Graduate Courses
2009-2010 Course Offerings
WS 9550 Feminist Theory (required course)
Professor Helen Fielding
September - December 2009
Wednesday 4:30 - 7:30 pm
Location: University College 213
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.
Course outline
WS 9560 Feminist Research Methodologies (required course)
Professor Katherine McKenna
January - April 2010
Thursday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Alumni Hall 101
This course will provide an overview of a variety of feminist research methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative. Guest lecturers from a broad variety of disciplines will demonstrate the different forms andcommon 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.
Course outline
WS 9590 Queer and Feminist Pedagogies
Professor Chris Roulston
September - December 2009
Thursday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Somerville House 2348
Through varied forms of cultural production-theory, literature, visual culture-this course will offer an overview of the history and development of queer theory in Europe and North America. Specifically, the course will aim to address how queer theory's analysis of non-normative sexualities intersects with feminist analyses of gender; it will also examine how the queering of sexuality can provide alternative ways of thinking about broader constructions of identity, in particular those of race and class.
Course outline
WS 9461 Feminism, Health and Biopolitics
Professor Jessica Polzer
January - April 2010
Friday 9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Location: University College 377
How do developments in biotechnology and genetics (re)situate various parts of the female body as sites for surveillance, control, and resistance? How are biotechnologies implicated in the disciplining of the female body and in the governance of populations? This interdisciplinary course draws on studies in biopolitics and feminism to critically explore and question the politics of health in the 21st century. Emphasis will be placed on analysis of current developments in biotechnology and genetics in order to explore, from a feminist perspective, their ethical, legal, social and political implications.
Course outline
WS 9540 Women and Employment: Discrimination and Equality Policy in Canada
Professor Carol Agocs
January - April 2010
Monday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Weldon Library 257
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.
Course outline
WS 9581 Feminism and Race
Professor Tracy Isaacs
September - December 2009
Friday 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: Social Science Centre 3103
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.
Course outline
WS 9582 Space, Sex and Gender in Contemporary Performance
Professor Kim Solga
September - December 2009
Monday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Talbot College 305
How do sexed and gendered bodies shape performance space? How do gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered subjects negotiate the still largely heteronormative stages and screens of Western cultural production? What role does space, in turn, play in shaping gender and sexual identity for a given time and place, and in re-shaping those identities for new eras? This course will examine theatre, film, and television drawn primarily from the last three decades alongside work in human geography, architecture, film theory and performance theory in order to develop a wide range of responses to these and related questions. Assessment will include at least one major presentation and at least one conference-length paper; students will also be offered the opportunity to develop creative final projects.
Course outline
WS 9583 Gender and Civil Society in Global Development
Professor Arja Vainio-Mattila
January - April 2010
Thursday 8:30 - 11:30 am
Location: Huron College W101
The possibility of empowering of women globally through international development initiatives is a central assumption underlying these efforts. This course will explore how the discourses of gender and civil society perform within the context of global development. We will examine in particular issues such as: relationship between participation and empowerment, whether civil society performs as an agent, space or process, meaning of gender equality versus gender equity, and what gets promoted and/or obscured in development discourse as we engage with these emerging narratives.
Course outline
WS 9584 Oral Histories, Women's Histories (Full Course)
Professor Rebecca Coulter
September 2009 - April 2010
Tuesday 4:30 - 7:30 pm
Location: Weldon Library 257
This course examines feminist theories, practices and critiques of oral history as a method for collecting, preserving and understanding women's lives and women's activism. Instruction in feminist oral history methods is provided and students participate in an oral history project on the women's movement in London from 1960 to 2000.
Course outline
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 2009 - August 2010
The Independent Research Project is only available to MA students See the IRP Guidelines here.
Courses Offered in Other Departments 2009-2010
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
EDU 9624 An Introduction to Gender Issues in Education
Professors Aniko Varpalotai and Ellen Singleton
January - April 2010
Tuesday 6:30 - 9:30 pm
Classroom: TBA
This course provides an overview of gender issues in education, from early childhood through post-secondary education, including feminist theories and perspectives, historical and contemporary issues, and the intersections of gender with other social justice concerns such as: race, social class and sexual orientation; and changing understandings of masculinities and femininities.
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
ENG 9039 Writing Women and Masculinity in Early Modern England
Professor James Purkis
September - December 2009
Wednesday 9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Classroom: UC 377
The early decades of the seventeenth century saw the production of an unprecedented number of books about, and by, women. This course will explore early modern constructions of literary authority through study of a diverse assortment of these texts, from male-written catalogues of misogynist commonplaces and female-penned religious meditations to public stage-plays and closet drama. Classes will examine in what sense(s) - post-theory, and in the light of questions of discontinuity between the seventeenth century and our own - these texts may still be read in relation to their writers and, specifically, how the gender of the writer can inform interpretation.
The main critical focus will be on the manner in which women writers were able to construct public authorial voices when a host of institutions, cultural practices, and social codes gendered the author, the "domain of writing", and the public sphere, as male. Other key issues will include: how male writers' masculinity comes into question through literary failure; pseudonymity and the textual performance of gender; the reinscription of the author as subject of her own writing evident in recent work recovering and institutionalising women's writing; the politics of reading for proto-feminism. (For a longer description see: http://www.uwo.ca/english/site/grad/crsindx.html)
Course outline
ENG 9036 Suffrage, Sex and Democracy in Early 20th-Century Britain
Professor Alison Lee
January - April 2010
Tuesday 3:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Classroom: UC 377
The campaign for Women's Suffrage in early Twentieth-Century Britain was also a campaign for a radical change to the period's perspectives on the changing roles of women. Many who were involved in the agitation for the vote, both pro-and anti-suffrage, characterised it as fundamentally a "sex war." Women who dared publicly to manifest their desire for the vote, were understood, according to baldly contradictory logic, as hysterical, unsexed and unwomanly-designations that authorised the physical violence to which they became increasingly subject including public assaults, imprisonment and forcible feeding. This course will examine some of the fiction written during the campaign whose aim was not only to intervene in and propagandise about women's right to vote, but also to redefine perceptions surrounding women's sexuality. In order to contextualise the intersecting discourses of politics and sexuality, we will also read contemporary non-fiction texts on sexology, marriage, eugenics, pro-and anti-suffrage, feminism and democracy. (For a longer description, see: http://www.uwo.ca/english/site/grad/crsindx.html
DEPARTMENT OF FILM STUDIES
FIS 9210 Pregnancy Film
Professor Chika Kinoshita
January - April 2010
Monday 9:30 am - 12:30 pm (screening)
Thursday 9:30 am - 11:30 am (seminar)
Classroom: UC 12
This course investigates representations of pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth in film. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to the controversial issues of reproductive rights and visual representation, drawing on anthropological and historical study of women's health and the politics of the body as well as feminist film criticism. Topics we will discuss include: birth control, abortion, and eugenics in film before WWII; pregnancy as a perspective on seduction narratives and melodramas; the impacts of imaging technologies like ultrasound on the politics of abortion; the art and politics of pregnancy horrors or science fictions; recent pregnancy-themed fiction films (Juno, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, and more). While we will take a variety of cinematic traditions - such as France, Hong Kong, and Romania -- into consideration, three weeks will be spent on Japanese film and culture so that we can develop a comparative perspective on the North American contexts.
DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH
FRE 9101 L'endurance : repr?sentations contemporaines et enjeux
Professor Karin Schwerdtner
January - April 2010
Wednesday 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: TBA
? ?crire, ?crire... pourquoi ? ? ... pour quelles fins ? Afin de tenter de r?pondre ? cette question (sur un corpus restreint), ce cours se propose de prendre comme objet d'?tude la mani?re dont plusieurs ?crivains du vingt-et-uni?me si?cle traitent la question de l'endurance - en la repr?sentant par l'entremise du sujet f?minin fictionnel. La premi?re partie du cours offrira une introduction ? diff?rentes perspectives - scientifiques, psychanalytiques et litt?raires - sur l'endurance et ses concepts voisins (la survivance, la r?silience). En m?me temps seront pr?sent?es des approches litt?raires pertinentes (ex : th?ories de l'?nonciation, th?orie narrative, ?thique narrative). La deuxi?me partie invitera ? une r?flexion sur les enjeux de l'?criture et de la parole - au moyen d'une analyse de la repr?sentation et de l'?nonciation narrative de l'endurance au f?minin. Corpus : fictions de cinq auteurs (par ex : Le Cl?zio, L?, Modiano, Ernaux et Germain). (Course requires fluency in French. Written work can be submitted in English.)
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
HIS 9406 Historical Views of Women in the Western World (Full Course)
Professor Katherine McKenna
September 2009 - April 2010
Tuesday 9:30 am - 11:30 am
Classroom: SSC 4317
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
PHIL9702 Advanced Topics in Reproductive Ethics
Professor Carolyn MacLeod
September - December 2009
Monday 2:30 - 5:30 pm
Classroom: TC 310
The main topic for this course will be parenthood and the main sections of the course will be the following:
The Grounds of Parenthood: What makes someone a parent? Is the parenting relationship primarily biological or social or some combination of the two? Does parenthood come in different forms with each form generating its own set of responsibilities?
The Value of Parenting: How much should we value people's ability to parent? Do people have a right to procreate, or more generally to become a parent? The Morality of Parenting: When is procreation, or more generally parenting, morally permissible? Is it ever wrong to bring a child into being? What obligations do parents have toward their children? What obligations does society have toward people who bear or raise children? Since one can be a parent without procreating, our discussions will not be limited to parenting that involves procreation.