The Women & Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) at the University of Toronto is dedicated to exploring the entangled work of gender, race and sexuality in identities, relations, practices, theories and institutions. WGSI has developed a distinct strength in transnational feminist studies, which joins questions concerning nation-states, citizenship, colonialisms, diasporas and global capitalism with concerns about how to understand the gendered, queered and raced politics of subjectivity, activism and knowledge making.
Many students find their courses at WGSI among the most exciting and meaningful during their time at the University of Toronto. Undergraduate and graduate students alike expand and challenge the scope of feminist studies and politics with our award-winning teachers. Our undergraduate program offers specialists, majors and minors, while our graduate program offers an M.A. and a collaborative M.A. and Ph.D. program with over 30 other departments.
In our classrooms and our research, we put feminism into critical question as much as we develop feminist questions. Our dual emphasis on interdisciplinarity and transnational feminist studies aims to respond to the diverse feminisms that meet in the diasporic space of Toronto and embodied in our students, as well as to be accountable to the complexities of politics in an interconnected world. These commitments are manifest in our close relationship with critical and postcolonial area studies, with particular strengths in research that traces the relationships and disconnects between Africa, the Caribbean, East Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, Canada and the United States.
WGSI also connects its activities beyond the classroom with our exciting practicum program that offers students the chance to work with community organizations and our many community-engaged research projects. In these ways, WGSI aspires to provide students with experiences that will not only transform their thinking, but also support their future undertakings and sense of self.
WGSI graduates have found themselves well prepared to pursue advanced degrees in many disciplines; to train in the legal, scientific, teaching, and medical professions; to find employment in community service agencies and NGOs; to take on leadership roles in local, state and national government; to pursue careers in the creative arts; and to become public intellectuals in a variety of media.