This course introduces students to women's position in Canada as political actors and provides gender-based analysis in relation to public policy and law in Canada. Students will study women's historical participation in and exclusion from policy decision-making processes, and evaluate the impact of feminism and women's activism on Canadian public policies. Using intersectional framework, the course will also examine different ways in which public policies can be made more responsive to gender and diversity concerns as well as the role public policy can play in overcoming gender inequalities. We will investigate key historical changes in public policies affecting Canadian women in such areas as family, workplace, education, poverty-welfare, sexuality and reproductive laws, immigration and refugee laws, and global issues. The course concludes with women's achievements in this area.

This course studies how the notion of family is conceptualized and organized transnationally and historically and examines the multiple familiar roles of women in diverse contexts.

This courses provides a richly rewarding opportunity for students in their second year to work in the research project of a professor in return for 299Y course credit. Students enrolled have an opportunity to become involved in original research, learn research methods and share in the excitement and discovery of acquiring new knowledge. Participating faculty members post their project descriptions for the following summer and fall-winter sessions in early February and students are invited to apply in early March. See Experiential and International Opportunities for more details.

The course explores historical and contemporary debates regarding the construction of gender in Islam. It examines historic and literary representations, ethnographic narratives, legal and human rights discourses, the politics of veiling, and Islamic feminism. This course situates Muslim women as complex, multidimensional actors engaged in knowledge production and political and feminist struggles, as opposed to the static, victim-centered, Orientalist images that have regained currency in the representation of Muslim women in the post 9/11 era.

Sustainability considers humanity’s relationship to the environment. It reflects on a feminist politic of care and the specific ways people are affected along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship. It explores how feminist scholarship seeks to direct policy change and respond to ecological and climatic crises.

This course examines the process of migration to Canada from a gender perspective, noting the interplay between structural impediments and women's own agency. Historical perspectives on migration and government policy, and on ways women have rebuilt lives and shaped communities.

This course engages with feminist theoretical models and approaches to examine the ways in which the “body” has been constructed, enacted, and embodied through aesthetic forms like photography, cinema, music, performance, film and to understand how women, queer, and racialized artists use aesthetics as a response to social and political crises. This course considers what constitutes the relationship between the political and the aesthetic and approaches aesthetics as important sites of ideological and political tension.

A special topic by guest instructor. Topics vary from year to year. Check the web site for current offerings.

This course examines how Black Feminisms are theorized, produced and practiced, by predominantly Black women scholars, activists and cultural producers located in the diaspora - Canada, the United States and the Caribbean.

This course introduces students to LGBTIQ themed films and visual culture from Africa and the diaspora. It analyzes gender and sexuality from the perspective of black/African filmmakers, visual artists, and theorists.

This course examines how gender and sexuality intersect with factors such as nationhood, race, language, politics, religion, geography, and the arts in Quebec. After six classroom sessions, the class will travel to Montreal for 4-5 days, where they will visit museums, cultural institutions and attend guest lectures at various institutions. This experiential learning opportunity allows students to engage in deeper learning to see the issues and histories they have been studying come to life. Ancillary fees apply for this course.

This course examines the histories of activism for and by women in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) from the colonial period to the present. Topics include colonialism, the Partition of 1947, war, religion, development, labour, nationalism, and the family/reproductive rights.

This course explores themes related to Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism in North America. The course centres on how Indigenous women engage in decolonial practices as a response to histories of colonialism and genocide. Themes include status and tribal nations; oral history and narrative; violence and resistance, knowledge construction and pedagogy, community, self-governance and freedom.

This course discusses, historicizes, and theorizes the undeniable connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our planet. This course engages with Indigenous feminisms, Black feminisms, and queer/decolonial/anticolonial thought to build a response to historic and ongoing colonial, gender-based, and environmental violence through grounded justice practices.

This course's central focus is an examination of the way race and gender operate together in structuring social inequality. It offers the analytical tools for exploring the interconnections between race and gender, along with other systems of domination, and incorporates perspectives from women of colour and from women in the global "South."

From forced sterilization and sex-selective abortion, to selfies, prisons, and biosecurity, this course conceptualizes suspicion and technologies of surveillance in transnational perspectives. Informed by a range of interdisciplinary scholarship, namely critical transnational feminist and Black feminist texts, it interrogates how surveillance has long enacted racialized, gendered, and biopolitical injustices.

Working with gender studies' theories, this course draws on social and cultural constructions and practices to offer a complex reading of masculinities. It explores contemporary debates of the ways in which masculinities have been theorized and experienced in practices and identity formation.

This course explores how gender, sexuality and other intersectional identity markers work within and against structures of privilege and oppression in the world of sport. It takes up topics and themes that inform popular culture and influence the construction of social norms.

The course examines how computer technologies facilitate women's participation in cyberspace and how women define and construct their involvement. It studies the simultaneous generation of new modalities of empowerment and disempowerment including language, role-playing, communication, gaming, and networking and conduits for sex trafficking, harassment and other forums of exploitation.

This course discusses the construction and representation of women in Canadian and International law. It analyzes specific contexts and historical issues including employment, sexuality, reproduction, deviance and a variety of justice theories relating to gender.

An interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship of women to a variety of psychological and psychoanalytical theories and practices. Topics include gender development, stereotyping and gender roles, the impact of gender on intimate relationships, women and the psychological establishment, women's mental health issues and feminist approaches to psychoanalysis.

Feminist theories and frameworks examining the interconnections between women, health and biomedicine in North America and transnationally.

Examines the diversity and shared experiences of women in western and non-western societies. This is primarily a history course, supplemented with some contemporary perspectives. It compares women in diverse economic, cultural and religious settings. 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.

Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) analyzes how society, culture, education, and intersectional power relationships shape women’s lives and their career choices and studies the underlying gendered issues in these professions.

An examination of the complexities and the processes of colonialism/postcolonialism. Emphasis is placed on writings by feminists in the Global South, and the diaspora, to explore how subordination was forged and resisted in specific colonial and postcolonial settings.

This course considers the construction and mobilization of the gendered, sexed and sexualized subject within its historical, cultural and geographical contexts and seeks to understand the role of love in the construction of gendered identity and sexuality. Through its examination of texts on love, passion and desire, it investigates the lives and treatment of selected women in feminist scholarship in order to think through how ideas about race, class, sexuality, desire and danger are mediated in and through the body.

This course offers a critical overview of contemporary theories of sexuality, focusing on transnational discussions by feminists and queer theorists.

This course will focus on how gender and violence shapes and impacts the lives of women and LGBT persons. The course will explore the concept of gender and the myriad of ways in which it has been shaped by historical, and contextual relations of power and privilege. The course will explore how scholars in the feminist/women's movement have defined the concept of violence as it impacts women and girls.

What is the relationship between aesthetic form and sexuality? Drawing on theories and methods from feminist and sexuality studies, this course engages this question to understand the emergence of queer aesthetics as a response to social and political crisis, whilst comprehending how LGBTIQ+ artists create livable worlds by imagining otherwise.

An opportunity to carry out an extended research project under the supervision of a faculty member. A proposal must be presented to the faculty member and consent obtained before the end of the July registration period.