Undergraduate Courses

The Department of Women & Gender Studies offers a wide range of courses. Some courses are offered every semester, while others rotate on a yearly or every other year rotation.

Please always refer to the current year's academic calendar for the most accurate list of courses offered. The comprehensive list of courses below are not offered every semester. Please refer to the Bridge for current semester offerings and to register for courses.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A critical feminist examination of women's embodied lives in differing social locations. The course challenges the traditional dichotomies of mind/body, culture/nature, and public/private in the treatment of such topics as the feminization of poverty; sexualities, reproduction, and family life; violence against women; women and religion; and culture and body image.
Lib Ed Req: Social Science

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Concerns of women in health and illness are explored in relation to current formal and informal health care practices.
Prerequisite(s): Second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req: Social Science

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A history of the development of feminist theoretical perspectives from the 18th Century to the present using a multidisciplinary perspective.
Recommended Background: Women and Gender Studies 1000
Lib Ed Req: Social Science

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This course explores the critical link between feminist theoretical perspectives and practice. Through various historical periods and global settings, students evaluate ways in which feminist consciousness shapes women's local, national, and transnational activism. Utilizing experiential learning, students gain first-hand knowledge of viable forms of advocacy for social justice and equality.
Recommended Background: Women and Gender Studies 1000
Lib Ed Req: Social Science

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Critical analysis of scientific methods and research processes from a feminist perspective including design, collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data.
Prerequisite(s): One of Women and Gender Studies 1000 or Second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req: Social Science

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The lives and diversity of women across North America or Europe from the 15th Century to contemporary times. Organized around major themes rather than a chronology of events, topics may include the impact of industrialization and urbanization on women and families; women’s reproductive behaviour and labour; suffrage, citizenship and the nation; women’s access to education; and community and social activism.
Prerequisite(s): One course (3.0 credit hours) in History at the 1000 level or Women and Gender Studies 1000
Recommended Background: History 2222
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

This course is designed for students to develop an expanded understanding of the law to include both formal and informal practices of resistance, social policing and the enforcement and reinvention of social and legal norms. A critical examination of feminist legal theory, this course draws primarily on feminist literatures, physical spaces, court cases, and legislation. Students will examine the interface between theory and practice (praxis), embodiment and regulation, cultural practices, psychological states, sexualities and gender identities in the context of how feminists have theorized both formal legal institutions and the many forms of legalistic regulation that shape everyday life. Through case studies, critical analysis, social observation and site examinations students will further develop their critical thinking skills by theorizing how gendered and racialized knowledge shapes both the formal and informal legal practice that appears in their daily lives.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This series investigates the relationships of women and their bodies to the physical, cultural, and social domains in which they move. Individual offerings will focus on or include areas such as health; sexualities; physical activity and well-being; cultural production; media; paid and unpaid labour; and migration and coerced removal.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 1000 or a previous course in Women and Gender Studies AND second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This series examines how women's lives and local environments are impacted by globalization. Individual offerings will focus on or include areas such as global and grassroots feminist alliances; human rights; feminist political economy; indigeneity; ecofeminism; technology transfer; sex trade and tourism; feminization of labour and free trade zones; and population, integration, and immigration policies.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 1000 or a previous course in Women and Gender Studies AND second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This series examines women's contributions to, and historical exclusion from, the arts. Individual offerings will focus on or include areas such as women and film; women and creative arts, critics, and patrons of the arts; the arts in cultural and separatist feminisms; race, disability, and ethnicity in the arts; avant garde and cultural production activism by women in the arts; and women's relationships to new technologies (cyberfeminism) and multimedia.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 1000 or a previous course in Women and Gender Studies AND second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This series examines myriad ways women have been represented and how they have resisted or challenged those representations in various cultural forms and practices. Individual offerings will focus on or include areas such as popular culture, media, sexualities, literature, visual arts, performing arts, law, internet, fashion, cosmetic industries, and the impact of advertising and marketing on young girls.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 1000 or a previous course in Women and Gender Studies AND second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This series explores the relationship between faith, spirituality, and sexuality among world and indigenous religious traditions and new religious movements. Individual offerings will focus on or include areas such as religious gender ideologies, rites of passage into adulthood, sexual prohibitions and taboos, mysticism, and images of the divine as feminine and masculine.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 1000 or a previous course in Women and Gender Studies AND second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This series examines contemporary relationships among society and space; nature, environment and development; and culture and technology. Individual offerings will focus on or include areas such as feminist responses to the design, use, and increasing privatization of public spaces; the role of gender in planning for environmental sustainability; feminist political economy; and critiques of science.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 1000 or a previous course in Women and Gender Studies AND second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Relationships between various state formations and women's lives. Offerings start from the understanding that the state plays a central role in organizing gender, racial, sexual, and national relations of power. Focus on specific areas such as reproductive rights, paid/unpaid labour, citizenship and immigration, indigenous sovereignty, sexual rights, social security, marriage, and war/militarism.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 1000 or a previous course in Women and Gender Studies AND second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
This series examines the complex intersections of gender in the Asian context. Individual course offerings will focus on, but not be limited to, the following: development and economy, cross-border migration, militarization and regional conflicts, impact of globalization, culture and politics, youth and democratization, environment and sustainability, tradition and sexualities, science and modernization, and social justice movements.
Prerequisite(s): One of Women and Gender Studies 1000 or Asian Studies 1000

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, gender, and social change that includes: theories of the legitimacy of judicial review; analyses of selected sections of the Constitution Act through Supreme Court and appellate court decisions; contemporary critical race, postcolonial, gender, sexualities, Indigenous and legal literatures that address intersecting forms of discrimination; current issues that highlight the role of law as a means of social control and political contestation; analyses of selected statutes, regulations and the facta presented to courts.
Prerequisite(s): One of Political Science 1000, Political Science 2210, or Women and Gender Studies 1000
Lib Ed Req: Social Science

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Exploration of contemporary scholarship within feminist theoretical frameworks as they apply to specific topics or debates in the discipline. Individual offerings will focus on or include areas such as critical race theory, First Nations/Indigeneity, postmodern feminism, queer and trans theory, ecofeminism, globalization, decolonization, Third Wave feminist theories, and other specific areas that address the politics of difference.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 2300

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Students will design research proposals, write grant applications and conduct ethics reviews for specific projects, employing feminist research theory and methods.
Prerequisite(s): Women and Gender Studies 2700 AND Women and Gender Studies 3350 OR one of Addictions Counselling 3260 or Nursing 3360
Lib Ed Req: Social Science

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Seminar for advanced investigation of specific topics or current issues in Women and Gender Studies.
Prerequisite(s): One of Women and Gender Studies 2300 or Women and Gender Studies 2700 AND third-year standing (a minimum of 60.0 credit hours)
Note: Gender-based courses at the 2000 level or higher in other disciplines may be appropriate background preparation for this course. Please contact the Department of Women & Gender Studies for more information.

Credit hours: 6.00
Contact hours per week: Variable
This is a research-oriented course in which students will conduct empirical research, submit a report in the form of an Undergraduate Thesis which will be made publicly available, and report orally on the work. In consultation with their Thesis Supervisor, students will define a research problem and formulate a research plan.
Prerequisite(s): Fourth-year standing (a minimum of 90.0 credit hours) AND a cumulative GPA of 3.30 or higher AND one of Women and Gender Studies 3700 or [Women and Gender Studies 2700 and one Independent Study (3.0 credit hours) in Women and Gender Studies at the 3000 or 4000 level]
Note: Contact hours will vary. Students should be aware that this course involves regular contact with the Thesis Supervisor as well as considerable independent work.