100 Level

  • SOC 90.154 Introduction to Sociology
  • GWS 36.162 Making Sense of Gender 

200 Level

  • GWS 36.2XX Understanding Feminism
  • GWS 36.255 Sex, Gender, Popular Culture
  • GWS/SOC 36/90.281 Race and Racism

300 Level

  • GWS/SOC 36/90.350 Transnational Social Change
  • GWS/SOC 36/90.361 Consumer Culture and Society
  • GWS 36.366 Critical Reading in Gender
  • GWS/SOC 36/90.369 Reproductive Justice

400 Level

  • SOC 90.485 The Sociology of Development and Globalization
  • GWS/SOC 36.90.463 Body Studies

 

My teaching philosophy is very much influenced by bell hooks’ conceptualization of an engaged pedagogy. Like hooks, I believe that there should be pleasure in the classroom. Learning that is both exciting and fun does not detract from the rigorous nature of higher education, but can instead stimulate intellectual engagement and community building. Given the intensities of both teaching and learning feminist theories, women and gender issues, and the complexities of structures of oppression, the classroom is often a space of painful learning and unlearning about cissexism, heterosexism, racism, ableism, classism, colonization, and imperialism. I believe that Women’s and Gender Studies is a special site in the academy where personal pain and daily struggle with these issues can be both shared and politicized through feminist theorizing and the exposure of students to sites of feminist resistance. While learning about power and privilege is often difficult for students, it can be as exciting as it is challenging. 

Students are collaborators in my teaching and research. I find that I am at my best when I am working through concepts and ideas that inspire my writing, and my research is at its best when I engage my students in the work I am conducting. Given the emphasis on representations in my research, I work to engage my students in questions about not just what gender is, or race, sex, sexuality, disability, for that matter, but rather, what is does, and how narratives of normativity and progress, in particular, circulate and to what end. 

THESIS SUPERVISION

Elizabeth Poirier. 2018.“Media Representations of Sexualized Violence Perpetrated by Collegiate Athletes.” Undergraduate Honour Thesis. Department of Sociology. Brandon University.