Course Description
How do we transform rough ideas into solid, persuasive, and nuanced arguments? What does a critical analysis look like? How do we navigate the seemingly endless sources of information and cultural products that are available to us in order to develop a helpful archive from which to work? What’s the most effective way to present our key ideas? This seminar is for advanced students in Women and Gender Studies who want to design and execute a major research project. In the process, you’ll reflect on and develop your research method, think through the ethics and politics of making knowledge, work at the craft of writing clear, persuasive prose, and workshop different stages of your projects. We’ll devote the first term to formulating specific, focused topics and questions and developing practical strategies to help you pursue the goals that you’ll eventually set out in your project proposals. The second term, during which we will meet every two weeks, will be organized into a series of workshops that will allow you to give and receive feedback on aspects of your papers and to help each other troubleshoot as you run into challenges.
This course is an opportunity to explore, in some detail, questions that matter to you and to further develop the necessary skills to express complex, original thought. By participating in this classroom community of thinkers and writers, you’ll also experience firsthand how making knowledge is a relational, rather than isolated, endeavour.
Course Instructor – Dr. S. Trimble
Abinaya Balasubramaniam Abstract – “The Teardrop-shaped island: Postmemory and trauma in Sri Lanka”
Afra Michael Boissevain Abstract – Eating (dis)Order: Non-medicalised self-starvation and feminine madness in three works by Francesca Lia Block
Alexandra Pinosa Abstract – “Maybe She Loves It, Maybe She’s Sponsored”
Ashley Merrell Abstract – “Homies are Accessories: Miley Cyrus, Postfeminism and Eating the Other”
Byul Seol Abstract – “Women’s Ascent: The first lady becomes the first female President”
Ida Soliemanpour-Zahir Abstract – Off the Hook: Escorting, Post-feminism and The Art of Conspicuous Consumption
Lucia Gambetti-Bracco Abstract – Almost Human: Adolescent Feminine Sexuality in Supernatural Fiction
Tyler Carson Abstract – Feeling (World) Pride: Cruel Optimism, Affect, and the Emerging Event