Spring 2018 - GSWS 320 D100
Special Topics in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies (4)
Class Number: 3386
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Jan 3 – Apr 10, 2018: Thu, 1:30–5:20 p.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Willeen Keough
wkeough@sfu.ca
1 778 782-4534
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Prerequisites:
15 units.
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
A specific theme within within the field of gender, sexuality, and women's studies, not otherwise covered in depth in regularly scheduled courses, will be dealt with as occasion and demand warrant.
COURSE DETAILS:
The Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver has gone through many changes over the past 150 years. A First Nations hunting and fishing territory for thousands of years, the area became the centre of the emerging city of Vancouver at the turn of the 20th century and a thriving working-class neighbourhood through much of the 1900s. Since the 1970s and 1980s, however, the area has been represented in new and disturbing ways. Dubbed “Canada’s poorest postal code” in the media and popular understanding, the DTES has been defined by outsiders as a “dumping ground” for the city’s social problems: addiction, poverty, homelessness, prostitution, gender violence, and HIV/AIDs. Yet the DTES is much more than the sum of the challenges it faces, and residents and their allies have re-appropriated the neighbourhood and re-created a strong sense of community, mutual caring, and activism. Today, however, residents struggle to maintain their community in the face of increasing gentrification and its related impacts, including a radical decline in social housing, increasing rents and food prices, growing hostility towards low-income residents, and ultimate displacement. Through an exploration of written primary sources, secondary literature, films, oral narratives, videos, and websites, and through engagement with speakers from the community, this course will seek to understand the intersection of inequalities situated in gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, class, and disability that have created and re-created Vancouver’s Downtown. It will also encourage students to consider how we might integrate academic work with a commitment to social action.
COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:
I Display disciplinary knowledge of core concepts of gender and sexuality.
For more detailed information please see the GSWS website: http://www.sfu.ca/gsws/courses/Educational_Goals.html
Grading
- Attendance and active participation 15%
- Written reading responses 15%
- Group facilitation of readings 15%
- Op-ed 20%
- Research paper OR ‘zine + paper OR social action + paper 35%
NOTES:
PLEASE NOTE that students who have taken a version of this course on the DTES as GSWS 320 or GSWS 321 may not take this current articulation of the course for credit.
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
All required readings will be available on SFU Canvas and/or the Internet.
Registrar Notes:
SFU’s Academic Integrity web site http://students.sfu.ca/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.
Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the University community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the University. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the University. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS