From vaccines and contraception, to erectile dysfunction drugs and clinical trials, biomedicine and biotechnologies are increasingly powerful and transformative modalities transnationally. Incorporating methods from feminist postcolonial, cultural, media and technoscience studies, this course examines biomedicine by critically attending to its intersections with gender, race, sexuality, colonialism, capitalism and culture.

A critical interdisciplinary investigation of how gender impacts on central topics in disability studies: the normalized body and cultural representations; sexuality; violence; the cognitive and social roles of medicine; transnational perspectives on disability; and disability rights and issues of social justice including the experience of people with disabilities and responses of resistance.

This seminar analyzes human rights responses to particular gendered sites of historical repression including examples of genocide, torture and war. It includes reactions generated from government and international organizations as well as remedies developed by victims/survivors. As part of this course, students may have the option of participating in an international learning experience that will have an additional cost and application process.

This course situates feminist ethics within the context of Western moral theories, and will consider the challenges that have been posed to this tradition from careful consideration of the category of women's experience. It will examine foundational texts in the history of ethics as well as more recent feminist interventions in such paradigms. The course complements the study of the theoretical texts with analysis and discussion of contemporary social and political issues pertaining to gendered selves.

This course challenges the notion of the archives as institutions and repositories of historical truths. It develops students’ archival analytical skills using critical feminist intersectional, decolonial, diasporic, and queer approaches. Students learn to reimagine and rethink archival spaces.

What can diaspora studies teach us about sexuality studies? And, what can sexuality studies teach us about diaspora studies? This class examines the relationship between diaspora studies, sexuality studies, and feminist studies by focusing on how diasporic movements of bodies have altered and transformed modern conceptualizations of gender and sexuality. It will investigate how diasporic subjects negotiate their relationship to constructs of home and (un)belonging.

A special topic by a guest instructor. Topics vary from year to year. Check the web site for information about this offering each term.

The practicum allows advanced WGS students to combine theory and practice through part-time unpaid placement with a community agency, government body, educational or social change organization.

This course examines the theories, histories and experiences of 'queer' in Canada and transnationally. It incorporates the diversity of emergent cultural expressions of LGBTQ sexuality understood beyond definitions of social identities.

This course examines the intricate relationships among feminism, culture, power and representation. Major themes include: the construction of gendered, sexualized, and racialized subjectivities; ideologies and the media; bio-and communication technologies; neoliberalism and neocolonialism; and counter interpretations, reclamations, and remixes of hegemonic cultural forms.

Student-initiated project of reading and research, supervised by a member of the Department. Primarily intended for students in a Major program. After obtaining a supervisor, a student must apply to the Department of Historical Studies. A maximum of 1.0 credit in a reading course is permitted.