Gender and Sexuality in Literature

MA and PhD

This unique graduate program – the first of its kind in Atlantic Canada – offers students opportunities for the specialised study of gender and sexuality through the lens of literature.

Whether enrolled in the MA or PhD program, students will develop an understanding of the core ideas and central debates that shape the field of gender and sexuality studies, including elements of queer studies, trans studies, and intersectional feminism.

The program offers, in its foundation course, training in theoretical approaches to gender and sexuality studies – but students will also have the opportunity to unite theoretical analysis with the study of literature, including its political and intellectual contexts. Across designated courses and a thesis, students will examine the relationship between literary form and the formation of ideas about gender and sexuality.

Students in the GSL program will explore literature from a range of histories and geographies and investigate how such texts both contribute to and confront normative understandings of gender and sexuality.

The program benefits from the participation of faculty members whose research combines innovative and progressive methods of literary analysis with the study of how individual and collective ideas about gender and sexuality intersect with other powerful social structures including race, ethnicity, class, and disability.

Faculty have particular strength in historical British literature, especially Early Modern, Romantic, Victorian and Modern as well as in twentieth-century and contemporary American, Canadian, Indigenous and Diasporic literatures. We are a lively and generous community of academics who especially aim, through this program, to create an active scholarly community for 2SLGBTQIA+ graduate students.

Writers, historically and today, offer important expression about the experiences of people with diverse and dissident gender and sexual identities. These texts pose problems – and consider solutions – that can help us all to confront the challenges and limitations we face as a society.

Faculty members with research interests in GSL:

• Elizabeth Effinger
• Triny Finlay
• Tavleen Purewal
• Lisa Robertson
• Melanie Simoes Santos
• Edith Snook
• Kasia van Schaik

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Requirements