Note: Please contact the instructor for the course syllabus. Syllabi with class locations will be made available on an OWL website once you are registered. 

Fall Term

GSWS 9574 Indigenous Feminisms
Instructor: Renee Bedard rbedard4@uwo.ca 

Draws on Indigenous theoretical and Indigenous feminist frameworks, epistemologies, and knowledge to understand Indigenous women's participation in political movements and land and environmental activism. This course explores issues relating to the historical and contemporary experiences of Indigenous women feminists nationally and internationally. This course also considers Indigenous feminist analyses and Indigenous women’s issues.

GSWS 9600/4470F Narratives, Archives, Memories
Instructor: Kate Korycki kate.korycki@uwo.ca 

This course rests on the Indigenous wisdom that storytelling and relationships are central to our collective and individual self-understandings. As such, the course investigates how stories of the past constitute, justify, and make invisible the present-day systems of stratification; and conversely, it explores how they are used to mobilize and sustain challenges and resistance to those systems. Drawing on political and critical theory, collective memory, political sociology and transitional justice literatures, this course examines how the present shapes the stories we construct, and how the the past and stories we tell about the past shape the present.

We began with a notion that all communicative modalities need interpretation, as none of them are natural, but constructed or performed “facts.” We will therefore attempt to read deeply, and to interpret and analyze text – a “text” may be an interview, a museum, a film, a novel… – for its embedded meanings. We will also attempt to render stories of others in ways that remain true to the original, that is we will practice deep description and conscious writing. All students interested in interpretation and analysis of archives and narratives, will find this course useful.

GSWS 9459 Professional Development 
Instructor: Laura Cayen lcayen2@uwo.ca 

This course is intended to assist graduate students in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies with their professional development. The emphasis will be on developing practical skills for being successful as a graduate student, including developing pedagogical skills as a teaching assistant, literature reviews, grant writing, cv development, abstract writing and submission, knowledge mobilization, and the peer-review process for publishing in journals and edited collections. The course also highlights opportunities for alt-academic and non-academic career skill development.

course outline

GSWS 9550 Feminist Theory 
Instructor: Kim Verwaayen kjverwaa@uwo.ca 

This course will analyze feminist theoretical approaches providing students with an understanding of the fundamental questions at stake in each. We will consider epistemological perspectives as well as the intersections of feminist theories with other theoretical approaches such as queer theory and critical race theory. The implications of feminist theory for academic research will be addressed throughout. This course is restricted to GSWS graduate students.

Winter Term

GSWS 9576 Emancipation in/and the Afterlife of Slavery
Instructor: Erica Lawson elawso3@uwo.ca 

This graduate seminar examines what Rinaldo Walcott describes as “the long emancipation” signaling the unfulfilled promise of liberation despite the legal end to Black people’s enslavement. It draws on interdisciplinary scholarship (e.g. black feminist thought, sociology, cultural studies, political science, economics) to address how scholars challenge democratic liberalism – or what Charles Mills describes as racial liberalism, by which he means that, “conceptions of personhood and resulting schedules of rights, duties, and government responsibilities have all been racialized.”[1] We will focus on issues such as (but not limited to) racial capitalism, mass incarceration, housing, health, education, environmental racism, political participation, and anti-colonial activism. The course is informed by the structural violence of the transatlantic slave trade and its manifestations in what Saidiya Hartman calls the afterlife of slavery - that is, skewed life chances for African descendants in the Black diaspora. Importantly, we will examine conventional narratives about freedom, rights, and racial progress, drawing on theoretical critiques from Black Studies.

[1] Mills, C.W. (2008). “Racial Liberalism.” PMLA, 123(5):  1380-1397.

GSWS 9464 Feminist Methodologies
Instructor: Jessica Polzer jpolzer@uwo.ca 

This course will review feminist research methodologies from a variety of disciplinary traditions and theoretical perspectives. Through readings and assignments, a primary objective of this course will be to examine and articulate distinctions and relationships between epistemology, methodology and methods. Through guided practices of critical reflection, students will be able to articulate the assumptions that underlie and inform various feminist research methodologies and understand their implications for research methodology. Emphasis will also be placed on specific methodological issues that span across this range, and will include, for example: ethical issues, researcher reflexivity and positionality, sampling, and the practices and politics of data collection, interpretation and reporting.  

GSWS 9469/4459G The Feminist Romance Novel
Instructor: Miranda Green-Barteet mgreenb6@uwo.ca 

A romance novel is a work of genre fiction that primarily focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, generally with a happy ending. One of the most commercially successful genres, especially among female and female identifying readers, the genre has often been dismissed by critics for being “fluff” or escapist. As critic Pamela Regis argues, “critical characterization of the romance novel is overwhelmingly negative” (3). In this course, we consider why is the romance novel, a genre that is primarily written by women and read by women, is treated so dismissively. We will examine the genre from the nineteenth century to the modern day, exploring how the genre has evolved and asking ourselves: are romance novels feminist? In addition to this question, we will consider issues of consent, worklife balance, gender roles, social and societal expectations for women, and sex and sexuality. Novels that may be considered include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Gordon Merrick’s The Lord Won’t Mind, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower, Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I, and Sarah J. Maas’s Court of Thorn and Roses, among others. In addition to novels, we will consider theoretical perspectives on the romance novel, including works by Pamela Regis, Kristin Ramsdell, and Janice Radway.

GSWS 9827 Histories of Sexualities
Instructor: Laurel Shire lshire@uwo.ca 

TBA

GSWS 9575 Directed Reading Course (Half Course)
The directed reading course is conducted under the supervision of a faculty member, and is taken only with permission of the Chair of Graduate Studies. Normally, only PhD students are permitted to take a directed reading course. Proposals for directed reading courses must be approved by the Graduate Chair in consultation with the Graduate Committee and must be submitted no later than one month prior to the course start date. 

Proposal for Directed Reading Course  

GSWS 9585 Scholarly Practicum (Full Course)
GSWS 9522 Scholarly Practicum (Half Course)

The Scholarly Practicum course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to receive academic credit for experiential learning. It could involve a community placement, an internship or an applied project. Students and supervisors must have the practicum approved by submitting a written proposal describing the activity and the benefit of it to the student's current program of study and future goals to the graduate chair at least two months (longer if ethics approval is required) before it’s commencement. Proposals for directed reading courses must be approved by the Graduate Chair in consultation with the Graduate Committee and must be submitted no later than one month prior to the course start date.    

The Scholarly Practicum course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to receive academic credit for experiential learning. It could involve a community placement, an internship or an applied project. Students and supervisors must have the practicum approved by submitting a written proposal describing the activity and the benefit of it to the student's current program of study and future goals to the graduate chair at least two months (longer if ethics approval is required) before it’s commencement. 

Proposal for Scholarly Practicum

COURSES FROM OTHER DEPARTMENTS (TBA)