time periods, and genres but with a primary focus on representation in literature by women. Why have women been historically linked with mental deficiency or madness? What social, political, economic, and literary ends have been served by this connection? How do other axes of identity, such as race, class, sexuality, age, (dis)ability etc. intersect with the social construction of madness? Ultimately, these queries lead us to ask: how do women respond? How do they write experiences of reason and madness, cure and illness, liberation and imprisonment? By reading works (short stories, novels, memoirs) by women from both within and outside the asylum experience, and various approaches to madness by feminist theorists, we will focus on how various writers explore, question, and defy their discursive and material imprisonments. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 3311F Kim Verwaayen Mondays 1:30 - 4:30pm Course outline

GSWS 3315G BLOOD, BREATH AND THE BLACK BODY (NEW COURSE!)
This course draws on Black feminist and queer theories to think through questions of health, risk, and care. We will consider some of the ways Black people have been depicted as non-human, vectors of disease, and a problem for public health. Students will engage the work of Black Studies scholars and artists whose critical interventions push us to think differently and expansively about what health science data can do for black people, but also to imagine models of care that account for the multiple dimensions of Black peoples’ lives. Possible topics include the politics of blood donation in Canada, blackness and fatphobia, anti-Black racism and pandemics, sexual risk and pleasure, and environmental racism.Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Listen to Dr. Grey talk about this course here 

Winter 3315G Cornel Grey Wednesdays 10:30-1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 3316G ART(S) MATTER: FEMINISM, ARTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE (NEW COURSE!)
How do creative practices respond to and attempt to intervene within historical and ongoing forms of injustice, including in our contemporary moment? How can the arts move us to be, and do, otherwise? This course looks to examples of feminist artivism (across visual art, media, spoken word performances, poetry, film, and theatre, as potential examples) in relation to some major and lesser known local and global social justice movements and issues. Together we will work to understand and assess various relations between art, aesthetics, feminism, and politics and cultural change. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter 3316G Kim Verwaayen Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm Course outline

GSWS 3320F INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND FEMINIST METHODOLOGIES (NEW REQUIRED COURSE!)
This course introduces students to gender studies and feminist research methodologies from a variety of disciplinary traditions and theoretical perspectives. Students will learn about and begin to apply specific methodological issues, including ethics, archival work, researcher positionality, and the practices and politics of data collection, interpretation, and reporting.Antirequisite(s):BOTH GSWS 3321F/G and GSWS 3322F/G. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 3320F Susan Knabe Thursdays 10:30 - 1:30pm

GSWS 3324G CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES
From black face performances, appropriation of cultural and spiritual practices, and its centrality in economic and other forms of social inequalities, race and racism persists. In this course, we will ask: What is race and its formations? How does it shift and change over time? Why do we remain so deeply invested in race/racism but are afraid to talk about it? And how is race debated and contested in the twenty-first century? We will explore these, and other questions, with sources from across disciplines (e.g., sociology, feminism, anthropology, literature), as well as in popular culture/media, and in liberation and anti-colonial movements. The course does not offer definitive answers about race, but rather explores its historical roots and contemporary manifestations. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E, or permission of the Department. 

Winter 3324G Erica Lawson Mondays 1:30 - 4:30pm Course outline

GSWS 3358F BLACK GIRL MAGIC: A STUDY OF BLACK GIRLS AND GIRLHOOD (NEW COURSE!)
This interdisciplinary course introduces students to theories, methods, and pedagogical approaches that understand Black girls as meaning-makers and political actors. Throughout this course we will examine how narratives of Black girlhood crafted by Black women address issues of gender, race, geography, class, sexuality, citizenship, and more. To do this, we will appraise the lived consequence of antiblackness, settler colonialism, imperialism, and heteropatriarchy for Black girls in a series of academic texts, novels, tv-shows, music and podcasts. The stories that we pay attention to - lived or imagined - in this course work against one-dimensional readings of Black girls. Instead, such stories emerge from the belief that Black girls already know a lot about the social worlds they inhabit while also considering the joy, kinship, play, love, and freedom dreams that Black girls experiences in the places they are in. In this course, we center Black girl magic. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 3338F Jade Nixon Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm

GSWS 3359F REVOLUTIONARY MOTHERING AND DISRUPTIVE MOTHERS (NEW COURSE!)

Motherhood is a contested site of engagement, representation, and political participation; it is a topic of much feminist theorizing touching on areas such as fashion (e.g., Rihanna’s insistence on dressing and showing off her pregnant body), activism (Moms Against Guns), and debates (Pregnant people? Pregnant women?). Feminist literature informs us that people who identify as mothers can resort to violence in the name of justice and freedom; some leverage maternalism for war or peace; others conform to national and cultural ideals; still others are disruptive and troublesome, charting new and transgressive paths that challenge state and ‘traditional’ expectations. Through articles, media, fashion, film, and conversation, this thematically organized survey course explores disruptive and revolutionary motherhood and mothering practices in a global context. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 3359F Erica Lawson Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30pm Course outline

GSWS 3363G LGBTQIA+ AND POLITICS (NEW COURSE!)
This course traces the shape and the stakes of sexuality politics in theoretical, historical and contemporary guises. Its explorations are anchored in the empirical cases of Iran, USA, Canada, Uganda and Eastern Europe. We begin our exploration with the history of sexuality and trace its implication with the creation of the state and its biopolitics. We continue with sexual politics imbrications with the formation of nations, empires, and religious orders, as well as notions of terrorism and homonationalism. We end the class with the extensive exploration of gender ideology wars as well as the assault on trans-rights and their connection to white nationalism.
Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E or GSWS 2253E or GSWS 2273E, or permission of the Department.

Winter 3363G Kate Korycki Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30pm Course outline
 

4000 Level Courses

GSWS 4456F QUEER TRAUMA AND RESILIENCE: CANADIAN PERSPECTIVES (NEW COURSE!)

This course will examine queer responses to dominant notions of trauma and resilience. Students will gain a critical understanding of queer and trans trauma through topics that expand medicalized discourse on post-traumatic stress disorder. We will examine issues such queer homelessness and foster care, suicide, intimate partner violence, and post-traumatic growth. We will also explore the painful effects of large-scale, traumatizing historical events throughout Canadian queer history, such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, racism, homonationalism, as well as the raids of cruising parks and bathhouses. We will examine queer of colour critique in topics such as trans necropolitics, the development of ethno-specific AIDS service organizations, and queer diasporas. This course will have practical implications, exposing students to both activist and professional queer organizations and their responses queer and trans trauma. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach that will be beneficial for students interested in the non-profit sector, trans health, counselling, psychology, social work, nursing, medicine, sociology, and health sciences. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 4456F Kody Muncaster Fridays 10:30 - 1:30pm

GSWS 4460G  GENDER, PANDEMICS AND SOCIAL EQUALITY (NEW COURSE!)
Despite the devastating effects of the most recent COVID-19 pandemic, the potential for learning about social, economic, and political inequality from COVID-19 is tremendous. This course offers students a dynamic opportunity to engage with the timeliness of this topic; evaluate policy, programming, activism, and patterns of inequality through a feminist lens; and explore how issues of gender equality, social justice, and crisis response and policy interact with pandemics. We will build a foundation of feminist theory establishing that gender affects how people experience public health crises, and then explore how factors such as race, Indigeneity, sexuality, class, disability, incarceration, vocation, family status, immigration status, housing, and experiences of violence shape those experiences further. We will focus on emerging literature and examples from the most recent COVID-19 pandemic and the Canadian experience, but students are encouraged to bring knowledge and examples from different historical and cultural contexts to the table. Course content will be interdisciplinary and appeal to students across the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter 4460G Andrea Burke Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 4463F QUEER SCIENCE FICTION
This course will look at queer depictions of sexuality in science fiction, a genre that has been arguably somewhat queer from its inception in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Although we will touch on historical concerns, the primary focus of the course will be on work published after Ursula K Le Guin's monumentally influential novel,The Left Hand of Darkness (1967). The course will cover topics such as critiques of heteronormativity in sciencefiction, futures that imagine alternative epistemologies of sexuality, futures without binary sex/gender systems, the question of what roles sexuality plays in robotics and Artificial Intelligence, sexuality and post-humanism, sexuality in cyberpunk and its offshoots, and responses to the AIDS crisis. Prerequisite(s): GSWS 2220E or GSWS 2253E or GSWS 2273E, or permission of the Department.

Fall 4463F WG Pearson Thursdays 11:30am - 2:30pm Course outline

GSWS 4464G GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT: ENGAGING WITH THEORY AND PRACTICE
This Course is informed by the interests and needs of future scholars and practitioners of gender equality - i.e. students who hope to engage in research, project design and implementation, policy formulation and analysis, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy and/or networking in international development, global cooperation or other related domains. A few readings and lectures will be devoted to providing students with a historical perspective on the evolution of the theory of gender and development. The rest of the course will focus almost exclusively on key contemporary gender issues in development. The course seeks to provide students with a strong theoretical and conceptual grounding in gender and development as well as applied skills to work as development professionals. Students will study development policy and learn tools and methodologies that will enable them to pursue careers as gender equality practitioners with the United Nations system, other intergovernmental organizations, state agencies, NGOs and other civil society organizations, think-tanks, bilateral and multi-lateral agencies, and private foundations. 

Winter 4464G Bipasha Baruah Mondays 10:30am - 1:30pm Course outline

2021-2022 Courses

GSWS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND WOMEN'S STUDIES
We will explore, among other topics, the following: challenges to the sex- and gender-binary, including transgender, non-binary, and intersex identities; intersectionality and solidarity across gender, race, class, and ability; constructions of masculinities and femininities; the operation of state power on gender and sexual minorities; colonialism and Indigenous resistances; activism and protest, including through literature and art. 

Come join us as we discuss these topics through conversations about sex testing in the Olympics; K-pop and boy bands; racism on dating apps like Tinder and Grindr; Uber, the gig economy, and mommy blogs; reproductive rights for trans folks; the recently released report from the inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA People; incels, rape culture, and misandry; self-care and emotional labour. 2 lecture hours plus one hour tutorial, 1.0 course.  

Fall/Winter 1020E/001 Laura Cayen Mondays 1:30 - 3:30pm plus 1 hour tutorial
Fall/Winter 1020E/002 Laura Cayen

Thursdays 4:30 - 6:30pm plus 1 hour tutorial

GSWS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
This course is an interdisciplinary half-year course that will introduce students to the field of sexuality studies.  It will examine this field through several different approaches: theoretical, literary, visual, cultural and historical.  The aim will be to explore questions of identity and representation as they relate to sexuality: how are sexual identities formed? Are they essential or constructed? Who controls representations of sexuality? Why do we think of certain sexualities as normal and others as deviant? Within this context, we will analyze how certain expressions of sexuality are socially excluded and devalued in the name of a sexual norm. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. 

Fall 1021F Chris Roulston  Lectures will be online plus 1 hour in-class tutorial

GSWS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE, CHANGE
The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in struggles for social justice, economic empowerment, education, health, poverty alleviation, human rights, environmental protection, peace-building, good governance and political representation. A variety of case studies and examples will be used to highlight the ways in which women and other marginalized groups organize and agitate for change, resist oppression and theorize the concept of “justice”. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. 

Winter 1022G Bipasha Baruah Lectures will be online plus 1 hour in-class tutorial

GSWS 1023G GAY LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: BEYOND ADAM AND STEVE
Modern gay identities are defined by their integration into liberal capitalism and multicultural democracy. A once marginalized group now benefits from unprecedented social mobility. This course will survey the impact of a shifting market and new federal policies on topics like the social politics of gay spaces, gentrification, art and culture and more. Students will gain a historical understanding of gay culture and an interdisciplinary set of texts to analyze an ever multiplying set of identities that fit within gay culture. By the end of this course, students will be introduced to topics in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory and gender studies and have a set of critical tools to approach these topics from music studies, political theory and sociology. 2.5 hours  

Winter 1023G Jeremy Fairall Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm

GSWS 1024F INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
This introductory course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights. The course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social difference and relations of power; as well, we will examine arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion, the rights of ‘minoritized’ groups, and the politics of affirmative action. Towards these goals, we will take up readings about these issues from disciplines such as: anti-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. This also includes discussions of relevant case studies that highlight contemporary debates. Therefore, from different vantage points, the course examines some of the following questions: How are equity, diversity and human rights shaped by political and state interests? What are (some of) the limits and possibilities of institutionalized, liberal approaches to equity and diversity?  What are human rights and what does it mean to have such rights? And how are these rights contested and protected?  2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course 

Fall 1024F  Shirin Abdmolaei Lectures will be online plus 1 hour in-class tutorial

GSWS 2160A INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Intimate Relations focuses on how expectations of intimacy and relationships rely on particular understandings of love, sex, sexuality and bodies to shape how we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings. The course considers how intimacy (sexual, maternal, familial, affectionate) is understood in relation to history, philosophy, health, society and popular culture. No prerequisites 3 hours, 0.5 course.

Fall 2160A Lauren Auger  Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm

GSWS 2161B WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. 3 hours, 0.5 course.

Winter 2161B Nikki Edwards Online Course

GSWS 2162B THE BODY
We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society’s difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body.
No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2162B Sarah Blanchette Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm

GSWS 2163A SEX, HOW TO: SEX EDUCATION, ITS HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES 
Sex education is a controversial topic; should we even be teaching people how to have sex or how not to have sex? This course traces the history of sex education and its many controversies as well as looking at contemporary sex education practices both locally and in an international context. 

Fall 2163A Nikki Edwards Online course

GSWS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION
This course is designed to give students an introduction to the role played by fashion in the construction of gendered identities (in addition to learning about fashion history, fashion in relation to sexuality, and fashion as identity). Topics to be covered include: what clothing can tell us about empire, gender, sexuality, class, race, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics and globalization; fashion as art; drag queens and kings; fashion and sustainability; fashion journalism; the metrosexual; the history of the stiletto; veiling; and fashion subcultures such as goth and punk. We will also examine the trends of athleisure, anti-fashion, slow fashion, and normcore.Although the focus of much of the course will be on 深夜福利站 fashion, we will also look at Asian and African designers and influences (Harajuku fashion, Pei and Yamamoto; hip-hop and The Black Panther), as well as indigenous fashion. 

Fall 2164A Jacob Evoy Online course

GSWS 2167B  QUEER(ING) POPULAR CULTURE
How are Queer individuals represented in popular culture? Images of 2SLGBTQ+ individuals in media, including news, film, and television, produce particular ideas of queer identity. This course examines the historical and contemporary presence of queer individuals within popular culture and popular culture produced for and by 2SLGBTQ+ people.

Winter 2167B Amy Keating Mondays 4:30 - 7:30pm

GSWS 2205G MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
In emphasizing the social construction of manhood and masculinity as constitutive of the enormous capital that men command, this course aims to advance a critical view whereby such concepts are seen not as impenetrable bastions of historically oppressive power, but as privileged nodes that have been instrumentalized within discursive ideological networks. Through an examination of diverse media sources (literature, film, art, critical journalism, news articles, music, etc.) and their treatment of issues like “guy” culture, male body image, homosociality, aggression, family, success, and male sexuality, this course encourages the centrality of critical reflection in understanding the oftentimes violent negotiation of masculinity across various intersectional sites, and how those dynamics are refracted in men’s relationships with themselves, other men, women, and institutions.
Winter 2205G Christian Ylagan Mondays 1:30 - 4:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
(Reqiuired 2nd yr. theory course)

An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2256E or Women's Studies 2257E Prerequisite(s): WS1020E, or WS1021F/G and WS1022F/G, or permission of the Department.
3 hours, 1.0 course.

Fall/Winter 2220E  Andie Shabbar and Lauren Auger Thursdays 10:30am - 1:30pm

GSWS 2225F INTRO TO GIRLHOOD STUDIES 
This course introduces students to the emerging field of Girlhood studies. We consider what it means to be a girl and how the concepts of girl and girlhood have been constructed across a variety of geographic and historical contexts, as well as how the intersections of race, class, gender, and ability have influenced these concepts. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including literature, and history, we specifically consider girlhood through a feminist lens and examine how definitions of girl and girlhood shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, and futures
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G. Previous course outline

Fall 2225F Miranda Green-Barteet Tuesdays 1:30 am - 4:30pm

GSWS 2240F FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists’ calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. Antirequisite: WS2250E. No prerequisites.
3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2240F Alison Lee Wednesdays 10:30 am - 1:30pm

GSWS 2243F TECHNOLOGY AND EMBODIMENT
What is the relationship between technology, power, and the body? How do historical uses and contemporary developments of technology implicate our experiences and expressions of sexuality, gender, race, class and ability? This course will take an intersectional approach to examine a wide range of questions related technology and the body including: What role has sexuality and gender played in the development of technology, and how have technological advancements affected our ideas of identity categories? Is it useful to think of identity categories themselves as a sort of embodied technology? What can technological failures tell us about our relationship to one another? Topics we will examine include reproduction technologies, surveillance, virtual sex, digital romance and dating, biomedical practices, queer embodiment, the link between sexuality, technology and militarization, and technological innovations in queer activist practices. 

Fall 2243F Andie Shabbar Mondays 1:30 - 4:30pm 

GSWS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women’s health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women’s Health; Representing Gender and Women’s Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women’s Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women’s Health; and Women, Work and Health. Antirequisite: Women’s Studies 2154. No prerequisites. 

Fall/Winter 2244 Jessica Polzer   Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm

GSWS 2246B WORK, LITERATURE AND FILM: WOMEN AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Across the globe, contemporary women writers and filmmakers are increasingly engaging with environmental discourses in their artistic work. Intersectional in its manifestations, these artists’ commitment against environmental injustice is usually accompanied by concerns regarding gender, sexual, ethnic, and class inequality. Primary texts include fiction films, documentaries, novels, and short stories.

Winter 2246B Victoria Jara  Mondays 2:30 - 5:30pm 

GSWS 2265G YOUTH ACTIVISM
In this course, we will highlight the connections among gender, youth activism, and nontraditional political participation. Understanding the state of youth activism, and the factors that encourage youth participation is particularly important because, as we will discuss throughout the semester, youth have played a crucial role in many of the most effective social movements going back to the 1960s, and the youth of today will shape what politics looks like for the next generation. The course is divided into three sections. First, we will examine the foundational features of youth activism and political participation writ large. Second, we will investigate current youth activism in action by looking at local, national, and global movements such as Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, and Fridays for Future. And, finally, by using the groundwork established in the first two-thirds of the course, we will explore how youth are changing the content and shape of political engagement today. Prerequisite(s):  or 1.0 course from    .

Winter 2265G Jeremy Johnston  Wednesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm

GSWS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, 1.0 course 

Fall/Winter 2273E Laura Cayen Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm

GSWS 2274G INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 4460F/G if taught in Winter 2013; Women's Studies 3343F/G if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G. 

Winter 2274G Sadie Hochman Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm

GSWS 2283G DESIRING WOMEN
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites. 

Winter 2283G Lauren Auger   Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm

GSWS 3133G LESBIAN LIVES AND CULTURES
This course will explore what it means to identify as a lesbian today. With the move away from identity politics and the ascendance of queer as a challenge to identity categories, it will consider the place of lesbianism in contemporary North American culture and more globally. Attention will be paid to a variety of aspects of lesbian lives and to contemporary forms of lesbian experiences in relation to their historical antecedents. Themes will include intersectionality, activism, sex, literature, art and politics. 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. 
Prerequisite(s):  or  or permission of the department.

Winter 3133G Chris Roulston   Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30pm

GSWS 3173G INTRODUCTION TO QUEER THEORY
What is queer theory, where did it come from, how is it changing? Examining key foundational texts in queer theory, the contexts for its emergence, and debates over its contemporary usefulness and direction, students in this course will trace the development of queer theory from Foucault to the present day.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s):  or  or permission of the department. Previous course outline.

Winter 3173G WG Pearson Wednesdays 10:30am - 1:30pm

GSWS 3321G ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES (Required 3rd yr. theory course)
This course applies a wide range of feminist theories and critical practices, including postmodern and queer theories, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies, to a diverse array of artistic practices, including literature, film, and the performing and visual arts. 3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department. 

Winter 3321G Andie Shabbar Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm

GSWS 3322F ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
(Required 3rd yr. theory course)

This course is an advanced examination of the application of feminist theories and practices to topics in the social sciences. Focus will include epistemological and methodological questions raised in feminist engagement across the various social science disciplines. Topics addressed may include a range of social-economic, cultural, political, and policy issues. 3 hours, 0.5 course Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department. 

Fall 3322F Lauren Auger Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm

GSWS 3324G CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES
Focussing on the changing meanings of race and racism in the twenty-first century, this course discusses and analyzes conceptual frameworks for understanding the multi-faceted and intersectional dimensions of race and racism, and examines how these inform social justice movements and other initiatives that seek to challenge institutional racism and racial violence. Prerequisite(s):  or  or permission of the Department. 

Winter 3324G Jason Sandhar  Mondays 2:30 - 5:30pm

GSWS 3330F GENDER, RACE AND REBELLION
When it comes to twenty-first century rebellions, adolescents are taking center stage, and specifically adolescent girls. In this course, we will examine contemporary girlhood and how adolescent girls are at the forefront of race- and gender-based rebellions. Understanding the state of youth activism, and the factors that encourage adolescent girls to rebel against harmful social structures is particularly important because, as we will discuss throughout the semester, youth have played a crucial role in many of the most effective social movements going back to the 1960s, and adolescent girls today are on the frontlines of rebelling against issues such as police brutality, government policies, and environmental catastrophe. Specifically, adolescent girls frequently demonstrate a hyper-awareness of how these injustices are informed by gender and race. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Fall 3330F Jeremy Johnston Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm

GSWS 3333F  RESISTING HOMOPHOBIA ACROSS THE GLOBE 
Homophobia - or a hostility towards persons not conforming to heterosexual norms - is old and new, global and local. Despite its longevity, it varies in intensity both geographically and historically & it is not natural, but created. It is also resisted, evaded, subverted. In this class, we explore these aspects of production, maintenance and resistance and we do so by paying attention to both history and contemporary cases. More specifically, we investigate how homophobia was and is implicated in the disciplining of gender, how it was and is a tool of orientalism; how it helped build nations and grow religious orders, how it aided Cold War; and how it now organizes notions of terrorism. Prerequisite(s):  or  or permission of the Department.

Fall 3333F Kate Korycki  Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm

GSWS 3345G/TS 3211G IN YOUR SKIN: SEXUALITY AND PERFORMANCE - NEW!!
Gender and sexuality. Intersectional experiences of gender identity. Trans, non-binary, queer lives. This is an unprecedented moment in modern history: these once-taboo topics are not only being spoken about openly, in the social mainstream, but are being taken up and explored with rigour, kindness, and hot, sweaty desire in all manner of theatrical and performance forms. In Your Skin introduces students to the past and present of sex and gender performatives on 深夜福利站 stages. We will meet the trailblazers, learn about the ways in which contemporary artists are pushing the boundaries of gender representation on stage today, and we’ll pay particular attention in the intersections among sexual and gender identities and experiences of race, Indigeneity, class, and ability on and off stage.  Prerequisites: Women's Studies 2253E or 2273E or 2220E or permission of the Department. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 3345G Kim Solga Tuedays 11:30-1:30pm  

GSWS 3362G TOXIC MASCULINITY
“At the heart of the relational conception of masculinity is the conflict between what it means to be a “real” man and what it means to be a “good” man—a conflict that is ultimately enacted within contested contexts such as culture, ideology, institutions, and habitus. This leads to questions such as: are toxicity and masculinity mutually exclusive? Is toxicity an essentially masculine characteristic? Are toxic masculinity and healthy masculinity binary concepts? Toxic masculinity, as this course hypothesizes, thus arises when there is an incongruence or asymmetry between the performative and idealized aspects of men’s experiences of manhood and masculinity.” Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Winter 3362G Christian Ylagan Tuesdays 1:30-4:30pm

GSWS 4458F STIGMA: PEOPLE, PLACES AND POPULATIONS
This course takes an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach to stigma theorization driven by a feminist perspective in order to critique the classed, raced, and gendered harms that structural stigma enacts. Through a wide range of examples using academic and non-academic literature, films, and popular media texts, we will examine stigma beyond established understandings of individualised shame. Rather, students will explore how stigma power operates as a technique of biopower applied at an individual, spatial and societal level to discipline bodies, and regulate populations and places in ways that reproduce existing hierarchies of difference and marginalize, manage, and/or affirm our place within society. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Fall 4458F Stephanie Brocklehurst  Thursdays 10:30 - 1:30pm

GSWS 4459G A BUSINESS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN: AN EXPLORATION OF SEX WORK IN CANADA 
Sex workers have long been at the forefront of feminism. Yet, many communities and scholars who proclaim a commitment to feminism continue to exclude sex workers and invalidate their lived experiences. In this course, students will explore how sex work is not inherently oppressive and instead look at how dominant social structures, values and laws marginalize sex workers and enable and perpetuate the injustices that sex workers face. Students will develop nuanced understandings of sex work leading to a recognition of and appreciation for the role that sex work has in feminism and social justice through both the struggles faced and accomplishments made by various sex working communities. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Winter 4459G Georgina Gifford Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm

GSWS 4461F POST-FEMINISM, ADVERTISING AND INFLUENCERS
What is the relationship between feminism and advertising?  In what ways have women been involved in the advertising industry?  How has the advertising industry historically viewed and valued women as consumers?  How have activists used media reform to advance feminist aims? How has advertising responded to decades of feminist critique?  In this course, students will explore and discuss the representation of women in advertising, women’s employment in the advertising industry, the political economy of gender in audience studies, post-feminist advertising themes of empowerment, choice, diversity, and inclusion, and the relationship between activism and the a-political nature of post-feminism. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Fall 4461F Laura Cayen Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm

GSWS 4463F QUEER SCIENCE FICTION
This course will look at queer depictions of sexuality in science fiction, a genre that has been arguably somewhat queer from its inception in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Although we will touch on historical concerns, the primary focus of the course will be on work published after Ursula K Le Guin's monumentally influential novel,The Left Hand of Darkness (1967). The course will cover topics such as critiques of heteronormativity in sciencefiction, futures that imagine alternative epistemologies of sexuality, futures without binary sex/gender systems, the question of what roles sexuality plays in robotics and Artificial Intelligence, sexuality and post-humanism, sexuality in cyberpunk and its offshoots, and responses to the AIDS crisis. Prerequisite(s):  or  or  or permission of the Department.

Fall 4463F WG Pearson Wednesdays 10:30am - 1:30pm

GSWS 4464G GENDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
This course will focus on the intersections between gender, sexuality, development and environmental justice. Feminist and queer theory will be used to interrogate binary categories such as natural/unnatural, nature/culture, normal/abnormal as they relate to our understandings of “the environment.” The course will explore how racism, colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression have shaped and continue to shape environmental discourses. We will examine key contemporary environmental issues such as climate change; food security; the “green” economy and low-carbon development; access to water, sanitation and energy; pollution; and wildlife conservation from feminist perspectives. Course materials will include academic and non-academic literature, activist texts as well as case studies, fiction and films. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Winter 4464G Bipasha Baruah Mondays 10:30am - 1:30pm

2020-2021 Courses

WS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND WOMEN'S STUDIES
We will explore, among other topics, the following: challenges to the sex- and gender-binary, including transgender, non-binary, and intersex identities; intersectionality and solidarity across gender, race, class, and ability; constructions of masculinities and femininities; the operation of state power on gender and sexual minorities; colonialism and Indigenous resistances; activism and protest, including through literature and art. 

Come join us as we discuss these topics through conversations about sex testing in the Olympics; K-pop and boy bands; racism on dating apps like Tinder and Grindr; Uber, the gig economy, and mommy blogs; reproductive rights for trans folks; the recently released report from the inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA People; incels, rape culture, and misandry; self-care and emotional labour. 2 lecture hours plus one hour tutorial, 1.0 course.  

Fall/Winter 1020E/001 Laura Cayen Online course plus a one hour synchronous online tutorial
Fall/Winter 1020E/002 Laura Cayen Online course plus a one hour synchronous online tutorial

WS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
This course is an interdisciplinary half-year course that will introduce students to the field of sexuality studies.  It will examine this field through several different approaches: theoretical, literary, visual, cultural and historical.  The aim will be to explore questions of identity and representation as they relate to sexuality: how are sexual identities formed? Are they essential or constructed? Who controls representations of sexuality? Why do we think of certain sexualities as normal and others as deviant? Within this context, we will analyze how certain expressions of sexuality are socially excluded and devalued in the name of a sexual norm. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. 

Fall 1021F Chris Roulston Online course plus a one hour synchronous online tutorial

WS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE AND CHANGE
The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in struggles for social justice, economic empowerment, education, health, poverty alleviation, human rights, environmental protection, peace-building, good governance and political representation. A variety of case studies and examples will be used to highlight the ways in which women and other marginalized groups organize and agitate for change, resist oppression and theorize the concept of “justice”. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course 

Winter 1022G Bipasha Baruah Online course plus a one hour synchronous online tutorial

WS 1023G GAY LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: BEYOND ADAM AND STEVE
Modern gay identities are defined by their integration into liberal capitalism and multicultural democracy. A once marginalized group now benefits from unprecedented social mobility. This course will survey the impact of a shifting market and new federal policies on topics like the social politics of gay spaces, gentrification, art and culture and more. Students will gain a historical understanding of gay culture and an interdisciplinary set of texts to analyze an ever multiplying set of identities that fit within gay culture. By the end of this course, students will be introduced to topics in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory and gender studies and have a set of critical tools to approach these topics from music studies, political theory and sociology. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. Previous course outline

Winter 1023G Jeremy Fairall Online course plus a one hour synchronous online tutorial

WS 1024F INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
This introductory course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights. The course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social difference and relations of power; as well, we will examine arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion, the rights of ‘minoritized’ groups, and the politics of affirmative action. Towards these goals, we will take up readings about these issues from disciplines such as: anti-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. This also includes discussions of relevant case studies that highlight contemporary debates. Therefore, from different vantage points, the course examines some of the following questions: How are equity, diversity and human rights shaped by political and state interests? What are (some of) the limits and possibilities of institutionalized, liberal approaches to equity and diversity?  What are human rights and what does it mean to have such rights? And how are these rights contested and protected?  2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course 

Fall 1024F  Shuchi Karim Online course plus a one hour synchronous online tutorial
  

WS 2161B WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2161B Nikki Edwards Online Course

WS 2163A SEX, HOW TO: SEX EDUCATION, ITS HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES 
Sex education is a controversial topic; should we even be teaching people how to have sex or how not to have sex? This course traces the history of sex education and its many controversies as well as looking at contemporary sex education practices both locally and in an international context. 

Fall 2163A Nikki Edwards Online course 

WS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION 

This course is designed to give students an introduction to  the role played by fashion in the construction of gendered identities (in addition to learning about fashion history, fashion in relation to sexuality, and fashion as identity). Topics to be covered include: what clothing can tell us about empire, gender, sexuality, class, race, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics and globalization; fashion as art; drag queens and kings; fashion and sustainability; fashion journalism; the metrosexual; the history of the stiletto; veiling; and fashion subcultures such as goth and punk. We will also examine the trends of athleisure, anti-fashion, slow fashion, and normcore.Although the focus of much of the course will be on 深夜福利站 fashion, we will also look at Asian and African designers and influences (Harajuku fashion, Pei and Yamamoto; hip-hop and The Black Panther), as well as indigenous fashion. 

Fall  2164A  Jacob Evoy Synchronous online course Mon 4:30-7:30pm

WS 2165B GENDER, MIGRATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is a major challenge for the planet’s future; population migration will increase, causing social, political and environmental effects while leaving some people with few options. This course will examine both present and future in a world where climate change is increasingly inevitable and its results are felt intersectionally. 

Winter  2165B Jemima Baada Synchronous online course Mon 4:30-7:30pm

WS 2166B  D.I.Y. GENDER FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Today we are starting to see official recognition, in some places, of trans and non-binary people, while social recognition of proliferating gender identities has become increasingly the norm. This course interrogates changes in the way genders are understood, from social to scientific recognition, and questions rhetorics of “choice,” “biology,” etc. .

Winter  2166B Dayna Prest  asynchronous online course 

WS 2205G MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
In emphasizing the social construction of manhood and masculinity as constitutive of the enormous capital that men command, this course aims to advance a critical view whereby such concepts are seen not as impenetrable bastions of historically oppressive power, but as privileged nodes that have been instrumentalized within discursive ideological networks. Through an examination of diverse media sources (literature, film, art, critical journalism, news articles, music, etc.) and their treatment of issues like “guy” culture, male body image, homosociality, aggression, family, success, and male sexuality, this course encourages the centrality of critical reflection in understanding the oftentimes violent negotiation of masculinity across various intersectional sites, and how those dynamics are refracted in men’s relationships with themselves, other men, women, and institutions. 

Winter 2205G Christian Ylagan  Synchronous online course Mon 3:30-4:30pm

WS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
(Reqiuired 2nd yr. theory course)

An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2256E or Women's Studies 2257E Prerequisite(s): WS1020E, or WS1021F/G and WS1022F/G, or permission of the Department.
3 hours, 1.0 course.

Fall/Winter 2220E  Erica Lawson and Kim Verwaayen Synchronous online course Thur 10:30am-1:30pm

WS 2240F FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists’ calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. Antirequisite: WS2250E. No prerequisites.
3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2240F Alison Lee Synchronous online course Wed 10:30 am-1:30pm

WS 2243G SEXUALITIES AND SURVEILLANCE: CULTURES, PRACTICE AND RESISTANCE
How does surveillance affect our everyday experiences and expressions of sexuality? What is the history of sexual surveillance and what kinds of practices were used to control and regulate certain bodies over others? How do contemporary surveillance technologies aim to track, identify, and classify gender, race, and sexuality?Are there ways in which surveillance may benefit marginalized communities? And,how can we resist sexual surveillance? Taking a transnational intersectional approach, this course examines how surveillance technologies, practices, and strategies of resistance shape and contest perceptions of sex, desire, citizenship, and identity. Paying close attention to the relationship between issues of visibility and invisibility, we will analyze the role of surveillance in current political debates and contemporary representations of sexuality.

Winter 2243G Andie Shabbar Synchronous online course Wed 4:30-7:30pm

WS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women’s health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women’s Health; Representing Gender and Women’s Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women’s Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women’s Health; and Women, Work and Health. Antirequisite: Women’s Studies 2154. No prerequisites. 

Fall/Winter 2244 Anita Slominska     Synchronous online course Wed 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2259F ORDER: SOCIAL SCIENCES THE FEMINIST WAY - NEW COURSE!
2020 is a year of disruptions, changes, disorders, and of retrenchments, returns to “normal” and restoration of orders. It is a moment of rupture, but one that has been long in the making, and it is a moment of uncertainty, as the shape of the future is still unclear. In this class we will explore the prevailing social science concepts that help us understand these shifting realities, and we will interrogate those concepts with feminist, queer and critical race theory. More specifically, in this class we will explore order and disorder, structure and agency, stability and change, and we will examine how they are produced, maintained and challenged, at the level of individual and a group. Even though order and disorder are relational terms, in that we cannot think of one without the other, in the fall, we will analytically isolate order - that is we will downplay the transformative and disruptive elements and focus on stability - and examine how it is produced at the level of an individual or a group. In the next semester, we will reverse the gaze and concentrate on disorder, its benefits, costs and processes. In exploring the issue of order, we will rely on history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, political science and economics. The aim of this course is to help students develop a vocabulary that will help them in all social science courses; it is also to help them develop a capacity for critical and analytical questioning and deepening of that mainstream vocabulary.

Fall 2259F Kate Korycki Synchronous online course Wed 1:30-4:30pm

WS 2263F INTERSECTIONS: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY 
This course investigates the implicit and explicit connections among sexuality, gender identity, race and class. It uses feminist and queer theoretical approaches to examine the historical relationships between these intersecting factors and explore their legacy in the way that "othered" sexual bodies are perceived and treated.
Prerequisite: Women's Studies 1020E or Women’s Studies 1021F/G plus Women's Studies 1022F/G, or permission of the Department. 

Fall 2263F Andie Shabbar Synchronous online course Mon 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2264G WITCHIN': INTERSECTIONAL INVESTIGATIONS INTO WITCHCRAFT AND OCCULT PRACTICES
The word ‘witch’ within the North American cultural imaginary often conjures stereotypical images of a ‘haggish old woman’ dressed in black flying through the night sky on a broom stick. Far from a simple Halloween character or occult figure, the witch is a person, a figure, a way of living, and a positionality that is inextricably imbricated in the formation and maintenance of many historical and contemporary political, religio-spiritual, and economic systems. In this course, we will conduct a sustained investigation of the figure of the witch across time and space with the goal of developing a greater understanding of the gendered, raced, sexualized, and classed aspects of this magikal figure. Guiding this investigation will be a pronounced focus on how normative conceptions of gender, race, class, and sexuality are articulated through and are challenged by this cultural figure. 

Winter 2264G Kassie Shewan   Synchronous online course Tue 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2270B WOMEN, LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE 
This course is an introduction to various areas of law which affect women in specific ways. It will examine laws relating to sex discrimination, employment, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, abortion, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, pornography and prostitution. It will explore topical debates in these various areas of law and how law can be used as a strategy for bringing about social change.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, half course. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2260. 

Winter 2270B TBA Synchronous online course Tue 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, 1.0 course 

Fall/Winter 2273E Laura Cayen Synchronous online course Tue 10:30-1:30pm

WS 2274F INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 4460F/G if taught in Winter 2013; Women's Studies 3343F/G if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G. 

Fall 2274F Sadie Hochman Synchronous online course Thurs 1:30-2:30pm

WS 2275G HETEROSEXUALITIES
This course is interested in the interdisciplinary study of heterosexualities. Topics covered will include: social and historical productions of (hetero)sexualities; cultural performances of (hetero)sexualities; heterosexual pleasures and dangers; heterosexed pornographies and sex-work; erotic (hetero)sexual power play; and heterosexualities that cross the boundaries of (cis)gender, race, age, ability, class and nation. 

Winter 2275G Lauren Auger Synchronous online course Thurs 1:30-2:30pm

WS 2283G DESIRING WOMEN
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites. 

Winter 2283G Lauren Auger Synchronous online course Wed 10:30 am-11:30pm

WS 3153F BAD GIRLS: DISSIDENT WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE
This course examines our fascination with the figure of the “bad girl” in popular culture. We will concentrate on theoretical work which informs the relationship between popular culture and dissident sexuality in order to look more closely at how adolescent and young adult female bodies are created, controlled and contested. Prerequisites: Women's Studies 2253E or 2273E or 2220E or special permission of the department.

Fall 3153F Laura Cayen Synchronous online course Wed 10:30 am-1:30pm

WS 3163G CONTEMPORARY QUEER TOPICS
This course investigates topics in contemporary queer life, including same-sex marriage, gay and queer radicalism and the fight for sexual liberation, the growth of assimilatory politics and its consequences, homonationalism and pink-washing, homophobia and bullying, the role of religion, and the globalization of LGBT human rights rhetoric and politics. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2273E or Women's Studies 2220E or permission of the department.

Winter 3163G Wendy Pearson  Synchronous online course Thurs 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 3311F/ ENG 3369F - TOPICS IN 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE: JANE AUSTEN
This course will be broad enough to provide an introduction to this historical period. It may concentrate on a shorter historical span, a particular genre, or use some other principle of selection. 3 hours, 0.5 course

Fall 3311F Online MH McMurran     Syllabus 

WS 3315G RESPONDING TO VIOLENCE AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SETTLER COLONIALISM
This course is designed as a kind of response to this report, as well as other Indigenous activists, scholars, and allies who are seeking both justice for and the prevention of future violence against Indigenous women and girls. To accomplish this, with me students will engage in a learning (or unlearning) of Canada’s settler-colonial policies and agendas that have contributed to the marginalization of many Indigenous people and communities. From that foundational knowledge, the rest of the course will be spent investigating and understanding the specific problem of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada, with special attention to the kinds of work being done to raise awareness about and ultimately prevent more forced disappearances and murders. 

Winter WS 3315G Kascie Shewan Synchronous online course Wed 10:30-1:30pm  

WS 3316G WOMEN AND OTHER DEVIANTS.....UNDER COMMUNISM AND CAPITALISM - NEW COURSE!
The point of this course is to examine how major politico-economic systems produce different notions of gender, and how they produce different sexual citizens. To this end, in this class, we explore the main tenets of real (past and present) communism and capitalism, as both political and economic systems; we trace how they produce their ‘ideal’ citizen & worker; and we investigate how those citizens & workers implicate notions of gender and sexuality.

Winter WS 3316G Kate Korycki Synchronous online course Thur 1:30-4:30 pm 

WS 3321F ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES (Required 3rd yr. theory course)
This course applies a wide range of feminist theories and critical practices, including postmodern and queer theories, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies, to a diverse array of artistic practices, including literature, film, and the performing and visual arts.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Fall 3321F Helen Fielding  Synchronous online course Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3322G ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
(Required 3rd yr. theory course)

This course is an advanced examination of the application of feminist theories and practices to topics in the social sciences. Focus will include epistemological and methodological questions raised in feminist engagement across the various social science disciplines. Topics addressed may include a range of social-economic, cultural, political, and policy issues. 3 hours, 0.5 course Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department. 

Winter 3322G Erica Lawson Synchronous online course Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3324G CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES
Focussing on the changing meanings of race and racism in the twenty-first century, this course discusses and analyzes conceptual frameworks for understanding the multi-faceted and intersectional dimensions of race and racism, and examines how these inform social justice movements and other initiatives that seek to challenge institutional racism and racial violence. Antirequisite(s):  if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s):  or . 

Winter 3324G Jason Sunder  Synchronous online course Mon 4:30-7:30pm

NEW COURSE
WS 3345G GLOBAL AND HISTORICAL CASES OF HOMOPHOBIA AND RESISTANCE
Homophobia - or a hostility towards persons not conforming to heterosexual norms - is old and new, global and local, and its apparent demise in some places and times is never assured. In this class, we will explore all these aspects of production, maintenance and resistance and we will do it by paying attention to both history and contemporary cases. We will investigate how homophobia was and is implicated in disciplining of gender, how it was and is a tool of orientalism; how it helped build nations and grow religious orders, how it aided Cold War; and how it now organizes the notions of terrorism. We will also explore how it adapted and responded to ongoing resistance and how the resistance changed through time. Our class discussions will be anchored around the cases of France, Iran, USA, Uganda and Poland, and they will explore how the cases affect each other. Other cases of interest to students are welcome!

Winter 3345G Kate Korycki  Synchronous online course Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3350F FEMINISM ACROSS BORDERS
Is an inclusive feminism possible? Is a feminism that transcends borders and embraces a
broader, more global spectrum of feminist voices than ever before feasible? Reading feminist
authors from a diversity of backgrounds, we examine the attractions and challenges of a global
feminism. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2220E, or permission of the Department. 

Fall 3350F Shuchi Karim Synchronous online course Thur 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3355E FEMINIST ACTIVISM
This course examines a variety of issues and interventions to understand what feminist action can accomplish. Some of the questions we engage include:  What tools do various feminist activists take up, for what specific kinds of aims, and with what successes and why? What can we learn from the failures or exclusions of feminist activisms? What are the relationships between past or historical movements and contemporary contexts, individual and collective action, community organizing and institutions, local and global solidarities? How can feminist protest genuinely avoid divide-and-conquer politics to be the ethical, intersectional, accountable work we require of feminism in the 21st century? It is the commitment of this course that, in addition to studying feminist activism in the classroom, students engage in a Community Engagement Learning (CEL) project sustained over the course with a community organization or other partners to encourage students’ implementation of their learning -- beyond the borders of the classroom. Please note that the course is currently capped at twenty-two students for CEL group projects. As of July 21st, registration will open to students wishing to take it with an alternate assignment rather than working with, and completing a project for, community partners.

Fall/Winter WS 3355E Erica Lawson and Kim Verwaayen Synchronous online course Mon 1:30-4:30pm

WS 3357G/ FILM 3352G - QUEER CINEMA: BEFORE STONEWALL- QUEER CINEMA AND AMERICAN CULTURE FROM WWII TO GAY LIBERATION 
Examining the conventions and the gradual undoing of what Vito Russo famously called “the celluloid closet,” this course will explore key shifts in queer representation in American cinema of the postwar era. We will analyze the queer typology (sad young men, dangerous dykes, queer killers, etc.) of a variety of Hollywood genres (horror, noir, melodrama) as well as the often subversive work of figures like Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, and Alfred Hitchcock in the context of Cold War homophobia and gender normativity. We will then frame the eventual breakdown of Production Code restrictions on “sexual perversion” in relation to the development of queer alternatives via avant-garde, underground, and documentary cinema. The final section of the course will concentrate on a group of films from the Stonewall era that will allow us to grapple with the aesthetic, cultural, and political consequences of the shift from silence and oppression to an era of presumed liberation. What’s gained—and perhaps lost—for queer subjects in the transition from invisibility to visibility, from subculture to mainstream, and how has this key historical moment shaped our contemporary notions of queer culture and identity?

Potential screenings include: Queen Christina, Rope, Tea and Sympathy, Caged, Johnny Guitar, Glen or Glenda?, The Children’s Hour, Fireworks, Un Chant d’Amour, My Hustler, Chained Girls, Olivia, Flaming Creatures, A Florida Enchantment, Portrait of Jason, The QueenCBS Reports: The Homosexuals, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Killing of Sister George, and others. 

Winter 2021 Online Syllabus 

WS 3358G FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN CANADA 
Gender-based violence was one of the earliest issues identified by feminists as a focus for grass-roots organization and continues today to be an important subject for community work, research and political struggle. This seminar will provide an overview of both the theory and practice of feminist anti-violence work locally and globally. This course will also examine key aspects of these debates in Canada and the United States, as well as in other parts of the world. These theoretical issues will also be connected with practice, that is, with the front-line work that is undertaken in the community to counter violence against women and their children. 

Winter 3358G Synchronous online course Thur 1:30-4:30pm

NEW COURSE
WS 3359G/VA 3362G RACE AND GENDER IN THE PRE-MODERN WORLD
This course explores the influence of women artists, patrons, collectors, subjects, etc. on the Early Modern art world. In approaching this topic, we begin by contextualizing early feminist art historical interventions that established the initial processes of recovery of female artistic voices as we examine important women artists and female contributors to the art market in Europe during the Early Modern era. Informed by contemporary theories and methodologies concerning gender and race, our discussion of Early Modern art will move beyond Europe into the Americas and the Middle East to consider the significance of female artists, patrons, and personas. This course both surveys Early Modern women artists and patrons and examines the academic discourse on Renaissance and Baroque Art History.

Winter 3359G Cody Barteet online

WS 4456F FOR POLITICS, PROGRESS AND PLEASURE: EXPLORING CONTEMPORARY QUEER COMMUNITIES
This course is a survey of various communities that are made by and for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and 2-Spirit (LGBTQIA2+) populations throughout contemporary north america. The survey is framed through attention to historical context, spatial location, and temporality. The course highlights a multi-faceted and heterogeneous collection of “queer” communities and challenges the notion that there exists a monolithic “queer community.” By studying spaces of gathering in its various forms and purposes, “community” as a concept will become an overarching indicator of not only one, but many ways of connecting to others.  

This course will also draw attention to communities designed (or incidental) for the purposes of political organizing, leisure, recreation, pleasure, or a combination of any of these. Examples include the history of public sex and “cruising,” the creation of archives to value and include Lesbian voices, and places of art for commentary and/or to connect with a participating audience. We will also draw attention to the current “mainstreaming” of queerness, such as the burgeoning interest in drag and the rise of gay tourism. Students will learn to critically consider how these communities have contributed to the current state of LGBTQIA2+ visibility, and further explore who gets left out, how “queer communities” are used as a tool for colonizing and political agendas, and how capitalism benefits from the trendiness of being “queer.” 

Fall 4456F Amy Keating  Synchronous online course Mon 10:30 - 12:30pm

WS 4460G QUEER TEMPORALITIES 
Is there such a thing as queer time? In recent years, much queer scholarship has focused on the idea of queer temporalities, opposing queer time to heteronormative time, from both individual and historical perspectives. The
notion of queer time has led to analyses of how we approach the historical, and how we engage with questions of desire and subject formation. However, if queer time has value as a critical tool, we will also consider whether it can continue to have purchase in the face of the increasing normalization of the very idea of queer.

Winter WS 4460G Chris Roulston Synchronous online course Thur 1:30 - 4:30pm

 

WS 4464G GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT
This course will provide an introduction to the theory and practice of gender and development. Course content is informed by the interests and needs of future scholars and practitioners - i.e. students who hope to engage in research, project design and implementation, policy analysis, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy and/or networking in development or a closely related domain. The course seeks to provide students with a strong theoretical and conceptual grounding in gender and development as well as applied skills to work as a development professional. Students will study development policy and learn tools and methodologies that will enable them to pursue careers as gender equality practitioners with the United Nations system, other intergovernmental organizations, development-oriented state agencies, NGOs and other civil society organizations, bilateral and multi-lateral agencies, and private foundations.

Winter 4464G Bipasha Baruah  Synchronous online course Mon 10:30-1:30pm

2019-2020 Courses

WS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND WOMEN'S STUDIES
In 2019-2020 we will explore, among other topics, the following: challenges to the sex- and gender-binary, including transgender, non-binary, and intersex identities; intersectionality and solidarity across gender, race, class, and ability; constructions of masculinities and femininities; the operation of state power on gender and sexual minorities; colonialism and Indigenous resistances; activism and protest, including through literature and art. 

Come join us as we discuss these topics through conversations about sex testing in the Olympics; K-pop and boy bands; racism on dating apps like Tinder and Grindr; Uber, the gig economy, and mommy blogs; reproductive rights for trans folks; the recently released report from the inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA People; incels, rape culture, and misandry; self-care and emotional labour. 2 lecture hours plus one hour tutorial, 1.0 course.  

Fall/Winter 1020E/001 Laura Cayen Mon 1:30 - 3:30 plus one hour tutorial
Fall/Winter 1020E/002 Laura Cayen Thur 4:30 - 6:30 plus one hour tutorial

WS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
This course is an interdisciplinary half-year course that will introduce students to the field of sexuality studies.  It will examine this field through several different approaches: theoretical, literary, visual, cultural and historical.  The aim will be to explore questions of identity and representation as they relate to sexuality: how are sexual identities formed? Are they essential or constructed? Who controls representations of sexuality? Why do we think of certain sexualities as normal and others as deviant? Within this context, we will analyze how certain expressions of sexuality are socially excluded and devalued in the name of a sexual norm. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. 

Fall 1021F Chris Roulston Wed 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial

WS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE AND CHANGE

The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in struggles for social justice, economic empowerment, education, health, poverty alleviation, human rights, environmental protection, peace-building, good governance and political representation. A variety of case studies and examples will be used to highlight the ways in which women and other marginalized groups organize and agitate for change, resist oppression and theorize the concept of “justice”. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course 

Winter 1022G Bipasha Baruah Wed 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial

WS 1023F GAY LIFE AND CULTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: BEYOND ADAM AND STEVE
Modern gay identities are defined by their integration into liberal capitalism and multicultural democracy. A once marginalized group now benefits from unprecedented social mobility. This course will survey the impact of a shifting market and new federal policies on topics like the social politics of gay spaces, gentrification, art and culture and more. Students will gain a historical understanding of gay culture and an interdisciplinary set of texts to analyze an ever multiplying set of identities that fit within gay culture. By the end of this course, students will be introduced to topics in gay and lesbian studies, queer theory and gender studies and have a set of critical tools to approach these topics from music studies, political theory and sociology. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. Previous course outline

Fall 1023F Sadie Hochman Tue 11:30-1:30 plus one hour of tutorial

WS 1024G INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

This introductory course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights. The course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social difference and relations of power; as well, we will examine arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion, the rights of ‘minoritized’ groups, and the politics of affirmative action. Towards these goals, we will take up readings about these issues from disciplines such as: anti-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. This also includes discussions of relevant case studies that highlight contemporary debates. Therefore, from different vantage points, the course examines some of the following questions: How are equity, diversity and human rights shaped by political and state interests? What are (some of) the limits and possibilities of institutionalized, liberal approaches to equity and diversity?  What are human rights and what does it mean to have such rights? And how are these rights contested and protected?  2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course 

Winter 1024G Shuchi Karim Tue 11:30-1:30 plus one hour of tutorial
 

WS 2160A INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
This course focuses on how expectations of intimacy and relationships rely on particular understandings of love, sex, sexuality and bodies to shape how we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings. The course considers how intimacy (sexual, maternal, familial, affectionate) is understood in relation to history, society and popular culture.

This course approaches the broad theme of intimacy from multiple perspectives and through a variety of topics, many of which will be presented by a guest lecturer who is a specialist in the relevant field of study. Topics include issues of locating and understanding intimate relations in history, the development of heterosexual intimacy, the history and contemporary practice of Queer intimacy, the politics of abortion and birth control, the influence of the media on love, sex and women’s health, interracial relationships, and the politics and practice of marriage, motherhood and the family. No prerequisites 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2160A Katherine McKenna Mon 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2161B WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2161B Nikki Edwards   Wed 4:30-7:30pm

WS 2162B THE BODY
We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society’s difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body.
No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2162B Jessica Polzer Wed 1:30-4:30pm 

WS 2163A SEX, HOW TO: SEX EDUCATION, ITS HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES 
Sex education is a controversial topic; should we even be teaching people how to have sex or how not to have sex? This course traces the history of sex education and its many controversies as well as looking at contemporary sex education practices both locally and in an international context. 

Fall 2163A Kascie Shewan Wed 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION 

This course is designed to give students an introduction to  the role played by fashion in the construction of gendered identities (in addition to learning about fashion history, fashion in relation to sexuality, and fashion as identity). Topics to be covered include: what clothing can tell us about empire, gender, sexuality, class, race, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics and globalization; fashion as art; drag queens and kings; fashion and sustainability; fashion journalism; the metrosexual; the history of the stiletto; veiling; and fashion subcultures such as goth and punk. We will also examine the trends of athleisure, anti-fashion, slow fashion, and normcore.Although the focus of much of the course will be on 深夜福利站 fashion, we will also look at Asian and African designers and influences (Harajuku fashion, Pei and Yamamoto; hip-hop and The Black Panther), as well as indigenous fashion. 

Fall  2164A  Kelly Olson Wed 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2205G MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
In emphasizing the social construction of manhood and masculinity as constitutive of the enormous capital that men command, this course aims to advance a critical view whereby such concepts are seen not as impenetrable bastions of historically oppressive power, but as privileged nodes that have been instrumentalized within discursive ideological networks. Through an examination of diverse media sources (literature, film, art, critical journalism, news articles, music, etc.) and their treatment of issues like “guy” culture, male body image, homosociality, aggression, family, success, and male sexuality, this course encourages the centrality of critical reflection in understanding the oftentimes violent negotiation of masculinity across various intersectional sites, and how those dynamics are refracted in men’s relationships with themselves, other men, women, and institutions. 

Winter 2205G Christian Ylagan Wed 10:30-1:30pm

WS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
(Reqiuired 2nd yr. theory course)

An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2256E or Women's Studies 2257E Prerequisite(s): WS1020E, or WS1021F/G and WS1022F/G, or permission of the Department.
3 hours, 1.0 course. 

Fall/Winter 2220E Kim Verwaayen and Erica Lawson Thurs 10:30 am - 1:30 pm

WS 2240F FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists’ calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. Antirequisite: WS2250E. No prerequisites.
3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2240F Alison Lee Wed 10:30 am - 1:30pm

WS 2243G Feminist Topics in Sexuality Studies: Queer & Feminist Film & Media Festivals
This course introduces students to the students to the critical and scholarly study of queer and feminist film and media festivals globally. Though film festivals are nearly as old as cinema itself, and queer and feminist film festivals emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s concurrently with the new civil rights movements across North America and Europe, the scholarly study of film and media festivals is a relatively new phenomenon, with much of the scholarship on festivals published in the last 10 years. This course introduces students to this contemporary research as well as to the early festival research and theory that forms the foundation of this field of study and to the various methods of studying queer and feminist film festivals. 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): none

Winter 2243G Jonathan Petrychyn Mon 10:30 am - 1:30pm

WS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women’s health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women’s Health; Representing Gender and Women’s Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women’s Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women’s Health; and Women, Work and Health.
Antirequisite: Women’s Studies 2154. No prerequisites. 

Fall/Winter 2244 Jessica Polzer Tue 10:30-1:30pm

WS 2252G WOMEN WRITING SEX: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND THE BODY IN WOMEN'S WRITING FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH (Antirequisite WS 2233G if taken in Winter 2019)
The main objective of the course is to acquaint the students with a wide range of women’s voices on gender and sexuality through their writings, from across the world, especially from the global south. We will focus on how gender, class, and race intersecting in women’s own expressions of sexual identities, practices and politics which are shaped by their respective societal definitions of gender norms or constructions of sexual taboos. It will include women’s writings from different literary genres, both traditional as well as contemporary ones including fiction, essay, poetry, blogs or online contents, films etc.
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course.  Antirequisite: WS 2233G if taken in 2018-2019.  Prerequisite(s):  or both  and  or permission of the Department.

Winter 2252G Shuchi Karim Mon 1:30-4:30pm

WS 2260 WOMEN, LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE 
This course is an introduction to various areas of law which affect women in specific ways. It will examine laws relating to sex discrimination, employment, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, abortion, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, pornography and prostitution. It will explore topical debates in these various areas of law and how law can be used as a strategy for bringing about social change.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, half course. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2270A/B. 

Fall/Winter 2260 Tugce Elliati-Kose Tues 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2263F INTERSECTIONS: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY
Are Latinas inherently sexy and sensual women? Are poor people, especially nonwhite people, lazy and shiftless? Do Aboriginal women make “bad” mothers? Are Asian men less “manly” than black men? These questions, among others, will be discussed in this course as we investigate the intersections between race, class, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary perspective. One of the main objectives of this course will be to unravel how human beings become categories that expand beyond the seemingly binary divide between “the sexes,” “the races,” and the “haves and have-notes.” Instead, we will consider the real-life experiences of “Muslim women” or “two-spirit people” through an examination of texts from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, among others. In addition, our examination of products from popular culture, such as films, television shows, music videos, and clips from the internet, will provide thoughtful, and often provocative, examples of the complex representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality in our society.
Prerequisite: Women's Studies 1020E or Women’s Studies 1021F/G plus Women's Studies 1022F/G, or permission of the Department. 

Fall 2263F Andie Shabbar Mon 10:30-1:30pm

WS 2264F FEMINISM IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: READING FEMINIST LITERATURE INTERCULTURALLY
The broader objective of this course is to acquaint students with the universal nature of feminism, especially from the non-western contexts. Keeping gender and sexuality as the main focus of the course, it will introduce issues around gender, sexuality, diversity, identities and experiences through different genres of literature by women writes and researchers from the global south. Through these readings, the course will examine the cultural and social constructions of gender and sexuality through the lens of gender and feminist theories that are originating from non-western academia and literature. 
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course.  Prerequisite(s):  or both  and  or permission of the Department.

Fall 2264F Shuchi Karim Mon 1:30-4:30pm

WS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, 1.0 course 

Fall/Winter 2273E Laura Cayen Tue 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2274F INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc.
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 4460F/G if taught in Winter 2013; Women's Studies 3343F/G if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G. 

Fall 2274F Sadie Hochman Thurs 4:30-7:30pm

WS 2275G HETEROSEXUALITIES
This course is interested in the interdisciplinary study of heterosexualities. Topics covered will include: social and historical productions of (hetero)sexualities; cultural performances of (hetero)sexualities; heterosexual pleasures and dangers; heterosexed pornographies and sex-work; erotic (hetero)sexual power play; and heterosexualities that cross the boundaries of (cis)gender, race, age, ability, class and nation, 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2275G Lauren Auger Thurs 4:30-7:30pm

WS 2283G DESIRING WOMEN
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2283G Lauren Auger Wed 1:30-4:30pm

WS 3133G LESBIAN LIVES AND CULTURES
This course will explore what it means to identify as a lesbian today. With the move away from identity politics and the ascendance of queer as a challenge to identity categories, it will consider the place of lesbianism in contemporary North American culture and more globally. Attention will be paid to a variety of aspects of lesbian lives and to contemporary forms of lesbian experiences in relation to their historical antecedents. Themes will include intersectionality, activism, sex, literature, art and politics. 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s):  or  or permission of the department. 

Fall 3133G Chris Roulston Thur 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 3173F INTRODUCTION TO QUEER THEORY
What is queer theory, where did it come from, how is it changing? Examining key foundational texts in queer theory, the contexts for its emergence, and debates over its contemporary usefulness and direction, students in this course will trace the development of queer theory from Foucault to the present day.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite: Women's Studies 2273E or permission of the department. .

Fall 3173F Wendy Pearson Thurs 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 3321F ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES (Required 3rd yr. theory course)
This course applies a wide range of feminist theories and critical practices, including postmodern and queer theories, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies, to a diverse array of artistic practices, including literature, film, and the performing and visual arts.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Fall 3321F Helen Fielding Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3322G ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
(Required 3rd yr. theory course)

This course is an advanced examination of the application of feminist theories and practices to topics in the social sciences. Focus will include epistemological and methodological questions raised in feminist engagement across the various social science disciplines. Topics addressed may include a range of social-economic, cultural, political, and policy issues. 3 hours, 0.5 course Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department. 

Winter 3322G Erica Lawson Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3324G CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES
Focussing on the changing meanings of race and racism in the twenty-first century, this course discusses and analyzes conceptual frameworks for understanding the multi-faceted and intersectional dimensions of race and racism, and examines how these inform social justice movements and other initiatives that seek to challenge institutional racism and racial violence. Antirequisite(s):  if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s):  or . 

Winter 3324G TBA Mon 4:30-7:30pm

WS 3305F CULTURE JAM: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE
While popular culture operates to naturalize and distribute dominant discourses about gender and sexuality, it is also a fertile space through which resistance can be enacted. This course examines; common sense; representations of gender and sexuality within 深夜福利站 popular culture and the ways these representations have been confronted and contested. Antirequisite(s): The former WS 359F. Prerequisites: Women's Studies 2253E or 2273E or 2220E or permission of the Department. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall WS 3305F/AH 3392F Laura Cayen Tue 10:30-1:30pm  

WS 3343G Feminist Topics in Sexuality Studies: Interventions in Rape Cultures - New course
This course aims to continue and complicate the many contemporary discussions in academia, news, and social media regarding sexualized violence. Specifically: what is sexualized violence? Are rape and other kinds of sexualized violences an inevitable part of ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ human? And, if not, what can we do to prevent sexualized violence? Drawing on the works of feminist theorists working in different disciplines (e.g. critical theory, history, anthropology, cultural studies), the course will aim to employ feminist theory’s attentiveness to context and complexity to help think through this long-standing, but contextually and temporally specific, form of gendered violence. Importantly, although this course will draw on important qualitative research conducted in the social sciences regarding sexualized violence, this course will most prominently engage with philosophical and theoretical approaches to rape cultures, sexualized violence and its prevention characteristic of the Arts & Humanities. Prerequisite(s):  or  or permission of the department. 

Winter 3343G Kascie Shewan Tue 10:30-1:30pm

WS 3350F FEMINISM ACROSS BORDERS
Is an inclusive feminism possible? Is a feminism that transcends borders and embraces a
broader, more global spectrum of feminist voices than ever before feasible? Reading feminist
authors from a diversity of backgrounds, we examine the attractions and challenges of a global
feminism. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2220E, or permission of the Department. 

Fall 3350F Shuchi Karim Thur 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3357G WOMEN FILMMAKERS 
(cross-listed with Spanish 3350 and CLC 3350G)
This course will explore the notion of film authorship in relation to its utterances and implications when associated to the praxis of contemporary women film directors, from the early 1960s to the present. While troubling the notion of women’s cinema, its definition, limits and limitations, a wide range of case studies – films emerging from dissimilar contexts of production and reception – will be mostly read and discussed in the light of feminist approaches to questions about gender and representation. In this sense, the course will also offer a historical and critical overview of feminist scholarship within film studies and of the ongoing debates in this area of study. 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department. 

Winter WS 3357G Tue 9:30-10:30am (screening) & Thurs 9:30-11:30am (Lecture)

WS 4458G Gender, Militarism and Peacekeeping
This course will take an in-depth look at how gender operates within global peacekeeping and what intersectional dimensions of inequality exist among peacekeepers. We will look at how those who are made subordinate navigate these contradictory spaces. The course will begin by looking at the history of United Nations peacekeeping and Canadian involvement as well as what peacekeeping is and what peacekeepers do. We will read international texts and resolutions (such as UNSCR 1325), as well as feminist scholarship on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda including its potential and limitations. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2220E, or permission of the Department. 

Winter 4458G Sandra Biskupski Mon 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 4459G Spaces, Sexualities and Subjectivities: Queer(ing) Geographies
In this course we will consider what it means to queer a space, what it means and/or has meant to take up space on behalf of a particular group, and the relational dynamics between and among spaces and subjectivities. Throughout the semester we will look specifically at mapping practices, affective and emotional geographies, decolonizing geography, trans spaces and trans and nonbinary folks’ experiences navigating particular spaces, as well as queer and trans experiences of belonging and visibility in rural areas specifically. Students will think critically about the politics of queer space, how notions of queer space are challenged and deconstructed, and about who is understood as belonging in queer spaces. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2220E, or permission of the Department. 

Winter WS 4459G Dayna Prest Mon 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 4461F Feminist Activism
This course examines a variety of issues and interventions to understand what feminist action can accomplish. Some of the questions we engage include:  What tools do various feminist activists take up, for what specific kinds of aims, and with what successes and why? What can we learn from the failures or exclusions of feminist activisms? What are the relationships between past or historical movements and contemporary contexts, individual and collective action, community organizing and institutions, local and global solidarities? How can feminist protest genuinely avoid divide-and-conquer politics to be the ethical, intersectional, accountable work we require of feminism in the 21st century? It is the commitment of this course that, in addition to studying feminist activism in the classroom, students engage in a Community Engagement Learning (CEL) project sustained over the course with a community organization or other partners to encourage students’ implementation of their learning -- beyond the borders of the classroom. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2220E, or permission of the Department

Fall 4461F Kim Verwaayen Mon 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 4607F THE HISTORY OF WOMEN AND GENDER RELATIONS IN AFRICA
Women in Africa today are exceedingly diverse and accomplished, despite the negative news we
read every day about violence, disease and poverty. Even those who recognize this often assume
that women’s growing influence in African societies is a recent development due to the influence
of modern liberal values. Contrary to this, in the past African women were not the victims of
male domination, but held powerful leadership roles, were strong economic contributors and
respected members of their extended families. African feminists today draw upon these
traditions as a source of empowerment. This course will examine African women’s roles in the
past as well as factors that undermined their status and changed gender relations such as slavery,
economic forces and colonialism. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2220E, or permission of the Department. 

Fall 4607F Katherine McKenna Wed 4:30-7:30pm

WS 4464G GENDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT -Just added!
This course will focus on the intersections between gender, sexuality, development and environmental justice. Feminist and queer theory will be used to interrogate binary categories such as natural/unnatural, nature/culture, normal/abnormal as they relate to our understandings of “the environment.” The course will explore how racism, colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression have shaped and continue to shape environmental discourses. We will examine key contemporary environmental issues such as climate change; food security; the “green” economy and low-carbon development; access to water, sanitation and energy; pollution; and wildlife conservation from feminist perspectives. Course materials will include academic and non-academic literature, activist texts as well as case studies, fiction and films. Prerequisite(s):  or permission of the Department.

Winter 4464G Bipasha Baruah Tue 1:30-4:30pm

2018-2019 Courses

WS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN'S STUDIES
An introductory and interdisciplinary survey of the status of women in contemporary, historical, and cross-cultural perspective, this course explores how gender and other differences are established or challenged through various institutional and individual practices. With a focus on feminist resistance to sexual, socio-cultural, economic, racial, and political oppression worldwide, we will appraise the implications of these practices for women's everyday lives.
2 lecture hours plus one hour tutorial, 1.0 course.  

Fall/Winter 1020E/001 Kim Verwaayen Mon 1:30 - 3:30 plus one hour tutorial
Fall/Winter 1020E/002 Laura Cayen Thur 4:30 - 6:30 plus one hour tutorial

WS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
We will be introducing students to current social and political issues in sexuality studies, with a focus on contemporary issues around sexuality, including formation of sexual identities, sexual practices and politics, policing of sexuality, questions of sexual diversity, and the historical and global nature of ideas and controversies around sexuality.
2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. 

Fall 1021F Chris Roulston Wed 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial

WS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE AND CHANGE
The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in matters of education, health, poverty, globalization, the environment, etc.
2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course 

Winter 1022G Laura Cayen Wed 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial

WS 1024G INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
This introductory course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights. The course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social inequality, social difference, and unequal relations of power; as well, we will consider arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion. Towards these goals, we will take up readings about these issues from schools of thought such as: ant-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. In doing so, the course examines some of the following questions: How are equity, diversity and human rights shaped by political and state interests? What are (some of) the limits and possibilities of institutionalized, liberal approaches to equity and diversity? How are these approaches challenged? What does it mean to have “human rights?” And how, and by whom, are these rights contested? In addition to learning through our course readings, lectures, discussions, documentaries, and assignments, we will pay attention to media stories, human rights organizations, as well as to protests by equity-seeking groups to see how they approach the issues addressed in this course. 

Winter 1024G TBA Tue 11:30-1:30 plus one hour of tutorial
 

WS 2139B SOCIAL HISTORY OF WOMEN IN CANADA
Instructor: Katherine McKenna

This course is designed to be an overview of women’s history in Canada from the first days of European settlement to the end of the 20th Century. Its focus is social history, that is, examining the realities of women’s everyday lives. One of the most informative and evocative ways of understanding women of the past is through biography, which will be a key theme throughout the course. Emphasis will be placed on examining a variety of historical sources including drawings and paintings, illustrations, photographs, oral history video and film, primary documents and written historical scholarship.  At the end, students will have a sense of how women’s diverse lived experiences have changed throughout Canadian history, and how they have remained the same. No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course.Course outline

Winter 2139B Katherine McKenna Mon 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2160A INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Intimate Relations focuses on how expectations of intimacy and relationships rely on particular understandings of love, sex, sexuality and bodies to shape how we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings. The course considers how intimacy (sexual, maternal, familial, affectionate) is understood in relation to history, philosophy, health, society and popular culture.
No prerequisites 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2160A Katherine McKenna Mon 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2161A WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2161A Nichole (Nikki) Edwards Wed 4:30-7:30

WS 2162B THE BODY
We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society’s difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body.
No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2162B Rachael Pack Thur 4:30-7:30

WS 2163B SEX, HOW TO: SEX EDUCATION, ITS HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES 
Sex education is a controversial topic; should we even be teaching people how to have sex or how not to have sex? This course traces the history of sex education and its many controversies as well as looking at contemporary sex education practices both locally and in an international context. 

Winter 2163B Nichole (Nikki) Edwards Wed 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION 

This course is designed to give students an introduction to  the role played by fashion in the construction of gendered identities (in addition to learning about fashion history, fashion in relation to sexuality, and fashion as identity). Topics to be covered include: what clothing can tell us about empire, gender, sexuality, class, race, industry, revolution, nation-building, identity politics and globalization; fashion as art; drag queens and kings; fashion and sustainability; fashion journalism; the metrosexual; the history of the stiletto; veiling; and fashion subcultures such as goth and punk. We will also examine the trends of athleisure, anti-fashion, slow fashion, and normcore.Although the focus of much of the course will be on 深夜福利站 fashion, we will also look at Asian and African designers and influences (Harajuku fashion, Pei and Yamamoto; hip-hop and The Black Panther), as well as indigenous fashion. 

Fall 2164A Kelly Olson Mon 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2205F MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
This course addresses masculinities as social constructs. It debates the theoretical and practical strongholds competing discourses have had over gender as a construct and specifically masculinities. One overarching goal of this course is to develop critical and analytical frameworks for unsettling and interrogating gender assumptions. Additionally, this course is intended to raise questions that will better enable us to construct and deconstruct what and how we come to understand masculinity, singular, as masculinities, plural. In the everyday public discourse, we are witness to a heightened awareness and growing concern, generally, to “help the boys.” From mainstream media reports, to schools, universities and education more generally, we are inundated with calls for more attention to "the boys." Though largely cloaked by concerns for performance, achievement, and gender equity, at the heart of the debate is a set of deep-seated and long-held understandings and assumptions about gender but specifically masculinity and schooling. This course provides a lens for examining masculinities in the context of media, activist organizations, daily social interactions as well as looking closely at secondary schools as a primary masculinizing institution. Our particular lens of analysis probes masculinities from various points of intersection, namely, the raced, class and gendered lives of boys and young men.
No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. Course outline

Fall 2205F Christian Ylagan Mon 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
(Reqiuired 2nd yr. theory course)

An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2256E or Women's Studies 2257E Prerequisite(s): WS1020E, or WS1021F/G and WS1022F/G, or permission of the Department.
3 hours, 1.0 course. 

Fall/Winter 2220E Andie Shabbar and Crystal Gaudet Thurs 10:30 am - 1:30 pm

WS 2225G INTRO TO GIRLHOOD STUDIES 
This course introduces students to the emerging field of Girlhood studies. We consider what it means to be a girl and how the concepts of girl and girlhood have been constructed across a variety of geographic and historical contexts, as well as how the intersections of race, class, gender, and ability have influenced these concepts. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including literature, and history, we specifically consider girlhood through a feminist lens and examine how definitions of girl and girlhood shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, and futures
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G. 

Winter 2225G Miranda Green-Barteet Mon 1:30 am - 4:30pm

WS 2233G Women Writing Sex: Gender Sexuality and the Body in Women’s Writing from the Global South - New Course! 
Description will be available soon. 
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): none

Winter 2233G TBA Mon 10:30 am - 1:30pm

WS 2240F FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists’ calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. Antirequisite: WS2250E. No prerequisites.
3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2240F Alison Lee Wed 10:30 am - 1:30pm

WS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women’s health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women’s Health; Representing Gender and Women’s Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women’s Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women’s Health; and Women, Work and Health.
Antirequisite: Women’s Studies 2154. No prerequisites.

Fall/Winter 2244 Jessica Polzer Wed 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2259F Reproducing Race: Race, Reproduction, Parenting, and Families.
Race is widely understood to be a social construction. Therefore, we can ask how some social practices help to construct or ‘reproduce’ race, and how others deconstruct it. This course centres on historical and contemporary practices that concern race and the formation of families, and the having and rearing of children. And it asks how these practices reproduce race, but also how they can deconstruct it, and how well they might align as a result with anti-racist politics. Among specific topics that we will cover are anti-miscegenation laws, race and online dating, eugenics and race, the race selection of gametes acquired for one’s reproductive use, race in global commercial contract pregnancy, transracial adoption, and the instilling of racial identities in one’s children. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing from disciplines such as women’s studies, history, philosophy, and critical race theory. We will also use contemporary media and film.

Fall 2259F Carolyn McLeod Tues 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 2260 WOMEN, LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE 
This course is an introduction to various areas of law which affect women in specific ways. It will examine laws relating to sex discrimination, employment, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, abortion, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, pornography and prostitution. It will explore topical debates in these various areas of law and how law can be used as a strategy for bringing about social change.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, half course. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2270A/B. 

Fall/Winter 2260 Tyler Totten Tues 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2263G INTERSECTIONS: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY
Are Latinas inherently sexy and sensual women? Are poor people, especially nonwhite people, lazy and shiftless? Do Aboriginal women make “bad” mothers? Are Asian men less “manly” than black men? These questions, among others, will be discussed in this course as we investigate the intersections between race, class, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary perspective. One of the main objectives of this course will be to unravel how human beings become categories that expand beyond the seemingly binary divide between “the sexes,” “the races,” and the “haves and have-notes.” Instead, we will consider the real-life experiences of “Muslim women” or “two-spirit people” through an examination of texts from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, among others. In addition, our examination of products from popular culture, such as films, television shows, music videos, and clips from the internet, will provide thoughtful, and often provocative, examples of the complex representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality in our society.
Prerequisite: Women's Studies 1020E or Women’s Studies 1021F/G plus Women's Studies 1022F/G, or permission of the Department. 

Winter 2263G Andrea Allen Thurs 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, 1.0 course 

Fall/Winter 2273E Laura Cayen Tue 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2274G INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc.
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 4460F/G if taught in Winter 2013; Women's Studies 3343F/G if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G.

Winter 2274G TBA Thurs 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 2275F HETEROSEXUALITIES
This course is interested in the interdisciplinary study of heterosexualities. Topics covered will include: social and historical productions of (hetero)sexualities; cultural performances of (hetero)sexualities; heterosexual pleasures and dangers; heterosexed pornographies and sex-work; erotic (hetero)sexual power play; and heterosexualities that cross the boundaries of (cis)gender, race, age, ability, class and nation, 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course.

Fall 2275F Lauren Auger Tues 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 2283G DESIRING WOMEN
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites. 3 hours, 0.5 course

Winter 2283G Andrea Allen Mon 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 3153F BAD GIRLS: DISSIDENT WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE
This course examines our fascination with the figure of the “bad girl” in popular culture. We will concentrate on theoretical work which informs the relationship between popular culture and dissident sexuality in order to look more closely at how adolescent and young adult female bodies are created, controlled and contested. 3.0 hours, 0.5 course..
Prerequisite(s):  or  or  or permission of the Department.

Fall 3153F Laura Cayen Wed 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 3173F QUEER THEORY
What is queer theory, where did it come from, how is it changing? Examining key foundational texts in queer theory, the contexts for its emergence, and debates over its contemporary usefulness and direction, students in this course will trace the development of queer theory from Foucault to the present day.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite: Women's Studies 2273E or permission of the department. .

Fall 3173F Wendy Pearson Thurs 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 3312G GENDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
This course examines the relationship between gender and the environment, including the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on women and children, gender and agricultural practices and policies, land tenure and access to and control of resources, and the role of gender in environmental activism at both local and global levels. 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s):  or  or permission of the department. 

Winter 3312G David Huebert Wed 10:30-1:30pm

WS 3321F ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES (Required 3rd yr. theory course)
This course applies a wide range of feminist theories and critical practices, including postmodern and queer theories, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies, to a diverse array of artistic practices, including literature, film, and the performing and visual arts.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): WS2220E, WS 2256E, or WS2257E, or permission of the department.

Fall 3321F Victoria Miceli Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3322G ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
(Required 3rd yr. theory course)

This course is an advanced examination of the application of feminist theories and practices to topics in the social sciences. Focus will include epistemological and methodological questions raised in feminist engagement across the various social science disciplines. Topics addressed may include a range of social-economic, cultural, political, and policy issues. 3 hours, 0.5 course Prerequisite(s): WS2220E, WS 2256E, or WS2257E, or permission of the department.

Winter 3322G Erica Lawson Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3324F CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES
Focussing on the changing meanings of race and racism in the twenty-first century, this course discusses and analyzes conceptual frameworks for understanding the multi-faceted and intersectional dimensions of race and racism, and examines how these inform social justice movements and other initiatives that seek to challenge institutional racism and racial violence. Antirequisite(s):  if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s):  or . Course outline

Fall 3324F Will Gooding Wed 10:30 - 1:30 pm

WS 3345F QUEER CINEMA (crosslisted with Film 3352F)
This course will explore the history, politics, and aesthetics of queer film, particularly the representation of queer culture and identity as well as the policing of non-normative sexualities. Course topics may include: Hollywood and the Celluloid Closet, queer independent cinema, and transgender film.  Antirequisite(s): Film Studies 2259F/G. Extra Information: 2 lecture/seminar hours, 1 3-hour lecture/screening. 0.5 course

Fall 2018 WS 3345F Film Screening Tue 5:30 - 8:30pm, Lecture Wed 5:30 - 7:30pm  

WS 3350G FEMINISM ACROSS BORDERS
Is an inclusive feminism possible? Is a feminism that transcends borders and embraces a
broader, more global spectrum of feminist voices than ever before feasible? Reading feminist
authors from a diversity of backgrounds, we examine the attractions and challenges of a global
feminism.

Winter 3350G TBA Tue 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3357G WOMEN FILMMAKERS 
(cross-listed with Spanish 3901G and Film Studies 3311G)
This course will explore the notion of film authorship in relation to its utterances and implications when associated to the praxis of contemporary women film directors, from the early 1960s to the present. While troubling the notion of women’s cinema, its definition, limits and limitations, a wide range of case studies – films emerging from dissimilar contexts of production and reception – will be mostly read and discussed in the light of feminist approaches to questions about gender and representation. In this sense, the course will also offer a historical and critical overview of feminist scholarship within film studies and of the ongoing debates in this area of study. 0.5 course

Winter 2018 WS 3357G Tue 9:30-10:30am & Thurs 9:30-11:30am

WS 3362G COMPARING WOMEN'S POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN THE PROVINCES: KATHLEEN WYNNE, CHRISTY CLARK AND RACHEL NOTLEY - New course! Crosslisted with PoliSci 3391G
This course compares provincial political structures through a feminist lens, especially regarding the premier’s office and the party system. The course centers on two questions: why have female Canadian political leaders been successful recently in rising to lead some provincial governments in Canada; and once in office, how do they exercise leadership?  

Winter 3362G Wed 1:30-3:30 pm

WS 4460F (M)AD WOMEN: (POST)-FEMINISM, ADVERTISING AND ANALYSIS (grad/undergrad split)
What is the relationship between feminism and advertising?  In what ways have women been involved in the advertising industry?  How has the advertising industry historically viewed and valued women as consumers?  How have activists used media reform to advance feminist aims? How has advertising responded to decades of feminist critique?  In this course, students will explore and discuss the representation of women in advertising, women’s employment in the advertising industry, the political economy of gender in audience studies, post-feminist advertising themes of empowerment, choice, diversity, and inclusion, and the relationship between activism and the a-political nature of post-feminism.

Fall WS 4460F Laura Cayen Tue 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 4456F FROM GOLDEN GIRLS TO RAGING GRANNIES: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON AGING 
Discussions about age relations and aging have long been inconsequential if not absent in the feminist imaginary. For years, feminism has been rightly accused of neglecting age as a social location when commenting on interlocking forms of oppression. Although several anthologies have attempted to address this gap, we still see its absence in Women’s Studies. In this course, we will attend to this gap by approaching the aging body and age relations from a feminist gerontological perspective to demonstrate how and why age, as a socio-political location, matters to gender relations. To this end, students will be introduced to an array of discourses that govern aging bodies to explore how hegemonic gender and (hetero)sexual norms are reproduced and/or contested.

Fall 4456F Jami McFarland Mon 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 4461G GENDER IS BURNING: CONTEMPORARY TRANS TOPICS
This course provides an in-depth examination of key theories in trans studies. The course will begin by introducing students to the emergence of trans studies as a field, out of, and alongside, feminist and queer theory, while also diverging from these fields. Subsequent weeks will focus on specific approaches to theorizing trans subjectivities and experiences including psychoanalytic approaches, phenomenological approaches, pathologization, transfeminism, trans political economy, trans necropolitics, trans temporalities, somatechnics, decolonizing approaches, and tranimalities. The course will provide students with the opportunity to focus specifically on trans theory as it has emerged from the humanities, and foster the application of these theories to contemporary topics pertaining to trans issues and gender issues more broadly.

Winter 4461G Vanessa Slothouber Mon 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 4607G THE HISTORY OF WOMEN AND GENDER RELATIONS IN AFRICA
Women in Africa today are exceedingly diverse and accomplished, despite the negative news we
read every day about violence, disease and poverty. Even those who recognize this often assume
that women’s growing influence in African societies is a recent development due to the influence
of modern liberal values. Contrary to this, in the past African women were not the victims of
male domination, but held powerful leadership roles, were strong economic contributors and
respected members of their extended families. African feminists today draw upon these
traditions as a source of empowerment. This course will examine African women’s roles in the
past as well as factors that undermined their status and changed gender relations such as slavery,
economic forces and colonialism.  

Winter 4607G Katherine McKenna Thurs 1:30 - 4:30pm

2017-2018 Courses

WS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN'S STUDIES
An introductory and interdisciplinary survey of the status of women in contemporary, historical, and cross-cultural perspective, this course explores how gender and other differences are established or challenged through various institutional and individual practices. With a focus on feminist resistance to sexual, socio-cultural, economic, racial, and political oppression worldwide, we will appraise the implications of these practices for women's everyday lives.
2 lecture hours plus one hour tutorial, 1.0 course.   

Fall/Winter 1020E/001 Laura Cayen Mon 1:30 - 3:30 plus one hour tutorial
Fall/Winter 1020E/002 Kim Verwaayen Thur 4:30 - 6:30 plus one hour tutorial

WS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
We will be introducing students to current social and political issues in sexuality studies, with a focus on contemporary issues around sexuality, including formation of sexual identities, sexual practices and politics, policing of sexuality, questions of sexual diversity, and the historical and global nature of ideas and controversies around sexuality.
2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course  

Fall 1021F Chris Roulston Wed 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial

WS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE AND CHANGE
The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in matters of education, health, poverty, globalization, the environment, etc.
2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course 

Winter 1022G Bipasha Baruah Wed 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial

New Course!

WS 1024G INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
This introductory course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights. The course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social inequality, social difference, and unequal relations of power; as well, we will consider arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion. Towards these goals, we will take up readings about these issues from schools of thought such as: ant-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. In doing so, the course examines some of the following questions: How are equity, diversity and human rights shaped by political and state interests? What are (some of) the limits and possibilities of institutionalized, liberal approaches to equity and diversity? How are these approaches challenged? What does it mean to have “human rights?” And how, and by whom, are these rights contested? In addition to learning through our course readings, lectures, discussions, documentaries, and assignments, we will pay attention to media stories, human rights organizations, as well as to protests by equity-seeking groups to see how they approach the issues addressed in this course. 

Winter 1024G Erica Lawson Tue 11:30-1:30 plus one hour of tutorial

 

WS 2160B INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Intimate Relations focuses on how expectations of intimacy and relationships rely on particular understandings of love, sex, sexuality and bodies to shape how we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings. The course considers how intimacy (sexual, maternal, familial, affectionate) is understood in relation to history, philosophy, health, society and popular culture.
No prerequisites 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Winter 2160B Katherine McKenna Mon 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2161A WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. 3 hours, 0.5 course 

Fall 2161A Nichole Edwards Mon 4:30-7:30

WS 2162A THE BODY
We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society’s difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body.
No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2162A Julianna Beaudoin Wed 4:30-7:30

WS 2163B SEX, HOW TO: SEX EDUCATION, ITS HISTORY AND CONTROVERSIES - New course!
Sex education is a controversial topic; should we even be teaching people how to have sex or how not to have sex? This course traces the history of sex education and its many controversies as well as looking at contemporary sex education practices both locally and in an international context. 

Winter 2163B Nichole Edwards Thurs 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION 
This course examines the world of fashion from a critical feminist perspective. Topics covered may include fashion’s role in gender and sexuality identity; the relationship between women’s fashions and women’s liberation; the history, sociology, aesthetics of fashion; the mass production of fashion; and feminist concerns about exploitation and sweatshop labour. 2 hours of in class time, 1 hour online, 0.5 course Please note: Prerequisites have been lifted for the 2017-2018 enrollment period. 

Fall 2164A Samantha Brennan Wed 4:30 - 6:30pm

WS 2205F MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
This course addresses masculinities as social constructs. It debates the theoretical and practical strongholds competing discourses have had over gender as a construct and specifically masculinities. One overarching goal of this course is to develop critical and analytical frameworks for unsettling and interrogating gender assumptions. Additionally, this course is intended to raise questions that will better enable us to construct and deconstruct what and how we come to understand masculinity, singular, as masculinities, plural. In the everyday public discourse, we are witness to a heightened awareness and growing concern, generally, to “help the boys.” From mainstream media reports, to schools, universities and education more generally, we are inundated with calls for more attention to "the boys." Though largely cloaked by concerns for performance, achievement, and gender equity, at the heart of the debate is a set of deep-seated and long-held understandings and assumptions about gender but specifically masculinity and schooling. This course provides a lens for examining masculinities in the context of media, activist organizations, daily social interactions as well as looking closely at secondary schools as a primary masculinizing institution. Our particular lens of analysis probes masculinities from various points of intersection, namely, the raced, class and gendered lives of boys and young men.
No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

Fall 2205F Tues 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2211F GIRLS ON FIRE - New course! 
Many YA dystopian novels published recently feature strong female protagonists who openly rebel against the totalitarian societies they live in. In this course, we will consider how the recent spate of Young Adult dystopian fiction simultaneously subverts and affirms gendered expectations facing many young women in the 21st century. 

Fall 2211F Miranda Green-Barteet Mon 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
(Reqiuired 2nd yr. theory course)

An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2256E or Women's Studies 2257E Prerequisite(s): WS1020E, or WS1021F/G and WS1022F/G, or permission of the Department.
3 hours, 1.0 course. 

Fall/Winter 2220E Kim Verwaayen & Laura Cayen Thurs 10:30 am - 1:30 pm

WS 2225G INTRO TO GIRLHOOD STUDIES 
This course introduces students to the emerging field of Girlhood studies. We consider what it means to be a girl and how the concepts of girl and girlhood have been constructed across a variety of geographic and historical contexts, as well as how the intersections of race, class, gender, and ability have influenced these concepts. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including literature, and history, we specifically consider girlhood through a feminist lens and examine how definitions of girl and girlhood shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, and futures
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G. 

Winter 2225G Miranda Green-Barteet Mon 1:30 am - 4:30pm

WS 2240G FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists’ calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. Antirequisite: WS2250E. No prerequisites.
3 hours, 0.5 course

Winter 2240G Alison Lee Wed 10:30 am - 1:30pm

WS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women’s health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women’s Health; Representing Gender and Women’s Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women’s Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women’s Health; and Women, Work and Health.
Antirequisite: Women’s Studies 2154. No prerequisites. 

Fall/Winter 2244 Jessica Polzer Tues 4:30 - 7:30pm

WS 2259G Reproducing Race: Race, Reproduction, Parenting, and Families.
Race is widely understood to be a social construction. Therefore, we can ask how some social practices help to construct or ‘reproduce’ race, and how others deconstruct it. This course centres on historical and contemporary practices that concern race and the formation of families, and the having and rearing of children. And it asks how these practices reproduce race, but also how they can deconstruct it, and how well they might align as a result with anti-racist politics. Among specific topics that we will cover are anti-miscegenation laws, race and online dating, eugenics and race, the race selection of gametes acquired for one’s reproductive use, race in global commercial contract pregnancy, transracial adoption, and the instilling of racial identities in one’s children. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing from disciplines such as women’s studies, history, philosophy, and critical race theory. We will also use contemporary media and film.

Winter 2259G Carolyn McLeod Tues 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 2263F INTERSECTIONS: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY
Are Latinas inherently sexy and sensual women? Are poor people, especially nonwhite people, lazy and shiftless? Do Aboriginal women make “bad” mothers? Are Asian men less “manly” than black men? These questions, among others, will be discussed in this course as we investigate the intersections between race, class, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary perspective. One of the main objectives of this course will be to unravel how human beings become categories that expand beyond the seemingly binary divide between “the sexes,” “the races,” and the “haves and have-notes.” Instead, we will consider the real-life experiences of “Muslim women” or “two-spirit people” through an examination of texts from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, among others. In addition, our examination of products from popular culture, such as films, television shows, music videos, and clips from the internet, will provide thoughtful, and often provocative, examples of the complex representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality in our society.
Prerequisite: Women's Studies 1020E or Women’s Studies 1021F/G plus Women's Studies 1022F/G, or permission of the Department. 

Fall 2263F Andrea Allen Thurs 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2270B WOMEN, LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE 
This course is an introduction to various areas of law which affect women in specific ways. It will examine laws relating to sex discrimination, employment, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, abortion, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, pornography and prostitution. It will explore topical debates in these various areas of law and how law can be used as a strategy for bringing about social change.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, half course. 

Winter 2270B Tyler Totten Tues 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production.
No prerequisites. 3 hours, 1.0 course 

Fall/Winter 2273E Andie Shabbar Wed 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 2274G INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc.
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 4460F/G if taught in Winter 2013; Women's Studies 3343F/G if taught in Fall 2015. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 1020E or 1.0 from Women's Studies 1021F/G, 1022F/G, 1023F/Gand 1024F/G.

Winter 2274G Thurs 1:30 - 4:30pm

WS 2283F DESIRING WOMEN
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites. 3 hours, 0.5 course

Fall 2283F Andrea Allen Tues 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 3133G LESBIAN LIVES AND CULTURES
This course will explore what it means to identify as a lesbian today. With the move away from identity politics and the ascendance of queer as a challenge to identity categories, it will consider the place of lesbianism in contemporary North American culture and more globally. Attention will be paid to a variety of aspects of lesbian lives and to contemporary forms of lesbian experiences in relation to their historical antecedents. Themes will include intersectionality, activism, sex, literature, art and politics.
3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2273E or Women's Studies 2220E or permission of the department. 

Winter 3133G Chris Roulston Thurs 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 3173F QUEER THEORY
What is queer theory, where did it come from, how is it changing? Examining key foundational texts in queer theory, the contexts for its emergence, and debates over its contemporary usefulness and direction, students in this course will trace the development of queer theory from Foucault to the present day.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite: Women's Studies 2273E or permission of the department. 

Fall 3173F Wendy Pearson Thurs 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 3305G CULTURE JAM: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE
While popular culture operates to naturalize and distribute dominant discourses about gender and sexuality, it is also a fertile space through which resistance can be enacted. This course examines “common sense” representations of gender and sexuality within 深夜福利站 popular culture and the ways these representations have been confronted and contested.

Winter 3305G Wed 4:30 - 7:30 pm

WS 3321F ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES
(Required 3rd yr. theory course)

This course applies a wide range of feminist theories and critical practices, including postmodern and queer theories, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies, to a diverse array of artistic practices, including literature, film, and the performing and visual arts.
3 hours, 0.5 course. Prerequisite(s): WS2220E, WS 2256E, or WS2257E, or permission of the department.

Fall 3321F Helen Fielding Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3322G ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
(Required 3rd yr. theory course)

This course is an advanced examination of the application of feminist theories and practices to topics in the social sciences. Focus will include epistemological and methodological questions raised in feminist engagement across the various social science disciplines. Topics addressed may include a range of social-economic, cultural, political, and policy issues. 3 hours, 0.5 course Prerequisite(s): WS2220E, WS 2256E, or WS2257E, or permission of the department.

Winter 3322G Wed 1:30 - 4:30 pm

WS 3350F FEMINISM ACROSS BORDERS
Is an inclusive feminism possible? Is a feminism that transcends borders and embraces a broader, more global spectrum of feminist voices than ever before feasible? Reading feminist authors from a diversity of backgrounds, we examine the attractions and challenges of a global feminism. 

Fall 3350F Wed 10:30 - 1:30 pm

WS 3355E FEMINIST ACTIVISM - New course!

This course examines a variety of issues and interventions to understand what feminist action can accomplish. Some of the questions we engage include:  What tools do various feminist activists take up, for what specific kinds of aims, and with what successes and why? What can we learn from the failures or exclusions of feminist activisms? What are the relationships between past or historical movements and contemporary contexts, individual and collective action, community organizing and institutions, local and global solidarities? How can feminist protest genuinely avoid divide-and-conquer politics to be the ethical, intersectional, accountable work we require of feminism in the 21st century? It is the commitment of this course that, in addition to studying feminist activism in the classroom, students engage in a Community Engagement Learning (CEL) project sustained over the course with a community organization or other partners to encourage students’ implementation of their learning -- beyond the borders of the classroom. Please note that the course is currently capped at twenty-two students for CEL group projects. As of July 21st, registration will open to students wishing to take it with an alternate assignment rather than working with, and completing a project for, community partners. Please note, you are in class for two hours a week. For the third hour, you are expected to do CEL project related work or work on your alternative assignment. 

Fall/winter 3355E Erica Lawson/ Kim Verwaayen

Mon 1:30-3:30

WS 3357G WOMEN FILMMAKERS - New course!
(cross-listed with Spanish 3901G and Film Studies 3311G)
This course will explore the notion of film authorship in relation to its utterances and implications when associated to the praxis of contemporary women film directors, from the early 1960s to the present. While troubling the notion of women’s cinema, its definition, limits and limitations, a wide range of case studies – films emerging from dissimilar contexts of production and reception – will be mostly read and discussed in the light of feminist approaches to questions about gender and representation. In this sense, the course will also offer a historical and critical overview of feminist scholarship within film studies and of the ongoing debates in this area of study. 0.5 course

Winter 2018 3357G Tue 9:30-10:30am & Thurs 9:30-11:30am

WS 3358F VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 
Gender-based violence was one of the earliest issues identified by feminists as a focus for grass-roots organization and continues today to be an important subject for community work, research and political struggle. This seminar will provide an overview of both the theory and practice of feminist anti-violence work locally and globally. This course will also examine key aspects of these debates in Canada and the United States, as well as in other parts of the world. These theoretical issues will also be connected with practice, that is, with the front-line work that is undertaken in the community to counter violence against women and their children. 

Fall 3358F Mon 4:30 - 7:30 pm

WS 3362G COMPARING WOMEN'S POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN THE PROVINCES: KATHLEEN WYNNE, CHRISTY CLARK AND RACHEL NOTLEY - New course!
This course compares provincial political structures through a feminist lens, especially regarding the premier’s office and the party system. The course centers on two questions: why have female Canadian political leaders been successful recently in rising to lead some provincial governments in Canada; and once in office, how do they exercise leadership?  

Winter 3362G Wed 1:30-3:30 pm

WS 4458F STORYTELLING FOR CHANGE: THE ART OF DECOLONIAL FEMINIST PRAXIS.
This methodologies course brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholarship to critically examine autoethnography as a feminist practice. In doing so, we theorize storytelling as a method of critical inquiry and a catalyst for social transformation. As Cree scholar Neal McLeod contends, storytelling offers a way to better understand the world around us and to question the injustices inflicted upon us (2007). With this in mind, in this class we consider the relationship between auto/biographical photography and social justice activism, particularly with regard to issues stemming from the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism in Canada.

Fall 4458F Mon 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 4459G BEYOND GI JANE: WOMEN'S ROLES IN WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 
This course examines the myriad different, often overlapping roles and experiences of women during wars, stressing how they can be active agents rather than only passive bystanders or victims.  It explores how other identity categories such as nationality, ethnicity and race combine with gender to shape women’s wartime experiences, showing how adding a gender analysis complicates and deepens our understanding of war's impact.

Winter 4459G Mon 10:30 - 1:30pm

WS 4464G GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT: THEORY, PRACTICE, ADVOCACY -New course!
This course will provide an introduction to the theory and practice of gender and development. Course content is informed by the interests and needs of future scholars and practitioners - i.e. students who hope to engage in research, project design and implementation, policy analysis, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy and/or networking in development or a closely related domain. A few readings and lectures will be devoted to providing students with a historical perspective on the evolution of the theory of gender and development. The rest of the course will focus almost exclusively on key contemporary gender issues in development. The course seeks to provide students with a strong theoretical and conceptual grounding in gender and development as well as applied skills to work as a development professional. Students will study development policy and learn tools and methodologies that will enable them to pursue careers as gender equality practitioners with the United Nations system, other intergovernmental organizations, development-oriented state agencies, NGOs and other civil society organizations, bilateral and multi-lateral agencies, and private foundations.

Winter 4464G Tues 1:30-4:30pm

2016-2017 Courses

WS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN'S STUDIES
Instructors: Kim Verwaayen (sec 001) &  Laura Cayen (sec 002)
Email: kjverwaa@uwo.ca, lcayen@uwo.ca
An introductory and interdisciplinary survey of the status of women in contemporary, historical, and cross-cultural perspective, this course explores how gender and other differences are established or challenged through various institutional and individual practices. With a focus on feminist resistance to sexual, socio-cultural, economic, racial, and political oppression worldwide, we will appraise the implications of these practices for women's everyday lives. 2 lecture hours plus one hour tutorial, 1.0 course. 


WS 1021F INTRODUCTION TO SEXUALITY STUDIES
Instructor: Chris Roulston
Email: croulsto@uwo.ca
Class times: Wednesdays 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial 
We will be introducing students to current social and political issues in sexuality studies, with a focus on contemporary issues around sexuality, including formation of sexual identities, sexual practices and politics, policing of sexuality, questions of sexual diversity, and the historical and global nature of ideas and controversies around sexuality. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course.


WS 1022G GENDER, JUSTICE AND CHANGE
Instructor: Bipasha Baruah
Email: bbaruah@uwo.ca
Class times: Wednesdays 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial
The 21st century is a period of accelerating change focused around issues of gender, justice and activism. This course will introduce students to the ways in which movements for justice and change are informed by and take up gender issues in matters of education, health, poverty, globalization, the environment, etc. 2 hours plus a one hour tutorial, 0.5 course. 


WS 1024F INTRO TO EQUITY,DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Instructor: Erica Lawson
Email: elawso3@uwo.ca
Class times: Tuesdays 1:30 - 3:30 pm plus one hour tutorial
This course surveys theory and practice in the fields of equity, diversity, and human rights as they are taken up in institutional domains such as social work, education, and law and in schools of thought such as critical race studies, feminism and gender studies, sexuality studies, and disability studies, 0.5 course. 


WS 2159B THE ART OF SEX: DEPICTIONS OF SEX AND SEXUALITY IN WESTERN ART
Instructor: Sonia Halpern
Email: shalpern@uwo.ca
Class times: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30pm
This course will explore the ways in which various aspects of sexuality get depicted in historical and contemporary art. Sexuality has been associated with art since pre-historic times, as demonstrated by the appearance of fertility figures, and became a pervasive subject in the centuries that followed, intersecting with heteronormative religious, medical, legal, and psychiatric discourses, as well as with covert and overt acts and movements of resistance. The art works under discussion reflect the concept that attitudes around sex and sexuality, along with integrated ideologies of masculinity and femininity, are crucial to our understanding of both art and society. Painting, sculptures, photography, and digital art will all be examined in the form of lectures and accompanying PowerPoint illustrations. 


WS 2160B INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Instructors: Katherine McKenna
Email: kmckenna@uwo.ca
Class times: Mondays 4:30 - 7:30pm
Intimate Relations focuses on how expectations of intimacy and relationships rely on particular understandings of love, sex, sexuality and bodies to shape how we experience ourselves as gendered and sexual beings. The course considers how intimacy (sexual, maternal, familial, affectionate) is understood in relation to history, philosophy, health, society and popular culture. No prerequisites 3 hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 2161A WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE: GARBO TO GAGA
Instructors: Nichole Edwards
email: nedwar7@uwo.ca
Class times: Mondays 4:30 -7:30pm
How are women represented in popular culture? Women's images in the media, from newspaper and magazines to television, film and music videos produce particular notions of what it means to be a woman, be feminine, etc. We will examine both the historical and contemporary roles of women in popular culture. 3 hours, 0.5 course Top of Page WS 2162B THE BODY Instructor: Wendy Pearson and guest lecturer Class times: Mondays 4:30 - 7:30 pm We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society’s difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body. No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 2162B THE BODY
Instructors: Julianna Beaudoin
Email: jbutler23@uwo.ca
Class times: Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm
We will examine social and scientific constructions of the body, including concepts of beauty, health, fitness, sexuality, and questions of representation. Among other things, we may examine particular social problems, such as technologies of the body and bodily modification, ideas of health and illness, society’s difficulty with understanding the disabled body as sexual, the cultural obsession with body size, psychiatric and medical responses to people who feel that their bodily sex does not match their gender, changing ideas about beauty and attraction, and artistic conceptions, representations, and alterations of the human body. No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course.  


WS 2164A GENDER AND FASHION    New Course!
Instructors: Samantha Brennan
Email: sbrennan@uwo.ca
Class times: Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm

This course examines the world of fashion from a critical feminist perspective. Topics covered may include fashion’s role in gender and sexuality identity; the relationship between women’s fashions and women’s liberation; the history, sociology, aesthetics of fashion; the mass production of fashion; and feminist concerns about exploitation and sweatshop labour. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 2205F MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
Instructor: Joshua Morrison
Email: jmorr@uwo.ca
Class times: Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm
This course addresses masculinities as social constructs. It debates the theoretical and practical strongholds competing discourses have had over gender as a construct and specifically masculinities.  One overarching goal of this course is to develop critical and analytical frameworks for unsettling and interrogating gender assumptions. Additionally, this course is intended to raise questions that will better enable us to construct and deconstruct what and how we come to understand masculinity, singular, as masculinities, plural. In the everyday public discourse, we are witness to a heightened awareness and growing concern, generally, to “help the boys.”  From mainstream media reports, to schools, universities and education more generally, we are inundated with calls for more attention to "the boys." Though largely cloaked by concerns for performance, achievement, and gender equity, at the heart of the debate is a set of deep-seated and long-held understandings and assumptions about gender but specifically masculinity and schooling. This course provides a lens for examining masculinities in the context of media, activist organizations, daily social interactions as well as looking closely at secondary schools as a primary masculinizing institution. Our particular lens of analysis probes masculinities from various points of intersection, namely, the raced, class and gendered lives of boys and young men. No prerequisites, 3 hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 2212G GENDER, BODIES, WORK, VALUE   New Course!
Instructor: Stephen Lin
Email: clin64@uwo.ca
Class times: Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm
Gender is mobilized in both insidious and obvious ways to de/value bodies, appropriate power, profit and wealth from labour, and alienate people. This course mobilizes intersectional, decolonial, feminist, anti-capitalist and liberatory scholarship to organize a deep understanding of value, and builds toward deshaming and reclaiming the humanizing praxis of work, 3 hours, 0.5 course. Antirequisite(s): The former Women’s Studies 2261F/G. Prerequisite(s):  or 1.0 course from , , , .


WS 2220E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES (Reqiuired 2nd yr. theory course)
Instructors: Kim Verwaayen and Erica Lawson 
Emails: kjverwaa@uwo.ca, elawso3@uwo.ca
Class times: Thursdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
An examination of the implications of feminist theories and practices at work in many different disciplines, including arts, media, social sciences, health sciences, science, law. We introduce students to theoretical concepts and ask questions about the ways sex, gender and sexuality are understood and researched from a range of perspectives. Antirequisite(s): Women's Studies 2256E or Women's Studies 2257E Prerequisite(s): WS1020E, or WS1021F/G and WS1022F/G, or permission of the Department. 3 hours, 1.0 course. 


WS 2225F - INTRO TO GIRLHOOD STUDIES      New Course!
Instructor: Miranda Green-Barteet
Email: mgreenb6@uwo.ca
Class times: Monday 1:30 am - 4:30pm
This course introduces students to the emerging field of Girlhood studies. We consider what it means to be a girl and how the concepts of girl and girlhood have been constructed across a variety of geographic and historical contexts, as well as how the intersections of race, class, gender, and ability have influenced these concepts. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including literature, and history, we specifically consider girlhood through a feminist lens and examine how definitions of girl and girlhood shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, and futures, 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course.
Prerequisite(s):  or 1.0 from , , and . 


WS 2240F FOUNDATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT 
Instructor: Alison Lee
Email: alee@uwo.ca
Class times: Wednesdays 10:30 am - 1:30pm
This course takes up foundational readings in the history of feminist thought from early feminists’ calls for women's equality and rights to postmodern understandings of gender. The course will consider how feminist thought has emerged, developed and evolved in response to various historical, intellectual, social, political and cultural challenges. Antirequisite: WS2250E. No prerequisites. 3 hours, 0.5 course 


WS 2244 WOMEN AND HEALTH
Instructor: Andrea Allen
Email: aallen65@uwo.ca
Class times: Thursdays, 4:30 - 7:30pm
This course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding women’s health. The course is organized into six modules with each module covering a topic area that is relevant to women and health. The topics covered in this course are:The Medicalization of Women’s Health; Representing Gender and Women’s Health; The Politics of Reproduction; Diversity and Women’s Experiences of Health Care; The Social Determinants of Women’s Health; and Women, Work and Health. Antirequisite: Women’s Studies 2154. No prerequisites. 


WS 2263F INTERSECTIONS: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY
Instructor: Andrea Allen
Email: aallen65@uwo.ca
Class times: Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm
One of the main objectives of this course will be to unravel how human beings become categories that expand beyond the seemingly binary divide between “the sexes,” “the races,” and the “haves and have-notes.”  Instead, we will consider the real-life experiences of “Muslim women” or “two-spirit people” through an examination of texts from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, feminist studies, and queer studies, among others.  In addition, our examination of products from popular culture, such as films, television shows, music videos, and clips from the internet, will provide thoughtful, and often provocative, examples of the complex representations of race, gender, class, and sexuality in our society.  Prerequisite: Women's Studies 1020E or Women’s Studies 1021F/G plus Women's Studies 1022F/G, or permission of the Department. 


WS 2270B WOMEN AND LAW
Instructor: Tyler Totten
Email: ttotten@uwo.ca
Class times: Mondays 1:30 - 4:30pm
This course is an introduction to various areas of law which affect women in specific ways. It will examine laws relating to sex discrimination, employment, sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault, abortion, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, pornography and prostitution. It will explore topical debates in these various areas of law and how law can be used as a strategy for bringing about social change. No prerequisites. 3 hours, half course. 


WS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
Instructor: Jessica Cameron
Email: Jessica.Cameron@uwo.ca
Class times: Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm
This interdisciplinary course focuses on sexuality as a subject of study and considers how sexuality defines individual and social subjectivity. The course will explore sexual subjects within a theoretical context and might include sexology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, feminism, the history of sexual identity, and its representation in cultural production. No prerequisites. 3 hours, 1.0 course. 


WS 2274F INTRO TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
Instructor: Jake Pyne
Class times: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30pm
This course will focus on trans identities, history, theory and politics from the perspectives of feminist, queer, and emerging trans theory. Topics may include transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and intersectionalities with sexuality, race, class, ability, etc.3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 2275G HETEROSEXUALITIES
Instructor: Cameron Greensmith
Email: cgreensm@uwo.ca
Class times: Wednesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm
This course is interested in the interdisciplinary study of heterosexualities. Topics covered will include: social and historical productions of (hetero)sexualities; cultural performances of (hetero)sexualities; heterosexual pleasures and dangers; heterosexed pornographies and sex-work; erotic (hetero)sexual power play; and heterosexualities that cross the boundaries of (cis)gender, race, age, ability, class and nation, 3 lecture hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 2283G DESIRING WOMEN
Instructor: Andrea Allen
Email: aallen65@uwo.ca
Class times: Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm
This course looks at how female sexuality and subjectivity is experienced, understood, represented and theorized across a range of disciplines; these may include art, literature, media, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology and medicine. It explores how female sexual desires, practices and identities are shaped in relation to individual, cultural and social meanings of female sexuality. No prerequisites. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 

WS 3173G QUEER THEORY
Instructor: Wendy Pearson
Class times: Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30pm
What is queer theory, where did it come from, how is it changing? Examining key foundational texts in queer theory, the contexts for its emergence, and debates over its contemporary usefulness and direction, students in this course will trace the development of queer theory from Foucault to the present day. Prerequisite: Women's Studies 2273E or permission of the department. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 3305G GENDER, SEX AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE
Instructor: Laura Cayen
Class times: Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30pm
While popular culture operates to naturalize and distribute dominant discourses about gender and sexuality, it is also a fertile space through which resistance can be enacted. This course examines; common sense; representations of gender and sexuality within 深夜福利站 popular culture and the ways these representations have been confronted and contested. Antirequisite(s): The former WS 359F. Prerequisites: Women's Studies 2253E or 2273E or 2220E or permission of the Department. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 


WS 3311F "It's (Not) All in Your Head" and Writing Resistance: Feminist Articulations of Madness
Instructor: Kim Verwaayen
Class times: Thursdays 4:30 - 7:30pm
Why have women, as women, been historically linked with mental deficiency/madness? What social, political, economic, and literary ends have been served by this connection? Most importantly, how have women responded?  By reading works (short stories, novels, memoirs) by women from both within and outside the asylum experience, we will focus on  how women writers explore, question, and defy their discursive and material imprisonments. Prerequisite(s): Women's Studies 2220E, 2256E or 2257E, or permission of the Department. 


WS 3321F ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES

Instructor: Helen Fielding 
Class times: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
This course applies a wide range of feminist theories and critical practices, including postmodern and queer theories, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies, to a diverse array of artistic practices, including literature, film, and the performing and visual arts. Prerequisite(s): WS2220E, WS 2256E, or WS2257E, or permission of the department. 3 hours, 0.5 course. 


WS3322G ADVANCED TOPICS IN FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
Instructor: Erica Lawson
Class times: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
This course is an advanced examination of the application of feminist theories and practices to topics in the social sciences. Focus will include epistemological and methodological questions raised in feminist engagement across the various social science disciplines. Topics addressed may include a range of social-economic, cultural, political, and policy issues. Prerequisite(s): WS2220E, WS 2256E, or WS2257E, or permission of the department. 3 hours, 0.5 course. Course outline


WS 3331F CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES
Instructor: Erica Lawson
Class Times: Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm
With a focus on examining the changing meanings of race and racism in the twenty-first century, this course addresses some of the following questions: How is race central to the production of knowledge?  How do ‘racializing processes’ occur in social relations? ‘How does racial formation’ take place in conjunction with other identities? How are racial identities contested? What are the gendered dimensions of race? And how do racialized groups and their allies challenge racist practices?  These questions will be addressed by looking at how racial knowledge informs public policy, politics, economics, identity,  the ‘welfare state,’  multiculturalism, the “War on Terror,” and other aspects of governing practices in everyday life. The purposes of the course are to a) discuss and analyze the conceptual frameworks for understanding the multi-faceted and intersectional dimensions of race and racism, and b) to examine how these inform social justice movements and other initiatives that seek to challenge racial violence. Prerequisites: WS 2256E or 2257E or 2220E or WS 2273E or permission of the Department


WS 3343F  INTRODUCTIONS TO TRANSGENDER STUDIES
Instructor: TBA
Class Times: Tuesdays 5:30 - 8:30pm 
The 1990’s saw the emergence of a separate academic field related to the ‘transgender phenomenon’;this course provides an introductory overview to the relatively young discipline of transgender studies. We begin with a historical look at how the term ‘transgender’ has come to encompass a broad range of diverse gender variant practices and discourses. Of particular interest in this regard will be the focus on trans theory and politics from the point of view of its relations to feminist theory and queer theory. We will also treat trans issues as framed within other disciplines such as legal, medical, and sociological discourses. Our readings and classes will incorporate discussions of transphobia and oppression of trans people, sex and gender change, transvestism, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and of how race and class intersect with being trans. Each session will be introduced by a short lecture on some of the relevant issues to be discussed in the class. During the course of our study, reading material, discussions and audio-visuals will hopefully be supplemented by input from invited guests. Prerequisites: WS2220E or WS 2253E or WS 2256E or WS2257E or WS2273E or permission of the Department. 3 hour, 0.5 course. 


WS 3350G FEMINISM ACROSS BORDERS
Instructor: Shazia Sadaf
Class times: Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm
Rapid globalization and resulting “Third-wave Feminism” has challenged 深夜福利站 feminism’s universalization of women’s experiences as arbitrary and restrictive.  A singular depiction of women under patriarchal tyranny without incorporating cultural, historical and religious differences undercuts the complexity of women’s issues which have gained new currency in post 9/11 clash of civilizations, Global War on Terror and rising fear of Islamic fundamentalism. Women’s education and gender inequality in extremist societies, including issues like child marriages, veiling and genital mutilation, have become causes of urgent debate in recent years. In light of these developments, is an inclusive feminism possible, or indeed feasible? This course reads exploratory texts in tandem with critical essays to examine the implications of new feminist discourses arising from issues of relativism, cultural imperialism and terrorism, and whether these changing understandings can help in the internationalization of feminist thought and action. Prerequisites: WS 2220E or WS 2253E or WS 2256E or WS 2257E or WS 2273E or permission of the Department


WS 3358F FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Instructor: Prof. Katherine McKenna
Class times: Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm

Gender-based violence was one of the earliest issues identified by feminists as a focus for grass-roots organization and continues today to be an important subject for community work, research and political struggle. This seminar will provide an overview of both the theory and practice of feminist anti-violence work locally and globally. Prerequisites: WS 2220E or WS 2256E or WS 2257E or permission of the Department. 

WS 4460F Special Topics in Women's Studies: Decolonial Interventions and Indigenous Activism
Instructor: Victoria Miceli
Email: vmiceli@uwo.ca
Class Times: Mondays 10:30 - 1:30pm
At this present moment in North America, as well as around the world, we are witnessing an ever-increasing movement toward decolonzing the settler state, with communities calling on politicians and citizens to act on threats to the environment, Indigenous women's bodies, and land theft. Especially in the age of social media, it is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore these issues and the movements that are arising to address them. By examining Indigenous-led activist movements, this course will explore different forms of activism organized by Indigenous persons and communities to combat state and colonial violence within what many of us refer to as Canada. The course will cover issues ranging from Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, to Indigenous motherhood and reproductive justice, land claims and struggles, questions of reconciliation and more in order to understand both changing systems of power, as well as resistance to these oppressive systems. 3 hour, .5 course. Prerequisite(s):; or permission of the Department. 


WS 4461G Special Topics in Women's Studies: Race and The Social Construction of Motherhood
Instructor: Patricia Hamilton
Email: phamilt8@uwo.ca
Class Times: Mondays 10:30 - 1:30pm
What is a good mother? "Who" is a good mother? How do dominant racial ideologies and practices shape notions of good; motherhood? What effect does this have on the mothering experiences of racialized women? And how have women of colour differently theorized, challenged or incorporated mainstream motherhood theories in feminist scholarship? With a focus on examining motherhood at the intersection of race and other social locations such as class, dis/ability and sexuality, this course seeks to address these, among a number of other questions.

In particular, the course is concerned with the contested parameters that define good motherhood as well as its theoretical foundations in the neoliberal state. Through discussions, readings, films and presentations we will examine the historical and contemporary circumstances that have shaped racialized notions of good motherhood. By considering how different groups of women experience racialized motherhood this course will attend to how mothers disrupt, challenge and/or conform to disciplinary scripts about who mothers should be and what they should do. In our focus on mothers of colour, we begin to shift the center, examining motherhood from the perspective of women situated outside of the boundaries of good motherhood. 3 hour .5 course.Prerequisite(s): or permission of the Department. 


WS 4464G Special Topics in Women's Studies: Trauma and Testimony (Grad/Undergrad split class)
Instructor: Kim Verwaayen
Email: kjverwaa@uwo.ca
Class Times: Tuesdays 10:30 - 1:30pm
How do feminist interventions in trauma studies trouble conventional understandings of history, memory, experience, violence, rupture, and the everyday and with what effect? What is the critical urgency of speaking trauma and (how) is this possible? How are acts of witnessing sometimes made to serve hegemonic interests -- and how can this co-optation be contested by interventive feminist actions?

Reading various practices across feminist theory, literature, art, film (and, to a much lesser extent, clinical therapy), this course explores feminist understandings of trauma, the uses of testimony, and feminist forms of resistance through political, clinical, and aesthetic actions. Specifically, topics include: feminist understandings of trauma, particularly vis-a-vis relationships between the personal (that is, private or individual experience, memory, testimony) and the public (collective and cultural memory, trauma and its witnessing); decolonization of the conventional western trauma studies canon; conflicts between culturo-historical perspectives on trauma and experience; mislit, fetishism, and trauma spectacle; and, most centrally, feminist responses through often artistic experimental forms of witnessing. 3 hour .5 course.
Prerequisite(s): or permission of the Department.