Graduate Courses

The following are the 2019-20 graduate courses offered at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Scroll down for course descriptions.

Winter 2019/20

GRSJ 500 GRSJ 500 (3): Intersectional Issues in Social Justice and Equality Studies Term 1-2 A two-term seminar organized around the bi-weekly Wednesday Lecture Series, readings, discussions and faculty seminars. Required for first year MA and PhD students. Instructor: Dr. Dina Al-Kassim	GRSJ 501 GRSJ 501 (3): Issues in Decolonizing and Feminist Methodologies Term 2 This course aims to stimulate discussion around decolonizing feminist social research methodologies by examining alternative (research) practices in the social sciences, humanities and applied fields (e.g. planning, education, environment and natural resources, health, social work, etc.) that lead towards respectful, reciprocal and responsible dialogues in (re)producing and (re)generating knowledge and action. Learners will be tackling issues in decolonizing and feminist research methodologies by questioning as well as redressing common disciplinary, cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions around knowledge, knowledge production and distribution -- examining whose knowledge and what forms of knowledge bases matter, how these knowledge bases are acquired and disseminated as we search for more complex, nuanced, and diverse ways of dealing with research problems/issues, ethics and methods from feminist, anti-colonial and indigenous perspectives. Required for first year MA and PhD students. Instructor: Dr. Becki Ross	GRSJ 502 GRSJ 502 (3): Issues in Gender, Sexuality and Critical Race Theories Term 1 Introduces students to key issues at the intersection of Queer, Trans, Feminist and Critical Race Theories. We will examine a variety of cultural texts (eg, fiction, film) and new models of academic and cultural engagement with a radical democratic politics. Required for first year MA and PhD students. Instructor: Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva
GRSJ 515A GRSJ 515A (3): Critical and Creative Social Justice Studies Seminars Term 2 The potential of creative work to disrupt ingrained ideas and representations by appealing to the senses. Study and engage with academics, artists, and activists interested in how art contributes to critical and engaged social justice work. Instructor: TBA	GRSJ 511 GRSJ 511 (3): Difficult Knowledge: Ethics and Praxis of Research in Challenging Settings Term 1 During and in the aftermaths of mass violence, including genocide, war, displacement, state repression, slavery and disaster, questions of who is responsible and why, arise. What are the causes and consequences of mass violence? Who defines this and who is silenced? How is violence remembered and by whom? How do we listen to loss and foster an ethics of responsibility? These questions are not limited to public debate, nor the purview of state commissions, inquires and interventions. They become central to how we learn about history, a sense of who we are, and how we relate to one another. They are also profoundly imbricated in how we craft and shape research projects and engage with knowledge production. Instructor: Dr. Pilar Riano-Alcala	GRSJ 503D GRSJ 503D (3): Special Topics in Feminist Studies: Historical Memory & Social Reconstruction Term 2 Memory and social reconstruction explores the complex tensions, agents and social disputes on memory in societies undergoing crisis and in the afterlives of disaster, systemic abuse, dispossession and the breakdown of social worlds. Stressing the structural and ever present realities of structural violence, racism and colonialism, this course examines processes of social reconstruction and the many forms or mechanisms associated with these processes including international led programmatic interventions, national relief efforts, organized and non-organized social resistance, local level initiatives and micro practices of social repair. We will approach memory as cultural practice, as a complex and expressive social field shaped by power relations and in which various agents struggle for recognition in unequal fields of power. Memory, therefore, will be understood as a field in tension, where hierarchies, inequalities and social exclusions coexist in complex and dynamic ways, including creative and resurgent ways. For this end, the seminar is organized around significant themes and fields of practice in examining the relationships between memory and social reconstruction. Instructor: Dr. Pilar Riano-Alcala
GRSJ Directed Readings GRSJ 505A (3): Directed Reading Sec 002, Term 1 Sec 003, Term 2 Undertaken with the supervision of a faculty member selected by the student, with the approval of the GRSJ Graduate Chair. For form/instructions contact e-mail the GRSJ Office or phone 604-822-9171. Restricted to students in GRSJ graduate programs. GRSJ 505B (6): Directed Reading Sec 001, Term 1-2 Undertaken with the supervision of a faculty member selected by the student, with the approval of the GRSJ Graduate Chair. For form/instructions contact e-mail the GRSJ Office or phone 604-822-9171. Restricted to students in GRSJ graduate programs.