Course Offerings for 2023/24

Descriptions for Special Topics Courses

WS290G Tree Talking and Street Truths

Justice learning in all aspects is most profoundly felt in those serendipitous moments when someone from a place we had never really thought about before opens our minds and understanding more expansively. Think about the tree climber working hidden from us high up in the trees that dot our landscapes.  Have we ever wondered what they experience as they dangle precariously from a branch in their relation to the tree itself, or what they see as they observe the streets below?  What about the people who every day are working in shelters or more directly on the streets with people whose lives are too easily only framed as “homeless” and “addicts”.  Do we ever consider the workplaces of the tree climber or the frontline worker on the streets or the drag performer who lives and experiences the oppressive forces of gender, race, and sexuality containment but pushes against all of that regardless?  How in the balance of risk and safety do the tree climber, the frontline street worker, the drag performer see the world and live in it?  We can only answer those questions if we open ourselves to those meetings and longer less dismissive conversations of discovery.  And in those moments learn how to take what we’re gifted from new directions into the whole spectrum of our thinking lives. And that is what we’ll do together for 12 weeks in conversations and in readings from the edge.

WS301L Gender Based Analysis

Learning how to do gender-based analyses of a wide range of policies, programs, media and communication in this course, will equip students with vital skills for monitoring and evaluation of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Students will be exposed to a range of methods to further expand their toolkit for critically examining and countering gender and intersecting forms of discrimination.

WS301M Gender and Globalization

This course focuses on key issues and debates at the intersection of globalization (social, political, economic and cultural) and gender, with an emphasis on issues of migration and mobility, social inequality and human rights, and global social movements.

WS490I Decolonization Feminisms

This course considers the past and present of settler colonialism in Canada and the ways feminist movements have challenged and/or reinforced these relations in theory and practice. It also considers how Indigenous scholars, activists and allied feminists have engaged with each other, and explores the tensions and possibilities of alliance that exist between movements struggling against capitalist, heteropatriarchal, colonial and white supremacist relations. What are Indigenous critiques of feminism? How might feminism become a tool of decolonization? Students will learn of key terms, theories and politics, and will apply this knowledge through the study of both historical and current issues facing Indigenous peoples in Canada.