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Topics in Canadian History: Gender and the Body in Canada

Black and white photographs including: male dancers and a female beauty pageant with the front woman wearing a sash that reads "Miss Sask. Roughriders"
Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Courtesy of Toronto Public Library

This course considers the use of the body as a category of analysis in Canadian history, examining methodological approaches to the material and the discursive body. How did historical perceptions of the body affect the lives of people in Canada? As a tool of examination, how does body history help us access complex cultural and political processes and phenomena such as nationhood, medicine, colonization, consumerism, and popular culture? Beginning with how the body emerged as an area of study, students will engage with a number of weekly thematic readings in gender history that demonstrate how studying the body can illuminate understandings of gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and ability. 

This course is offered as a 3.0-unit seminar during the 2022-2023 year. 

Department of History, Queen's University

49 Bader Lane, Watson Hall 212
Kingston ON K7L 3N6
Canada

Undergraduate

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Graduate

Queen's University is situated on traditional Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe territory.