Departmental Notes
Subject Code for Black Studies: BLCK
Subject Code for Gender Studies: GNDS
World Wide Web Address: http://www.queensu.ca/gnds
Head of Department: Susan Lord
Department Administrator: Jarena Lee
Departmental Office: Robert Sutherland Hall, Room 455
Departmental Telephone: 613-533-6318
General E-Mail Address: genderstudies@queensu.ca
Chair of Undergraduate Studies (BLCK): Jennifer Leath
Administrative Program Coordinator (BLCK): Anita Ragunathan
Undergraduate Office E-Mail Address (BLCK): blck@queensu.ca
Chair of Undergraduate Studies (GNDS) & SXGD Certificate Coordinator: Elizabeth Brulé
Undergraduate Office E-Mail Address (GNDS): gndsug@queensu.ca
Chair of Graduate Studies: Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin Graduate Office E-Mail Address: gndsgrad@queensu.ca
Overview
The Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s is distinguished by the centrality of the study of race and colonialisms across all its courses, and by a focus on how to apply knowledge within work for social change. Our curriculum is organized around seven key themes: feminist, queer, trans, anti-racist, Indigenous, and postcolonial theories and methodologies; activism and social justice; political economy and class inequality; representation, art, literature, and creative work; politics and policy in health, reproduction, education and welfare; and oral histories and community memories.
This innovative, interdisciplinary program combines the arts, humanities, and social sciences, offering students a unique opportunity to design a degree suited to their interests and career goals, including law, academia, medicine, public service, media, and activism.
The Department also administers a Certificate Program in Sexual and Gender Diversity (SXGD) that is open to undergraduate students in all degree plans.
Faculty
For more information, please visit: https://www.queensu.ca/gnds/people-search
- Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin
- burcu baba
- Elizabeth Brulé
- Nancy Butler
- Kesha Fevrier
- Melissa Houghtaling
- Joseph Kangmennaang
- Sailaja V. Krishnamurti
- Jennifer S. Leath
- Margaret Little
- Katherine McKittrick
- Scott Morgensen
- Juliane Okot Bitek
- Dalitso Ruwe
- Trish Salah
- Vanessa Thompson
- Jane Tolmie
Cross-Appointed:
- Lee Airton
- Beverley Baines
- Annette Burfoot
- Alana Butler
- Jacqueline Davies
- Karen Dubinsky
- Allison Goebel
- Laila Haidarali
- Lynne Hanson
- Jennifer Hosek
- Samantha King
- Reena Kukreja
- Kathleen Lahey
- Eun-Young Lee
- Susan Lord
- Eleanor MacDonald
- Kristin Moriah
- Dorit Naaman
- Ishita Pande
- Kip Pegley
- Elaine Power
- Carolyn Prouse
- Margo Rivera
- Chloé Savoie-Bernard
- Isabelle St-Amand
- Sari van Anders
- Asha Varadharajan
- M. Shobhana Xavier
Courses
Black Studies (BLCK)
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Critically analyze race as a historical and contemporary social construct and its relationship to blackness, sexuality, class, and other identifications.
- Assemble critical tools and theoretical concepts, and develop interdisciplinary methodological tools, in the area of black studies.
- Describe major trends across various black liberation movements.
- Explain theories and practices of anti-racism.
- Compose, critique, and critically engage creative texts as sites of struggle.
- Research and write independently; research and write collaboratively.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Introduce students to contemporary African and Indigenous writing and art production.
- Read and respond to contemporary African and Indigenous writing and art production.
- Illustrate spaces of solidarity and conversations that arise from reading these works together.
- Understand and recognize the effects of colonialism and the work of resistance across continents.
- Discuss strategies for thinking, writing and making connections towards liberation.
NOTE This course is repeatable for credit under different topic titles.
NOTE This course is also listed/offered as GNDS 312/3.0.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Identify key topics, questions, theories and methods in the field of Black Feminisms.
- Understand the wide-ranging and intersectional impact of Black Feminist Thought and their own relationship to Black Feminisms.
- Explain the role of power and context in shaping Black Feminist epistemologies and methodologies.
- Develop critical thinking skills fostering their abilities to deeply analyze and evaluate Black Feminist Thought through varied disciplines and contexts.
- Identify past and current praxis of Black Feminist activism and organizing.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Explain key theoretical approaches and concepts in the field of Black Environmentalism and Ecologies.
- Describe the relationship between race, colonialism, capitalism, and how it leads to the inequitable distributions of environmental harms and/or externalities on communities of colour.
- Reflect on how the histories and lived experiences of black communities in the global south have been shaped by the processes of racism, colonialism, and uneven global development.
- Compare how culture informs one's values and beliefs on issues of environmental injustice and anti-black racism prior to and after this course.
- Communicate a key concept from the course (i.e., environmental racism) in plain language format to a nonacademic audience to practice transferrable skills beyond the class.
- Demonstrate competency in, and a commitment to equity-related principles, e.g., anti-black racism by exploring their own relationships to power, and privilege within their personal and professional interactions.
- Practice effective time management techniques to improve concentration and productivity.
NOTE This course is also listed/offered as HLTH 360/3.0.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Develop critical understanding of how conditions of power shape Black Health.
- Explain global Black health inequities and their social and commercial determinants.
- Identify the importance of practices that promote cultural safety and Black health equity.
- Identify opportunities to operationalize strategies to promote global Black Health.
NOTE This course is repeatable for credit under different topic titles.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Critically assess how conditions of power shape social determinants and health inequities.
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of anti-Black racism and colonialism and their impact on health of African/Black populations from an intersectional perspective.
- Identify opportunities to operationalize strategies to advance racial health equity.
- Apply clear, critical, and creative knowledge translation skills.
- Collaborate with peers and apply leadership and public speaking skills.
NOTE This course is repeatable for credit under different topic titles.
NOTE Requests for such a program must be received one month before the start of the first term in which the student intends to undertake the program.
Gender Studies (GNDS)
NOTE Also offered online. Consult Arts and Science Online. Learning Hours may vary.
NOTE Also offered online. Consult Arts and Science Online. Learning Hours may vary.
NOTE Film Screening: estimated cost $15.
NOTE Also offered online. Consult Arts and Science Online. Learning Hours may vary.
NOTE Also offered at Bader College, UK. Learning Hours may vary.
NOTE Film Screening: estimated cost $15.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Critically analyze theories and discourses of sex, gender, and reproductive justice that have emerged since the 20th century.
- Recognize, acknowledge, and challenge structures of inequality including racism, capitalism, colonialism, (hetero)sexism, ableism, and other manifestations of power, in the production and dissemination of knowledge about reproductive health, reproductive rights and reproductive justice.
- Apply an intersectional lens to explain how experiences in the field of reproduction are bound up with experiences of race, Indigeneity, ethnicity, class, age, and (dis)ability.
- Explain the role of power and context in shaping knowledge about reproduction in terms of sex, gender, and other identity markers.
- Identify strategies for activism and reproductive justice work with people of color individuals and communities.
- Discuss how systems of privilege and oppression have created social hierarchies among different genders and sexualities as well as other axis of power.
- Practice different modes of communication for exploring reproductive health and justice issues, including formal academic writing, creative writing, visual and oral communication, and other forms of creative work.
NOTE This course is repeatable for credit under different topic titles.
NOTE Film Screening: estimated cost $15.
NOTE This course is also listed/offered as BLCK 312/3.0.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Identify key topics, questions, theories and methods in the field of Black Feminisms.
- Understand the wide-ranging and intersectional impact of Black Feminist Thought and their own relationship to Black Feminisms.
- Explain the role of power and context in shaping Black Feminist epistemologies and methodologies.
- Develop critical thinking skills fostering their abilities to deeply analyze and evaluate Black Feminist Thought through varied disciplines and contexts.
- Identify past and current praxis of Black Feminist activism and organizing.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Develop literary-critical, visual-critical, intersectional, and political analytic skills.
- Develop an understanding of disability studies as a field, and of critical disability studies as a field.
- Develop skills in pacing critical reading in a reading-intensive course.
- Use literary and visual texts to reflect on their own and others’ lives, times, and situations, and on social justice and gender issues that call for attention.
- Develop, present, and defend informed cultural critical perspectives of their own.
- Develop their skills as "conversational partners" on difficult topics, learning to take into account differences and multiple perspectives.
- Deploy critical models from critical disability studies, feminist studies, transgender studies, cultural studies, critical race studies, in their written and oral work.
NOTE This course is repeatable for credit under different topic titles.
NOTE This course is repeatable for credit under different topic titles.
NOTE This course is repeatable for credit under different topic titles.
NOTE Requests for such a program must be received one month before the start of the first term in which the student intends to undertake the program.