Course Descriptions

This course provides an introduction to the discipline of Women’s Studies. It will explore local, Indigenous and transnational Women’s movements, and introduce students to the history and diversity of feminist thought and practice. The course will emphasize intersectional and decolonial feminist approaches that provide insight into the relationship between identity, positionality, place, and power relations.

This course explores key ideas, theories and debates in critical studies of gender and sex, including how different disciplines construct these concepts. Disciplinary perspectives covered may include Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Geography, Indigenous Studies, Biology, Sport Studies, Literary and Law. By applying intersectionality – a foundational analytical framework in Women’s and Gender Studies – students will gain a better understanding of the interrelationship of gender with factors like race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, sexuality, class, ability, and other markers of identity or difference.

This course provides an intersectional examination of representations of gender in literature. Learners will focus on the ways that literary texts discursively shape, respond to, reinforce, and/or challenge existing gender norms. Readings, which may include both fiction and non-fiction, will span writing by authors who are prominent, emerging and/or historically excluded.

This course engages learners with historical and contemporary topics about how Canadian laws govern and interact with gender and sexuality. Starting from the position that law is one of the key contexts for individual, social, and structural negotiations of gender, gender identities, sexualities, and womanhood, we consider how law both produces and regulates experiences, rights, personhood, and gendered selves. Using critical, feminist, intersectional, anticolonial, and socio-legal frameworks, we examine criminalized gender identities and gendered practices.

This course introduces concepts, theories, and issues in the psychology of gender, gender roles, and gender relations. Gender research in psychology is examined in relation to social and cultural contexts, with a specific focus on bodies, mental health, gender and psychiatric diagnoses, socialization, relationships, personality, and identity. The course explores intersectional, Indigenous and anticolonial perspectives on gender, and students will examine how ideas about gender are shaped by specific social, cultural, and historical contexts.

This course examines the role of gender in politics and public policy through critical, intersectional, feminist, anticolonial, and sociopolitical frameworks. Learners will examine the role that political institutions and public policies play in creating, challenging, and overcoming gender-based inequality. While Canadian political and policy-based discourses are the core focus, this course also engages with gender, politics, and public policy on a global scale.

This course uses an intersectional feminist perspective to examine how societal notions of gender shape our built environments and colour our perceptions of the world around us. Gender differences are apparent in how we live, work, travel, and explore. Drawing on geographical topics ranging from our everyday home and work experiences to the trafficking of people across borders, this course explores gender roles and patterns from around the world and their spatial implications in cultures.

This course examines the lives of women in the western world from ancient times to 20th century North America. Private lives as well as public and political activities will be studied. Topics will include the role of women in the early Christian church, women in monasticism, women and the family in pre-industrial Europe, the impact of industrialization, pioneers and path-breakers, and the rise and nature of women's movements.

This course provides an introduction to the study of gender and culture from a social science perspective. The course will engage critical, intersectional and/or decolonial social sciences literatures to explore gender relations, ideologies, and lived experiences in cultural contexts. Comparative studies of gender across cultures and theories, and critical examinations of the representations of gender comprise the methods of examination of core course topics.

This course examines gender as a theoretical concept, social construction, and category of analysis for understanding differing experiences of health. Explorations of gender and health will be understood through contextual, intersectional, rights-based, and anticolonial frameworks and includes topics such as: public health and body politics; reproductive health and justice; experiences of health for LGBTQ2S+ people; mental health and Mad Studies; and creating gender-informed responses to health and social/public policy.

This course examines ideas about and roles of women in the major religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism) as well as native religions, Wicca and goddess religions. Students will look at how women have been shaped by religious traditions, at women as agents of resistance and social change, and at women as spiritual leaders, past and present.

Focusing on Europe and North America, this course examines the historical representation of women in art as well as the particular challenges and accomplishments of women artists. Students will investigate the ways that visual imagery has both upheld and critiqued gender differences and the impact feminist inquiry has had on the theories and practices of art and art history.

This course explores the ways that cultural notions of gender and sex are influenced and transformed by science and technology. Using an intersectional and interdisciplinary lens, this course examines how gender is constructed in various science and technology discourses and practices from past to present.

This course applies an intersectional feminist analysis to the study of gender in popular culture. Drawing on a variety of media which may include advertising, digital media (including film and series), comic books, video games, popular fiction, podcasts and magazines, students will examine the representation of diverse genders. The course will also explore how popular culture often functions to reinforce social norms concerning gender roles and identities, while also acting as sites of resistance through challenging gender norms.

This class takes a broad approach to exploring gender, work, and labour. Learners explore when and why certain kinds of labour not considered real work and how particular moments have shifted the intersections of gender, work, and labour. Specific attention is paid to whose labour counts, with a focus on workers who are often ignored, made invisible, informalized, or excluded. This course also considers resistance efforts and counter-movements on local, national, and international levels.

Using Sara Ahmed's concept of the feminist killjoy, this course examines various theoretical and practical dimensions of social justice, equity, and diversity work. Informed by feminist theory, gender studies, critical race theory, and anti-colonial theories, this course will explore intersectional feminist activism at odds with racism, sexism and colonialism in institutional life. Pragmatic explorations will include an analysis of the physical and emotional intensities of embodying and performing killjoy tactics, and killjoy strategies for sustainable self and community care.

Using an anti-oppression lens, this course explores how gender, race, and colonial oppression intersects and impact the lives of racialized women. The course examines the complexities of colonialism, imperialism, orientalism, and systemic racism in the present day. The course will open spaces for anti-racist and decolonial forms of learning by including oral storytelling, art-based activism, and land and community-based learning.

This course examines social, cultural, and political constructions of masculinity in the past and present. The course considers the interplay between the dominant expression of a “hegemonic masculinity” and the co-existence and persistence of “multiple masculinities” that often elude it or resist it. Course readings will engage with emerging forms of (cis, trans*, new) masculinities, situating them against the background of new developments in popular feminist and academic feminist critique.

This course offers an exploration of gender in relation to the human rights framework that acknowledges the intersections of power among gender and race, ethnicity, class, and sexualities, among other identities. Learners delve into various facets of the gendered nature of human rights on a global scale, including core standards and principles, citizenship, international conflict and inequity, the study of war and peace, international organizations and law, globalization, migration, sustainable development, social movements, and asylum.

This course will examine current forms of penal governance in Canadian federal and provincial women's prisons. Through the lens of gender, this course theorizes the complexity of carceral power and examines the shifting and complex nature of women's penal governance. While the functions of prison - to contain, to segregate and to punish - remain consistent, the meaning and content of women's penal governance has changed over time. We examine how penal governance and the way that people experience incarceration is gendered, classed and racialized and hybrid forms of power and knowledge have informed prison strategies.

This course explores contemporary issues in women's and gender studies, including current debates and tensions in the discipline. Specific topics will vary from year to year, but could include, for example, examinations of Indigenous feminisms; trans health; focused topics on migration and settlement; education policy and gender identity; gender, sex and sexuality in sport; and other current topics in critical, intersectional and/or decolonial feminist scholarship and activism.

This course explores contemporary issues in queer studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing from a range of academic and community-based knowledge, the course will engage theory, history, and various analytic methods to explore queer histories, theories, cultures and debates, including Indigenous Two-Spirit identities.