Courses

For more information about Women and Gender Studies undergraduate courses at the University of Toronto, please consult the Faculty of Arts & Science 2011-2012 Calendar.

CORE COURSES

WGS 160Y Introduction to Women and Gender Studies
An integrated and historical approach to social relations of gender, race, class, sexuality and disability, particularly as they relate to women’s lives and struggles across different locales, including Canada.

WGS 260H Texts, Theories, Histories (formerly WGS262H1)
Examines modes of theories that shaped feminist thought and situates them historically and transnationally so as to emphasize the social conditions and conflicts in which ideas and politics arise, change and circulate.
Recommended Preparation: WGS 160Y.
Exclusion: WGS 262Y.

WGS 261Y Scientific Constructions of Sex and Gender
This course was discontinued as of the 2011-2012 academic year.

WGS 271H/WGS 271Y Gender, Race and Class in Contemporary Popular Culture
A critical examination of institutions, representations and practices associated with contemporary popular, mass-produced, local and alternative culture. Students will develop skills in media literacy in relation to representations of race, class and gender in a variety of popular cultural forms.

WGS 272H/WGS 272Y Queer Cultures
This course was discontinued as of the 2012-2013 academic year.
The course is now listed as the third level as WGS 376H

WGS 273Y Gender and Environmental (In)Justice
What does it mean to think about environmental justice from a feminist perspective? In this class, it means we look critically at how problems Get identified, explained, and prioritized. We do this in ways that are transnational in scope, and interdisciplinary in focus. We bring Scientific assessments, community complaints, and government responses into conversation with one another, even when they appear to be speaking very different languages. Students in this class will have the opportunity to think comparatively about how human and non-human nature, ecological crises, political economies and environmental movements are raced, classed, and gendered, in a variety of geographical, historical and cultural contexts. And together we will try to answer challenging questions such as: Does environmental justice include social justice, or are they in conflict? What might environmental justice and activism involve?

This course will actively engage students in the issues raised above through the use of actor narratives, case studies and an introduction of Theoretical frameworks. Assignments will be participatory and reflexive, and there will be opportunities for the use of new media through the course website and blogging platforms. Not all assigned work will be text-based (written) in order to provide students with the opportunity to express themselves in ways other than the traditional essay.

WGS 334H Topic for Spring 2012: TBA

WGS 335H Topic for Spring 2013: Women and Revolution in the Middle East
This course examines the complex and conflictual relations between women and revolutionary struggles and focuses on a number of theoretical and empirical issues relevant to the Middle East and North Africa context. The course is open to both senior-level undergraduate and graduate students with different requirements.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y

WGS 336H Topic for Fall 2012: TBA
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.

WGS 350H Masculinity and the Human in an Age of Terror
This course conceptualizes racialized masculinities and violence within postcolonial and anti-imperial discussions on contemporary discourses on terror. Working with concepts in gender and queer studies, this course draws on cultural production to offer a complex reading of masculinities and what it means to be human in conflict zones.
Recommended preparation: WGS 260Y/WGS 260H.

WGS 360H Making Knowledge as if the World Mattered
Teaches skills in feminist approaches to making knowledge. Introduces feminist practices for doing research and navigating the politics of production and exchange. Develops skills for conveying knowledge to the wider world, such as through papers, reports, performances, new media, art.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y

WGS 362H Topic for Spring 2013: Dreams of Freedom
An upper level course. Subjects of study vary from year to year.
Drawing inspiration from Amira Mittermaier’s recent book, Dreams that Matter, this course invites us to consider the dreamscapes of freedom, both literal and metaphoric. What new spaces can be imagined and opened up when freedom is used as a starting point for analysis and being-ness rather than as an endpoint of a set of tangled relationships with domination? Why does freedom seem so possible at certain historical moments and entirely elusive at others? Can dreams of freedom ever atrophy? These are some of the questions we will puzzle through as we read a range of texts that move across different geographies of time, disciplines, and genres including the aesthetics of novel and flim. Authors include Mittermaier, Krishnamurti, Toni Morrison, Beryl Fletcher, George Lamming, Arundhati Roy, and Lee Maracle.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.

WGS 363H Topic for Fall 2012: Gendered Labour Around the World
This course will focus on masculinities and femininities in workplace settings, with an emphasis on service work around the world. We will discuss workers’ lived experiences of gender regimes which are embedded within dynamics of class, race and nation. The relationship between gender processes and workplace hierarchies will be explored.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.

WGS 365H Gender Issues in the Law
Topic An upper level course. Subjects of study vary from year to year.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.
Not offered in 2012-13.

WGS 366H Gender and Disability
A critical interdisciplinary investigation of how gender impacts on central topics in disability studies: ableism as a political ideology; the normalized body and cultural representations; sexuality, violence and nurturance relations; the cognitive and social roles of medicine; transnational perspectives on disability, disability rights and issues of social justice.
Recommended Preparation: WGS 160Y; WGS 367H. Not offered in 2012-13.

WGS 367H The Politics of Gender and Health
Examines diverse traditions and normative models of health (e.g., biomedicine, social constructionist, aboriginal health) in conjunction with analyses of the origin, politics, and theoretical perspectives of contemporary Women’s Health Movements. Topics include fertility, sexuality, poverty, violence, labour, aging, (dis)ability, and health care provision.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.

WGS 368H Gender and Cultural Difference: Transnational Perspectives
This course was discontinued as of the 2012-2013 academic year.

WGS 369H Studies in Post-Colonialism
Examines gendered representations of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability in a variety of colonial, neo-colonial, and “post”-colonial contexts. Topics may include the emergence of racialist, feminist, liberatory and neoconservative discourses as inscribed in literary texts, historical documents, cultural artifacts and mass media.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.

WGS 370H Utopian Visions, Activist Realities
Examines gendered representations of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability in a variety of colonial, neo-colonial, and “post”-colonial contexts. Topics may include the emergence of racialist, feminist, liberatory and neoconservative discourses as inscribed in literary texts, historical documents, cultural artifacts and mass media.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.

WGS 372H Women and Psychology/Psychoanalysis
An interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship of women to a variety of psychological and psychoanalytical theories and practices. Topics may include women and the psychological establishment; women’s mental health issues; and feminist approaches to psychoanalysis.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 373H Gender and Violence
An interdisciplinary study of gendered violence in both historical and contemporary contexts including topics such as textual and visual representations; legal and theoretical analyses; structured violence; war and militarization; sexual violence; and resistance and community mobilization.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y; WGS 350H.

WGS 374H Feminist Studies in Sexuality
Sexual agency as understood and enacted by women in diverse cultural and historical contexts. An exploration of the ways in which women have theorized and experienced sexual expectations, practices and identities.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y; WGS271Y.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 375H Colonialism, Sexuality, Spirituality and the Law
Examines the challenge indigenous knowledges and practices posed to colonialism by analyzing Spanish and British legal codes promulgated by both church and state. Focusing upon the links between sexuality and spirituality, explores how gender shaped the social dynamics of conquest and resistance and draws out the implications for contemporary colonialisms.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS376H Queen Cultures (formerly WGS272H1/WGS272Y1)
Examines the history of queer and the cultures that have been imagined from it. Understood in terms of what does not conform to sexual normative, queer does not just define social identities but references a range of emergent cultural expressions.
Exclusion: WGS272H1/WGS272Y1
Recommended Preparation: WGS160Y1

WGS380H Aboriginal, Black and Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars
Examines the gendered effects of white settler colonization on/in 21st century Canada and traces the formation of multiple settlements by examining black and immigrant populations. The course poses a challenge to contemporary formulations of diaspora and multiculturalism. It examines solidarity movements within and across these three communities.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y.
Not Offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 385H Gender and Neoliberalism
Reviews major feminist transnational, Marxist and Foucauldian approaches to the study of neoliberalism. Adopts a comparative, historical and global approach to the ways that gender is implicated in state restructuring, changing roles for corporations and non-governmental organizations, changing norms for personhood, sovereignty and citizenship, and changing ideas about time/space.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y. Not Offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 386H Gender and Critical Political Economy
Offers a critical analysis of political economy, its historical and contemporary contentions and the ‘ruptures’ that open the space for alternative theorizing beyond ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ thinking, by inserting gender and intersecting issues of power, authority and economic, valorization across multiple and changing spheres: domestic, market and state.
Recommended preparation: WGS 160Y; WGS 273Y.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

400-SERIES COURSES: BALLOTING PROCEDURE

During the first round of ROSI enrolment, 400-Series courses are reserved for Specialists and Majors in Women and Gender Studies. Enrolment restrictions vary from course to course and pre-requisites will be enforced during the first round of enrolment. During the second round of enrolment, students must enrol at the department and fill out the appropriate 400-level ballot form. Please note that students cannot enrol in WGS470Y via ROSI, and therefore must ballot at the department. Ballot forms are available from the Women and Gender Studies Program Office, Room 2036, Wilson Hall, New College, 40 Willcocks Street. Forms must be signed and approved by both the course instructor and the Undergraduate Coordinator for the Women and Gender Studies Program. Please note that students in their first or second year of study (with 8.5 credits or less) are not permitted to enrol in 400-level courses.

400-SERIES COURSES

WGS 425H Women and Issues of International Development
Provides a gender analysis of the political economy of development and globalization, and a critical overview of related feminist theoretical, policy, and strategy debates. Issues explored include feminisation of labour, gender mainstreaming, trafficking in women, poverty-alleviation strategies, and transnational feminist organizing.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Exclusion: WGS 425Y.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 426H Gender and Globalization: Transnational Perspectives
Critically examines current interdisciplinary scholarship on globalization, its intersections with gender, power structures, and feminized economies. Related socio-spatial reconfigurations, ‘glocal’ convergences, and tensions are explored, with emphasis on feminist counter-narratives and theorizing of globalization, theoretical debates on the meanings and impacts of globalization, and possibilities of resistance, agency, and change.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Exclusion: WGS 463H1, fall session 2009.

WGS 430H Queer Diasporas
This course is an overview of the growing field of Queer Diasporas. It considers how queer people inhabit transnational spaces. It also examines how diaspora, as an analytical framework that challenges meanings of un/belonging, might be queered. Alongside theoretical works on queer diasporas, this course draws on cultural/aesthetic texts to think through its major themes.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in the field of Sexuality Studies (WGS or other).
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 434H Advanced Topics in Women and Gender Studies
Topic for Fall 2012: Black Diasporic Feminisms: Modernity, Freedom, Citizenship
This course introduces students to feminist genealogies of the black diaspora. It addresses the contexts and movements that generated key questions. It asks how these interventions disclose preoccupations with modernity, freedom and citizenship. Topics include history, trauma and memory, sexuality and the female body, confinement and deportation, and political communities.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

WGS 435H Advanced Topics in Women and Gender Studies
Topics for Spring 2013: Culture and History of a Nuclear Age
Interdisciplinary and transnational examination of the nuclear age. Considers such epistemologies as the “nuclear family” ideology and the cold war “Atom for Peace” campaign; feminism and the nucealr sciences; gender and sexual critique of the pro-and anti- nuclear discourse; and knowledge concerning the nuclear disasters and its aftermath.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

WGS 440H Gender and the Sacred
This course was discontinued as of the 2012-2013 academic year.

WGS 445H Migrations of the Sacred
Considers the gendered impact of migration on women’s indigenous spiritual practices, taking globalization as a political economic starting point. The course focuses on the lives of women whose experiences emblematize displacement and examines how women’s agency interrupts and transforms normative meanings of “tradition” and “modernity.”
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

WGS 451H Independent Study in Women and Gender Studies
Under supervision, students pursue topics in Women and Gender Studies not currently part of the curriculum.
Prerequisite: Permission of the Undergraduate Coordinator, Women and Gender Studies Program.

Deadline for Fall, 2011 Session: June 15, 2012
Deadline for Winter, 2011 Session: September 15, 2012

WGS 460Y Honours Seminar
Supervised undergraduate thesis project undertaken in the final year of study. Students attend a bi-weekly seminar to discuss research strategies, analytics, methods and findings. A required course for Specialist students.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

Application Deadline: June 15, 2012

WGS 461Y Advanced Topics in Women and Gender Studies
An upper-level seminar. Topics vary from year to year.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

WGS 462H Advanced Topics in Gender and History
An upper-level seminar. Topics vary from year to year.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y and a half course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 463H Advanced Topics in Gender Theory
An upper-level seminar. Topics vary from year to year.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 465H Special Topics in Gender and the Law
Senior students may pursue advanced study in gender and law. Topics vary from year to year.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, WGS 365H, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Not offered in 2012-2013.

WGS 470Y Community Engagement
The application of theoretical study to practical community experience. Advanced Women and Gender Studies students have the opportunity to apply knowledge acquired in the Women and Gender Studies curriculum through a practicum placement within a community organization.
Prerequisite: WGS 160Y, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.