Faculty of Arts & Science 2016-2017 Calendar

Women and Gender Studies

• Women and Gender Studies Specialist | Women and Gender Studies Major | Women and Gender Studies Minor
• Women and Gender Studies Courses

Faculty

For the past 40 years, we have trained students to think deeply about how gender and sexuality operate at the individual, interpersonal, institutional and global levels.  Drawing from a range of disciplines such as history and literature, sociology and law, we enable students to answer urgent and complex questions, such as how militarization can constrict men’s aspirations for their lives, why there are income disparities between women and men, how sexual expression is scripted and can be re-scripted, and even what Lady Gaga could have in common with Shakespeare.  In addition to training students to traverse the stanzas of a poem and a government report with equal care and skill in their quests, we also focus attention on matters of scale: when to aggregate and when to parse significant distinctions, how to think comparatively across space and time.

The Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto is distinctive for its transnational approach, critically addressing how national borders and nationalist discourses frame the constructions of gender and sexuality.  We study the effects of migration, diaspora and wars on experiences of home and heritage, family, desire and selfhood.  We provide students the conceptual tools to connect processes of imperialism and globalization with emergent economies and forms of labor and consumption.  Finally, we encourage students to reflect on the varied histories of feminism when framing their own activism in the present.

Our graduates go on to do innovative work in the public service, creative, and corporate sectors, becoming everything from documentary film-makers to grassroots activists to policy analysts in economic development agencies.  All of them draw on the critical lens they develop in this program, becoming part of a rich community of graduates who maintain their connections with one another, and who come back to the classroom where they once were students to share their experiences.

Undergraduate Coordinator: Professor J. Taylor, New College, Room 2029 (416-978-5238).

Undergraduate Administrator: Marian Reed, New College, Room 2036 (416-978-3668).

Email: grad.womenstudies@utoronto.ca

Web site: www.utoronto.ca/wgsi

Women and Gender Studies Programs

(10 full courses or their equivalent, including at least five full 300+ series courses and at least one WGS course at the 400-level)

1. WGS160Y1 (normally taken in first year)
2. WGS260H1
3. WGS360H1
4. WGS460Y1 and one additional full-course equivalent at the 400+ level
5. Four additional full-course equivalents from the core group below
6. Two additional full-course equivalents from Group A or B

(7 full courses or their equivalent, including at least three full 300+ series courses and at least one half WGS course at the 400-level)

1. WGS160Y1 (normally taken in first year)
2. WGS260H1
3. WGS360H1
4. Three additional full-course equivalents from the core group below
5. Two additional full-course equivalents from group A or B

1. WGS160Y1 or WGS271Y1.
2. An additional 3.0 credits from the WGS core group or group A.  1.0 of these credits must be WGS courses at the 3rd or 4th-year level.

Core Group:
WGS160Y1, WGS260H1, WGS271Y1, WGS273H1, WGS275H1, WGS331H1 to WGS336H1, WGS340H1,  WGS350H1, WGS355H1, WGS360H1, WGS362H1, WGS363H1, WGS365H1, WGS367H1, WGS369H1, WGS370H1, WGS372H1, WGS373H1, WGS374H1, WGS376H1, WGS385H1, WGS386H1, WGS395H1, WGS420H1, WGS426H1, WGS434H1, WGS435H1, WGS440H1, WGS450H1, WGS451H1, WGS460Y1, WGS461Y1, WGS462H1, WGS463H1, WGS465H1, WGS470Y1

Group A: (Primary Focus on Women and Gender Studies)
ANT343H1, ANT456H1, ANT460H1; CLA219H1, CLA319H1; EAS462H1; ENG273Y1, ENG307H1, ENG355H1; FAH425H1; FRE304H1; GER421H11; GGR320H1, GGR327H1; HIS202H1, HIS205H1, HIS297Y1, HIS306H1, HIS348H1, HIS354H1, HIS363H1, HIS383H1, HIS406H1, HIS446H1, HIS448H1, HIS481H1; ITA455H1; JAL355H1; JPP343H1; JPU315H1; KPE200H, KPE300H, KPE401H; NEW325H1; NMC284H1, NMC484H1; PHE102H1, PHE301H1, PHE430H1; PHL243H1, PHL367H1; POL344Y1, POL432H1, POL450H1; PSY323H1; RLG235H1, RLG311H1, RLG312H1, RLG313H1, RLG315H1, RLG416H1; SLA248H1, SLA453H1; SOC214H1, SOC265H1, SOC314H1, SOC365H1, SOC366H1, SOC367H1, SOC383H1, SOC465H1; SPA382H1; UNI237H1, UNI335H1; VIC342H1, VIC343Y1; VIS209H1

Group B: (Minor Focus on Women and Gender Studies)
ANT329H1, ANT427H1, ANT477H1;  CIN332Y1, CIN372Y1, CIN432H1; EAS314H1; ENG270Y1, ENG323H1, ENG370H1; FAS246H1; FCS390H1;  GER250H1; GGR328H1, GGR363H1, GGR457H1; HIS459H1, HIS474H1; ITA493H1; JHA394H1, JPR364Y1; NEW214H1, NEW240Y1, NEW241Y1, NEW302Y1, NEW341H1, NEW344Y1, NEW345H1, NEW351Y1, NEW449H1; NMC384H1; PHL268H1, PHL281H1, PHL373H1, PHL380H1, PHL384H1; POL480H1; PRT351H1; SDS255H1, SDS256H1, SDS345H1, SDS346H1, SDS354H1, SDS355H1, SDS65H1, SDS377H1, SDS379H1, SDS475H1, SDS477H1, SDS478H1; SOC207H1, SOC220H1, SOC281H1, SOC309Y1, SOC410H1; UNI325H1; UNI211H1, UNI310H1, UNI330H1; VIS310H1; VIC341H1

Women and Gender Studies Courses

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 can be found at www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/course/fyh-1/.

WGS160Y1 is subject to certain enrolment restrictions. During the first (P) round of enrolment on ACORN, priority is given to Specialists, Majors and Minors in Women and Gender Studies.  Please refer to the Arts & Science Registration Instructions and Timetable at http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/course for course enrolment procedures.

An integrated and historical approach to social relations of gender, race, class, sexuality and disability, particularly as they relate to womens lives and struggles across different locales, including Canada.

200-level courses, with the exception of WGS273H1, are subject to certain enrolment restrictions.  During the first (P) round of enrolment on ACORN, priority is given to Specialists, Majors and Minors in Women and Gender Studies.  Please refer to the Arts & Science Registration Instructions and Timetable at http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/course for course enrolment procedures.

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.

A critical examination of institutions, representations and practices associated with contemporary popular culture, mass-produced, local and alternative.

Using a transnational, feminist framework, this course examines material and conceptual interrelations between gendered human and non-human nature, ecological crises, political economies and environmental movements in a variety of geographical, historical and cultural contexts. Does environmental justice include social justice, or are they in conflict? What might environmental justice and activism involve?

Examines how masculinities shape the lives of men, women, transgender people. Effects of construction, reproduction and impact of masculinities on institutions such as education, work, religion, sports, family, medicine, military and the media are explored. Provides critical analysis of how masculinities shape individual lives, groups, organizations and social movements.

Subjects will vary from year to year.

Subjects vary from year to year.

300-Series Courses are subject to certain enrolment restrictions. During the first (P) round of enrolment on ACORN, priority is given to Specialists, Majors and Minors in Women and Gender Studies.  We strongly recommend that students complete WGS160Y in preparation for 3rd-year courses; however, this is not a formal pre-requisite.  Please refer to the Arts & Science Registration Instructions and Timetable at http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/course for course enrolment procedures.

Note: Courses numbered WGS330H1-WGS336H1 are reserved for Special Topics in Women and Gender Studies.  Topics vary from year to year.

An upper level seminar.  Subjects of study vary from year to year.

An upper level seminar.  Subjects of study vary from year to year.

An upper level seminar.  Subjects of study vary from year to year.

An upper level seminar. Subjects of study vary from year to year. Topic for 2011-2012: Life Writing. A theoretical and literary study of the practice of life writing.  Students will learn about narrative styles and their potential for a feminist imaginary.  The course will include works of oral history, creative biography and autobiography, personal memoir and poetry.

An upper level seminar. Subjects of study vary from year to year.

An upper level course. Topics vary from year to year. Topic for 2011-2012: Gender and Sexuality in World Literature. This course explores gender and sexuality within literary texts as they move in transnational circuits of translation and publication.   Reading, situating, and discussing fiction and prose, the class will consider the different ways gender, sexuality, affect, race, labor, violence, and nation are narrated, theorized, and entangled.

This course examines the conplex and conflictual relations between women and revolutionary struggles and foces on a number of theoretical and empirical issues relevant to the Middle East and North Africa context. 

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.

This course will focus on masculinities and femininities in workplace settings, with an emphasis on service work around the world. We will discuss workers' lived experiences of gender regimes which are embedded within the dynamics of class, race and nation.  The relationships between gender processes and workplace hierarchies will be explored. 

Teaches skills in feminist approaches to making knowledge.  Introduces feminist practices for doing research and navigating the politics of production and exchange.  Develops skills for conveying knowledge to the wider world, such as through research papers, reports, performance, new media, art.

An upper level seminar. Subjects of study vary from year to year.

An upper level seminar. Subjects of study vary from year to year.

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.

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 Womens Health Movements. Topics may include fertility, sexuality, poverty, violence, labour, ageing, (dis)ability, and health care provision.

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.

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.

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; womens mental health issues; feminist approaches to psychoanalysis.

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.

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.  This course will be offered every three years.

Takes up conversations in queer and trans studies as separate and entangled fields.  It explores how queer and trans people have experienced and theorized gender and sexuality.

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.

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.

Examines practices emerging from Indigenous hub spaces where complex Indigeneities are negotiated and mobilized for social change.  Students will analyse practices rooted in Indigenous feminism, and performance (including Indigenous hip-hop culture), as acts of decolonization; and explore their manifold expressions within Indigenous new media and other forms of community-based activism.

Examines the ways in which bodies are lived and enscribed and represented through a variety of genres.  Students will work through issues of corporeality and materiality in the production and reception of texts and will practice embodied writing on a personal level through in-class workshops and written assignments. 

The course communicates the growing field of "girl studies" and provides a critical exploration of the historical, social, psychological and political definitions attached to girlhood.  We will move toward a feminist understanding of how definitions of girl-child shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, political agendas and futures.

During the first and second round of enrolment on ACORN, certain enrolment restrictions apply to 400-Series courses.  Pre-requisites will be enforced.  Eligible students must have completed 2.5 full course equivalents in Women and Gender Studies.  Students with 8.5 credits or less are not permitted to enrol.

"RP" indicator courses: during the restricted (R) round, only 3rd and 4th-year Specialists and Majors in Women and Gender Studies are eligible to enrol.  During the priority (P) round, priority is given to 3rd and 4th-year Specialists, Majors and Minors in Women and Gender Studies. 

"RE" indicator courses: this only applies to WGS460Y1: Honours Seminar.  During the restricted (R) round, only 4th-year Specialists and Majors in Women and Gender Studies are eligible to enrol.  During the "E" round, all students must enrol (ballot) at the department.  Ballot forms can be picked up at the Women and Gender Studies Institute Program Office, Room 2036, Wilson Hall, New College, 40 Willcocks Street or printed off the WGSI website: http://www.wgsi.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-forms. Forms must be approved by the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Women and Gender Studies Program. E-mail: grad.womenstudies@utoronto.ca.

"E" indicator courses: students must enrol (ballot) at the department.  Ballot forms can be picked up at the WGSI Program Office or printed off the WGSI website: http://www.wgsi.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/undergraduate-forms.  Forms must be approved by the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Women and Gender Studies Program.

A transpacific examination of issues that have directly and indirectly shaped the feminist and other related critical inquiries in Asia and among the Asian diasporas in Canada and the United States.

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.

An upper level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. Topic for 2011-2012: Gender and Transnationalism in the Black Diaspora. This course introduces students to feminist discussions of material and cultural processes underpinning the transnational production and circulation of blackness.  Among the topics that will be explored are migratory circuits, the cultural politics of memory, sexuality and the boundaries of diaspora, carceral regimes and the forging of transnational political communities.

An upper level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor.

Drawing together film, fiction, and theory this course invites students to explore ways of imagining other worlds.  From afro-futurism to planetary humanism, from cyborgs to hauntings, from science fiction fantasies to the politics of aliens, the course examines and produces feminist, postcolonial, anti-racist, and queer visions of other worlds.

Explores transnational feminist genealogies of the black diaspora.  The course pays attention to the contexts and movements that generated key questions, exploring how these interventions disclose preoccupations with modernity, freedom and citizenship.  Topics may include trauma and memory, sexual citizenship, Afrofuturism, indigeneity, and the crafting of political communities.

Under supervision, students pursue topics in Women and Gender Studies not currently part of the curriculum. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

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. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An upper level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on the instructor.

An upper-level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor.

Senior students may pursue more advanced study in feminist theory. Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor.

Senior students may pursue advanced study in gender and law. Topics vary from year to year.

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. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.