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.

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. Visit the Departmental web site at Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies for further information.

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.