Women and Gender Studies Courses |
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First Year Seminars The 199Y1 and 199H1 seminars are designed to provide the opportunity to work closely with an instructor in a class of no more than twenty-four students. These interactive seminars are intended to stimulate the students’ curiosity and provide an opportunity to get to know a member of the professorial staff in a seminar environment during the first year of study. Details here. 100-Series Courses During the first round of enrolment, WGS160Y1 is
subject to certain enrolment restrictions. Please refer to THE 2008-2009 Registration
Handbook & Timetable. WGS160Y1 An integrated and historical approach to social relations of gender, race, class, sexuality and disability, particularly as they relate to women’s lives and struggles across different locales, including Canada. WGS261Y1 Critically examines how the scientific construction of sex and gender in the context of race, class and nation have both reinforced and challenged racial hierarchies, colonialism and the formation of academic disciplines such as psychology, anthropology and biology. WGS262H1 Examines modes of theories that shaped feminist thought and situates them historically and transnationally so as to emphasize the social conditions and conflicts in which ideas and politics arise, change and circulate. WGS271Y1 A critical examination of institutions, representations and practices associated with contemporary popular culture, mass-produced, local and alternative. WGS272Y1 Examines the history of ‘queer’ and the cultures that have been imagined from it. Understood in terms of what does not conform to sexual normativities, ‘queer’ does not just define social identities but references a range of emergent cultural expressions. WGS330H1 A critical feminist reading of selected works of fiction, poetry and essays by Caribbean women writers. The aim is to appraise the development of this literature, situate texts within the key social and political debates which have influenced the region’s literary output, as well as to consider the implications of the environments within which these writers function. WGS334H1 WGS335H1 An upper level seminar. Subjects of study vary from year to year. WGS336H1 An upper level course. Topics vary from year to year. WGS350H1 This course contextualizes racialized masculinities and violence within postcolonial and anti-imperial discussions on contemporary discourses of terror. Working with concepts in gender and queer studies, this course draws on cultural production to offer a complex reading of masculinities and what it means to be human in conflict zones. WGS362H1 An upper level seminar. Subjects of study vary from year to year. WGS363H1 An upper level seminar. Subjects of study vary from year to year. WGS365H1 Examines the operation of the law as it affects women, the construction and representation of women within the legal system, and the scope for feminist and intersectional analyses of law. Includes an analysis of specific legal issues such as sexuality and reproduction, equality, employment, violence and immigration. WGS366H1 A critical interdisciplinary investigation of how gender impacts on central topics in disability studies: ableism as a political ideology; the normalized body and cultural representations; sexuality, violence and nurturance relations; the cognitive and social roles of medicine; transnational perspectives on disability, disability rights and issues of social justice. WGS367H1 Examines diverse traditions and normative models of health (e.g. biomedicine, social constructionist, aboriginal health) in conjunction with analyses of the origin, politics, and theoretical perspectives of contemporary Women’s Health Movements. Topics may include fertility, sexuality, poverty, violence, labour, ageing, (dis)ability, and health care provision. WGS368H1 Explores the ways in which gendered constructions of cultural identity and difference are implicated in local and transnational political projects, including feminism. Challenges colonialist stereotypes of women as exotic or “victims of culture”. WGS369H1 Examines gendered representations of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability in a variety of colonial, neo-colonial, and “post”-colonial contexts. Topics may include the emergence of racialist, feminist, liberatory and neoconservative discourses as inscribed in literary texts, historical documents, cultural artifacts and mass media. WGS370H1 Drawing on diversely situated case-studies, this course focuses on the ideals that inform struggles for social justice, and the mechanisms activists have employed to produce the change. Foci include the gendered implications of movement participation, local and transnational coalition, alternative community formation, and encounters with the state and inter/supra/transnational organizations. WGS372H1 An interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship of women to a variety of psychological and psychoanalytical theories and practices. Topics may include women and the psychological establishment; women’s mental health issues; feminist approaches to psychoanalysis. WGS373H1 An interdisciplinary study of gendered violence in both historical and contemporary contexts including topics such as textual and visual representations; legal and theoretical analyses; structural violence; war and militarization; sexual violence; and resistance and community mobilization. WGS374H1 Sexual agency as understood and enacted by women in diverse cultural and historical contexts. An exploration of the ways in which women have theorized and experienced sexual expectations, practices and identities. WGS375H1 Examines the challenge indigenous knowledges posed to colonialism by analyzing Spanish and British legal codes. Focusing on the links between sexuality and spirituality, we explore how gender shaped the social dynamics of conquest and resistance and draw out the implications for contemporary colonialisms. WGS380H1 Examines the gendered effects of white settler colonization on/in 21st Century Canada and traces the formation of multiple settlements by examining black and immigrant populations. The course poses a challenge to contemporary formulations of diaspora and multiculturalism. It examines solidarity movements within and across these three communities. WGS385H1 Reviews major feminist transnational, Marxist and Foucaultian approaches to the study of neoliberalism. Adopts a comparative, historical and global approach to the ways that gender is implicated in state restructuring, changing roles for corporations and non-governmental organizations, changing norms for personhood, sovereignty and citizenship, and changing ideas about time/space. WGS386H1 Offers a critical analysis of political economy, its historical and contemporary contentions and the ‘ruptures’ that open the space for alternative theorizing beyond ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ thinking, by inserting gender and intersecting issues of power, authority and economic valorization across multiple and changing spheres: domestic, market and state. JNV300H1 The study of a selected group of creative writers from at least two national literatures whose texts raise issues regarding gender as either an historically or culturally variable construct. Texts will be chosen on the basis of a shared historical era, a literary genre, experience, institutional categorization, or project.
During the first round of ROSI enrolment (July 6 – August
9), 400-Series courses are reserved for Specialists and Majors in Women and
Gender Studies. Enrolment restrictions vary from course to course and pre-requisites
will be enforced during the first round of enrolment. During the second round
of enrolment (as of August 11th), students must enroll at the department and
fill out the appropriATE 400-level ballot form. Ballot forms are available
from the Women and Gender Studies Program Office, ROOM 2036, Wilson Hall, New
College, 40 Willcocks St, or on-line at www.utoronto.ca/wgsi/undergraduate/400levelballots.html.
Forms must be signed and approved by both the course instructor and the Undergraduate
Coordinator for the Women and Gender Studies Program. Please note that students
in their first or second year of study (with 8.5 credits or less) are not permitted
to enroll in 400-level courses. WGS425H1 Provides a critical feminist analysis of development theories and paradigms and an overview of related theoretical and conceptual debates on the concept of ‘development’ itself, its gender implications, competing discourses, and related practices within national, regional and global contexts, and from a post-colonial feminist/gender perspective. WGS426H1 Critically examines current interdisciplinary scholarship on globalization, its intersections with gender, power structures, and feminized economies. Related socio-spatial reconfigurations, ‘glocal’ convergences, and tensions are explored, with emphasis on feminist counter-narratives and theorizing of globalization, theoretical debates on the meanings and impacts of globalization, and possibilities of resistance, agency, and change. WGS430H1 This course is an overview of the growing field of Queer Diasporas. It considers how queer people inhabit transnational spaces. It also examines how diaspora, as an analytical framework that challenges meanings of un/belonging, might be queered. Alongside theoretical works on queer diasporas, this course draws on cultural/aesthetic texts to think through its major themes. WGS434H1 An upper level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. WGS435H1 An upper level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. WGS440H1 Examines how gender illuminates the sacred by focusing upon the forces of nature within the Vodou and Yoruba cosmological systems. Explores how these sacred knowledges disturb the secular parameters of feminism through close attention to the conceptual and ceremonial practices among practitioners in the diaspora. WGS445H1 Considers the gendered impact of migration on women’s indigenous spiritual practices, taking globalization as a political economic starting point. Focuses on the lives of women whose experiences emblematize displacement and examines how women’s agency interrupts and transforms normative meanings of ‘tradition’ and “modernity.’ WGS451H1 Under supervision, students pursue topics in Women and Gender Studies not currently part of the curriculum. WGS460Y1 Supervised undergraduate thesis project undertaken in the final year of study. Students attend a bi-weekly seminar to discuss research strategies, analytics, methods and findings. A required course for Specialist students. WGS461Y1 An upper level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on the instructor. WGS462H1 An upper-level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. WGS463H1 Senior students may pursue more advanced study in feminist theory. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. WGS465H1 Senior students may pursue advanced study in gender and law. Topics vary from year to year. WGS470Y1 The application of theoretical study to practical community experience. Advanced Women and Gender Studies students have the opportunity to apply knowledge acquired in the Women and Gender Studies curriculum through a practicum placement within a community organization. |