Graduate Course Offerings
Previous Years Courses:
2011-2012
2010-2011
2009-2010
2008-2009
2012-2013 Graduate Course Offerings
WS 9550A Feminist Theory (required course)
Professor Susan Knabe
September - December 2012
Thursday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Lawson Hall 2205
Course outline
This course will analyze feminist theoretical approaches providing students with an understanding of the fundamental questions at stake in each. We will consider epistemological perspectives as well as the intersections of feminist theories with other theoretical approaches such as queer theory and critical race theory. The implications of feminist theory for academic research will be addressed throughout.
This course is restricted to WSFR graduate students.
WS 9560B Researching Lived Experience - Feminist Methodologies (required course option)
Professor Katherine McKenna
January - April 2013
Thursday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Alumni Hall 101
Course outline
This course will provide an overview of a variety of feminist research methodologies with a focus on the Social Sciences, both quantitative and qualitative. Guest lecturers from a broad variety of disciplines will demonstrate the different forms and common themes of feminist research. Questions such as the following will be raised: How do factors such as class, gender, race and ethnicity affect research? Should political change be the goal of feminist research or should it be primarily deconstruction and analysis? Are some methodologies more "feminist" than others? Students will be required to complete a major assignment in which they pick a topic of interest and suggest at least three different research methodologies that could be used to investigate that topic.
WS 9565A Feminist Theory and Methods in the Arts and Humanities (required course option)
Professor Chris Roulston
September - December 2012
Friday 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: Lawson Hall 2205
Course outline
This course will explore how different feminist theoretical and methodological approaches inform research and practice in the disparate disciplines which comprise the Arts and Humanities. Experts in each field will provide insight into the way these theoretical and methodological approaches have been taken in relation to research or practices in the visual arts, philosophy, literature, cultural studies and theatre and performance. Particular attention will focus on the interdisciplinary nature of feminist contributions to these fields through an exploration of the productive intersections and tensions between and among different theoretical and methodological approaches in the Arts and Humanities, including, but not limited to, performance theory, poststructuralist theory, queer theory and post-colonial theory.
WS 9540B Women and Employment: Discrimination and Equality Policy in Canada
Professor Carol Agocs
January - April 2013
Tuesday 3:30 - 6:30 pm
Location: Stevenson Hall 3166
Course outline
Using readings and cases from several disciplines to inform discussions and seminar presentations, course participants will critically examine theories and research on workplace discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender and race. We will then consider policy remedies including human rights processes, employment equity, pay equity, and diversity programs, and assess their outcomes for women. Central themes of the course include the critical analysis of ways in which policies are constructed and implemented, and the dynamics of organizational change and resistance to change in the workplace.
WS 9581A Feminism and Race
Professor Erica Lawson
September - December 2012
Tuesday 10:30 - 1:30 pm
Location: Lawson Hall 2205
Course outline
A study of race, ethnicity, and racism, especially, but not exclusively, as they arise in feminisms and feminist scholarship. Questions will include, but are not limited to: How should we understand race? How does intersectional identity (including racial, ethnic and class identity) challenge feminist discourse? Is there a difference between exclusion and racism? How is anti-racist feminism different from feminism? What would an inclusive feminist movement and inclusive feminist scholarship look like? Authors will include Linda Martin Alcoff, Maria Lugones, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Patricia Monture, Chandra Mohanty, Jimani Bannerji, and Gloria Anzaldua.
WS 9587B Re-Membering: Feminist Interventions in Trauma and Testimony
Professor Kim Verwaayen
January - April 2013
Tuesday 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: Lawson Hall 2210
How have feminist interventions in trauma theories troubled conventional understandings of history, experience, violence/rupture, and the everyday, and with what effect? How are acts of 'witnessing' sometimes made to serve hegemonic interests -- and how can this co-optation be contested by in(ter)ventive feminist actions? Reading various practices across feminist theory, literature, art, film, and clinical therapy, this course explores feminist understandings of trauma, the use of testimony, and feminist 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 trauma and its witnessing); conflicts between culturo-historical perspectives on/of trauma and experience; mislit and the fetishism of the trauma spectacle; and, most centrally, feminist responses through often experimental forms of witnessing.
WS 9591B Screening Sex
Professor Wendy Pearson
January - April 2013
Wednesday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location:Lawson Hall 2205
Course outline
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 European and Canadian filmmaking, 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, such as The Birdcage and To Wong Foo. Along the way, we will consider specific themes, such as coming out, family relationships, intersections with race and class, and AIDS. The course will finish by looking at the mainstreaming of certain types of queer representation, particularly in Milk, The Kids are All Right and A Single Man, and the effects such films have on the viability of independent queer film making. Films that may be screened for this course include: Queen Christina (1933), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), Some Like It Hot (1959).
WS 9592A Gender and Development: Engaging with Theory, Practice and Advocacy
Professor Bipasha Baruah
September - December 2012
Wednesday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Lawson Hall 2205
Course outline
This course seeks to provide an introduction to gender and development as a domain of theory, practice, advocacy and interaction. The course is informed by the needs and interests of future practitioners, i.e. students who hope to engage in research, project design and implementation, policy analysis, advocacy and/or networking in the gender and development field or a closely related domain. To best serve the needs of such students, a few lectures of the course are devoted to providing students with a historical perspective on the evolution of the theory and practice of gender and development discourse, and rest of the course focuses almost exclusively on key contemporary and emerging gender issues and debates. Students who do not intend to work as gender and development practitioners, but who want to acquire an up-to-date understanding of the field are welcome in the course, which is open to all graduate students with an interest in the contemporary theory and practice of gender and development.
NEW COURSE!
WS 9593B Feminism, Biopolitics and Colonial Critique
Professor Julia Emberley
January - April 2013
Wednesday 12:30-3:30 pm
Location: UC 274
Course outline
This course would examine the rise of Foucauldian biopolitics and feminist responses, critical interventions and new directions in the field. In particular, students will examine how biopolitics has influenced scholarship on the role of the female body in determining political and economic interests in such historical events as slavery and colonial expansion as well as in relation to contemporary events such as international adoptions and surrogate exchanges. Students will read theoretical material by Michel Foucault, Anne Laura Stoler, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Patricia Williams, and Anna Davin. Students will also read literary and view visual materials including but not limited to Octavia Butler's Kindred, Linda Hogan's People of the Whale, Hiromi Goto's The Kappa Child and Rebecca Belmore's Vigil.
WS 9575 Directed Reading Course (Full or Half Course)
The directed reading course is conducted under the supervision of a faculty member, and is taken only by permission of the Chair of Graduate Studies. Normally, only PhD students are permitted to take a directed reading course, and Master's students will only be allowed to do so under exceptional circumstances.
WS 9599 Independent Research Project (Full Course)
September 2012 - August 2013
The Independent Research Project is only available to MA students See the IRP Guidelines here.
WS 9585 Scholarly Practicum (Full or Half Course)
The Scholarly Practicum course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to receive academic credit for experiential learning. It could involve a community placement, an internship or an applied project. Students must have their practicum approved by submitting a written proposal describing the activity and the benefit of it to the student's current program of study and future goals to the graduate chair at least two months (longer if ethics approval is required) before the its commencement. Within one month after the completion of the practicum, a report must be submitted to the graduate chair. The course will be graded on a pass/fail basis. It is normally open only to doctoral students.
Courses Offered in Other Departments 2012-2013
Please note: Spaces in these courses are limited and permission of the instructor may be required.
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
Classics 9351B The Roman Family
Professor Kelly Olson
January - April 2013
Monday, 2:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: LAH 3220
This course will analyze the different ways in which, during the first two centuries CE, Romans lived together as families. We will examine the strategies they developed to secure the continuation of the family and its property; how families and their constituent members fitted into public life, and how these issues affected individuals of different social backgrounds. It will study what concepts like childhood, adolescence, or familial affection meant to Romans; what sentiments were invested in the various family-related roles and how these sentiments differed from our own. We will also look at such topics as slavery, adultery, and the dissolution of marriage, and their effects on family.
The subject of the Roman family has enjoyed a great deal of recent attention from ancient historians, whose inspiration has come, to a large extent, from work done by historians of the family in the medieval and early modern periods. It will be one aim of this course to make this dependence more explicit and to analyze the merits as well as the problems of a comparative approach.
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
ED 9629A Equity & Social Justice in Education
Professor Goli Rezai-Rashti
September - December 2012
Class time: TBA
Location: TBA
This course introduces students to a range of equity issues in education. The aim is to provide a conceptual and analytic framework for examining gender, race, sexuality, and social class differences as they relate to pedagogy, curriculum and policy issues.
EDU 9626 Gender Theories in Education
Professor Wayne Martino
Online course offered from January - April 2013
Please note: Professor Martino is willing to meet with WSFR graduate students on campus.
This course introduces students to important theories of gender and examines their implications for policy, pedagogy and practice, particularly as they relate to curriculum development, implementation and gender-based school reform. Students will reflect on specific research and policy texts in relation to their own professional/personal lives.
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
ENG 9050B Ruptures and Crossovers: Reading India through Postcolonial Theory in the 21st Century
Professor Nandi Bhatia
January - April 2013
Wednesday, 12:30 - 3:30 pm
Location: TBA
This course will investigate major topics in postcolonial theory - such as Orientalism, subalternity, mimicry, exile, home, community, nation, and diaspora - and assess the scope and relevance of these topics for studying literary and cultural texts from and about India. Approached from gendered, national, and class perspectives, the readings will entail an examination of the diverse geographies of migration as well as the institutional and linguistic contexts that frame the texts. Such an approach will necessitate an exploration of the links between literary-cultural engagements and politics in order to address how the texts speak to the ruptures, crossovers and influences that have resulted from Britain’s longstanding engagement with India since the transfer of power from the East India Company rule to the British Crown in 1858 until independence-Partition in 1947.
ENG 9087B Regulating the Edwardian Body
Professor Alison Lee
January - April 2013
Tuesday, 3:30 - 6:30 pm
Location: TBA
The aim of this course is to examine discourses of eugenics and degeneration in the context of Edwardian literature, science and politics.
Michel Foucault calls eugenics one of the “two great innovations in the technology of sex in the second half of the nineteenth century” (HS, 118). The administration of sex and its fertility to which Foucault refers, however, reached a crisis point at the beginning of the 20th Century. Economic challenges to British supremacy, a humiliating showing by Britain in the Boer War and a declining birthrate, at least among the upper classes, led many Britons to fear that the Empire was becoming less than robust, and that its decline could be mapped onto the bodies of the populace. Eugenics, the ‘science of improving stock’ (Galton) appeared to offer a solution to what was seen as a national deterioration in health, wealth and power. As Karl Pearson writes: “without high average soundness of body and soundness of mind, a nation can neither be built up nor an empire preserved. Permanence and dominance in the world passes to and from nations even with their rise and fall in mental and bodily fitness” (1909).
Surprisingly, eugenics in this period appealed to a broad spectrum of political opinion, and was invoked not only by conservatives, but also by sex radicals and social reformers. The atrocities of WWII and the latter half of the 20th Century have understandably impoverished our perception of eugenics but, in the Edwardian period, eugenics was a site of political contestation for both radicals and conservatives. In both its ‘positive’ (the encouragement of ‘fit’ procreation) and ‘negative’ (the discouragement of ‘unfit’ procreation) aspects, eugenics took a central role in debates on issues such as maternity, birth control, poverty, women’s suffrage, sexology, class, disease and race. Indeed, it is hard to overstate the extent to which eugenics permeated Edwardian public discourse. Edwardian eugenics, then, becomes an exemplary site that raises questions about biopolitics in the period, as well as questions about why it was such an attractive theory to fiction writers and theorists who were also socialist, feminist or queer. Writers we will consider include: Michel Foucault, Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Havelock Ellis, Edith Ellis, Marie Carmichael Stopes, Margaret Sanger, Olive Schreiner, Christabel Pankhurst, Joseph Conrad, Cecily Hamilton, Vita Sackville-West, Elinor Glyn and Grant Allen.
ENG 9031 Queer Times
Professor Steven Bruhm
Summer 2013, Full Course
Class time: TBA
Location: TBA
“Queer theory,” write Stephen Barber and David Clark , has produced “on the one hand, sexual, gendered, and racial deroutinizations, and, on the other, deroutinizations of a disorienting and unpredictably temporal kind.” This course examines some of those deroutinizations-- first as they have come to define “homosexuality” in the psychoanalytic enterprise, and later as they have been reworked by two decades of queer theory. Central to this course will be questions of temporality, narrative, and the psycho-logics of linearity. Our archive for analysis: children, marriage, transgender/transsexuality, and (post)AIDS, as well as some fiction and a number of juicily queer films produced in the last few years. While all class readings engage in some way with questions of time and temporality, we will doubtless veer off into other questions as well, so don’t let that come as a surprise.
DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH STUDIES
FR9XXXB L’écriture féminine et la tradition
Professor Christine Roulston
January - April 2013
Class time: TBA
Location: TBA
Comment lire l’écriture féminine? Existe-t-elle en tant que tradition, et devrions-nous penser la littérature féminine à partir de ce terme? D’une part, en interrogeant la production des catégories dites masculines et féminines, nous analyserons une différence qui a marqué notre culture occidentale de manière profonde, dans la mesure où elle a informé notre façon de penser et d’imaginer le sujet. Cela mêne à une mise en question de l’idée même du féminin et du masculin. De l’autre, la reconstruction spécifique de l’histoire des femmes et de leur production littéraire reste un projet idéologique et politique nécessaire. Ce cours propose d’analyser une série de textes du dix-septième siècle au présent pour voir s’il existe une spécificité de l’écriture féminine. Y a-t-il des thèmes, des questions formelles, des genres particuliers, qui réapparaissent? Les textes sont-ils plutôt définis par leur époque que par une affinité avec une tradition féminine de l’écriture? Le cours sera organisé autour de ces questions, et autour de lectures critiques et littéraires.
Note: This course is taught in French, but assignments may be written in English.
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
HIS 9406 History of Women in the Western World
Professor Katherine McKenna
September 2011 - April 2012 (Full Course)
Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Location: TBA
This course is not only the story of how women have lived over time in different contexts and from different perspectives in the history of the western world. Rather, it is as much about how historians have written about the female gender, and about the theoretical debates that have informed their writings. The broad expanse of history covered in this course allows for only some select 'flashpoints' to be examined. These will allow us to focus on key issues both in the historical debate and in the history of women in the western world. This will provide an overview or framework for understanding the complexities of changes in women's roles in the western world over time.
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
PHIL 9XXXA: Egalitarianism
Professor Samantha Brennan
September - December 2012
Monday, 2:30 - 5:30 pm
Location: STH 1145
This seminar will explore the following questions: What is equality and why should we think it matters morally? What's the right way to measure inequality? Insofar as think equality matters morally, what exactly is it that we think ought to be equal: income, well-being, opportunities? How much does equality matter compared to other factors that also have moral significance, such as desert, evil, and overall well-being? We'll read work by egalitarian moral and political philosophers as well as by the critics of egalitarianism. We’ll also examine the concept of sexual equality in some detail and look at the moral problems posed by micro-inequities.
PHIL 9XXXA Trust & Testimony
Professor Carolyn McLeod
September - December 2012
Wednesday, 2:30 -5:30 pm
Location: STH 1145
This course will cover philosophical work on trust and testimony by both feminists and non-feminists. We will explore various kinds of questions about trust and testimony: conceptual, epistemological, moral, and political questions. Examples include: What is the nature of trust or testimony? What does it mean to trust well? When are we warranted in accepting the testimony of others? Why is it important to take a feminist perspective on trust, trustworthiness, and testimony? What might a feminist epistemology of trust or testimony look like?
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
POL SCI 9755B Gender and the Challenges of Transnational PoliticsProfessor Veronica Schild
January - April 2013
Time: Friday, 9:30 - 11:30 am
Location: SSC 4103
This course explores the challenge posed by feminist and critical theory to the study of transnational politics. It proceeds through cross-cultural and historical comparisons to discuss the centrality of gender to three processes: work and migration; citizenship and human rights; and indigenous mobilizations. Transnationalism is a broad ranging concept that emphasizes the flow of capital, people, ideas, and objects across the borders of nation-states in contexts where states shape but do not contain these relations and flows. Transnationalism, and its associated transnational political processes, is not a new phenomenon. It is, however, one which we have until recently been ill equipped to study because of the nationalist and gender bias of our methodological approaches. Methodological nationalism assumes national borders to be the natural unit of study for political phenomena. It also assumes that particular nations provide the constant units of observation through all historical transformations. Gender bias assumes the conspicuous absence of women and their particular (racialized and classed) experiences from transnational political processes. And these biases have hampered scholars in their ability to move beyond dominant nationalist and gendered paradigms.