For more information on our course offerings, please go to York Course Website.
Calendar Year
Term
Course #
Course Title
2024
F
gs/gfws 6001A
Histories: Women, Genders, Sexualities
This course examines key concepts, debates, methodologies, and theoretical directions in the history of women, genders and sexualities from a transnational and intersectional perspective. It focuses on the dialogue between gender history and social history and asks how social movements have shaped the questions historians ask and how gender articulates with major analytic categories including class relations and racial formation.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
F
gs/gfws 6002A
Feminist Theory
Offers an analysis of contemporary feminist theoretical debates in the program's fields of specialization: Cultural and Literary Studies, Performance and Fines Arts; Diaspora, Transnational and Global Studies; Histories; Politics, Economies and Societies; Race; Sexualities; Theories and Methods. Required course for all MA students.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
W
gs/gfws 6007M
Feminist Research Colloquium
This course is designed for incoming Master's students. It provides a supportive learning environment to develop research and writing skills appropriate to the discipline.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): A. Alook
2025
W
gs/gfws 6007M
Feminist Research Colloquium
This course is designed for incoming Master's students. It provides a supportive learning environment to develop research and writing skills appropriate to the discipline.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
W
gs/gfws 6008M
Feminist Methodologies and Research Methods
Explores the relationship among theory, methodology and research methods, prepares students to identify, critique and assess the appropriateness of selected research methods and reviews some of the current debates on feminist methodologies. Required course for all PhD students.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): E. Karpinski
2025
W
gs/gfws 6008M
Feminist Methodologies and Research Methods
Explores the relationship among theory, methodology and research methods, prepares students to identify, critique and assess the appropriateness of selected research methods and reviews some of the current debates on feminist methodologies. Required course for all PhD students.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
F
gs/gfws 6009A
Advanced Research in Feminist Theory
This PhD course has two objectives: to provide advanced scholarship in feminist epistemologies and theories to prepare PhD students for their comprehensive exams and dissertations, and to engage critically with theoretical issues pertaining to students' research interests.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
W
gs/gfws 6111M
(De) Colonizing Research Methodologies
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): J. Michelakos
2024
W
gs/gfws 6114M
Race, Gender and American Politics
In recent years, a wealth of scholarship on race, gender and ethnicity has transformed the way scholars treat almost every aspect of U.S. history. This course uses this historical literature to re-examine conventional topics, such as the New Deal and the Cold War, broach fresh subjects like the history of whiteness, and shed new light on American culture and politics. Weekly readings explore such topics as slavery, the formation of the U.S. welfare system, Americanization and ethnicity, lynching and miscegenation, African American organizing in the Jim Crow south, gay history, and the urban crisis.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): P. Lawrie
2024
F
gs/gfws 6123A
Critical Sexuality
TBA
Instructional Format: SEMR
2025
W
gs/gfws 6207M
The Political Economy of Work and Welfare
Instructional Format: SEMR
2025
W
gs/gfws 6214M
Maternal Theory
Theory on mothering and motherhood has emerged as a distinct boy of knowledge within motherhood studies and feminist theory more generally. This course examines the rich and diverse tradition of maternal theory that has evolved over the last thirty years
Instructional Format: ONLN
2025
W
gs/gfws 6216M
Transnational Sexualities
This course examines the contemporary articulation and organization of sexual identities and rights in the developing world, and considers how interventions by international agencies, nation-states and advocacy groups have informed/been informed by racial and gender politics, and notions of citizenship.
Instructional Format: ONLN
2024
F
gs/gfws 6301A
Fem.Issues In Anth. Hist.& Current Deb
: Perceiving Women. This course explores literature in feminist anthropology during the past twenty years. Major theoretical contributions and debates discussed include issues that dominated the field during the 1970's (women in the ethnographic literature; the public/private dichotomy; male dominance; impact of colonialism) as well as current concerns regarding feminist methodology, cultural constructions of gender and the female body, and women's resistance. (Same as Women's Studies 6301.03.) Professor Romalis
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
W
gs/gfws 6301M
Fem.Issues In Anth. Hist.& Current Deb
: Perceiving Women. This course explores literature in feminist anthropology during the past twenty years. Major theoretical contributions and debates discussed include issues that dominated the field during the 1970's (women in the ethnographic literature; the public/private dichotomy; male dominance; impact of colonialism) as well as current concerns regarding feminist methodology, cultural constructions of gender and the female body, and women's resistance. (Same as Women's Studies 6301.03.) Professor Romalis
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): L. Davidson
2024
Y
gs/gfws 6801A
Reading Course
Individual students or small groups may conduct readings under a faculty member's supervision in one or two selected areas. Students wishing to enrol should contact the Director of the Graduate Program in Women's Studies for permission.
Instructional Format: DIRD
2025
W
gs/gfws 6801M
Directed Reading
Directed Reading
Instructional Format: DIRD
2024
W
gs/gfws 6801M
Directed Reading
Directed Reading
Instructional Format: DIRD
2024
I1
gs/gfws 6804A
Critical Perspectives on Race, Gender, Sexuality and the Environment
Overview of theories exploring racism, colonialism, gender and sexuality in relation to each other and to a range of urban and other environments. The course employs an intersectional perspective that foregrounds feminist, queer, transgender and other subjugated knowledges of racial capitalism, anti-Blackness and settler colonialism.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): J. Haritaworn
2024
F
gs/gfws 6805A
Health and Illness
This course is designed to consider current debates about health and care within a feminist political economy framework. The focus will be Canada but a Canada located within an international context. Of course students will be invited to introduce other perspectives and other countries into the readings, discussions and their papers.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
W
gs/gfws 6805M
Health and Illness
This course is designed to consider current debates about health and care within a feminist political economy framework. The focus will be Canada but a Canada located within an international context. Of course students will be invited to introduce other perspectives and other countries into the readings, discussions and their papers.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): C. Douglas
2024
W
gs/gfws 6906M
The Cultural and Social Construction of Girls and Girlhood: Critical Feminist Perspectives
Drawing upon multiple theoretical perspectives from contemporary girlhood studies, students explore the cultural and social construction of girls and girlhood. Critical feminist perspectives combined with girls' own experiences enable students to uncover and critique the ways in which girlhood is socially constructed and regulated through time, place and space. The role of oppression will be explored through an intersectional lens.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): N. Coulter
2024
F
gs/gfws 6907A
MA Seminar in Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies
Presents students with an overview of the fields of specialization available in this program and introduces them to current critical issues and debates. It also deals with professional development, such as preparing grant applications, conference papers and articles.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
F
gs/gfws 6910A
Black Feminisms
An introduction to the histories, theories, concepts and praxis of Black Feminism, as produced through intersectional struggles around race, class gender and sexuality. It considers shifts in the articulation of Black feminisms across geography, culture and time, and encourages further research into the specificities of Black Canadian feminism.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2025
W
gs/gfws 6912M
On Violence and Memory: Transnational Feminist Readings
This course uses a transnational feminist lens to examine the contested relationship between political violence and how it is remembered and memorialized, within histories of colonial and imperial power. It examines violence in-context, in relation to indigeneity, racialization, gender, class, sexuality, and highlights the transnational dimensions of memory practices through the traveling of tropes, signs, claims and power across borders.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
F
gs/gfws 6914A
Transnational feminism and thewomen in theGlobalSouth
This graduate level seminar for MA and Ph.Dstudentsisintended to critically discuss transnational feminism's agenda and its impact on women in the global Souththroughadecolonial lens. It addresses crucial questions about decolonizing knowledge and the agency of women in the global South.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2025
W
gs/gfws 6915M
Islamophobia and Gender in North America and Europe
This course will provide students with a graduate level seminar and discussion space to articulate and develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between Islamophobia or/and anti-Muslim racism and gender. We will discuss the historical roots and contemporary manifestation of anti-Muslim racism and how it enables the production of gender representations and stereotypes, as well as different types of resistance to this racism and its consequences, including by looking at the work done by Islamic feminists.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2024
W
gs/gfws 6915M
Islamophobia and Gender in North America and Europe
This course will provide students with a graduate level seminar and discussion space to articulate and develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between Islamophobia or/and anti-Muslim racism and gender. We will discuss the historical roots and contemporary manifestation of anti-Muslim racism and how it enables the production of gender representations and stereotypes, as well as different types of resistance to this racism and its consequences, including by looking at the work done by Islamic feminists.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): N. Hasan
2024
W
gs/gfws 6916M
Feminist Digital Cultures: mediations of identity, affect, embodiment and politics
This course focuses on intersectional feminist approaches to understanding digital texts, contexts, technologies and practices, engaging with entanglements of self, social bonds and political action and digital media from within fabric of everyday life. The course will both critique dominant digital systems and discuss Feminist political interventions and creative projects that utilize digital tools for social transformation.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): S. Driver
2025
W
gs/gfws 6917M
Feminist Fat Studies
This course focuses on the area of fat cultures and fat studies. Students learn about size politics from a variety of historical and contemporary assigned sources, including academic, activist, and digital material. This course examines fat studies scholarship, activism and cultural production through queer, Indigenous, anti-racist, critical disability and feminist theoretical frameworks. Students will be required to have feminist studies course experience at the discretion of the course director.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Learn More
The Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist & Women's Studies at York is an exciting environment to pursue innovative, socially engaging, career-ready education. Contact our Graduate Program Assistant to learn more.