First Year Seminar: Gender, Sexuality and Settler Colonialism

3 units

This course examines settler colonial societies through the lens of gender and sexuality. Central questions of the course include: How is colonialism a fundamentally gendered process? What is settler colonialism and how is it different from/similar to extractive or franchise colonialism? How does the political, legal and social construction of indigeneity intersect with other social categories such as race, gender, class and sexuality? How have social movements mobilized against land dispossession globally in ways that incorporate diverse understandings of gender? Looking at various global case studies, we will examine how indigenous feminist scholars and organizers think about and respond to resource extraction, economic exploitation, gender violence, and land theft. Drawing on anti-colonial, queer, indigenous feminist, two-spirit, transnational feminist and anti-capitalist traditions, we will compare settler colonial regimes and modes of organizing across economic, cultural, political, and environmental spheres. This course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.