Courses and outlines

WSDB 290/2        Introduction to Women’s Studies I

Fall

Lec. B

-T----

13:15 – 16:00

SGW

Rm: H - 401

Prof. C. Maillé

Lec. AA

--W---

18:00 – 20:15

SGW

Rm. TBA

Prof. T.B.A.

Winter

Lec. A

---J--

13:15 – 16:00

SGW

Rm: H - 403

Prof. T.B.A.

This course provides an introduction to the lives and conditions of women in historical contexts. It is suited both to those interested in women's issues in general and students enrolled in Women's Studies. Topics range from motherhood, lesbianism, family, violence and racism to women's economic status and women's resistance.

A more detailed description of the course is dependent on the professor teaching each section.

WSDB 291/2        Introduction to Women’s Studies II

Fall

Lec. A

---J--

13:15 – 16:00

SGW

Rm: H - 401

Prof. G. Mahrouse

This course looks at the lives and conditions of women in recent times; it explores systems of domination and women's resistance to them. It investigates how women have empowered themselves within these systems and have struggled for, and achieved, change. Topics may include women's organizations, socialization, education, language, economic and political structures.

A more detailed description of the course is dependent on the professor teaching each section.

WSDB 292/4        Feminisms and Research Methods

Winter

Lec. A

----F-

08:45 – 11:30

SGW

Rm: MB 3.430

Prof. T.B.A.

This course studies the concepts of race, racism, and racialization, especially vis-à-vis feminist theory and practice. It is premised on the idea that race and gender, along with other systems of oppression, constitute one another in structuring social inequality. Drawing from interdisciplinary thought derived largely from feminist, trans-national, psychoanalytic, and critical race theories, the course focuses primarily on questions of power, knowledge production, subjectivity, and interlocking systems of oppression within local and global contemporary contexts. It seeks to provide students with opportunities to reflect upon anti-racist feminist practice and to apply critical race and anti-racist analyses. The course pays particular attention to the ways that appeals to compassion for anti-racist and social justice aims are limited and shaped by racialized, gendered, and national identities and understandings.

Prerequisite:  Enrolment in a Women's Studies program or permission of the Institute.

WSDB 380/2        Feminist Thought I

Fall

Sem. A

M-----

13:15 – 16:00

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. T.B.A.

This course seeks to deconstruct the ideological premises of knowledge‑production and provides an overview of various modes of knowledge, theory, and activism among women in different cultural contexts. These types of knowledge range from storytelling to academic theorizing. The course provides key concepts and critical approaches for Feminist Thought II.

Prerequisite:15 credits, including WSDB 290, 291, or permission of the Institute.

NOTE: Students who have received credit for WSDB 394 may not take this course for credit.

WSDB 383/4       Lesbian Issues and Realities

Winter

Sem. AA

M----

18:00 – 20:15

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. T.B.A.

This course introduces students to the field of lesbian studies and examines lesbian existence within a historical as well as a contemporary context. A central theme of the course is diversity among lesbians, not only in terms of race, class, ability but also in terms of political consciousness.
 

Prerequisite: 18 credits, including WSDB 290, 291, 292, and nine credits from other WSDB or elective courses.

NOTE: Students who have received credit for WSDB 398 may not take this course for credit.

WSDB 390/4        Women and Peace

Winter

Sem. A

---J--

13:15 – 16:00

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. C. Maillé

This course covers a series of themes related to feminist peace politics such as violence, wars against women, militarism, roles played by women during wars, war mythologies, women in the military, the war industry and the new world order, feminist peace activism.

Prerequisite:15 credits, including WSDB 290, 291, or permission of the Institute.

WSDB 391/2        Health Issues: Feminist Perspectives

Fall

Sem. A

-T----

08:45 – 11:30

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. G. Rail    

This course presents feminist, intersectional, postcolonialist, poststructuralist and queer examinations of a variety of women’s health issues. It explores the complex cultural politics that tend to legitimize existing power relations in health care, health research, and "health" industries. Topics include biopolitics and surveillance of women’s bodies, medicalization and disease mongering, patriarchal capitalism and the health industry, cosmetic surgery and oppression or agency, women’s health and sociocultural identifications, feminist medical ethics, and alternative and feminist health care.

Prerequisite:15 credits, including WSDB 290, 291, or permission of the Institute.

WSDB 393/4        Critical Race Feminisms

Winter

Sem.  A

--W---

14:45 – 17:30

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof.  G. Mahrouse

This course explores the concepts of race, racism, and racialization, alongside feminist theories and practices. Drawing from feminist and critical race theories, the course focuses on questions of power, knowledge production, and interlocking systems of oppression within local and global contemporary contexts. It provides opportunities to reflect upon anti‑racist feminist practice and to apply anti‑racist analyses.

Prerequisite:15 credits, including WSDB 290, 291, or permission of the Institute.

Note: Students who have taken this course under WSDB 398G may not take this course for credit.

WSDB 398F/2       SELECTED TOPICS IN WS: "Crazy Talk": Gendered Discourses of Mental Illness in Popular Culture

Fall

Sem. A

----F-

10:15 – 13:00

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. T.B.A.

This course will explore how issues of gender, social power, ideology, and difference intersect in past and present discourses of mental illness, particularly as these discourses circulate within North American popular culture.

Prerequisite:15 credits or permission of the Institute.

WSDB 398H/4       SELECTED TOPICS IN WS: Contemporary Tourism & Relations to Power

Winter

Sem. A

-T----

14:45 – 17:30

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. G. Mahrouse

Using an interdisciplinary cultural studies framework and a feminist theoretical lens that privileges questions of power, this course ecamines the contemporary tourism phenomena. At the heart of this course are questions of gender, race, class and sexuality vis-à-vis diverse forms of tourism. While the course will explore a number of contentious themes and practices related to contemporary tourism including sex tourism and political tourism, it is especially concerned with engaging debate about the paradoxes of "responsible" tourism. Some of the specific questions explored in this course will include:

• how do tourist interactions with 'locals' shape subjectivities?
• How do tourists understand themselves in relation to the places they visit?
• how do gender, race, citizenship, and class impact the experiences of tourists?
• What are the possibilities and limitations of using responsible forms of tourism to challenge global inequity?

Prerequisite: 15 credits or permission of the Institute.

WSDB 398J/2      SELECTED TOPICS IN WS: Framing the Prostitute

Fall

Sem. AA

-T-----

18:00– 20:15

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. T.B.A.

The ‘problem’ of prostitution — specifically the public/visible presence of women providing sexual services to men for money* — has long preoccupied western society. Numerous, and shifting, presumptions regarding sexuality, gender roles, personal agency and public space have attracted disproportionate attention to the women involved in prostitution. Across generations and cultures, social, medical, legal and religious forces have attempted to explain, contain or erase prostitution. These efforts rarely permanently affect long-term change.

Prerequisite: 15 credits or permission of the Institute.

WSDB 398V/4      SELECTED TOPICS IN WS: Politics of Fashion: Art-History-Pornography
Winter

Fashion has been celebrated, labeled, and maligned throughout modernity—regarded as art, dismissed as triviality, or even excoriated as outright pornography. One may associate it with personal style, creativity, and the freedom to craft one’s own identity. But at the same time someone else might recognize fashion only through the lens of sweatshops, ethnic appropriation, elitist couture, or banal tabloid magazines. Fashion has truly been, and continues to be, a site of liberation and a tool of oppression. How can we come to terms with an element of culture that is everywhere, and yet remains so contradictory and so contested?

Prerequisite: 15 credits or permission of the Institute.

WSDB 480/4        Feminist Thought II

Winter

Sem. A

M-----

13:15 – 16:00

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. T.B.A.

This course uses the critical approaches studied in Feminist Thought I to explore the changes that have taken place in women’s expression and interpretation of modes of knowledge and theory. The course focuses on the relationship between oppressive systems and the ways different women’s groups have resisted them.

Prerequisite: 30 credits, which must include WSDB 290, 291, and 380 or permission of the Instructor.

NOTE: Students who have taken WSDB 394 may not take this course for credit.

WSDB 490/2        Feminist Ethics       

Fall

Sem. A

---J--

13:15 – 16:00

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. C. Maillé

This interdisciplinary seminar considers the effect of systems of gender, race, and class on women’s place in society. It takes into account recent developments in feminist scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

Prerequisite: 30 credits which must include WSDB 290, 291 and 380 or permission of the Instructor.

WSDB 491/2       Feminist Perspectives on Culture

Fall

Sem. A

--W---

08:45 – 11:30

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. G. Rail

This seminar explores the central concepts and theories in feminist cultural studies, as they inform feminist, post-colonial, queer, and post-structuralist understandings of culture.  The focus is on women as cultural producers and subjects in/of various cultural texts (e.g. cinema, visual arts, music, advertising, popular media, feminist writings). The discursive construction of gender, as it is inflected by class, race sexuality and location, is examined as well as the ways in which it is used, displayed, imagined and performed in contemporary culture. Students develop practical and analytical skills, posing feminist questions of how particular cultural narratives function within social, political and economic contexts. Students are required to participate in and lead discussions of the readings and to create and/or critique cultural productions.

Prerequisites: 30 credits which include WSDB 290, 291 and 380 or permission of the Instructor.

WSDB 492/2        Post & Anti-Colonial Feminist Theory

Fall

Sem. A

-T----

14:45 – 17:30

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. G. Mahrouse

The course is devoted to understanding the gendered dimensions of colonial/imperial relations of power and resistance both in historical and contemporary contexts. The main themes covered in the course include settler colonialism in Canada; knowledge, representations and power; contemporary challenges and resistance to anti‑imperialist struggles; and post‑colonial analyses of current economic and political relations.

Prerequisites: 30 credits which include WSDB 290, 291 and 380 or permission of the Instructor.

Note: Students who have taken this course under WSDB 498R may not take this course for credit.

WSDB 498E/4      Seminar in Women’s Studies: Women and Human Rights Advocacy

Winter

Sem. A

--W---

10:15 – 13:00

SGW

Rm. MU 101

Prof. T.B.A.

In spite of being marginal and oppressed, women’s communities and individuals facing injustice assert agency and contest the relations of power, as well as the conditions and/or the implications of their position. While much of this organizing has gone unnoticed by mainstream human rights movements, communities of women have demonstrated their ability to mobilize and resist. How do mainstream human rights frameworks address women’s issues and in what circumstances is this framework most useful or most harmful?  What strategies are women’s communities using to effect political change?  

Prerequisites: 30 credits which include WSDB 290, 291 or permission of the Instructor.

WSDB 498M/2      Seminar in Women’s Studies: Arab Feminism

Fall

Sem. A

---J--

10:15 – 13:00

SGW

Rm: MU 101

Prof. T.B.A.

The relevance of feminism to Arab women has been contested both from within and also by outsiders who have frequently stereotyped and superimposed set paradigms about Arab women.   This course is
designed to familiarize students with feminist theory from the perspective of Arab feminists in the Arab
world as well as in the Diaspora. The course will pay particular attention to the ways that Arabness as a
pan--‐nationalist construction and identity marker intersects with constructions of feminism as a Western importation.  In order to situate Arab feminisms today, the course will focus on some of the major events and preoccupations that shape Arab feminist discourses. 

Prerequisites: 30 credits which include WSDB 290, 291 or permission of the Instructor.