Cohort March 2023: Faculty of Arts – Elif Sari, Yukiko Takahashi-Lai, Charlie Cleugh, Lauryn De Santo, Heidi Collie, Sophie Dupuis
Project background
ANTH 312 (Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality) is a third-year undergraduate course that explores issues of gender and sexuality from anthropological and social justice-oriented perspectives. The course is open to all (50 in total) and has an interdisciplinary body of students from different arts, social sciences, and humanities programs.
As described in the syllabus, “this course uses gender and sexuality as analytical tools to understand, critically analyze, and hopefully transform the world we live in.” Accordingly, a primary learning objective is to understand how gender and sexuality are shaped historically and politically, and how they, in turn, play a crucial role in the organization of everyday life and politics. The second related goal is to apply this knowledge to everyday life and contemporary issues. When this course was taught in 2022 Winter term, the centrality of embodied knowledge to above-mentioned objectives was emphasized. Our project aims to redesign two course components to create more opportunities for embodied knowledge to strengthen above-mentioned objectives.
Project details
Redesigning Course Material
Diversifying the syllabus: Many students enrolled in the course in Winter 2022 had Asian and South Asian backgrounds. To make the syllabus representative of this demographic, we aim to increase the scope of course material on Asia and South Asia as these geographies were under-represented in the initial syllabus. Allowing students to see themselves (and each other) represented in the syllabus is an important pedagogical tool for embodied knowledge. Finding connections between their identities and lifeworlds and the course content will contribute to students’ sense of belonging in classroom, increase their engagement with course material, and improve their learning.
Indigenizing the syllabus: We are aware that diversifying course material is not the same thing as Indigenizing the syllabus. That’s why we state this goal separately from the previous one. The initial syllabus included readings on colonial history and Indigenous genders and sexualities. We would like to expand this decolonizing lens and include more work produced by Indigenous scholars, activists, and community members. This will allow Indigenous students to see themselves in the syllabus and non-Indigenous students to re-think their embodied relations with Indigenous lands and peoples.
Redesigning the Assignments
As stated above, a primary objective of Anth 312 is to apply critical knowledge of gender and sexuality to everyday life and social justice issues. When the course was taught in Winter 2022, the assignments allowed students to focus on everyday life but lacked the embodied component. We aim to redesign these assignments to better align with course objectives. The redesigned assignments will encourage students to engage with community activism and social movements. This will allow students to participate in embodied and engaged learning and bridge academic knowledge on intersectional violence and social (in)justice learned in class with community activism that challenges and resists such violence and injustice in real life.