Courses

Core Courses: 100-SERIES
Core Courses: 200-SERIES
Core Courses: 300-SERIES
Core Courses: 400-SERIES
Group A Courses
Group B Courses

CURRENT TIMETABLES

Fall & Winter 2020-2021 Course Timetable

Summer 2020 Course Timetable

PREVIOUS TIMETABLES

Fall & Winter 2019-2020 Course Timetable

Summer 2019 Course Timetable

Fall & Winter 2018-2019 Course Timetable

Summer 2018 Course Timetable

Fall & Winter 2017-2018 Course Timetable

Summer 2017 Course Timetable

CORE COURSES (with “WGS” prefix)

100-SERIES COURSES

WGS160Y is subject to certain enrolment restrictions. During the first (P) round of ACORN/ROSI enrolment, priority is given to Specialists, Majors and Minors in Women and Gender Studies.  Please refer to the Arts & Science Registration Instructions and Timetable for course enrolment procedures.

WGS160Y1 Introduction to Women and Gender Studies
An integrated and historical approach to social relations of gender, race, class, sexuality and disability, particularly as they relate to women’s lives and struggles across different locales, including Canada.
Exclusions: WSTA01H3, WGS101H5

200-SERIES COURSES

200-series courses, with the exception of WGS273H1, are subject to certain enrolment restrictions.  During the first (P) round of ACORN/ROSI enrolment, priority is given to Specialists, Majors and Minors in Women and Gender Studies.  Please refer to the Arts & Science Registration Instructions and Timetable for course enrolment procedures.

WGS260H1 F  Texts, Theories, Histories

Examines modes of theories that shaped feminist thought and situates them historically and transnationally so as to emphasize the social conditions and conflicts in which ideas and politics arise, change and circulate.
Recommended Preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusions: WGS262H1/WGS262Y1, WSTA03H3, WGS200Y5

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WGS271Y1 Y  Gender in Popular Culture

A critical examination of institutions, representations and practices associated with contemporary popular culture, mass-produced, local and alternative.
Recommended Preparation:  WGS160Y1
Exclusions:  WGS271H1, WSTB13H3, WGS205H5

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WGS273H1 F  Gender and Environmental (In)Justice (formerly WGS273Y1)

Using a transnational, feminist framework, this course examines material and conceptual interrelations between gendered human and non-human nature, ecological crises, political economies and environmental movements in a variety of geographical, historical and cultural contexts. Does environmental justice include social justice, or are they in conflict? What might environmental justice and activism involve?
Exclusions:  WGS273Y1, WSTC20H3

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WGS275H1 S   Men and Maculinities

Examines how masculinities shape the lives of men, women and transgender people.  Effects of construction, reproduction and impact of masculinities on  institutions such as education, work, religion, sports, family, medicine, military and the media are explored.  Provides critical analysis of how masculinities shape individual lives, groups, organizations and social movements.
Recommended Preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusion: WGS353H5

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WGS280H1  Special Topics in Women and Gender Studies

Subjects of study vary from year to year. 
Recommended Preparation:  WGS160Y1
Exclusion:  WGS334H1S

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WGS281H1  Special Topics in Women and Gender Studies

Subjects of study vary from year to year. 
Recommended Preparation:  WGS160Y1

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300-SERIES COURSES

300-series courses are subject to certain enrolment restrictions. During the first (P) round of ACORN/ROSI enrolment, priority is given to Specialists, Majors and Minors in Women and Gender Studies.  We strongly recommend that students complete WGS160Y in preparation for 3rd-year courses; however, this is not a formal pre-requisite.  Please refer to the Arts & Science Registration Instructions and Timetable for course enrolment procedures.

Note: Courses numbered WGS330H1-WGS336H1 are reserved for Special Topics in Women and Gender Studies.  Topics vary from year to year.

WGS334H1  Special Topics in Women and Gender Studies

An upper level seminar.  Subjects of study vary from year to year.
Topic for Spring 2019: Ghosts and Haunted Houses –An exploration of how theories and fictions of haunting can illuminate still-unfolding histories of dispossession and exploitation.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1

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WGS335H1 S  Special Topic in Women and Gender Studies

An upper level seminar.  Subjects of study vary from year to year.
Topic for Spring 2019: Decolonial Aesthetics and Futurities
Recommended Preparation:  WGS160Y1

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WGS336H1  Selected Topics in Cultural Studies

An upper level course. Subjects of study vary from year to year.  
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1

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WGS340H1  Women and Revolution in the Middle East

This course examines the complex and conflictual relations between women and revolutionary struggles and focuses on a number of theoretical and empirical issues relevant to the Middle East and North Africa context. The course is open to both senior-level undergraduate and graduate students with different requirements. 
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1.
Exclusion:  WGS335H1 Women and Revolution in the Middle East.

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WGS350H1  Masculinities and the Human in an Age of Terror

This course conceptualizes racialized masculinities and violence within postcolonial and anti-imperial discussions on contemporary discourses on terror. Working with concepts in gender and queer studies, this course draws on cultural production to offer a complex reading of masculinities and what it means to be human in conflict zones.
Recommended preparation: WGS262Y1/WGS262H1.

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WGS355H1 S  Gendered Labour Around the World

This course will focus on masculinities and femininities in workplace settings, with an emphasis on service work around the world. We will discuss workers’ lived experiences of gender regimes which are embedded within the dynamics of class, race and nation. The relationships between gender processes and workplace hierarchies will be explored.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusion:  WGS363H1 Gendered Labour Around the World.

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WGS360H1 S  Making Knowledge in a World that Matters

Teaches skills in feminist approaches to making knowledge. Introduces feminist practices for doing research and navigating the politics of production and exchange. Develops skills for conveying knowledge to the wider world, such as through research papers, reports, performance, new media, art.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusions: WSTB05H3, WGS202H5

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WGS362H1  Selected Topics in Gender and History

An upper level course.  Subjects of study vary from year to year. 
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1

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WGS363H1   Selected Topics in Gender and Theory

An upper level course.  Subjects of study vary from year to year. 
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1

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WGS365H1  Gender Issues in the Law

Examines the operation of the law as it affects women, the construction and representation of women within the legal system, and the scope for feminist and intersectional analyses of law. Includes an analysis of specific legal issues such as sexuality and reproduction, equality, employment, violence and immigration. 
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusions: WGS215H5, WGS365H5

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WGS367H1 S  The Politics of Gender and Health

Examines diverse traditions and normative models of health (e.g., biomedicine, social constructionist, aboriginal health) in conjunction with analyses of the origin, politics, and theoretical perspectives of contemporary Women’s Health Movements. Topics may include fertility, sexuality, poverty, violence, labour, aging, (dis)ability, and health care provision.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusion: WGS367H5

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WGS369H1 F  Studies in Post-Colonialism (formerly NEW369H1)

Examines gendered representations of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability in a variety of colonial, neo-colonial, and “post”-colonial contexts. Topics may include the emergence of racialist, feminist, liberatory and neoconservative discourses as inscribed in literary texts, historical documents, cultural artifacts and mass media.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusion: WGS369Y5

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WGS370H1 F  Utopian Visions, Activist Realities

Drawing on diversely situated case-studies, this course focuses on the ideals that inform struggles for social justice, and the mechanisms activists have employed to produce the change. Foci include the gendered implications of movement participation, local and transnational coalition, alternative community formation, and encounters with the state and inter/supra/transnational organizations.
Recommended Preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusion: WSTB10H3

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WGS372H1  Women and Psychology/Psychoanalysis

An interdisciplinary analysis of the relationship of women to a variety of psychological and psychoanalytical theories and practices. Topics may include women and the psychological establishment; women’s mental health issues; and, feminist approaches to psychoanalysis.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1
Exclusion: WGS366H5
Normally offered in the summer session.  Not offered in fall/winter 2019-2020.

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WGS373H1 F  Gender and Violence

An interdisciplinary study of gendered violence in both historical and contemporary contexts including topics such as textual and visual representations; legal and theoretical analyses; structured violence; war and militarization; sexual violence; and, resistance and community mobilization.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1; WGS350H1
Exclusions: WSTB12H3, WGS373H5

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WGS374H1 F  Feminist Studies in Sexuality

Sexual agency as understood and enacted by women in diverse cultural and historical contexts. An exploration of the ways in which women have theorized and experienced sexual expectations, practices and identities.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1; WGS271Y1

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WGS376H1 S  Studies in Queer and Trans

Takes up conversations in queer and trans studies as separate and entangled fields.  It explores how queer and trans people have experienced and theorized gender and sexuality.
Recommended preparation:  WGS160Y1
Exclusion:  WGS370H5

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WGS380H1 F  Feminist Graphic Novels

Comics aren’t new, and graphic novels aren’t either, but feminists have built a rich array of stories about consciousness, resistance, and coming of age in this genre that warrant scholarly attention.  In this case, we will read graphic novels for their subtelties, thinking about what picture and text make possible in the exploration of emotion, interconnection, and identity.  Reading about resistance to marriage in Ay of Yop City, a child’s view of revolution in Perspolis, parent child reckoning in Fun Home, and loneliness in Skim will advance students’ understandings of the power of narrative and the pictorial displacement of innocence.
Recommended Preparation:  WGS160Y1

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WGS385H1 F  Gender and Neoliberalism

Reviews major feminist transnational, Marxist and Foucauldian approaches to the study of neoliberalism. Adopts a comparative, historical and global approach to the ways that gender is implicated in state restructuring, changing roles for corporations and non-governmental organizations, changing norms for personhood, sovereignty and citizenship, and changing ideas about time/space.
Recommended preparation: WGS160Y1

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WGS386H1  Gender and Critical Political Economy

Offers a critical analysis of political economy, its historical and contemporary contentions and the ‘ruptures’ that open the space for alternative theorizing beyond ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ thinking, by inserting gender and intersecting issues of power, authority and economic, valorization across multiple and changing spheres: domestic, market and state. 
Recommended preparation:  WGS160Y1; WGS273Y1

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WGS390H1  Land-ing: Indigenous and Black Futurist Spaces

This course explores Indigenous feminist theories and their critiques of settler colonial erasures. This course will illuminate how Indigenous feminist critical interventions and worlding projects are being activated upon in shaping decolonization projects through community organizing, and artistic activist interventions.   Throughout this course we will explore how radical Indigenous feminisms are being articulated within urban Indigenous territories; and will be encouraged to think through its implications for how we come to understand Indigenous futurities.
Recommended preparation:  WGS160Y1
Exclusion: WGS347H5

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WGS396H1 S  Writing the Body

Examines the ways in which bodies are lived and enscribed and represented through a variety of genres.  Students will work through issues of corporeality and materiality in the production and reception of texts and will practice embodied writing on a personal level through in-class workshops and written assignments.
Recommended Preparation:  WGS160Y1

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WGS397H1  The Politics of Girlhood

The course communicates the growing field of “girl studies” and provides a critical examination of the historical, social, psychological and political definitions attached to girlhood.  We will move toward a feminist understanding of how definitions of girl-child shape individual experience, historical narratives, cultural representations, political agendas and futures.
Recommended Preparation: WGS160Y1
Normally offered in the summer session.  Not offered in fall/winter 2019-2020.

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400-SERIES COURSES:  ACORN/ROSI ENROLMENT AND BALLOTING

During the first and second round of ACORN/ROSI enrolment, certain enrolment restrictions apply to 400-Series courses.   Eligible students must have completed 2.5 full course equivalents in Women and Gender Studies.  Students with 8.5 credits or less are not permitted to enrol in 400-level courses.

“RP” indicator courses: this applies to all 4th-year courses except WGS451H1.  During the restricted (R) round, only 3rd-year and 4th-year Specialists and Majors in Women and Gender Studies are eligible to enrol.  During the priority (P) round, 3rd-year and 4th-year Minors in Women and Gender Studies are permitted to enrol.

EXCEPTION:  WGS460Y1Y.  During the restricted (R) round, only 4th-year Specialists and Majors in Women and Gender Studies are eligible to enroll in this course.

“E” indicator courses: this applies to Independent Studies (WGS451H1). Students should fill out this application form and submit it to the program office via email: wgsi.programs@utoronto.ca.

400-SERIES COURSES

WGS420H1  Asian/North American Feminist Issues

A transpacific examination of issues that have directly and indirectly shaped the feminist and other related critical inquiries in Asia and among the Asian diasporas in Canada and the United States.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

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WGS426H1 F  Gender and Globalization: Transnational Perspectives

Critically examines current interdisciplinary scholarship on globalization, its intersections with gender, power structures, and feminized economies. Related socio-spatial reconfigurations, ‘glocal’ convergences, and tensions are explored, with emphasis on feminist counter-narratives and theorizing of globalization, theoretical debates on the meanings and impacts of globalization, and possibilities of resistance, agency, and change.
Prerequisite:  WG160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Exclusions:  WGS463H1, fall session 2009, WSTC25H3

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WGS434H1 F  Advanced Topics in Women and Gender Studies

An upper level seminar.  Topics vary from year to year.
Topic for Fall 2019: The Politics/Cultures of Surveillance.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Exclusions:  WGS280H1S (Spring 2017); WGS334H1S (Summer 2018)

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WGS435H1 S  Advanced Topics in Women and Gender Studies

An upper level seminar.  Topics vary from year to year.
Topic for Fall 2018: Gender and Sexuality in the Nuclear Age
A herstory of black liberation movements, this course maps genealogies of intersectional theorizing, organizing, and praxis from the twentieth century to our present moment.  Through close study of works by and about black revolutionary migrants, exiles, intellectuals and so-called terrorists, participants will critique and create radical visions for emancipation.  Major topics and themes include black feminisms, queer insurgencies and utopias; pan-African socialism; transnational imaginaries and solidarities; misogynoir; sex and empire; gender and state violence.
Prerequisite: WG160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

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WGS440H1  Postcolonial Cyborgs for Planetary Futures:  Speculative Fiction Feminisms

Drawing together film, fiction and theory, this course invites students to explore ways of imagining other worlds. From afro-futurism to planetary humanism, from cyborgs to hauntings, from science fiction fantasies to the politics of aliens, the course examines and produces feminist, postcolonial, anti-racist, and queer visions of other worlds.
Prerequisite:  WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

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WGS442H1  Toxic Worlds, Decolonial Futures

Description TBD.
Prerequisite:  WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

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WGS450H1  Modernity, Freedom, Citizenship:  Gender and the Black Diaspora

Explores transnational feminist genealogies of the black diaspora.  The course pays attention to the contexts and movements that generated key questions, exploring how these interventions disclose preoccupations with modernity, freedom and citizenship.  Topics may include trauma and memory, sexual citizenship, Afrofuturism, indigeneity, and the crafting of political communities.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Exclusions: WGS434H1 Black Diasporic Feminisms: Modernity, Freedom, Citizenship, WSTB06H3, WGS340H5

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WGS451H1  Independent Study in Women and Gender Studies

Under supervision, students pursue topics in Women and Gender Studies not currently part of the curriculum.  Not eligible for CR/NCR option. See information regarding “E” indicator courses above.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Application Deadline for Fall 2020 Session:  June 15, 2020.
Application Deadline for Winter 2021 Session:  September 15, 2020.

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WGS460Y1 Y  Honours Seminar

Supervised undergraduate thesis project undertaken in the final year of study. Students attend a bi-weekly seminar to discuss research strategies, analytics, methods and findings. A required course for Specialist students.  Not eligible for CR/NCR option.
Prerequisite:  WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
ACORN/ROSI Enrolment:  For ACORN/ROSI enrolment details, please refer to the note on 400-level courses above.  WGS Specialists and Majors in their 4th year of study are permitted to enroll during the restricted (R) round of enrolment.

Back to 400-series course listings.

WGS461Y1  Advanced Topics in Women and Gender Studies

An upper-level seminar. Topics vary from year to year depending on the instructor.
Prerequisite: WG160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

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WGS462H1:  Advanced Topics in Gender and History

An upper-level seminar.  Topics vary from year to year.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

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WGS463H1 S Advanced Topics in Gender Theory

Senior students may pursue more advanced study in feminist theory.  Topics vary from year to year depending on the instructor.
Topic for Spring 2019:  Toxic Worlds, Decolonial Futures
This course explores the ways environmental violence are integral practices of settler colonialism that effect human and non-human life, disrupt indigenous sovereignty, and enact ongoing racism.  A typical way of addressing environmental violence is to document the harm done to bodies and communities.  This class asks, how might we also refuse and repair environmental violence?  What kind of decolonializing futures can be summoned in the aftermath of environmental violence?  How to enact obligations to Land/body relations?  Our readings will bring together Indigenous feminist approaches together with Black feminist, queer, and feminist environmental justice approaches.  Participants will build on the readings to create their own decolonial environmental justice future projects.
Prerequisite: WG160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.

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WGS465H1  Special Topics in Gender and the Law

Senior students may pursue advanced study in gender and law. Topics vary from year to year.
Prerequisite: WG160Y1,WGS365H1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
This course is offered every three years. 

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WGS470Y1 Y  Community Engagement

The application of theoretical study to practical community experience. Advanced Women and Gender Studies students have the opportunity to apply knowledge acquired in the Women and Gender Studies curriculum through a practicum placement within a community organization.
Prerequisite: WGS160Y1, one full course at the 300+ level in WGS, and one half course in WGS.
Exclusions: WSTC23H3, WGS435Y5

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WGS482H1 F Translating Sexuality: Queer Migration/Diaspora

Description TBD.

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ACORN/ROSI Enrolment:  For ACORN/ROSI enrolment details, please refer to the note on 400-level courses above.  WGS Specialists and Majors in their 3rd and 4th year of study are permitted to enrol during the first round of enrolment.  During the second round, WGS Minors in their 3rd and 4th year of study are permitted to enroll.