BAH.GESO - Gender & Social Justice - BA Honours

www.trentu.ca/gendersocialjustice

The program offered by the Department of Gender & Social Justice examines how systems of power, including gender relations and ideas about gender, shape every site of human interaction, from the personal to the institutional, and the local to the global. Gender relations and gendered identities are understood in constant interaction with race, class, ability, sexuality, citizenship, nation, and in connection to land, place, and cultural context. Courses investigate a broad range of issues, including how people experience configurations of systemic power—capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and so on—within different contexts; how media and popular culture challenge and reproduce dominant cultural narratives; how social justice scholars and activists are re-envisioning public policies in health, social welfare, climate, land, arts, and education; how processes of global migration and labour are gendered, racialized, and colonial; how dominant institutions like the family, schools, and the state have been historically constituted and shape social identities and opportunities; and how diverse activists, land protectors, artists, and social justice movements work for and make change.

As an interdisciplinary program, Gender & Social Justice draws on theoretical perspectives and methodologies from a wide range of fields such as History, Political Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, English Literature, Indigenous Studies, Cultural Studies, Global Development Studies, Canadian Studies, and the natural sciences. The program combines theory with practice, fosters critical thinking and research, and encourages students’ involvement with local and broader communities.