Courses

CWGS 2011-2012 course timetable (PDF)

WGS1000H Theories, Histories, Feminism
What is the context in which we now study histories and theories of feminism? This course will identify some themes and concepts important to feminisms of the past and evaluate them in light of new historical conditions. It will interrogate the status of feminism and examine its place and value in contemporary thought. What, for instance, can be said in the name of women? How do we understand sexual difference? And under what sign of sex? How do we understand feminisms relationship to race and class beyond simplified analyses of intersectionality? Why the move to transnational feminism?

WGS1001H Feminism, Transnationalism and Postcolonialism
Over the past fifteen years, feminist studies has been defined by a turn towards transnational and postcolonial perspectives. In this course, we will conduct a genealogy of this turn, reviewing some defining texts and reflecting on their impact. We will examine the political and theoretical milieu in which transnational and postcolonial approaches have gained currency. We will explore the kinds of questions that are facilitated, and also those that are eclipsed, by such approaches.

WGS1002H Feminist Methodologies and Epistemologies
This course provides a theoretical and thematic overview of feminist methodologies and epistemologies, incorporating and assessing competing truth and knowledge claims associated with specific modes of inquiry. Critical questions of concern pertain to the positionality and gaze of the researcher confronted with intersecting identities, the choice of ideological stances, dilemmas of ‘otherness,’ insider/outsider locations, and the ethical and political dimensions of research. We will critically examine how researchers negotiate subject/identity positions, transcend methodological boundaries and limitations in the construction of knowledge, link theory with practice and challenge assumptions of the epistemic dominance of specific modes of inquiry. Emphasis will be placed on the pragmatics of feminist inquiry in order to encourage reflexive engagement with feminist methodologies and epistemologies, as applied in practice through self-selected research projects.

WGS Research Seminar
The WGS Research Seminar is a student-focused monthly open forum, for the presentation of work-in-progress engaged in interdisciplinary feminist studies and its many intersections. Similar to a departmental colloquium, the seminar’s goal is to foster friendly, yet critically engaged, conversation and to feature the excellent emerging scholarship by graduate students and faculty. The research seminar’s overarching goal is to create opportunities for regular participation in the intellectual life of interdisciplinary feminist studies research here on campus. The WGS Research Seminar is scheduled monthly on a Wednesday, from 3:00-5:00p.m. Collaborative WGS students must attend 2/3 of the seminars in a year to pass this program requirement; for collaborative PhD students they must also present at least once before graduating, typically near the end of their degree. The WGS Research Seminar will also substitute for and enhance the functions currently performed by the previous pass/fail course WGS3000H, Advanced Research Seminar in Women’s Studies, by moving opportunities to present research to the dissertation phase of the Ph.D., and by more continuously drawing together graduate students at all levels as an intellectual community. Unlike WGS3000H, the WGS Research Seminar is an open forum, not a course. To view the seminar schedule, click here.