ERI200Y: Introduction to Women's/Gender Studies
Instructor: Ann-Barbara Graff
Office : North Building Room 291
Office Hours: MWF 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Class Meeting Times: W: 3-5 and tutorial hour
Teaching Assistants: Heather Howard-Bobiwash and Michele Byers
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Monna Donna (1866)
Tate Gallery, London
Welcome to ERI200Y. This course is the introductory course in the Women's/Gender Studies Programme at the University fo Toronto in Mississauga. An interdisciplinary course, we will examine historical, scientific, literary, and theoretical texts to investigate the various ways conceptions of gender are constructed and promulgated. We will explore the development of feminist thought and theory to the present day. We will trace the intersections of gender and other factors, including race, class, sexual orientation. The goal of the course is to encourage connections between personal experience and academic discourse through the development of critical skills of intellectual analysis; integral components of this goal are critical reading and writing.
Course Reading List (by topic)
Click here
Robyn Warhol and Diane Herndl, feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism, revised edition (Rutgers UP, 1997)
Katherin McPerson, Cecilia Morgan and Nancy Forestell (eds.), Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Ann-Barbara Graff, Course Reader which includes excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford University Press); link to M.E. Braddon Website
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)--scroll to Gilman page
Web Documents
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1867)
Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman? (1851)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Birth-mark (1846, 1854)
Recommended Texts
Wendy Mitchinson et al, Canadian Women: A Reader
St. Thomas Aquinas, "Whether Woman Should have Been Made in the First Production of Things" (13th Century)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, ou l'education (1762)
Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905)
The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action (1996)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688); Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain (1884);
Patricia Raybon, My First White Friend: Confessions of Race, Love and Forgiveness (1997);
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818; revised 1831);
Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826);
Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1855);
Sherene Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (University of Toronto Press, 1998); Nathalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography (1999)
4 short assignments (4 x 10%); mid-term test (10%);
final exam (35%);
Class/Tutorial Participation (15%)
Click here to participate in on-line class discussions. Scroll down to the Introduction to Women's/Gender Studies forum, graciously provided by Jason Nolan in the Division of the Environment.
Resources
Oxford English Dictionary
Relevant Web Sites
Women's Studies Resources (a comprehensive site maintained at Duke University)
A Celebration of Women Writers
The Victorian Women Writers Project
Margaret Sanger Papers" at NYU
How to Write a Paper
Some helpful hints and pointers to follow.
Click Here for more information about the program.
Last Updated by Ann-Barbara Graff -- September 1999
graff@dgp.utoronto.ca