WS 1020E Introduction to Women's Studies WS 2140 WOMEN IN CANADIAN HISTORY: CHANGING ROLES AND DIVERSE SOCIAL REALITIES WS 3356F - Sports, Sexuality and Gender Course Suffixes: WS 1020E - Introduction to Women's Studies Section 002 WS 4456F RE-MEMBERING: FEMINIST INTERVENTIONS IN TRAUMA AND TESTIMONY What does it mean to belong? Why do we feel comfortable in some places and alienated in other spaces? How do ideas about home influence who we are? From designer lifestyles to eco-feminism, this course will consider how notions of home and belonging are interconnected with ideas about gender, alienation and identity. Through an exploration of feminist debates concerning public/private spheres, migration, autonomy and alienation, this course will examine how notions of home and belonging influence who we are. Specifically, we will study how subjectivity is shaped by myriad socio-historical and cultural forces, such as ways in which domestic space is gendered. Through interrogating everyday ways of thinking about home and belonging, we will examine how notions of home and belonging intersect with issues of intersectionality.Readings will consider key debates in feminist thought such as those concerning the public versus private debates about home, ideas of alienation, and notions around exile and belonging. By considering home and belonging from a variety of micro and macro perspectives, we will question the ways in which notions of identity interconnect with issues of place. This questioning, in turn, allows for debate and discussion about wider issues pertaining to social justice. This course will be run as a discussion-based seminar with a web-discussion component. 3 hours, half course. WS 2154 - Women and Health online course This course focuses on issues in women's health including historical, social, economic, political and biological influences. Using a feminist perspective, both experimental and theoretically-based knowledge will be explored through the process of critical reflection. WS 3356G - Feminist Topics in Sexuality Studies: Sex and Popular Culture This course will centre on a feminist analysis of sex, sexuality, and gender in contemporary popular culture. Beginning with an exploration of Foucault’s theories of discourse and sexuality, students will be invited to critically engage with the popular culture they encounter in their everyday lives. Through a feminist lens, and with attention paid to the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality, students will examine excerpts from television and movies, romance novels and online fiction, youtube videos and twitter. These various forms of popular culture will be read as “sexual scripts”, cultural stories told to enforce norms and expectations about appropriate masculinities, femininities, and sexualities. Students will be asked to analyse these scripts using key theoretical concepts introduced each class, including patriarchy, heteronormativity, the male gaze, the other, hegemony, resistance and so forth. Students will also be invited to explore forms of pop culture that subvert the dominant sexual script and tell stories that challenge traditional notions of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. Please note: Prerequisites can be waived for this course. Also, if you have taken a course under the special topics number 3356F/G in the past and would like to take this new intersession course, please email the Undergraduate Chair, Helen Fielding, to make arrangements at hfieldin@uwo.ca WS 1020E 001, 002 - 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. Online Course This course is 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. This course focuses on issues in women's health including historical, social, economic, political and biological influences. Using a feminist perspective, both experimental and theoretically-based knowledge will be explored through the process of critical reflection. WS 2158A WOMEN ARTISTS AND THEIR UNCONVENTIONAL IMAGES OF WOMEN This slide-illustrated course will examine unconventional images of women created by women artists from the sixteenth to late twentieth centuries. The general social conditions of various periods, artistic convention, and artist biography will be discussed in order to illuminate the nonconformity of biblical, historical, and fictional images of women which women artists have rendered in a variety of media. 3 hours, half course. This slide-illustrated course examines Jewish women artists and patrons of the twentieth century in order to understand their contributions to the visual arts in the decades preceding and following the Holocaust. We will explore how these women struggled with and reacted to anti-Semitism and sexism in the art world, and in society generally. 3 hours, half course. 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. 3 hours, half course. 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. 3 hours, half course. Drawing from a range of disciplinary approaches such as philosophy, film, literary and queer theories, psychoanalysis and postcolonial studies, we develop skills in analysing, understanding and applying theory to such areas as literature, film and the visual arts. This course will examine the implications of gender analysis for theory and practice in the social sciences. The course will consider both empirical and theoretical questions about "sex-gender" systems in socio-economic, cultural, political, and legal contexts. Methodological and epistemological questions raised by feminist research will also be addressed. 3 hours, full course. Drawing on feminist theoretical work which foregrounds questions of difference, this course will investigate the implicit and explicit connections between and among sexuality, gender identity, race and class. Moreover, this course will examine the way that discourses of race and class, sexuality and gender identity, have developed throughout history and explore the legacy of these historical discourses in terms of the way that "othered" bodies are perceived and treated today. 3 hours, half course. 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. 3 hours, half course. 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. 3 hours, full course. 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 hours, half course. This course will examine the history and contemporary contexts of International Indigenous Feminism. It will examine the growing body of literature by Indigenous and non-indigenous scholars whose activism, writing and research demonstrate a feminist approach to Indigenous women's issues and perspectives. The course will survey how Indigenous Feminism is articulated across a range of topics relating to education, politics, activism, health, arts, culture, spirituality, environment, and history. Theoretical and practical applications of Indigenous Feminism will be explored, illuminating how it provides multiple perspectives of conceptualizing, and of resisting the oppressions many Indigenous women experience today. Popular shows like Rich Bride, Poor Bride and Bridezilla reveal that marriage ceremonies are more than individual expressions of love and commitment; today, white weddings are also big business. In this course we explore the white wedding as a cultural narrative, social space, material event, and spectacle of excess. Through a feminist lens, we will examine a selection of criticism and cultural texts to investigate how the white wedding still tends to promote domestic consumption, reinforce the traditional bridal role, and perpetuate heterosexual, class, race, and gender systems of domination. However, we will also consider how wedding traditions have changed, and how their representations may be used to critique dominant cultural production, negotiate differences, and advocate for social and political equality. 3 hours, half course. This half year course takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to understanding and analyzing how "women's health" has been constituted as both a field of knowledge and a domain of medical practice. Course content will be comprised of selected readings that draw on critical theories of health/medicine (in sociology, anthropology and other disciplines) and feminist theory in order to analyze and question how the female body and gendered subjectivities are constituted through practices in health, medicine, and health care. The constraints (and potential possibilities) of these constructions will be considered. 3 hours, half course. The course will look at a variety of issues including genetic engineering (such as the detection of a "gay gene" and the abortion of "gay fetuses" or other controls over human sexuality), the use of biological modification and high-tech prosthetics for sex, reproductive technology, cybertechnologies (especially virtual reality), and the somewhat further future potentials of space flight, terraforming, human modification for colonization of other planets, etc. It will include some science fiction texts, as well as investigations into the societal and personal effects on sexual desire, identity and embodiment of current and potential developments in science, technology, capitalism, etc. 3 hours, half course. 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? 3 hours, half course. This course is an introduction to theories of development and globalization and how they have interfaced with theories about women to inform international development discourse and programmes aimed at improving the lives of women, particularly in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, and Melanesia. The course examines some of the presumptions underlying these development programmes and their impacts on and implications for women's empowerment. What have been the contributions of feminist theory and practice to redefining and restructuring these programmes nationally and internationally and what are some of the major challenges ahead for the 21st century? Students are invited to examine these questions through selected case studies. 3 hours, half course. 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. WS 2154 - Women and Health online course This course focuses on issues in women's health including historical, social, economic, political and biological influences. Using a feminist perspective, both experimental and theoretically-based knowledge will be explored through the process of critical reflection. WS 3356G - Feminist Topics in Sexuality Studies: Sex.....in the Margins Drawing on a feminist ‘pro-sex' framework, this course examines sex - having sex, ‘doing' sex, representing sex, and selling sex-in the margins of popular culture. Students will critically engage with, among others, such topics as feminist pornography, polyamory, virtual sex, queer sex, sex work and sex play in literature, film, art, theory. 2009-10 Women's Studies Course Calendar 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 tutorial hour. WS 2139B SOCIAL HISTORY OF WOMEN IN CANADA This course is a survey of Canadian women's history from first European contact to the late twentieth century, with a focus on the realities of women's lived experience through biography. WS 2154 WOMEN AND HEALTH This course focuses on issues in women's health including historical, social, economic, political and biological influences. Using a feminist perspective, both experimental and theoretically-based knowledge will be explored through the process of critical reflection. WS 2157B THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN ARTISTIC COUPLES This course will offer an historical look at the variety of political, social, and economic factors relating to the status of women artists in a patriarchal art world, and within the context of their intimate partnerships with male artists. This slide-illustrated course will examine the lives and art of French sculptors Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, among others. This slide-illustrated course will examine images of women created by female and male artists in order to uncover significant differences between these works. Historical notions about women and various artistic factors will illuminate the distinctive ways that women artists have challenged men's enduring stereotyped representations of women. 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. WS 2205F MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY This course examines how historical and contemporary constructions of masculinity have shaped our understanding of what it means to act and be male in our society. It draws on critical gender theory to interrogate how issues associated with maleness and masculinity interact with questions of race, class, gender and sexuality. WS 2240F FOUNDATIONS 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. WS 2253E QUEER SUBJECTS This interdisciplinary course will examine alternative expressions of female sexuality (queer, lesbian, bisexual, female masculinity, transgendered, intersexed, etc.) through a selection of historical, literary, visual and theoretical texts. Primarily, the aim will be to explore questions of subjectivity and representation through discussions of social regulation, class, ethnicity and historical context. WS 2256E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES Drawing from a range of disciplinary approaches such as philosophy, film, literary and queer theories, psychoanalysis and postcolonial studies, we develop skills in analyzing, understanding and applying theory to such areas as literature, film and the visual arts. WS 2257E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES This course will examine the implications of gender analysis for theory and practice in the social sciences. The course will consider both empirical and theoretical questions about "sex-gender" systems in socio-economic, cultural, political, and legal contexts. Methodological and epistemological questions raised by feminist research will also be addressed. WS 2263G FEMINIST THEORY IN SEXUALITY STUDIES: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY Drawing on feminist theoretical work which foregrounds questions of difference, this course will investigate the implicit and explicit connections between and among sexuality, gender identity, race and class. Moreover, this course will examine the way that discourses of race and class, sexuality and gender identity, have developed throughout history and explore the legacy of these historical discourses in terms of the way that "othered" bodies are perceived and treated today. WS 3305F GENDER, SEXUALITY AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE: MAKING CULTURE JAM 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 Western popular culture and the ways these representations have been confronted and contested. WS 3330F SPECIAL TOPICS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES: "Chick Lit" Since the late-eighteenth century, publishers and booksellers have been marketing books as "women's fiction." Authors have had varied responses to this term; some, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Susan Warner, embraced the category, while others, like Virginia Wolfe and Edith Wharton, felt the term limited them as writers. In recent years, the term "Chick Lit" has become increasingly popular to describe fiction that would have been previously designated as "women's fiction." The primary purpose of this course is to ask the question: what is women's fiction or "Chick Lit?" In asking this, we will take care to consider how each work helps shape how we view women, their role in society, and how women's gender roles have changes along with the changing literary market. WS 3331G/FN3001G INDIGENOUS FEMINISM This course will examine the history and contemporary contexts of International Indigenous Feminism. It will examine the growing body of literature by Indigenous and non-indigenous scholars whose activism, writing and research demonstrate a feminist approach to Indigenous women's issues and perspectives. The course will survey how Indigenous Feminism is articulated across a range of topics relating to education, politics, activism, health, arts, culture, spirituality, environment, and history. Theoretical and practical applications of Indigenous Feminism will be explored, illuminating how it provides multiple perspectives of conceptualizing, and of resisting the oppressions many Indigenous women experience today. WS 3345G SPECIAL TOPICS IN SEXUALITY STUDIES: CONTEMPORARY QUEER TOPICS This course will investigate topics in contemporary queer life with a view to understanding the issues that frame our experiences of sexuality and gender. Possible topics may include sexual cultures, identity issues, human rights, lesbian and gay politics, same-sex marriage, queer families, media and the internet, cultures of resistance, and health and the queer body. 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. WS 4459F/WS 9581 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES: FEMINISM AND RACE 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, Himani Bannerji, and Gloria Anzaldua. WS4465E/WS 9584 SPECIAL TOPICS IN WOMEN'S STUDIES: ORAL HISTORIES, WOMEN'S HISTORIES 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. WS 2154 - Women and Health online courseCOURSES OFFERED INTERSESSION/SUMMER 2012
Instructor: Kate Lawless
Class times: Tuesdays and Thursdays 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Location: UC 142
Course outline
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.
Instructor: Marilla McCargar
Online course
Course outline
This course is 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.
3 hours, full course. Antirequisite WS2139A/B or HIS2182A/B.
Instructor: Rob Lake
Class times: Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30 to 7:30 pm
Course outline
The aim of this course is to develop student understanding of sexuality and gender through the powerful and increasingly relevant social context of sport. Students will engage in critical discussion to develop an understanding of not only how sport as part of popular culture is ‘gendered’, but also how the curious sport norms perpetuate ideologies surrounding sexuality, in terms of the body, femininity and masculinity. The role of sport and leisure within the wider feminist movements since the 19th century are critically examined, to give an historical perspective to these subject areas. Issues such as the ‘hero worship’ of male athletes and connected issues of sexual violence, the role of sport in creating heterogeneous social conceptions of normality in terms of sexuality, and the role of the sports films, TV and sports media in creating and reproducing gender norms, values and identities will also be examined. Case studies of female athletes will be introduced and examined in the context of their significant roles in wider feminist struggles or for what their achievements highlighted about sexuality and gender inequalities at the time, such as Billie Jean King, Suzanne Lenglen, Hassiba Boulmerka and Caster Semenya. In general, students will extend their critical understanding of sport and its perceived and often publicised role as a ‘positive’ in modern society, and also introduce themselves to an interesting and increasingly relevant social context through which to understand sexuality and gender in wider society, recognising sport as both a platform to challenge and reproduce its associated dominant ideologies.
COURSES OFFERED in 2011-2012
Course List
No suffix - full course not designated as an essay course
A - first term half course
B - second term half course
E - essay full course
F - first term essay half course
G - second term essay half course
WS 2139B - Social History of Women in Canada
WS 2154 - Women and Health
WS 2157B - The Status of Women in Artistic Couples
WS 2158A - Women Artists and Their Unconventional Images of Women
WS 2160B - Intimate Relations: Sex, Gender and Love
WS 2205F - Making Men: Critical Studies in Masculinity
WS 2240G - Foundations in Feminist Thought
WS 2243G - Feminist Topics in Sexuality Studies
WS 2256E - Feminist Theory and Practice in the Arts and Humanities
WS 2257E - Feminist Theory and Practice in the Social Sciences
WS 2270A - Legal Problems Affecting Women
WS 2273E - Sexual Subjects
WS 3305G - Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Resistance: Making Culture Jam
WS 3345F - Contemporary Queer Topics
WS 3358F - Special Topics in Women's Studies
WS 3359G - Motherhood and Mothering in the Global Context: Issues, Discourse and Images
WS 4456F - Re-Membering: Feminist Interventions in Trauma and Testimony
WS 4460G - Home and Belonging
WS 4461F - Fetal Positions
WS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN’S STUDIES
Instructors: Kim Verwaayen and Mary Bunch (Sec 001) Erica Lawson (Sec 002)
Section 001
Class times: Tuesdays 12:30 - 2:30 pm
plus one tutorial hour
Location: SH 3345
Class times: Wednesdays 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
plus one tutorial hour
Location: UCC 56
Course outline
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 tutorial hour, full course.
WS 2139B SOCIAL HISTORY OF WOMEN IN CANADA
Instructor: Katherine McKenna
Class times: Wednesdays 2:30 - 5:30 pm
Location: KB K106
Course outline
This course is 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.
3 hours, half course. Antirequisites WS2140 and HIS2182A/B.
WS 2154 WOMEN AND HEALTH
Instructors: Jessica Polzer and Andrea Allen
Class times: Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30 pm
Location: UC 142
Course outline
This course focuses on issues in women’s health including historical, social, economic, political and biological influences. Using a feminist perspective, both experimental and theoretically-based knowledge will be explored through the process of critical reflection.
3 hours, full course.
WS 2157B THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN ARTISTIC COUPLES
Instructor: Sonia Halpern
Class times: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: SH 3315
Course outline
This course will offer an historical look at the variety of political, social, and economic factors relating to the status of women artists in a patriarchal art world, and within the context of their intimate partnerships with male artists. This slide-illustrated course will examine the lives and art of French sculptors Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, among others. 3 hours, half course.
WS 2158A WOMEN ARTISTS AND THEIR UNCONVENTIONAL IMAGES OF WOMEN
Instructor: Sonia Halpern
Class times: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: UCC 56
Course outline
This slide-illustrated course will examine unconventional images of women created by women artists from the sixteenth to late twentieth centuries. The general social conditions of various periods, artistic convention, and artist biography will be discussed in order to illuminate the nonconformity of biblical, historical, and fictional images of women which women artists have rendered in a variety of media. 3 hours, half course.
WS 2160B INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX,
GENDER AND LOVE
Instructors:Wendy Pearson and guest lecturers
Class times: Mondays 4:30 - 7:30 pm
Location: WSC 55
Course outline
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. 3 hours, half course.
WS 2205F MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULINITY
Instructor: Michael Kehler
Class meets: Mondays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: SH 2355
Course outline
This course examines how historical and contemporary constructions of masculinity have shaped our understanding of what it means to act and be male in our society. It draws on critical gender theory to interrogate how issues associated with maleness and masculinity interact with questions of race, class, gender and sexuality. 3 hours, half course.
WS 2240G FOUNDATIONS OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
Instructor: Alison Lee
Class meets: Wednesdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: HSB 11
Course outline
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. 3 hours, half course.
WS 2243G FEMINIST TOPICS IN SEXUALITY STUDIES: GLOBAL FEMALE SAME-SEX SEXUALITIES
Instructor: Andrea Allen
Class meets: Thursdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: UC 142
Course outline
Sexuality is a complex interplay of desires, attractions, interests and modes of behavior. In particular, same-sex sexual practices and relationships have had diverse meanings in different societies and cultures. In this course, we will examine women's same-sex sexual behavior and identities from an interdisciplinary perspective through the use of ethnographic, historical, theoretical, and political texts. A cross-culture study of women's same-sex sexuality will provide students with an understanding of how the intersections of gender discrimination and oppression, as well as cultural norms surrounding pleasure and physicality, affect women's sexual choices and decisions with each other. 3 hours, half course.
WS 2256E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES
Instructors: Kim Verwaayen and Mary Bunch
Class meets: Mondays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: UCC 63
Course outline
Drawing from a range of disciplinary approaches such as philosophy, film, literary and queer theories, psychoanalysis and postcolonial studies, we develop skills in analyzing, understanding and applying theory to such areas as literature, film and the visual arts.
3 hours, full course.
WS 2257E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Instructor: Erica Lawson
Class meets: Tuesdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: UC 289
Course outline
This course will examine the implications of gender analysis for theory and practice in the social sciences. The course will consider both empirical and theoretical questions about “sex-gender” systems in socio-economic, cultural, political, and legal contexts. Methodological and epistemological questions raised by feminist research will also be addressed. 3 hours, full course.
WS 2270A LEGAL PROBLEMS AFFECTING WOMEN
Instructor: Amanda Porter
Class meets: Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: KB K106
Course outline
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. 3 hours, half course.
WS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
Instructor: Wendy Pearson and Mary Bunch
Class meets: Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: SH 3315
Course outline
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. 3 hours, full course
WS 3305G GENDER, SEXUALITY AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE: MAKING CULTURE JAM
Instructor: Susan Knabe
Class meets: Mondays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: UCC 61
Course outline
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 Western popular culture and the ways these representations have been confronted and contested. 3 hours, half course.
WS 3345F CONTEMPORARY QUEER TOPICS
Instructor: Wendy Pearson
Class meets: Wednesdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: UCC 61
Course outline
This course will investigate topics in contemporary queer life with a view to understanding the issues that frame our experiences of sexuality and gender. Possible topics may include sexual cultures, identity issues, human rights, lesbian and gay politics, same-sex marriage, queer families, media and the internet, cultures of resistance, and health and the queer body. 3 hours, half course.
WS 3358F SPECIAL TOPICS IN WOMEN’S STUDIES: FROM IDENTITY TO A POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE
Instructor: Mary Bunch
Class meets: Thursdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: TC 205
Course outline
This course aims to enhance students' understanding of identity and difference in feminist thought and activism, in the context of postmodern, postcolonial global relations. Western Feminism has been critiqued for its cultural hegemony, complicity in neocolonial global relations and exclusions of women of color, working class and poor women, and queer communities. In third wave feminism, we see a shift in different identity politics to various 'difference' feminisms, such as coalition politics, intersectionality, queer identities, and transnational feminism. In this course, we will examine the shift in emphasis in western feminist theory and politics from identity to difference, particularly as it is derived from the scholarship of feminists of colour and queer theory. 3 hours, half course.
WS 3359G MOTHERHOOD AND MOTHERING IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT: ISSUES, DISCOURSE, AND
IMAGES
Instructor: Erica Lawson
Class meets: Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: UCC 53
Course outline
This course situates and examines the lives of women as mothers in the global context. It attends to, but is not limited to, how ideologies about motherhood and mothering practices are re-constituted in globalization processes in ways that constrain and empower women, their families, communities, and societies, as they go about the business of mothering. The course includes a one-week optional travel component whereby students will visit the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus, Barbados, to participate in a course offered by the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, as well as appropriate cultural events. This component of the course will examine motherhood and mothering from a Caribbean perspective by exploring the connection between women’s productive and reproductive activities through matrifocality, child-shifting, migration and female kinship networks.
3 hours, half course
Instructor: Kim Verwaayen
Class meets: Wednesdays 3:30 - 6:30 pm
Location: Stevenson Hall 1155
Course outline
How do feminist interventions in trauma studies trouble 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, to a lesser extent, clinical therapy), this course explores feminist understandings of trauma, the uses 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.
3 hours, half course.
WS4460G HOME AND BELONGING
Instructor: Rita Gardiner
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Location: Stevenson Hall 3166
Course outline
WS 4461F FETAL POSITION(S): THE FETUS IN MEDICINE, LAW AND SOCIETY
Instructor: Jen Chisholm
Class Meets: Thursdays 2:30 - 5:30 pm
Location: UCC 54A
Course outline
This is an upper year seminar which examines representations of the fetus in medicine, law and contemporary society. These three thematic parts are weaved throughout the course, with particular attention paid to the proliferation of visual representations of the fetus in media, culture and society. First, we will focus on the fetus from a medical perspective, followed by an evaluation of the fetus in its social and political context, ending with a discussion of the implications of fetal subjectivity under Canadian law. A breadth of research exists on the fetus, specifically in medical and legal contexts, however this course is particularly concerned with feminist interpretations of pregnancy, fetal subjectivity and the contested relationships between pregnant woman and fetus. The primary aim of the course is to stimulate dialogue and discussion around the often controversial subject of fetal subjectivity.
3 hours, half course.
Course Offerings for Intersession/Summer 2011
Instructor: Kate Lawless
Instructor: Caitlyn Mulcahy
Day and Time: Tue, Thur, 4:30-7:30pm
Classroom: UC 286
Course outline
Course Offerings for Fall 2010/ Winter 2011
WS 2140 - Women In Canadian History: Changing Roles and Diverse Social Realities
WS 2154 - Women and Health
WS 2158A - Women Artist and Their Unconventional Images of Women
WS 2159B - Jewish Women Artists and Patrons of the 20th Century
WS 2160B - Intimate Relations: Sex, Gender and Love
WS 2205F - Making Men: Critical Studies in Masculinity
WS 2240F - Foundations of Feminist Thought
WS 2256E - Feminist Theory and Practice in the Arts and Humanities
WS 2257E - Feminist Theory and Practice in the Social Sciences
WS 2263G - Feminist Theory in Sexuality Studies: Race, Class and Sexuality
WS 2270B - Legal Problems Affecting Women
WS 2273E - Sexual Subjects
WS 3153F - Bad Girls: Dissident Women and Popular Culture
WS 3331G - Indigenous Feminism
WS 3357F - Bridezilla and the White Wedding
WS 3362G - Critical Perspectives in Feminism and Health
WS 3363G - Special Topics in Sexuality Studies: Future Sex
WS 4459G - Feminism and Race
WS 4464F - Women, Globalization and Development
WS 1020E INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN'S STUDIES
Instructors: Kim Verwaayen and Miranda Green-Barteet, Erica Lawson and Wendy Pearson
Section 001 Meets: Tuesdays 12:30 - 2:30 pm, plus one tutorial hour
Section 002 Meets: Wednesdays 11:30 am - 1:30 pm, plus one tutorial hour
Classroom: UC 142
2 lecture hours plus one tutorial hour, full course.
Course outline Section 001
Course outline section 002
WS 2140 WOMEN IN CANADIAN HISTORY: CHANGING ROLES AND DIVERSE SOCIAL REALITIES
Instructor: Marilla McCargar
3 hours, full course. Antirequisite WS2139A/B or HIS2182A/B.
Course outline
WS 2154 WOMEN AND HEALTH
Instructors: Jessica Polzer and Angela White
Class Meets: Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30 pm
Classroom: UC 30
3 hours, full course.
Course outline
Instructor: Sonia Halpern
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 30
Course outline
WS 2159B JEWISH WOMEN ARTISTS AND PATRONS OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Instructor: Sonia Halpern
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 289
Course outline
WS 2160B INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Instructors: Tracy Isaacs and guest lecturers
Class Meets: Mondays 5:30 - 8:30 pm
Classroom: WSC 55
Course outline Schedule of readings
WS 2205F MAKING MEN: CRITICAL STUDIES IN MASCULIITY
Instructor: Jeffery Vacante
Class Meets: Mondays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 142
This course examines how historical and contemporary constructions of masculinity have shaped our understanding of what it means to act and be male in our society. It draws on critical gender theory to interrogate how issues associated with maleness and masculinity interact with questions of race, class, gender and sexuality. 3 hours, half course.
Course outline
WS 2240F FOUNDATIONS OF FEMINIST THOUGHT
Instructor: Alison Lee
Class Meets: Wednesdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: UC 286
Course outline
WS 2256E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES
Instructors: Kim Verwaayen and Wendy Pearson
Class Meets: Mondays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: UC 286
3 hours, full course.
Course outline
WS 2257E FEMINIST THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Instructors: Susan Knabe and Mary Bunch
Class Meets: Tuesdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: KB-K203
Course outline
WS 2263G FEMINIST THEORY IN SEXUALITY STUDIES: RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY
Instructor: Chris Roulston
Class Meets: Thursdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: UCC 58
Course outline
WS 2270B LEGAL PROBLEMS AFFECTING WOMEN
Instructor: Adetoun Ilumoka
Class Meets: Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UCC 146
Course outline
WS 2273E SEXUAL SUBJECTS
Instructors: Wendy Pearson and Steven Bruhm
Class Meets: Tuesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: KB-K203
Course outline
WS 3153F BAD GIRLS: DISSIDENT WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE
Instructor: Susan Knabe
Class Meets: Thursdays 10:30 - 1:30 pm
Classroom: WL 258
Course outline
WS 3331G/FN3001G INDIGENOUS FEMINISM
Instructor: Rennee Bedard
Class Meets: Tuesdays 10:30-1:30 pm
Classroom: UC 201
Course outline
WS 3357F SPECIAL TOPICS: BRIDEZILLA AND THE WHITE WEDDING
Instructor: Elan Paulson
Class Meets: Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UCC 63
Course outline
WS 3362G CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES IN FEMINISM AND HEALTH
Instructor: Jessica Polzer
Class Meets: Mondays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UCC 54B
Course outline
WS 3363G SPECIAL TOPICS IN SEXUALITY STUDIES: FUTURE SEX
Instructor: Wendy Pearson
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: SH 3345
Course outline
WS 4459G FEMINISM AND RACE
Instructor: Erica Lawson
Class Meets: Fridays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: SH 3307
Course outline
WS4464F WOMEN, GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Instructor: Adetoun Ilumoka
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: WL 259
Course outline
Course Offerings for Intersession/Summer 2010
Instructor: Miranda Green Barteet
Day and Time: M, Tu, Wed, Thur, 4:30-7:30 pm
Classroom: UC 142
Final exam for 1020E is scheduled for:
Tuesday, June 22th
2:00 pm
HSB 11
Instructor: Kate Lawless
Course outline
Instructor: Mary Bunch
Day and Time: Tue, Thur, 4:30-7:30pm
Classroom: UC 286
No prerequisites for this class.
Course outline
Women's Studies Course Descriptions for 2009-10
2009-10 Western Academic Calendar
Instructor: Kim Verwaayen and Erica Lawson
Section 001 Meets: Tuesdays 12:30 - 2:30 pm plus one tutorial hour
Section 002 Meets: Wednesdays 11:30 - 1:30 pm plus one tutorial hour
Classroom: UC 142
Course outline for 1020E 001- Verwaayen
Course outline for 1020E 002 - Lawson
Instructor: Katherine McKenna
Class Meets: Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: SH 2355
Course outline
Instructor: Angela White
Class Meets: Wednesdays 4:30 - 7:30 pm
Classroom: UC 30
Course outline
Instructor: Sonia Halpern
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 289
Course outline
WS 2158A WOMEN ARTISTS AND THEIR UNCONVENTIONAL IMAGES OF WOMEN
Instructor: Sonia Halpern
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 204
Course outline
WS 2160B INTIMATE RELATIONS: SEX, GENDER AND LOVE
Course Coordinator: Tracy Isaacs (multiple guest lecturers)
Class Meets: Mondays 5:30 - 8:30 pm
Classroom: WSC 55
Course outline
Instructor: Jeffrey Vacante
Class Meets: Tuesdays 3:30 - 6:30 pm
Classroom: TC 203
Course outline
Instructor: Alison Lee
Class Meets: Wednesdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: UC 286
Course outline
Instructor: Mary Bunch
Class Meets: Wednesdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 30
Course outline
Instructor: Kim Verwaayen
Class Meets: Fridays 11:30 am - 2:30 pm
Classroom: HSB 236
Course outline
Instructor: Erica Lawson
Class Meets: Tuesdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: WL 258
Course outline
Instructor: Chris Roulston
Class Meets: Thursdays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: UC 289
Course outline
Instructor: Susan Knabe
Class Meets: Mondays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 289
Course outline
Instructor: Miranda Green-Barteet
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 30
Course outline
Instructor: Renee Bedard
Class Meets: Mondays 9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Classroom: UC 212
Course outline
Instructor: Wendy Pearson
Class Meets: Mondays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: UC 30
Course outline
Instructor: Adetoun Ilumoka
Class Meets: Thursdays 1:30 - 4:30 pm
Classroom: WL 258
Course outline
Instructor: Tracy Isaacs
Class Meets: Fridays 10:30 am - 1:30 pm
Classroom: SSC 3103
Course outline
Instructor: Rebecca Coulter
Class Meets: Tuesdays 4:30 - 7:30 pm
Classroom: WL 259
Course outline
Instructor: TBA
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Contact Us
Lawson Hall Room 3260The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6A 5B8
Tel. 519-661-3759
Fax. 519-661-3491
Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 4:30 pm
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