Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies

This First-Year Foundations seminar will explore sexuality at the intersections of race, gender, class, disability, citizenship status, and geography, among other social relations and processes as a foundational practice in Sexual Diversity Studies. In an intimate seminar setting, students will develop reading, writing, and presentation skills necessary for engaging in Sexual Diversity Studies across a wide array of disciplinary traditions. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

A critical examination of the HIV/AIDS global pandemic from a multidisciplinary perspective and with an emphasis on sexuality. The course examines the basic biology of HIV/AIDS and then covers social, historical, political, cultural, gender, and public health aspects of HIV/AIDS. Attention is given to the distinct features of vulnerable and marginalized populations, prevention, treatment, drug development, and access to medicines.

JSU237H1 is particularly intended for students in the Health Studies and/or Sexual Diversity Studies programs.

An interdisciplinary examination of sexuality across cultures and periods. How are sexualities represented? How are they suppressed or celebrated? How and why are they labeled as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, or perverse? How do sexualities change with race/ethnicity, class, gender, and geographies?

This course examines a variety of methodological approaches used in humanities and humanist social sciences concerning sexuality and gendered diversity. Students will explore some of the popular methods in sexuality studies including ethnography, archival research, visual cultural studies, oral history, and media and discourse analysis. 

This introductory course examines the critical relationship between popular culture and queer sexualities in historical and contemporary contexts. The course will draw upon literature from performance studies, media studies, and queer of colour cultural productions. Students will engage with a range of queer public cultures and arts, including drag performance, queer musics, social media networks, and popular media.

This is an interdisciplinary course examining the development of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) movement and its interaction with the state in the US and Canada. (Given by the Department of Political Science and the Sexual Diversity Studies Program)

This course focuses on Canadian literary and artistic productions that challenge prevailing notions of nationality and sexuality, exploring not only how artists struggle with that ongoing Canadian thematic of being and belonging, but also celebrate pleasure and desire as a way of imagining and articulating an alternative national politics.

HIV has forever changed the way human beings understand sexuality. Through a social justice lens, this course examines the nature of community norms, laws, popular media, and the academy to explore how the epidemic has impacted the provision of social services in relation to the diversity of human sexuality.

What do electronic technologies mean for feminist and queer identity, activism, sociability, art, and politics? This course considers a range of critical pressure points central to digital studies, including social networking, participatory media, digital archives, databases, new media activism, performance, embodiment, and representations of race, gender, and sexuality in electronic contexts.

This course offers a survey of some key texts and narratives that have traversed and structured Western conceptualizations of sexuality from Greek antiquity to the 19th century. We will examine a variety of literary, philosophical and medical sources in light of what they say about past conceptualizations of the body, desire and its pleasures, and we will ask how they resonate with, or radically differ from, our current understandings of bodily norms, passions and transgressions.

This course introduces students to key theories of sexuality and sexual diversity. The main goal is to create a framework for understanding sexuality at its intersections with race, gender, class, disability, citizenship status, and geography among other social relations and processes at an advanced level. Closely tracing sexuality’s intersections, course readings will draw upon critical race theory, postcolonial critique and decolonizing movements, women of colour feminisms, trans studies, and transnational sexuality and gender studies.

The course explores the legal regulation of sexuality. How does law understand, constitute and regulate sex, sexuality and sexual diversity? It will consider the role of different types of regulation, including criminal law, family law and constitutional law, and explore issues ranging from sex work and pornography to same sex marriage to transgender discrimination.

Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. This seminar is intended to expose students in the Sexual Diversity Studies program to topics that may not be covered by permanent university courses.

Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. This seminar is intended to expose students in the Sexual Diversity Studies program to topics that may not be covered by permanent university courses.

This multidisciplinary course examines multiple lesbian identities that have varied in time and place. The course will pose such questions as: What does lesbian mean? Why have changes occurred in meaning? How has the identity of lesbian been culturally represented and politically expressed in various social and political contexts? It will also take up contemporary theoretical, cultural, and political understandings of lesbianism.

What role have sex and sexuality played in the formation of the modern nation state? How has the state regulated sex? This course explores these questions with a theoretical focus on biopolitics. We will proceed in two parts. First, we engage Foucault’s History of Sexuality and its reception by postcolonial theorists, focusing on questions of state building. The second part of the course shifts examination from state formation to contemporary forms of sexual regulation by the state. This includes maintenance of the public/private divide, citizenship law and nationalism, administrative violence and the prison industrial complex, and neoliberalism and BDSM. By the end of the course, students are able to apply core theoretical concepts and identify forms of contemporary sexual regulation in a variety of Western and non-Western contexts. (Given by the Department of Political Science and the Mark S Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies.)

Experiences of queer youth are explored in various education settings through academic research, personal essays, and visual and performing arts to investigate how queer youth define themselves, what they are learning, the curriculum and pedagogy used in the learning process and the possibilities of said learning for social change, individual and community well-being.

An exploration of LGBTQ rights and changes in social and cultural responses to sexual diversity in varied regional, national, and cultural contexts, potentially including Africa, Latin America, South and East Asia, and Eastern Europe. The role of transnational linkages and networks will also be considered in effecting change.

This course examines current and historical transgender issues by exploring legal and health care issues, politics, mainstream and other media representations (including films, interviews, and other genres), as well as current and historical advocacy and community work in relation to power structures such as the nation-state, race, disability, and sexuality.

This course provides an introduction to the intersections between race, gender and sexuality through an exploration of the political theories, activisms and cultural forms of LGBTQ people of colour. It examines the emergence of queer of colour theory and critiques, and the ways in which the intersections of race, gender and sexuality figure in national, global, economic, & cultural structures.

This upper level course introduces students to questions of gender, sexuality, two-spirit, and same-sex desire at the intersections of race, indigeneity, and the violences of settler colonialism. Students will engage with work by scholars, activists, and artists in the fields of indigenous and queer studies, decolonizing activism, and cultural production.

How is the idea of “ethics” understood and deployed in research on sexuality and health? What are the ways that discourses of “risk,” “precarity,” and “cure” become regulative frameworks? How do racialization, colonialism and nation-­building participate in the biopolitics of sexuality and health? With these questions in mind, this interdisciplinary course will discuss various scholarly and activist literatures, including Youth Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Environmental Justice scholarship, Sex Education and Public Health Research, Critical Development Studies, and Queer and Feminist Studies to explore the cultural, social and political dimensions of ethics, health, and sexuality historically, and at the present moment.

An interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to the study of disability and sexuality. Students will enage with historical, mainstream and critical discourses and explore complex issues and representations pertaining to disability, sexuality, sexual practices and desire. Draws from a range of writings and cultural texts in queer, crip and sexuality studies. 

Topics vary from year to year depending on instructor. This seminar is intended to expose students in the Sexual Diversity Studies program to topics that may not be covered by permanent university courses.

A research essay under the supervision of a faculty member with knowledge of sexual diversity, the proposal and supervisor subject to the approval of the SDS Program Director. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

A major research essay prepared over the course of two academic terms (one year); under the supervision of a faculty member with knowledge of sexual diversity; the proposal and supervisor subject to the approval of the SDS Program Director. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

A capstone for majors and specialists who will work closely with SDS faculty in developing their own research project while participating in this seminar and learning about key debates, methodologies, and ethical issues in conducting research in SDS. Students will learn to write proposals, ethics reviews, grants and other relevant documents. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This interdisciplinary course will explore the politics of migration and border-crossing from queer, feminist, and trans perspectives. Drawing upon contemporary North American and transnational research, students will engage with critical literatures on citizenship and the state, mobility, belonging, and kinship and how these processes intersect with sexuality in the context of immigration and refugee systems.

This course is a critical study of the historical, aesthetic, and cultural formation of the concept of pornography. The course explores the relationship between sexual representation and sex work; works through debates about artistic merit and censorship and how they relate to larger issues of power, capitalism, and technology; and theorizes the relationship between sex and commerce. Readings will include work from feminist, queer, people of colour, and trans theorists in the cutting-edge field of porn studies.

This course critically examines the socio-political cultural context that has produced a new queer visibility. It assesses many of the post-Stonewall changes in the North American public sphere and the interelationship between the new queer visibility and the North American and public sphere.

This course explores, through queer of colour critique, feminist and queer theories, how sexuality, gender, and race are performed and heard in several popular music styles/genres. Sampling the field with readings, music videos and audio recordings, we examine sexuality, gender and race in music performance and reception currently and historically.

This course will provide an advanced exploration of the historical and contemporary formations and debates of queer studies. This seminar is designed to provide students with the opportunity to practice their skills of research and interpretation at a particularly advanced level. The specific theme of the seminar changes per year. Please see the department website for details.

A service learning course with student placements in various LGBT community organizations alongside regular classroom seminars to look at the politics of engagement, active citizenship, mobilization, archiving community histories, accessibility, belonging, activism, and philanthropy.