Courses

This course examines key concepts, debates, methodologies, and theoretical directions in the history of women, genders and sexualities from a transnational and intersectional perspective. It focuses on the dialogue between gender history and social history and asks how social movements have shaped the questions historians ask and how gender articulates with major analytic categories including class relations and racial formation.

Offers an analysis of contemporary feminist theoretical debates in the program's fields of specialization: Cultural and Literary Studies, Performance and Fines Arts; Diaspora, Transnational and Global Studies; Histories; Politics, Economies and Societies; Race; Sexualities; Theories and Methods. Required course for all MA students.

This course is designed for incoming Master's students. It provides a supportive learning environment to develop research and writing skills appropriate to the discipline.

Explores the relationship among theory, methodology and research methods, prepares students to identify, critique and assess the appropriateness of selected research methods and reviews some of the current debates on feminist methodologies. Required course for all PhD students.

This PhD course has two objectives: to provide advanced scholarship in feminist epistemologies and theories to prepare PhD students for their comprehensive exams and dissertations, and to engage critically with theoretical issues pertaining to students' research interests.

This course explores the fundamentals of queer and trans theory through the historiography of sexualities and gender identities around the world since 1500. It examines how people imagined, experienced and regulated embodiment, desire, family, pleasure, danger, and community in diverse times and places. The course's comparative approach allows students to investigate the eras and locations that interest them most.

Theory on mothering and motherhood has emerged as a distinct boy of knowledge within motherhood studies and feminist theory more generally. This course examines the rich and diverse tradition of maternal theory that has evolved over the last thirty years

This course examines the contemporary articulation and organization of sexual identities and rights in the developing world, and considers how interventions by international agencies, nation-states and advocacy groups have informed/been informed by racial and gender politics, and notions of citizenship.

Individual students or small groups may conduct readings under a faculty member's supervision in one or two selected areas. Students wishing to enrol should contact the Director of the Graduate Program in Women's Studies for permission.

Directed Reading

Explores historical and contemporary projects of ‘race-making’ and ‘race-thinking’ through an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach. It investigates the possibilities and limits of critical debates about ‘race’ and ‘racism’ through a range of overlapping theoretical perspectives, including: poststructuralism, critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, anti-racist feminism, post-colonial studies, queer theory, and transnationalism and diaspora studies. The investigation will focus on the ways in which the politics of difference is deeply embedded in the

Drawing upon multiple theoretical perspectives from contemporary girlhood studies, students explore the cultural and social construction of girls and girlhood. Critical feminist perspectives combined with girls' own experiences enable students to uncover and critique the ways in which girlhood is socially constructed and regulated through time, place and space. The role of oppression will be explored through an intersectional lens.

Presents students with an overview of the fields of specialization available in this program and introduces them to current critical issues and debates. It also deals with professional development, such as preparing grant applications, conference papers and articles.

An introduction to the histories, theories, concepts and praxis of Black Feminism, as produced through intersectional struggles around race, class gender and sexuality. It considers shifts in the articulation of Black feminisms across geography, culture and time, and encourages further research into the specificities of Black Canadian feminism.

This course uses a transnational feminist lens to examine the contested relationship between political violence and how it is remembered and memorialized, within histories of colonial and imperial power. It examines violence in-context, in relation to indigeneity, racialization, gender, class, sexuality, and highlights the transnational dimensions of memory practices through the traveling of tropes, signs, claims and power across borders.

This course will provide students with a graduate level seminar and discussion space to articulate and develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between Islamophobia or/and anti-Muslim racism and gender. We will discuss the historical roots and contemporary manifestation of anti-Muslim racism and how it enables the production of gender representations and stereotypes, as well as different types of resistance to this racism and its consequences, including by looking at the work done by Islamic feminists.

This course focuses on the area of fat cultures and fat studies. Students learn about size politics from a variety of historical and contemporary assigned sources, including academic, activist, and digital material. This course examines fat studies scholarship, activism and cultural production through queer, Indigenous, anti-racist, critical disability and feminist theoretical frameworks. Students will be required to have feminist studies course experience at the discretion of the course director.