GNDS Course Descriptions
Expand each section below for more details on our course offerings. 1-page course outlines are available for download.
100 Level Courses
Section 1
Course Outline (DOCX)
Section 2
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: This course explores women, gender, and difference from feminist and anti-racist perspectives. It identifies the ways in which women’s activism, politics, and experiences intersect with other gendered identifications such as race, location, class, (dis)ability, and sexuality. Lessons and texts will introduce feminism, the body, colonialism, gender performance, and strategies of resistance.
Note: Also offered online. Consult Arts and Science Online. Learning Hours may vary.
Learning Hours: 120 (24 Lecture; 12 Tutorial; 84 Private Study)
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: This course explores women, gender, and difference from feminist and anti-racist perspectives. It identifies the ways in which women’s activism, politics, and experiences intersect with other gendered identifications such as race, location, class, (dis)ability, and sexuality. Lessons and texts will introduce feminism, the body, colonialism, gender performance, and strategies of resistance.
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: Explores popular culture from feminist and anti-racist perspectives, with attention to sexuality, gender, race and nation in a variety of media.
Note: Also offered online. Consult Arts and Science Online. Learning Hours may vary.
Learning Hours: 120 (24 Lecture; 12 Tutorial; 84 Private Study)
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: Explores popular culture from feminist and anti-racist perspectives, with attention to sexuality, gender, race and nation in a variety of media.
200 Level Courses
Description: A study of feminist narratives and gender politics in relationship to women’s lives from the 17th century forward with an emphasis upon global histories.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 2 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: Decades after the formal decolonization of former colonies, the power relations of the colonial world - and the racism it engendered - remain deeply embedded in the West, and are intrinsic to contemporary relations of globalization. This course explores European colonialism; historical and social constructions of ‘race’; the ongoing occupation of Indigenous peoples’ territories; and contemporary racism.
Learning Hours: 120 (24 Lecture; 12 Tutorial; 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 2 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: This course is an introduction to critical studies in sexuality and gender diversity and is designed to familiarize students with a myriad of theories and topics in the field. Students will learn about classical and contemporary theories of sex, gender, and sexuality and explore a spectrum of identities and experiences, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual, intersex, queer, Two-Spirit, non-binary, and asexual. Students will furthermore examine how these diverse gender and sexual identities intersect with experiences of race, Indigeneity, class, age, and (dis)ability.
The course is open to all students but required for students enrolled in the Certificate in Sexual and Gender Diversity. It is designed to introduce SXGD students to the field and prepare them for selecting future courses.
Note: Also offered online. Consult Arts and Science Online. Learning Hours may vary.
Note: Also offered at the Bader International Study Centre. Learning Hours may vary.
Learning Hours: 120 (24 Lecture; 12 Tutorial; 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 2 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (PDF)
Description:
This course is an introduction to studies in sexuality and gender diversity. It will survey the field and include topics such as classical inquiries into sexuality, contemporary theories on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer identities, sexual movements, human rights, sexual morality, pornography, global sex trade, and queer cultural production. This course is open to all students but required for students enrolled in the Certificate in Sexual and Gender Diversity. It is designed to introduce SXGD students to the field and prepare them for selecting future courses.
Note: Also offered at the Bader International Study Centre. Learning Hours may vary.
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: This lecture introduces students to prominent scholarship on reproductive justice theoretical framework and activism through feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and intersectional lenses which recognize the need to sustain families and communities. Students will explore the history of access to reproductive care and the challenges to this access that women of colour, Indigenous women, incarcerated people, disabled people, and trans and non-binary people face. Students will use a decolonial approach to examine laws and policies that impact the reproductive autonomy of marginalized peoples.
Learning Hours: 126 (36 Lecture, 90 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite (Level 2 or above) or permission of the Department.
Exclusions: GNDS 280/3.0 (Topic Title: Reproductive Justice - Summer 2021).
Course Outline (PDF)
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 2 or permission of the Department
Offered when faculty resources permit, Special Topic courses are analyses of particular areas of gender studies interdisciplinary research. Details regarding specific topics will be available from the Head of the Department on an annual basis. Students are able to take multiple Special Topics courses of the same course code (i.e., GNDS 280, 380, 480), provided it is a different topic than the one(s) previously taken.
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: This course explores solidarity and alliance work, and the relationship to mutual aid and activism for social change. With a rise in sexism, homophobia, ableism, and racism, social movements are taking a critical intersectional approach to address these social inequities. Students will analyze case studies and community projects.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 2 or above or permission of the Department.
Exclusions: GNDS 280 (Topic Title: Solidarity and Alliance Work - Winter 2015; Fall 2021).
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: The course is an interdisciplinary introduction to comic studies that explores historical and contemporary comics, graphic novels, and sequential art in connection with debates surrounding race, class, nation, sexual and gender diversity. Topics include documentary, war, trauma, transgender studies, memory, heroism, capitalism, humour, feminist thought, medical humanities, digital culture, and satire.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 2 or above or permission of the Department.
Exclusions: GNDS 280 (Topic Title: Comics and Politics - Fall 2017).
300 Level Courses
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: This course examines different forms and critiques of feminism, and major issues in the development of feminist activism and feminist theory, including challenges to the colonial history of Western feminism. Students engage with current debates in feminism, gender and queer theory, and anti-racism.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 and GNDS 120/3.0 or GNDS 125/3.0
Description: Studies in black women’s and black gender politics in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Caribbean.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Notes: This course is co-offered as BLCK 312.
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: This course looks at teaching and learning, in formal and informal educational settings, from feminist perspectives. Explores difference (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability), social justice and activism, power and empowerment, critique and transformation, experience, and reflexivity. Students will develop their feminist pedagogical values and skills.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: Centers historical movements in communities affected by AIDS as sources of unique critical theories of disease, health, power, and social change. Highlights how testimonies, cultural and creative work, and social research in community-based AIDS activism inspire current critical theory in feminist, queer, disability, and critical race studies.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: This course offers an interdisciplinary framework of feminist thought on women, work and employment opportunities. It takes a comparative look at socio-political feminist theories on work and employment in different social and cultural contexts.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: Indigenous meanings of reproduction and health will form the core of this course. We will discuss the bio-medical model and examine how it has influenced the health of Indigenous peoples, with a particular focus on maternity care in Canada. We will discuss contradictions and incongruencies in an open, respectful, and thought-provoking manner.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Exclusions: GNDS 380/3.0 Topic: Indigenous Meanings of Reproduction and Health
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: This course explores transnational realities and diasporic experience, with particular attention to gender and sexuality, through the arts.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: This course examines gender in an international context with emphasis on current global issues of women and development. Topics include gendering international political economy, women’s health and sexualities, and forms of struggle, resistance and change in non-western contexts.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: This course examines ways in which science fiction and fantasy writers use technology and the fantastic as tools for the deconstruction and reconstruction of gendered categories. The emphasis is on contemporary novels as offering deliberate and sophisticated interventions in major discourses in gender studies, with attention to issues of race, class, and nationhood.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (DOCX)
Description: Examines scholarship, creative works, and activism by Indigenous women as a basis for introducing Indigenous feminist thought. Cases examine the many ways that Indigenous women and LGBTQ/Two-Spirit people participate in Indigenous nations, experience and resist settler colonialism, and work for Indigenous decolonization.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: This course provides a critical interdisciplinary introduction to methods and methodological issues in gender studies research.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 and GNDS 120/3.0 or GNDS 125/3.0
Description: This course will explore how the visual constructs and/or subverts ‘woman’ as a cultural category. An emphasis will be placed upon the female body as it intersects with class and race. Readings from art history, history, cultural theory and feminist theory will be considered.
Note: Also offered at the Bader International Study Centre
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: An investigation of gender as it is constructed in historical and contemporary dress and fashion. The focus will be upon visual culture and material culture.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: This course will examine the gendered history of the production and consumption of cloth, the impact of changing technologies on the textile industry since the 18th century, and the ensuing tensions between the industrial and the handcrafted.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: Considers the main themes in the history of masculinity and male sexuality, especially ‘dissident’ or subaltern masculinities internationally, and women’s roles in shaping ideologies of masculinity. Topics include the theorization of masculinity, initiation rituals, family and parenting, violence, sports, homophobia, sexual practices, colonialism, science/epistemology and men and feminism.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: This course takes an intersectional approach to contemporary interfaith dialogues, with the aim of exploring and developing religious, ethical, and cultural literacies. The course considers the construction of gender norms, stereotypes, cultural expectations, religious expectations and practices, and state policies post 9/11.
Note: Also offered at the Bader International Study Centre
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Course Outline (PDF)
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Critical Disability Studies and Storytelling considers how institutions and cultural locations 'dis-able' people systemically and socially. The course takes storytelling as a base framework for shared communication and inclusion: whose stories are imagined and told, whose are not? With an intersectional approach, this course engages with the disability rights movement and with disability arts, and is attentive to black disability politics, the history of eugenics, reproductive justice as a field, and the connectivity between making stories and the social determinants of health.
Description: Using feminist, trans and queer theory, critical race, disability studies, literary and cultural criticism, this course explores women’s writing in a wide range of genres, with emphases on memory and self-narration and the ways in which subjects located or rejected as ‘women’ contend with binary, racialized and classed frames of gender.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Description: This course explores current theory in queer studies by centrally examining the interdependence of race, sexuality, and gender. The course foregrounds the critical insights that follow sustained study of race in queer studies, and of queer matters in critical race, Indigenous, global, and diaspora studies.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Offered when faculty resources permit, Special Topic courses are analyses of particular areas of gender studies interdisciplinary research. Details regarding specific topics will be available from the Head of the Department on an annual basis. Students are able to take multiple Special Topics courses of the same course code (i.e., GNDS 280, 380, 480), provided it is a different topic than the one(s) previously taken.
Course Outline (PDF)
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or permission of the Department
Offered when faculty resources permit, Special Topic courses are analyses of particular areas of gender studies interdisciplinary research. Details regarding specific topics will be available from the Head of the Department on an annual basis. Students are able to take multiple Special Topics courses of the same course code (i.e., GNDS 280, 380, 480), provided it is a different topic than the one(s) previously taken.
400 and 500 Level Courses
Description: This course focuses on the theories, political activities, and organizing of Islamic feminists. It situates itself in relation to contemporary debates around the status of women in Islam and problematizes the nature of feminism and its assumed relationship to Islam. The course will focus on questions of religion, race, class, and nationalism in relation to Islam and Muslim women. This course contains an intensive and independent study component.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Course Outline (PDF)
Description: This course provides an advanced study in specific topics and theories relating to the fields of sexual and gender diversity. Topics may change from year to year. This course contains an intensive and independent study component.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Notes: This course is co-offered as a 800-level course. Students in this class will be a mix of upper year undergraduate students and master's students.
Description: This course is designed to provide an in-depth exploration of poverty issues in Canada. It includes discussions about working poor and welfare poor and addresses how race and sexuality can compound the issues of poverty. The course will also acknowledge how poor people are actively engaged in attempting to improve their lives through anti-poverty organizing. This course contains an intensive and independent study component.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Exclusions: POLS 318/3.0; POLS 382/3.0
Description: This interdisciplinary seminar will explore the ways in which modernity shapes cultural ‘difference’ and ‘the human’. Readings will focus on the racial and geographic contours of colonialism, transatlantic slavery and The Enlightenment in order to bring into focus communities that challenge racial-sexual categorization through creative expression (music, fiction, poetry, and visual art as well as theory). This course contains an intensive and independent study component.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Description: This advanced seminar addresses some of the many meanings and manifestations of ‘gender performance’ in literature and popular culture. Primary sources include a wide variety of media - novels, plays, poems, films, magazines and cartoons. Primary material will be balanced with careful consideration of work in areas such as feminist theory, identity politics, queer and performance theory. This course contains an intensive and independent study component.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Description: Examines critical theories and case studies of politics and governance in Indigenous and settler societies, based in Indigenous feminist thought. Cases examine the relation between nationality, gender, and sexuality within colonial relations of rule, methods of Indigenous governance, Indigenous sovereignty struggles, and theories and practices of decolonization. This course contains an intensive and independent study component.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Description: A seminar in which students work in and outside the classroom on community organizing projects. Students reflect on how feminist, anti-racist, and queer theory can be integrated with real world practices.
Learning Hours: 240 (36 Seminar, 72 Practicum, 132 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Description: Examines feminist ethnography and queer ethnography as distinct subfields, areas of inquiry, writing genres and ethical methods in research and social life. Topics: historical uses of ethnography and feminist/queer/trans critiques of them; adaptations of ethnography to trans, queer, and feminist work; ethnography’s importance to gender studies.
Learning Hours: 120 (12 Lecture, 24 Seminar, 36 Group Learning, 48 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Course Outline (PDF)
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Offered when faculty resources permit, Special Topic courses are analyses of particular areas of gender studies interdisciplinary research. Details regarding specific topics will be available from the Head of the Department on an annual basis. Students are able to take multiple Special Topics courses of the same course code (i.e., GNDS 280, 380, 480), provided it is a different topic than the one(s) previously taken.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Seminar, 84 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Offered when faculty resources permit, Special Topic courses are analyses of particular areas of gender studies interdisciplinary research. Details regarding specific topics will be available from the Head of the Department on an annual basis. Students are able to take multiple Special Topics courses of the same course code (i.e., GNDS 280, 380, 480), provided it is a different topic than the one(s) previously taken.
Description: In consultation with the Head of the Department, students arrange their reading with individual Gender Studies faculty, and are expected to write reports on their readings and to discuss them throughout the term with that faculty supervisor.
Learning Hours: 240 (15 Individual Instruction, 225 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Exclusions: GNDS 520/3.0; GNDS 530/3.0
Description: In consultation with the Head of the Department, students arrange their reading with individual Gender Studies faculty, and are expected to write reports on their readings and to discuss them throughout the term with that faculty supervisor.
Learning Hours: 120 (9 Individual Instruction, 111 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Exclusions: GNDS 510/6.0; GNDS 530/3.0
Description: In consultation with the Head of the Department, students arrange their reading with individual Gender Studies faculty, and are expected to write reports on their readings and to discuss them throughout the term with that faculty supervisor.
Learning Hours: 120 (9 Individual Instruction, 111 Private Study)
Prerequisite: Level 3 or above in a GNDS Major or Joint Honours or SXGD Plan, or permission of the Department
Exclusions: GNDS 510/6.0; GNDS 520/3.0
GNDS Options Courses
Courses from the following list may be counted towards a GNDS plan, up to a limit of 24.0 units for the Major, 12.0 units for the Joint Honours, and 18.0 for the Minor and General.
|
Code |
Title |
|---|---|
| ARTH 310 | Feminism, Art, Art History |
| ARTH 311 | Gender and Modernism |
| BADR 101 | Acting Globally - 2014-15 onwards |
| BIOL 369 | Sex and Evolution |
| DEVS 305 | Cuban Culture and Society |
| DRAM 375 | Women and Theatre |
| ECON 262 | Labour Markets and Gender Differences |
| ENGL 222 | Selected Women Writers I |
| ENGL 223 | Selected Women Writers II |
| ENGL 277 | Literature and Gender |
| ENSC 321 | Environmental Justice in Global Context |
| FILM 330 | Gender and Media |
| FILM 331 | Women and Film |
| FILM 332 | Queer Cinemas |
| FREN 390 | Genre et Littérature |
| GPHY 352 | Gender and the City |
| HIST 210 | The History of Sexuality in Canada |
| HIST 283 | Gender and Women in North America |
| HIST 446 | Gender, Sexuality and Race in South Asia |
| HIST 447 | Sex and the History of Medicine |
| HIST 464 | The History of Sexuality |
| HIST 465 | Topics in Women's History |
| IDIS 302 | Race and Racism |
| LAW 516 | Law and Sexuality |
| LLCU 244 | Hips Don't Lie? Music and Culture in Latin America |
| LLCU 326 | Film in the New Europe |
| LLCU 328 | Gender, Development and Film in Latin America |
| LLCU 330 | Cervantes I: Earlier Works |
| LLCU 331 | Cervantes II: Later Works |
| LLCU 333 | Acting Out: Sexual and Gender Subversion in Baroque Theatre |
| LLCU 354 | Women's Voices in Latin America |
| MECH 333 | Gender, Engineering and Technology |
| MUSC 286 | Women, Gender and Music |
| MUTH 201 | Sex and Violence in Performance (online only) |
| PHIL 275 | Thinking Gender, Sex and Love |
| PHIL 276 | Critical Perspectives on Social Diversity |
| PHIL 376 | Philosophy and Feminism |
| PHIL 454 | Topics in Feminist Philosophy |
| POLS 280 | Introduction to Women, Gender and Politics |
| POLS 318 | The Canadian Welfare State |
| POLS 352 | Women and the History of Political Thought |
| POLS 382 | Gender and Social Policy |
| POLS 443 | Gender and Globalization |
| POLS 456 | Theories of Identity Politics |
| POLS 483 | Justice and Gender |
| RELS 236 | Religion and Sex |
| RELS 312 | Christian Feminist Theology |
| RELS 332 | Race, Ethnicity, and Religion |
| SOCY 303 | Selected Topics in Feminist Sociology (2016-17 Sociology of Professions) |
| SOCY 384 | Women and Reproductive Technology |
| SOCY 389 | Gender, Law and Crime |
| SOCY 403 | Sociology of the Body |
| SOCY 431 | Advanced Studies in Gender Relations |
| SPAN 354 | Voces femeninas en America Latina |
| SPAN 428 | Gender, Development and Film in Latin America |