Instructor: Dr. Jemima Pierre
Critical anti-colonial and feminist analyses of colonial and racial subjugation, as well as the many modalities of indigenous and minority resistance.
Term 2
Description:
GRSJ 401: Gender, Body & Society
Instructor: Dr. Kim Snowden
An interdisciplinary examination of the body, exploring how social relations and space are implicated in the constitution and experience of gendered bodies and identities, with an emphasis on feminist analyses of body-societal relations. Recommended pre-requisites: either all of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102 or third-year standing.
Monstrous Bodies/Monstrous Texts
Description: This course will address the ways that the body is rendered monstrous through discourses of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and racism with a focus on representations of monstrous bodies in literature, film, and popular culture and feminist and social justice theories of monstrosity. The class will explore the ways in which reproduction and reproductive politics are represented in fiction and film, how popular culture represents and reproduces monstrous bodies, and will critically engage with the posthuman monster and its reproduction through technology, media, and popular culture. We will read and analyze a variety of fiction and film including novels, short stories, speculative fiction, science fiction, horror, and young adult fiction. Fictional texts, media, and authors include: Octavia Butler, Daniel Heath Justice, Hiromi Goto, Rebecca Roanhorse, Silvia-Moreno Garcia, Kim Fu, Tania de Rozario, Alien, Ex Machina, Mad Max: Fury Road, Ginger Snaps, and others.
GRSJ 328: Theories of Subjectivity
Instructor: TBA
How feminist scholarship has shaped and reinterpreted accounts of the subject, drawing on such traditions as structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, postmodernism, and Queer Theory. Recommended pre-requisites: All of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102. Restricted to GRSJ Majors and Minors in third-year standing or above.
Term 2
Description:
GRSJ 327: Theories of Representation & Difference
Instructor: Dr. Alifa Bandali
Feminist scholarship emphasizing languages and processes of representation and the construction of difference in cultural discourses and institutions. Recommended pre-requisites: all of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102. Restricted to GRSJ Majors and Minors in third-year standing or above.
Description: This course draws on interdisciplinary feminist scholarship with emphasis on the processes of representation. We explore the role and histories of language and discourse (to name a few) and how they enable and construct difference in everyday life and what role institutions play. Important to our course will be to consider some of the ruptures, tensions and shifts in feminist theories of representation and difference.
GRSJ 326: The Politics of Gender, Families & Nation-Building
Instructor: Dr. Alifa Bandali
Investigation of historical and contemporary scholarship on the diversity of families, focusing on differences of gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and social class within and across national borders. Recommended pre-requisites: all of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102. Restricted to GRSJ Majors and Minors in third-year standing or above.
Description: This course thinks with some of the theories and realities of gender, sexuality, race and class relations as they relate to the family, nation and state. Threaded through our course will be understandings of belonging. We will ask: who is able to belong, and what does family, nation and state have to do with it? We will examine contributions made by feminist, anti-colonial, anti-racist and LGBTQ2SIA+ scholars to challenge normative ideologies and research that re-iterate neoliberal, settler colonial, cis-gendered, heteronormative and racialized understandings that have informed dominant conceptions of family, nation and home to name a few.
GRSJ 325: Anti-Colonial & Feminist Qualitative Methods
Instructor: Dr. Elle Walks
Data collection techniques, the politics of interpretation, and the formulation of a research proposal using a feminist, anti-racist framework. Recommended pre-requisites: all of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102. Restricted to GRSJ Majors and Minors in third-year standing or above.
Description: This course serves as an introduction and overview to feminist, racialized, and anti-colonial qualitative research methodologies. The course covers the debates around what ‘feminist research’ is and what it should be, as well as how racialized and Indigenous communities have specific ethical considerations and methodological approaches. Overall, students will gain an understanding of diverse feminist approaches, and design a research proposal suited to their research interests.
GRSJ 316: Queer & Trans of Colour Theorizing
Instructor: TBA
The intellectual and political interventions of queer of colour theorizing in the gender and sexual politics of racial and imperial projects, including its engagements with women of colour feminisms, settler colonial and indigenous studies, and immigration and diaspora studies.
Description:
GRSJ 315: Critical Racial Theories
Instructor: Dr. Caroline Locher-Lo
Critical theories of racial and cultural difference. Initial formulations of theses against scientific racism and their later transformation by historical, social, and global-historical accounts of racial subjugation.
Term 2
Description: This course will explore theories on race, ethnicity, and culture–from the dawn of humankind into the present–with a focus on how these notions have been produced and reproduced. Students will utilise critical and theoretical approaches to delve into ethnic, racial, and cultural inequality in Canada and beyond. Numerous prominent racial theories will be called upon to provide lenses through which we will critically analyse the concepts of “race”, ethnicity, racism, identity, belonging, superiority, inferiority, orientalism, eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, dualism, hybridity, otherness, whiteness, essentialism, prejudice and bias, power, dominance, multiculturalism, xenophobia, diversity, cultural competence, and superdiversity. In essence, the course will examine a broad range of theories and notions pertaining to racial and cultural dynamics—and more importantly, their lasting implications.
For a deeper dive into the complexities of inequality, prejudice, and marginalisation, we will also dissect the structural circumstances and underlying conditions within which inequality is created, sustained, and normalised. Systemic structures of inequality will be explored through the notions of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, classism, and transnationalism; and theories such as critical race theory, representation theory, structural-functional theory, and social conflict theory. This course will ultimately equip students with the critical thinking skills, sociological lenses, and conceptual footings to independently analyse and deconstruct unjust social phenomena in the contexts of race and culture. GRSJ315 201 also aims to illuminate the critical necessity of recognizing and responding to inequality in the contemporary era.
GRSJ 311: African/Black Women in the Americas
Instructor: TBA
An interdisciplinary survey of gender studies and histories of African/Black women in the Americas from the beginning of the slave trade to the present. Recommended pre-requisites: either all of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102 or third-year standing.
Term 2
Description:
GRSJ 310: Gender, Race, Social Justice & Health
Instructor: Dr. Elle Walks
Interdisciplinary introduction to gender and health issues using selected theoretical frameworks. Recommended pre-requisites: either all of GRSJ 101, GRSJ 102 or third-year standing.
Term 1
Description: This interdisciplinary course takes an intersectional and structural approach to issues of Gender, Race, Social Justice, and Health. The course is mainly focused on COVID, Reproductive Justice, and trans populations, although through these foci, other populations (ie: Indigenous and im/migrant) and health issues (ie: physician encounters and disability) are also of concern. In-class engagement is required.