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WGST 266 course cover

Women's Studies (WMST) 266
Thinking from Women's Lives—An Introduction to Women's Studies (Revision 1)

Revision 1 is closed for registrations, replaced by current version

Revision 1 closed, replaced by current version.

Delivery mode: Individualized study.

Credits: 3 - Social Science

Prerequisite: None

Precluded course: WMST 267 and WMST 300. (WMST 266 may not be taken for credit if credit has already been obtained for WMST 267 and WMST 300.)

Centre: Centre for Work and Community Studies

WMST 266 has a Challenge for Credit option.

Course website

Overview

WMST 266 examines questions that women's studies raise about how knowledge is constructed in many academic disciplines. Tracing continuities and conflicts in feminist debates as they have emerged over the past twenty-five to thirty years, the course examines the problem of women's exclusion from western knowledge and how feminists have rethought what we know and how we know it from the perspectives of women's lives. Topics explored include the development of women's studies, feminist theory and research methods, representations of women in literature and history, women and popular culture, social inequality, violence and male power, women and work, gendered social policy, women's health, women and education, family, marriage, motherhood and reproduction.

Outline

Part 1 Learning about Women: Establishing the Questions, Changing the Terms


Unit One: Introducing Women's Studies

Unit Two: Thinking from Women's Lives

Unit Three: Representing Women

Unit Four: Body Politics

Unit Five: Social Inequality, Violence and Male Power

Unit Six: Doing Women's Studies


Part 2 The Social and Cultural Construction Gender: Making and Remaking "Woman"


Unit Seven: Never Done: Women at Work

Unit Eight: Social Policy as if Women Counted

Unit Nine: Women's Health

Unit Ten: Women and Education

Unit Eleven: Family, Marriage, Motherhood and Reproduction

 

Each unit consists of an introduction; a list of student objects, so that you will know exactly what you should achieve by the end of the unit; assigned readings; thought questions; commentaries, which provide additional information on the subjects covered by the readings; and a list of supplementary readings and references.

Evaluation

To receive credit for WMST 266, you must achieve a course composite grade of at least "D" (50 percent). The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:


Assign. 1
Oral Review
Assign. 2
Oral Review
Assign. 3
Short-answer Test (two 500 word essays)
Research Project (1250-1500 words) Final Essay Total
5% 5% 20% 35% 35% 100%

Note: All written assignments are open book. To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.

Course Materials

Textbooks

Robinson, Victoria and Diane Richardson, eds. Introducing Women's Studies. 2nd edition. New York: New York University Press, 1997.

Nuzhat, Amin Frances Beer, Kathryn McPherson, Andrea Medovarski, Angela Miles, and Goli Rezai-Rashti, eds. Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader. Toronto: Inanna, 1999.

Other Materials

The course materials include a reading file, a study guide, and a student manual.