Handbook

This seminar course acts as a ‘Capstone’ for students in the WGS minor. It is very useful to History majors as well, including those doing Education degrees; other majors with an interest in WGS also find it instructive. A central emphasis of the course is on helping students with an interest in WGS topics to prepare for honours research.

Course topics include: feminist (e.g. ‘gender’) and queer challenges to History and other academic disciplines: positioned versus ‘impartial’ scholarship; writing sceptical/experimental histories; gender and life-writing; intersectional (gender, race, class etc) analysis; the 'Who can [legitimately] speak for whom?’ debate and feminist ethics in the use of oral testimonies by the ‘Other’ woman; and the multiple challenges to academic studies posed by the Linguistic Turn/poststructuralism. These include critiques of essentialism in traditional perceptions of cultural/individual identity, which in Queer Theory today extends to a critique of conventional (for e.g. gay and lesbian) identity politics.