Equity Studies

In the Equity Studies focus area, students will be introduced to a broad range of scholarship grounded in lineages of insurgent and resurgent knowledges. Building from long histories, these knowledge practices are currently emerging from political mobilization around climate justice activism, Indigenous and Afro futurisms, migrant justice movements, queer/trans and gender non-conforming mobilizations, abolitionist politics, food security, and others.

The Equity Studies focus area takes a critical orientation to equity, introducing students to scholarship, faculty and a research ethic that support them in:

• articulating generative and critical practices of coalition, just social relations, and liberatory futures;
• challenging and reorienting away from dominant forms of knowledge production;
• understanding and tracing power, dominance and complicity across multiple contexts; and,
• mapping and analyzing forms of inequity, oppression and marginalization.

The foundational course, currently titled Equality in Context (MAIS 635), will focus on introducing students to the grounding lexicon or key concepts in this area of study, research, and praxis. Together, students will apply these key concepts to the study of a particular institutional context. Through the foundations course, students will be situated to take a deeper dive in courses focused on critical race theory, critical disability studies, gender and sexuality, cultural studies, global education and community change, Indigenous research methodologies, and further study into our relationality with the more than human world. Courses in the Equity Studies focus area range in their attention to the local, regional, national, and global, hence will offer students an opportunity to reflect on, research, and apply their knowledge in places and spaces that matter to them.

In being supported in their reading of insurgent and resurgent scholarship, Equity Studies students should emerge with a solid understanding of intersecting, interacting, and relational structures of domination (for example, racism and white supremacy; settler colonialism, colonialism, and imperialism; heteropatriarchy; capitalism; ableism; casteism). Most critically, students will be encouraged to turn their attention toward the ways in which rich legacies of mobilization for just and liberatory futures transcend the imaginaries of our institutions.

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Foundational courses

Grouped study

grouped study foundational studies

MAIS 635 – Equality in Context

(3)

Electives

Grouped study

grouped study equity studies electives

EDST 630 – Transformative Learning for Social Change	(3)
EDST 632 – Global Education	(3)
EDST 645 – Curriculum: Provoking Inquiry	(3)
ENVS 608 – Questioning Extinctions	(3)
ENVS 689 – The Political Ecology of Global Environment Change	(3)
GLST 652 – Democracy and Justice in the Context of Global Capitalism	(3)
GOVN 540 – Global Governance and Law	(3)
MAIS 604 – Planning and Action for Community Change	(3)
MAIS 612 – Gender, Leadership, and Management	(3)
MAIS 628 – Gender and Sexuality	(3)
MAIS 644 – Adult Education, Community Leadership, and the Crisis of Democracy	(3)
MAIS 658 – Critical Disability Studies: The Making of Normal Bodies	(3)
MAIS 663 – Critical Race Theory in Global Context	(3)
MAIS 665 – Cultural Studies: Reflections, Democratic Possibilities, and Futures	(3)
MDDE 651 – Gender Issues in Distance Education	(3)
POLI 550 – Women, Equality, and Representation	(3)
PSYC 576 – Assistive Technology	(3)
PSYC 589 – Learning Disabilities: Issues and Interventions	(3)
WGST 505 – Decolonizing Mental Health	(3)

Individualized study

individualized study equity studies electives

GLST 611 – Social Movements	(3)
HIST 632 – Gender, Race, Racism, and the History of Classical Scholarship	(3)
LGST 551 – Introduction to Legislative Drafting	(3)
MAIS 514 – The Theory and Practice of Trade Unions	(3)
MAIS 638 – What I Tell You May Not Be True: Autobiography, Discourse Analysis, and Post-Colonialism	(3)
MAIS 640 – Grounded Theory, Exploration, and Beyond	(3)
MAIS 650 – Canadian and International Labour Education	(3)
SOCI 537 – Deciphering Our Social Worlds	(3)
SOCI 539 – Sociology of War and Organized Violence	(3)
WGST 547 – Rethinking Science and Technology: Gender, Theory, and Practice	(3)