Current 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 Tue 1:30-3:30pm plus a 1 hr tutorial Previous course outline
Fall/Winter 1020E 002 Laura Cayen Thur 4:30-6:30pm plus a 1 hr 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 Amy Keating Wed 1:30-3:30pm plus a 1 hour tutorial Previous 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 TBA Wed 1:30-3:30pm 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, culture and more. By the end of this course, students will gain a historical understanding of gay cultures, and 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 Jeremy Fairall Tue 10:30-1:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 1024F INTRODUCTION TO EQUITY, DIVERSITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
This course addresses how equity, diversity, and human rights policies and practices respond to social difference and relations of power. We will examine arguments about multiculturalism as a strategy to promote social inclusion, the rights of minoritized groups, and the politics of affirmative action. We will take up readings about these issues from disciplines such as: anti-racism, feminism and gender studies, sexuality, disability, education, and legal studies. The course will examine 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 Kate Korycki Tue 10:30-12:30pm 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 Erica Lawson Mon 1:30-3:30pm Previous course outline

2000 Level Courses

GSWS 2140 WOMEN IN CANADIAN HISTORY
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. Emphasis will be placed on examining a variety of historical sources. Factors such as race, class, ethnicity and sexuality will be important themes. 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.
Fall/Winter Katherine McKenna Online asynchronous Previous course outline

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 Lauren Auger Mon 4:30-7:30pm Previous 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 Nikki Edwards Online Asynchronous Previous course outline

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 Lauren Auger Mon 4:30-7:30pm Previous 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 Gary Pelletier   Online asynchronous Previous 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 Western 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 Jacob Evoy Online asynchronous Previous 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 Amy Keating Tue 4:30-7:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2168B FROM DU BOIS TO BLACK PANTHER: BLACK POPULAR CULTURE
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. No prerequisites.

Winter Anmol Dutta   Online asynchronous Previous course outline

GSWS 2203G FUTURE SEX: SEX AND SCIENCE FICTION
The course will start by looking at a variety of cutting edge contemporary and near futureissues, 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 includenumerous important science fiction texts, as well as investigations into societal, social, and personal effects of technology on sexual desire, identity, and embodiment. No prerequisites.

Winter WG Pearson Thur 10:30-1:30pm 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 Christian Ylagan Mon 4:30-7:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2212G GENDER AND THE FUTURE OF WORK
How can we manage transformative change at work, caused by multiple factors such as technology, demographics, climate change, pandemics, and globalization while ensuring economic security for all as well as environmental sustainability and gender equality and social justice? These are defining questions of our time, and researchers and policymakers from various disciplinary backgrounds, professional and political sensibilities are attempting to find answers. This course will mobilize intersectional, decolonial, feminist, and anti-capitalist scholarship to understand transformative changes to paid and unpaid work, their effects upon gender equality and social justice, and future possibilities. PrerequisitesGSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G, GSWS 1030F/G or permission of the department. 

Winter Bipasha Baruah Tue 10:30-1:30pm Previous course outline

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

This course studies feminist engagements with the (de)construction of historically raced, classed, and gendered/sexed subjectivities, and works with a diverse range of theoretical approaches in interdisciplinary and intersectional contexts. Together we will explore how the practices of producing knowledge have real-life effects. We will attend to the ways feminist in(ter)ventions at once resist, expand, and explode conventional approaches and ways of knowing, being, and doing. Ultimately, we examine the implications of feminist analyses and methods – with a focus on ever-creative feminist resistance and innovation for change. Prerequisites: GSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G or permission from the department. 

Fall/Winter Kim Verwaayen and Lauren Auger Tue 1:30-4:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2230F INTRODUCTION TO THE BLACK/AFRICAN DIASPORA
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 or Corequisites: GSWS 1030F/Gand 0.50 course fromGSWS 1021F/G,GSWS 1022F/G,GSWS 1023F/G,GSWS 1024F/G, 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 Tue 4:30-7:30pm course outline

GSWS 2231F BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT
Focusing on theory as liberatory practice, Black feminist thought has re-shaped knowledge production across numerous academic disciplines, intellectual traditions, and social justice movements. With an emphasis on intersectionality and visionary pragmatism, this course introduces students to the foundational principles, debates, and concepts in Black feminist thought in the African diaspora.Pre or Corequisites: GSWS 1030F/G and 0.50 course from GSWS 1021F/G,GSWS 1022F/G,GSWS 1023F/G,GSWS 1024F/G, 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 Erica Lawson Thurs 11:30-1:30pm

GSWS 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. No prerequisites.

Winter Alison Lee Mon 10:30-1:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2243F #ME TOO: THE POLITICS OF RAPE CULTURE AND FEMINIST RAGE
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 the workplace, schools, and the online sphere. No prerequisites.

Fall Katrina Younes Mon 4:30-7:30pm Previous 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

Jeanette Pickett Pierce and Jessica Polzer

Thur 10:30-1:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2263F INTERSECTIONS OF RACE, CLASS AND SEXUALITY
This course explores the people and movements who name the interwoven structures of class, race and sexuality which shape them, and who respond and/or resist them through solidarity. The course explores identity as collective, political and created and it explores how it intersects with the politics of class. We will devote half the time to theory, exploring the meaning of intersecting categories like gender, race, class, sexuality and ethnicity; and the other half will be spent in examination of how they were historically produced, conflicted and entwined. PrerequisitesGSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G, GSWS 1030F/G or permission of the department. 

Fall Kate Korycki Wed 1:30-4:30pm Previous 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: GSWS 2260.

Fall Katrina Younes Wed 4:30-7:30pm 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 Laura Cayen Wed 10:30-1:30pm Previous 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. PrerequisitesGSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G, GSWS 1030F/G or permission of the department. 

Winter Elk Pauuw Tue 4:30-7:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 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.

Fall Lauren Auger Mon 10:30-1:30pm Previous course outline

WS 2290F INDIGENOUS FEMINISMS: POLITICS, RESISTANCE, AND CULTURAL RESURGENCE
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. Prerequisites: 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 department. 

Fall Lina Sunseri Wed 1:30-4:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 2291G INDIGENOUS WOMEN IN THE ARTS IN CANADA: CULTURAL TRADITIONS, SURVIVAL, AND COLONIAL RESISTANCE
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.Antirequisites: Indigenous Studies 2682F/G, Art History 2634F/G. PrerequisitesIndigenous 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 the department. 

Winter Renee Bedard Thur 10:30-1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2412G BLACK GEOGRAPHIES NEW COURSE!
This course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of black geographies. Drawing on scholarship from black studies, geography, history, literature and criminology, this seminar will examine how the (re)production of race creates different worlds for people marked as black.' We will think consciously about how black life troubles our understanding of, and relationship to, terms such as land, property, nature, home, citizen, and borders. At the same time, we will take note of the various ways black folks assert what Katherine McKittrick describes as a black sense of place.'Possible topics include migration, environmental racism, incarceration, gentrification, black gathering. Pre-or Corequisite(s): GSWS 1030F/G and 0.50 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G, or 0.50 of any first-year essay course in Arts and Humanities, Social Science, or Media, Information, and Technoculture or permission from the department. 

Winter Cornel Grey Wed 10:30-1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 2440G REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE NEW COURSE!
Through an intersectional, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural approach, this course examines reproductive justice. Topics may include abortion, birth control, sex education, choice rhetoric, human rights, bodily autonomy, forced sterilization, reproductive racism, reproduction and disability, eugenics, war and reproduction, and infertility. Specific content will vary year-to-year depending on the instructor. Prerequisite(s):GSWS 1020E, or 1.0 course from GSWS 1021F/G, GSWS 1022F/G, GSWS 1023F/G, GSWS 1024F/G, GSWS 1030F/G, or permission from the department. 

Winter Lauren Auger Thur 1:30-4:30pm 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 Kate Korycki Wed 1:30-4:30pm Previous course outline

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. PrerequisitesGSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E or permission of the Department.

Fall Chris Roulston Mon 1:30-4:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 3153G BAD GIRLS: DISSIDENT WOMEN AND POP CULTURE
This course will examine our recurring fascination with the figure of the bad girl in various forms of popular cultural production. The course will explore the various ways that bad girls have been produced within cultural production and interrogate the often complex and ambiguous relationships we have with these images and tropes. The first part of the course will concentrate on the theoretical work which informs the relationship between popular culture and dissident sexuality, while the second part of the course will look more closely at how specific types of sexual dissidence, particularly related to adolescent and young adult female bodies, is created, controlled and contested in popular culture. PrerequisitesGSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E or permission of the Department.

Winter Laura Cayen Online asynchronous 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. PrerequisitesGSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E or permission of the Department.

Winter Kate Korycki Tue 10:30-1:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 3311G FEMINISM WRITING MADNESS
In this course we will explore 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/madness? How do other axes of identity, such as race, class, sexuality, age, (dis)ability (etc.) materially intersect with the social construction of madness? And how do women, and other marginalized individuals and groups, respond? How do they write (right) the relations between madness and reason, illness and cure, imprisonment and liberation? 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 focus on how various writers and activists give witness to, question, and defy their discursive and material imprisonments.Prerequisite: GSWS 2220E or permission of the Department.

Winter Kim Verwaayen Wed 4:30-7:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 3320G INTRODUCTION TO GENDER AND FEMINIST METHODOLOGIES
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.Antirequisites:GSWS 3321F/G and GSWS 3322F/G. Prerequisite: GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter Susan Knabe Thur 10:30-1:30pm 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. PrerequisitesGSWS 2220E or GSWS 2273E or permission of the Department.

Fall Erica Lawson Wed 10:30-1:30pm Previous course outline

GSWS 3326G FEMINIST PHENOMENOLOGY NEW COURSE!
Feminist phenomenology is rooted in the study of lived experience. As theory and methodology, it begins with everyday lived experiences which are understood from within a matrix of social, political and institutional forces and structures. We will learn how to make sense of our everyday lives from a feminist critical perspective.  For example, the #Me Too movement follows in the tradition of naming and bringing to light that is inherent to feminist phenomenology. Bringing the phenomena (lived experience) to light through description, artworks and literature allows us to analyze how experience is shaped by forces beyond the individual, which can also work to shift the experiences themselves. In this course we will consider some key texts coming out of this tradition, including works by thinkers such as Sara Ahmed, bell hooks, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Linda Martín Alcoff, and Mariana Ortega. We will consider how phenomenology has been taken up in queer, trans*, decolonial and critical disability theories. Prerequisite: GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter Helen Fielding Thur 1:30-4:30pm Course outline

GSWS 3340F - READING BLACK LIVES NEW COURSE!
This course examines the history of peoples of African descent in the US through the life stories of ten individuals, some male-identified, others female-identified, and some whom we might today classify as non-binary, gender queer, or otherwise outside of the gender binary. These people lived from the earliest days of the TransAtlantic slave trade to the present. Throughout our reading of their lives, we will explore themes important in the history of people of African heritage in NorthAmerica, such as agency, resistance, intersectionality and identity, freedom, and creativity. Prerequisites: GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall Laurel Shire Mon 10:30-1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 3355E FEMINIST ACTIVISM NEW COURSE!
Feminism, across its various places and points of genesis, is fundamentally tied to the concept of protest – with aims for disruption and, ultimately if arguably, structural transformation. In the current global climate, many feminists are articulating more-than-ever an urgent need for active feminist interventions in broad and interconnected areas of everyday life. This course examines a variety of issues and interventions to understand what feminist action can accomplish.

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: GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Fall/Winter Kim Verwaayen Mon 1:30-4:30pm Course outline

4000 Level Courses

GSWS 4462G GENDER AND CLIMATE CHANGE
This course addresses how the future is imagined under anthropogenic climate change in ways that both stem from, and reproduce, white colonial, heteropatriarchal, and ableist systems and ways of thinking. Students will engage with both speculative fiction and real-world examples in order to explore how oppressed groups excluded from, or imagined outside of, dominant constructions of the future have imagined, reimagined, and brought into being alternative futures. This course will focus on speculative fiction that provides alternative ways of thinking about the future that challenge dominant narratives of either technological utopia or global apocalypse, both of which reproduce settler colonial, patriarchal, and neoliberal ways of understanding humanity and our relationship to temporality, land, and the more-than-human. Through this course, students will gain an understanding of alternative ways of thinking and living that challenge the prevailing understanding of what is to come, in order to imagine what else is possible. Each week will provide students with an eclectic mix of scholarship and speculative fiction that engages new ways of thinking about the future and its relationship to issues of power, oppression, justice, and social change, with a focus on climate change as a focal point for organizing the course. Prerequisite: GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter Peyton Campbell Frid 10:30-1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 4463F QUEER SCIENCE FICTION 
This course will look at queer depictions of sexuality in science fiction (SF), a genre that has been arguably somewhat queer from its inception in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). 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 science fiction, 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, dystopia and sexuality, and responses to the AIDS crisis. The focus in this course will be on SF novels, although we may also look at film and television. However, literary SF has, by and large, been much more inventive and thoughtful about sex and gender than a lot of televisual and cinematic SF. By reading and studying novels, we will have the space to consider sexuality and gender in depth, with due attention of issues of intersectionality. Prerequisites: GSWS 2220E or GSWS 2253E or GSWS 2273E, or permission of the Department.

Fall WG Pearson Tue 10:30-1:30pm Course outline

GSWS 4464G GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT
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. Prerequisite: GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter Bipasha Baruah Mon 1:30-4:30pm Course outline

GSWS 4607G 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: GSWS 2220E, or permission of the Department.

Winter Katherine McKenna Online synchronous, Thur 1:30-4:30pm Previous course outline