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.

This course provides students with an understanding of how Black Feminist Performance is read, interpreted and experienced in popular culture and everyday life. The course focuses on texts and cultural work produced by feminist scholars, critics and artists who engage with race, gender and sexuality across multiple sites.

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.

This course is an introduction to creative nonfiction as both a genre and a methodological tool for a variety of fields. It explores creative narrative approaches by professional writers in the form of journalism, documentary, ethnography, memoir, and narrative essay. This course also serves to begin and/or strengthen students’ own writing practice through craft-oriented workshops. Students explore ideas about product and process, form and meaning. Students will experiment with syntactic structures to explore how the form of language serves, or fails to serve, intention and the expression of meaning that may be understood and interpreted by others.

Writing communication is a social act that both shapes and is shaped by community. Students in this course develop a narrative portfolio based on research into the experiences of individuals within a community that interests them. The course aims to enhance students’ storytelling by incorporating aspects of community such as unwritten rules, community language and nomenclature, rituals, history, ironic juxtaposition, and profiles of community members. Readings include a mix of student-authored and contemporary professional works.

Examines theory and offers practice in creating content for Social Media. The course explores the growth of the Web, from information gathering to interactive and cooperative information/opinion dissemination. Students will critically examine the rhetorical practices of Social Media users and how these practices currently shape communications. Students will create and maintain individual content creation projects.

Examines theory and offers practice in nonfiction narrative with a specialized purpose. Students will explore conceptions of genre and the way genre shapes, and is shaped by, the social context of communications.

This course provides an introduction to journalism and examines journalism’s role in a democratic society. Students learn the fundamentals of journalistic writing, with a focus on news and reporting. The course examines news formats and styles, sources, interviews, research, structure, and other fundamentals. The course functions as a newsroom, with students producing several reported articles throughout the term, and includes guest talks and workshops with practicing journalists.

In this course, students design and carry out writing through a series of research techniques. Students learn to select and evaluate expert and scientific information from primary sources and produce content for an array of different media. A critical reading program exposes students to research-based writing. Assignments are aimed at developing professional skills across different forms and topics.

Introduction to Technical Communication serves as an introduction to the academic and professional fields of technical writing and communication. It explores strategies for analyzing organizational contexts, including professional audiences, professional purposes for writing, and organizational cultures. Assignments will build skills in technical writing, document design, documentation, accessibility, and ethical considerations for communication in professional settings.

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.

Examines conventions and standard practices when scientists write for other scientists in academic science journals, in conference and poster presentations, and in grant applications. This course focuses on presenting primary and secondary research. Humanities and social science students will gain specialized skills in technical writing and editing. Science students will learn the writing practices expected in professional labs and research groups. Students will present an article-length paper presenting primary research findings and a conference poster presenting the same findings to a scientific audience.

Examines the best practices of science writers and journalists who, based on research published in science journals, communicate scientific information to an educated audience which lacks specialized training. Science students will learn techniques for educating and informing public audiences. Humanities and social science students will learn to access and present current scientific information in engaging narrative. This course examines scientific writing and journalistic writing about science.

Examines language by approaching it through its social users -- ethnic groups, genders, and social classes -- and its contextualized usages -- the languages of publishing, advertising, law, technical communications, academe and the electronic media. The course explores the functions of these languages and the roles of such forces as dictionaries, social change, and new communications technologies in the evolution of these languages.

Examines written history as rhetoric and considers various conceptions of history and procedures for historical research and writing with reference to a range for models from Thucydides to contemporary writers of specialized and local histories. Students will conceptualize, design, and carry out primary source historical research to produce original history using locally available sources and materials.

Examines the rhetoric of speech drawing on theorists from Plato to Havelock to Ong, and considers implications of "great leap models" that present orality and literacy on a continuum. This course considers a range of oral practices from informal to formal, and from spontaneous to research-based and examines a range of rhetorical modes: dialogue, storytelling, reporting, debate and presentational address. Significant course time will be devoted to students' oral performance, both individual and team-based.

This course approaches reading and listening as time-bound processes by which we sense and make sense of the world around us. Reading and listening are not to be reduced merely to how we consume written or aural texts, but rather will be explored as the perceptual and cognitive activities that structure our sense of time, space, self and environment. We will place a particular emphasis on reading and listening in contemporary digital culture by engaging selectively with fundamental concepts in critical theory, as well as recent work in media and sound studies.

Examines organizational discourse with special attention to financial analysis and financial documents as rhetorical elements. Students will design and carry out primary research into organizations such as publicly listed companies and non-profit organizations and will examine different modes for reporting research findings. Principles of discourse analysis and genre theory provide a conceptual framework. Students do not need backgrounds in accounting or finance to manage this course.

This course examines how professionals in a variety of contexts communicate data. The course explores the growing relevance and allure of data in all its forms. Students will learn to interpret data to tell a story through numbers by creating infographics, writing informative articles from their own data mining, and presenting further findings at the end of the semester.

Examines theory and practice of editing in a professional communications environment. The course will consider principles of editing and the editorial process as it applies to various forms of writing, from daily news, to magazines, books, web pages and blogs. Study will include examination of the building blocks of an editor's skills - grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation - and the means employed by an editor working with a writer to achieve clarity, accuracy and immediate comprehension.