Janice DuMont 416-351-3732 ext. 2705
and Robin Mason 416-351-3732 ext. 2764 with Collaborative Program faculty mentors and others.
January 7th, 2010 (3 hour seminars from 10 a.m.- 1 p.m. on Thursday mornings). Link to Core Schedule, Topics and Speakers.
This graduate seminar course serves as the core course for the Collaborative
Program in Women's Health and, as such, focuses on women's health related issues.
Enrollment is limited to 18 students, doctoral and master's.
This course is open to all graduate students at the University of Toronto,
but preference will be given to Collaborative Program master's and doctoral trainees.
Graduate students not enrolled in the Collaborative Program may take this course
up to the limit of enrollment and by permission of the instructor.
On successful completion of the course students will:
- have a greater appreciation and knowledge of health issues that are more common or progress differently in women;
- be able to bring different types of knowledge and methodologies to bear when thinking about how to research conditions common in women;
- be able to critique the use of a given method to investigate/interrogate an identified issue in the health of women;
- have the skills necessary to synthesize, organize and critique research on a given women's health issue; and
- understand the challenges and rewards associated with multidisciplinary approaches to women's health scholarship.
Women's health as currently practiced is bounded by notions of gender, sex and
the reproductive bodies of women. Having started as a self-care, de-medicalizing
political movement it has evolved into a form of boutique medicine essentializing
the bodies of women. In the scientific realm, its forward movement has been
conceptualized as research on sex differences; in the clinical realm, as
gender-based medicine; and in the social realm, constructions of gender identities.
This development has philosophical, social, psychological,
scientific, political, and clinical implications that have fostered a divide between
theory and practice. In this course, we grapple with multiple methodologies as a
way of reuniting theory and practice in women's health.
The course begins with a theoretical framing of gender, sex and identity
drawing on perspectives and methodologies from the sciences, social sciences and
humanities. Under the direction of the course instructors, the course functions
as a dialogue between guest lecturers and students as one health-related issue
that is more common or progresses differently in women is used as a point of
departure for a critical examination of dominant lines of scholarship and cutting
edge methodologies. Topics to be discussed include caregiving, immune response,
Intimate partner violence, depression, and HIV. Films, internet sites, and gray
literature augment traditional educational resources. The course aims to foster
the development of integrative and innovative approaches to research and scholarship,
in a supportive but challenging multidisciplinary milieu.
Three-hour seminars will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. consecutive Thursdays from January 7 to
April 8, 2010 at 790 Bay Street, room 703. The complete
schedule is available here. Seminars will be taught by
the course professors with invited Collaborative Program colleagues and will include
a portion that is student-led. Students in the Collaborative Program in Women's Health are required
to attend the collaborative program seminar on the last Thursday of each month.
January 13, 2010 - last date to enroll in Graduate Courses
February 24, 2010 - last date to drop/delete Graduate Courses
Use this link for details of assignments and student evaluation associated with this course.
