Faculty of ArtThe following are the 2018/19 graduate courses offered at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Scroll down for course descriptions.
Winter 2018/19
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: Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva | CSIS 500 CSIS 500 (3): Critical Studies in Sexuality: Multidisciplinary Approaches: Queer Theory: Sexual Subjects/Sexual Politics Term 1 Critical Studies of Sexuality and Gender has become increasingly influential in our understanding of social formations, political institutions, scientific knowledge, and cultural expression. We will begin with an overview of Queer theory tracing Michel Foucault’s understanding of the ways that technologies such as forecasts, education systems, medicine practices, and statistical measures largely determine ideas of “bios”, “sex”, and their concomitant constellations of discursive formations. As we move through the course, we will investigate the ‘sexual’ dimensions of arts, economies, geographies, histories, literatures, politics and psychologies. We will interrogate contemporary systems of bio-power that constitute the individual into public systems, codes, nodes and networks. Along the way, we will consider how models of intersectionality inflect and deflect sexuality studies — approaches to complexity that attend to the ways that sexuality and gender are defined and entwined with other simultaneously rigid and amorphous categories of classification such as ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, health, identity, nationality, race, and religion. Instructor: Dr. Janice Stewart |  GRSJ 505A (3): Directed Reading |