The course sets in motion the conceptualization of an exhibition and its review by a panel. The course focuses on research methodologies as set by the instructor, as well as development of subject matter pertinent to the students’ areas of interest. It is designed to lead students toward the conceptualization of a major project/exhibition in their second year of study.

The MVS Proseminar offers Visual Studies graduate students in Curatorial Studies and Studio Art the opportunity to connect and exchange with leading international and local artists, curators, writers, theorists, and other scholarly practitioners and researchers. Publicly presented as a programmed series of talks. Alongside the public talks, the MVS Proseminar speakers engage in a series of exchanges with the graduate students in a variety of potential forms, from masterclasses, to individual studio-visits, talks, and Q&As.

Students will undertake and present self-directed research and artistic production that demonstrates well-developed ideas and practical expertise within the specific field chosen by the student. A body of work is to be produced with development toward the final MVS studio project. Weekly student-led seminars are important sessions for individuals to learn to share their research processes and refine presentation strategies, while inversely participating and engaging in colleagues’ research seminars. The course manages the logistics of the studio program, fosters a community of research and production, and provides feedback on individual studio production over a sustained period of time. The course meets weekly and is run in tandem with VIS1001H to facilitate interaction across the first- and second-year cohorts.

A weekly seminar that focuses on research methodologies and writing strategies. In parallel with studio and curatorial production, the students complete the first draft of their MVS qualifying paper. The course is made up of directed and self-directed readings, writing exercises, and seminar discussions arising from contemporary art issues and from the studio and curatorial work produced by the students.

As the culminating course for the degree, students produce a project consisting of two components: a substantial resolved body of studio work and a written research text. The studio work will be exhibited near the end of the Winter term where an Advisory Panel will adjudicate the exhibition along with the written text and an oral defence. The written component, along with appropriate supporting visual documentation, will be archived in the Faculty library.

This course offers theoretical and practical training on how to collaborate with an institution. It is designed to lead the student through the Winter term towards all logistical phases of the final exhibition. The course is developed in tandem with and support of VIS2101Y.

This course allows students to independently explore a visual studies topic through in-depth reading in close consultation with a faculty member.

This course allows students to independently explore a curatorial studies topic through in-depth reading in close consultation with a faculty member.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Enrolment is restricted to students registered in the master's and PhD degree programs in Women and Gender Studies or Collaborative Specialization in Women and Gender Studies.

Under supervision, students can pursue an independent research/reading course on topics in Women and Gender Studies that are not currently part of the curriculum. Students must have a project that a WGSI faculty member is willing to supervise. To enrol in this course, please email: wgsi.programs@utoronto.ca.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Why do people move? What are the causes and consequences of migration and displacement in Africa? This course critically examines the multifaceted dimensions of migration, mobility, and displacement through (text, art, film, and narratives) with a specific focus on communities and populations displaced by war, environmental destruction and disaster, economic failings, and the quest for economic opportunities or individual freedom. We will: 1) explore canonical and emergent interdisciplinary scholarships and their epistemic claims and debates, key theories and concepts on migration, mobility, and displacement; 2) engage in current debates and public discourses on these intersecting themes, analytics, and phenomena; and 3) interrogate the morality of media representation and gaze, discursive practices on the 'migrant' and 'refugee' subject formation, the 'catastrophic' biopolitics and governmentality of migration, the instrumentality and contingencies of political (non) interventions/(in)action, humanitarianism, and the politics of rights, justice, ethics, and solidarity. You will have the opportunity to unpack your own positionality and trajectories to reflect on the differentiated categories and trajectories of migration and mobility and to formulate your own critique and alternative epistemology.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

This course critically examines current interdisciplinary and feminist scholarship on globalization, its intersections with gender, race and class, neoliberal transformations, power structures, and sexualized and feminized economies. The related socio-spatial reconfigurations, "global" convergences, and tensions are explored, with special emphasis placed on feminist counter-narratives, alternative epistemologies and theorizing of globalization, the theoretical and political debates on the meanings and impacts of globalization, and the exploration of radical possibilities of resistance, agency, and change in local and transnational contexts.

This course examines transnational feminist genealogies of the black diaspora, paying careful attention to the contexts and movements that generated key questions, and exploring how these interventions disclose preoccupations with modernity, freedom and citizenship. Topics include history, trauma, and memory, diaspora and indigeneity, racialised embodiment, queer kinship, Afrofuturism, confinement and deportation, and the careful calibration of political communities.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

This course reframes the idea of hope through radical enunciations of the imagination. By drawing on works from postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis, the course offers a way to think about the aesthetic as it relates to the capacity to compose "otherwise possibilities" (Crawley, in excess of the terms of liberal humanism. The imagination's radical potential for an 'otherwise' will be explored through various concepts such as the "not yet conscious" (Munoz), queer archives, curiosity, and play.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

Subject varies from year to year. Check the WGSI website for information about this offering.

This course tracks the deployment and emergence of "queer of color critique" and its interconnections with women of color feminisms. We will examine theoretical texts, cultural production, and forms of activism by queer scholars of color who attend to questions of race, class, sexuality, and gender as intersecting social practices.