Summer session expands beyond current approaches to sexuality and gender

Returning this year and related to Queen’s Global Summer, registration is now open for the Feminist Transformative Practices in Research: Decolonial, Indigenous, and Intersectional Approaches to Gender/Sex/uality In/Justice summer session.

Participants from backgrounds in Psychology, behavioural research, and other fields that include attention to gender, sex, and/or sexuality will learn to challenge colonial doctrines of sexuality and gender, and to re-think sexual categories, gender, and kinship practices. Participants will leave the summer session equipped to identify and challenge how colonial structures of sexuality and gender inform studies of colonialism and anti-racist politics.

The session is being facilitated by Dr. Tushabe wa Tushabe, Associate Professor in the Center for Human Sexuality Studies at Widener University, and organized by Dr. Sari van Anders, Canada 150 Research Chair and Professor of Psychology, Gender Studies, and Neuroscience here at Queen’s.

“The previous Summer Session clearly occupied a special and transformative niche for most respondents, giving unique opportunities to learn material with discussions that readings alone would not facilitate, and to reflect and learn from like-minded though diverse community,” says Dr. van Anders.

In 2021 Dr. van Anders organized the First Summer Session in Gender/Sex/uality In/Justice, under the theme Relating Against the State: Decolonial and Anti-Imperialist Approaches to Gender/Sex/uality.

Twenty-eight individuals, who were selected from a pool of over 150 applicants, were invited to meet for two hours a week over eight weeks to address de/colonial and anti/imperialist thinking and approaches to sexuality and gender, and to approach sexuality and kinship through an anti-racist lens.

“Our goals for the summer session included working towards community building, education/growth/learning, community relevance, social change, and more empirical and just understandings of gender/sex/uality,” said Dr. van Anders. “We were excited to see the group come together to work on this and make progress.”

Adria Kurchina-Tyson, a grad student in Gender Studies, developed the syllabus and facilitated the 2021 meetings with organizational support from Dr. van Anders.

Applications for this summer’s session are due by Friday, May 20, and the free 8-week session will take place from June 7 to July 26.^.

Learn more about the program and register for the summer session on the Gender/Sex/uality In/Justice on the webpage.