Undergraduate Courses

                                   Thank you to Reena Kukreja for the photo

GNDS 120/3.0 Women, Gender, Difference (2L;1T)

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. Lectures and texts will introduce feminism, the body, colonialism, gender performance, and strategies of resistance.
EXCLUSION: WMNS 100, WMNS 101*, WMNS 102*
Also offered by correspondence in Winter 2012. Link to Continuing and Distance Studies

GNDS 120 Fall 2011 Course Outline

GNDS 125/3.0 Gender, Race and Popular Culture (2L;1T)

Discusses women as producers and consumers of popular culture and explores the relationships between popular culture and sexuality and gender.
EXCLUSION: WMNS 225*

Also offered by correspondence in Summer 2012 Link to Continuing and Distance Studies

GNDS 211/3.0 - Feminist Histories (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE:  GNDS 120* or GNDS 125* (or WMNS 225*)
EXCLUSION: WMNS 210

GNDS 212/3.0 - Racism, Colonialism, and Resistance (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Second year standing, or permission of the department
EXCLUSION: WMNS 320*

GNDS 212 Fall 2011 Syllabus

GNDS 215/3.0 - Introduction to Sexual and Gender Diversity (3L)

This course is an introduction to studies in sexuality and gender diversity. It will survey the field and include topics such as historical 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 Program in Sexual and Gender Diversity. It is designed to introduce SXGD students to the field and prepare them for selecting future courses.
PREREQUISITE Second year standing, or permission of the department
EXCLUSION WMNS 310

GNDS 311/3.0 - Contemporary Feminist Thought (3L)

The proposed new title is Feminist Thought. 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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing, or permission of the Department
EXCLUSION: WMNS 210

GNDS 311 Fall 2011 Course Outline

GNDS 312/3.0 - Black Feminisms (3L)

Studies in black women’s and black gender politics in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Caribbean.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing, or permission of the Department

GNDS 315/3.0 Feminist Pedagogies (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing, or permission of the Department

GNDS 320/3.0 - HIV/AIDS Movements: Histories of Community Health Activism (3L)

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.

PREREQUISITE: Third year standing, or permission of the Department

GNDS 321/3.0 - Gendering Opportunities - Women’s Work (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing, or permission of the Department

GNDS 326/3.0 - Gender, Diaspora and the Arts (3L)

This course explores transnational realities and diasporic experience, with particular attention to gender and sexuality, through the arts.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing, or permission of the Department
EXCLUSION: WMNS-426*

GNDS 330/3.0 - Gender and the Global South (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 335/3.0 - Gendered Alternatives: Science Fiction and Fantasy (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department
EXCLUSION WMNS 217*

GNDS 340/3.0 - Indigenous Women, Feminism and Resistance (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 340 Fall 2011 Syllabus

GNDS 345/3.0 - Research Methods in Gender Studies (3L)

This course provides a critical interdisciplinary introduction to methods and methodological issues in women’s studies research.
PREREQUISITE: WMNS 101*, WMNS 102*, WMNS 120* or GNDS 125* (WMNS 225*), and third-year standing.
EXCLUSION: WMNS 230*.

GNDS 350/3.0 - Feminism, the Body, and Visual Culture (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 351/3.0 - Gender, Dress and Fashion (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 352/3.0 Gender, Cloth and Globalization (3L)

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 hand crafted.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 360/3.0 - Masculinities: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (3L)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 365/3.0 - Gender Dialogues: Jewish and Muslim Experiences(3L) Redesigned course!

The global and historical scope of Jewish and Muslim experiences provide rich contexts within which to explore the many and varied meanings that sex and gender can manifest in practice and material culture. Intersectional analyses and multidisciplinary methods inform course design and discussion of artifacts, texts, popular culture, social history and practices. This, in turn, enables a more nuanced exploration of relevant social justice questions. The instructors' encounters with each other and with cultures more and less familiar to them represent an invitation for students to engage in dialogue with the subjects they encounter through the course. The course emphasizes diversity within as well as across Muslim cultures and Jewish cultures. Similarities as well as differences are equally important threads in our cross-cultural conversations. GNDS 365 Course poster
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 370/3.0 - Writing Lives: Feminism and Women’s Writing (3L)

This course will explore how women writers employ narrative as a creative and political tool to dramatize subjectivity and subvert cultural constructs of womanhood. Issues to be considered include the association of an anti-narrative style with ‘femininity,’ and the use of autobiography to position marginalized perspectives. An emphasis will be placed on narratives concerning any of gender, sexuality, ‘race,’ class, age, and ability. Fiction and poetry will be complemented by readings from feminist literary theory.
PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 375/3.0 - Queer/Race Studies (3L)

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.

PREREQUISITE: Third-year standing or permission of the Department

GNDS 401/6.0 - Debates on Feminism and Islam (3S)

This course situates itself in relation to contemporary debates around the status of women in Islam. Materials studied will allow students to develop an understanding and appreciation for the diverse perspectives and development of Islamic feminisms. It will permit students to address questions about Islamic gender politics and Muslim feminists’ engagement with (and challenge of) selfhood, agency, and authority as presented by traditional western feminist thought.

PREREQUISITE: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

EXCLUSION: WMNS 425* (2008-09)

GNDS 410/6.0, -420/6.0, -425/6.0, -430/6.0, -435/6.0, -445/6.0 - Special Topics in Gender Studies (3S)

When faculty resources permit, these courses are intensive 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.
PREREQUISITE: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 410/6.0 Winter 2013

Feminism, as a social justice movement, calls for personal and global transformations. This seminar course introduces principles of transformative learning theory, spanning the spectrum from more individualistic and humanistic expressions of transformation to more collective, radical, and civil-society oriented manifestations, and argues for the relevance of transformation theory to the varied goals of gender studies. Transformative learning is emancipatory, challenging the power relations and false assumptions that bind individuals and groups. Particular attention will be given to the gendered intersections of transformation with relationships, the body, emotion, race and class, positionality and the creative arts. Students will apply principles of transformation to a personal or social change project of their own choice.

GNDS 412/6.0 - Advanced Topics and Theories in Sexual and Gender Diversity (3S)

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.
PREREQUISITE: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 421/6.0 - Gender and Poverty (3S)

An examination of the historical roots and contemporary issues facing low-income, men, women and children. While the focus will be on the industrialized world, there will be attempts to appreciate how poverty is experienced and understood on a global scale.
PREREQUISITE: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department
EXCLUSION: POLS-318*

GNDS 422/6.0 - Women and Gender South of the Sahara (3L)

An interdisciplinary study of selected topics such as culture, ethnicity, health, sexuality, religion, economics, politics, African feminisms, agriculture and environment relevant to the study of women and gender in Africa south of the Sahara.
PREREQUISITE: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 427/6.0 - Towards the Human: Race and the Politics of Expression (3S)

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).
PREREQUISITES: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 428/6.0 - Gender Performance (3S)

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. Sample sources: works by William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bishop, Sarah Waters, David Henry Hwang, Diane DiMassa, Ian Iqbal Rashid; films such as Osama, The Ballad of Little Jo, Tootsie; postcards, Playboy, Ms. Magazine, news articles and advertisements. Primary material will be balanced with careful consideration of work in areas such as feminist theory, identity politics, queer and performance theory. The course is divided into distinct theme-based units, e.g. transvestism, gender identity, etiquette, beauty and the body, regulation of the household, violence, maternity, the trans community. Cross-listed with English.
PREREQUISITES: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 432/6.0 - Indigenous Politics: Gender, Nation and Sovereignty (3S)

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.
PREREQUISITE:Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 440/6.0 - Community-Based Research Practicum

The new title for this course is Social Justice Practicum: Learning through Community Organizing and Activism. 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.

PREREQUISITE: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 465/6.0 - Diaspora and Feminisms in Jewish Contexts

Using tools provided by diverse critical theories, practices, and textual traditions this course emphasizes reading for gender in Jewish contexts. We explore how these skills  transfer to personal, political or purely academic engagement with other forms of boundary-crossing.

PREREQUISITE: Third or Fourth-year standing in Gender Studies or SXGD or permission of the Department

GNDS 510/6.0, -520/3.0, -530/3.0 - Directed Special Studies

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.
PREREQUISITE: WMNS 100, 101*, 102*, GNDS 120* or GNDS 125* (or WMNS 225*); and GNDS 211* and GNDS  311* (or WMNS 210) and permission of the Department. Open only to students in Gender Studies degree programs with third-year standing or above.

Cross-Listed Courses

Cross-listed courses may not be offered every year. Please check with individual departments for prerequisites and offereings.

Art History
ARTH 310/3.0 Feminism, Art, Art History
Biology
BIOL 210/3.0 Biology of Sex
Drama
DRAM 375/3.0 Women and Theatre 1
DRAM 475/3.05 Women and Theatre II
Economics
ECON 262/3.0 Labour Markets and Gender Differences
English
ENGL 222/3.0 Selected Women Writers I (ENGL 205*)
ENGL 223/3.0 Selected Women Writers II (ENGL 265*)
ENGL 277/3.0 Studies In Women Writers (ENGL 303)
Environmental Studies

ENSC 321/3.0 Environmental Justice in Global Context
ENSC 420/3.0 Gender and Environments
Film
FILM 331/3.0 Women and Film
Faculty of Education
FOUN 490/3.0 Social Class, Gender and Race in Education
French
FREN 390/3.0 La femme et/dans la littérature
Geography
GPHY 352/3.0 Gender and the City
German
GRMN 453/3.0 Contemporary German Women’s Writing, East and West
History

HIST 210/3.0 The History of Sexuality in Canada
HIST 280/6.0 Gender in North American History
HIST 281/3.0 Gender in History: A European Perspective
HIST 446/3.0 Gender, Sexuality and Race in South Asia
HIST 447/3.0 Sex and the History of Medicine
HIST 464/6.0 The History of Sexuality
HIST 465/3.0 Topics in Women’s History
HIST 480/3.0 Women’s Experiences of World War II
Interdisciplinary
IDIS 302/3.0 ‘Race’ and Racism

International Studies

INTS 321/3.0 Urban Images: Race, Gender, Sexuality and the Imagine City
Italian
ITLN 363/3.0 Scrittrici italiane del Novecento

Jewish Studies
JWST 270/3.0 Women and Judaism
Law
LAW 516/3.0 Law and Sexuality
LAW 533/3.0 Law, Gender, Equality
LAW 534/3.0 Feminist Jurisprudence
Mechanical Engineering
MECH 333/3.0 Gender issues in Engineering and Related Sciences
Music
MUSC 286/3.0 Women, Gender and Music
Nursing
NURS 240/3.0 Women’s Health Issues
Philosophy

PHIL 276/3.0 Critical Perspectives on Social Diversity
PHIL 376/3.0 Philosophy and Feminism
PHIL 454/3.0 Topics in Feminist Philosophy
Political Studies
POLS 318/3.0 The Canadian Welfare State
POLS 352/3.0 Women and the History of Political Thought
POLS 382/3.0 Women and Politics
POLS 443/3.0 Women and International Political Economy
POLS 456/3.0 Debates in Contemporary Political Theory
POLS 483/3.0 Justice and Gender
Religous Studies
RELS 236/3.0 Religion and Sex
RELS 254/6.0 Women and Religion
RELS 259/3.0 Women in Religious Traditions
RELS 312/3.0 Christian Feminist Theology
RELS 332/3.0 The Goddess
Sociology
SOCY 232/3.0 Sociology of the Canadian Women’s Movement
SOCY 331/6.0 Women and Social Stucture
SOCY 384/3.0 Women and Reproductive Technology
SOCY 389/3.0 Gender, Law and Crime
SOCY 403/3.0 Sociology of the Body
SOCY 431/3.0 Advanced Studies in Gender Relations
Spanish
SPAN 328/3.0 Gender, Development and Film in Latin America
SPAN 354/3.0 Cultura femenina latinoamericana
SPAN 428/3.0 Gender, Development and Film in Latin America
School of Urban and Regional Planning
SURP 885/3.0 Feminist Approaches to Planning
Theology

THEO 442/3.0
THEO 646/3.0 Women’s Writings in Christian Thought

Other

Other courses may be considered towards a Gender Studies degree program. Please consult the Gender Studies Undergraduate Chair.