Code and section: SOC*4010*01

Term: Fall 2025

Instructor: Tugce Ellialti-Kose

Details

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

SOC*4010 | Violence & Society

Gender, Power, and Violence

Fall 2025

 

Instructor: Dr. Tuğçe Ellialtı-Köse

Email Address: tugce@uoguelph.ca

Class Time & Location: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30 am – 9:50 am in MACS 209 (and via Zoom on select dates)

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Course Description: This course examines the theme of power as it engages questions of gender and violence from a theoretically informed, feminist perspective. Our primary objective for the course is to develop a critical, nuanced, and holistic understanding of the pervasive problems of gender-based violence (GbV), and particularly violence against women (VaW), in contemporary societies. To this end, we will explore and expand on the connections between different forms of violence that, especially, but not exclusively, women and gender non-conforming and/or diverse individuals experience, and the historical, social, political, discursive, and institutional contexts and environments – including, law and the criminal justice system, medicine, workplaces, campuses, prisons, and social media – in which they unfold.

To this end, in this course, we will adopt an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach employing concepts, ideas, and theories from a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, criminology, and gender studies. Theorizing around the notion of power, we will examine different forms, sites, and spaces of symbolic, structural, and institutional violence as mutually and dialectically constitutive. Topics will include but are not limited to domestic violence, reproductive violence, rape, sexual assault and harassment, and violence against Indigenous girls and women, 2SLGBTQQIA, and trans people.

Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to power relations related to race, ethnicity, class/socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and immigration/citizenship status within the context of GbV to appreciate how structures of inequality intersect to shape both our diverse experiences and understandings of violence as individuals and collectives as well as our responses to violence. We will also explore the social and political relevance of GbV to discussions around power and the implications of the ways that different forms of GbV and VaW are defined and understood for social and criminal justice policy and action from an empirically rich and socially just and engaged perspective. Lastly, in the light of theoretical and conceptual tools that we will acquire throughout the term, we will engage questions about effective responses, interventions, and resistance to various forms of GbV.

Readings will include both foundational texts in the sociological and feminist literature on gender and violence and newer critical scholarship on specific, contemporary social, cultural, and political issues.

Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this course, you will be able:

• to develop a critical, theoretically informed, and nuanced understanding of the pervasive problems of GbV and VaW and demonstrate competence in applying a sociological imagination.
• to understand, debate, and apply sociological, feminist, and intersectional (including queer and critical race) perspectives to understand violence in society, with a focus on GbV and VaW.
• to cogently discuss how gender-based violence fundamentally derives from unequal relations of power and how these relations are politically and culturally produced as well as historically situated and structural, but also contested and open to change and transformation.
• to have an understanding of GbV and VaW at the intersections of various structures of inequality, including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, class/socio-economic status, sexual orientation, age, and immigration/citizenship status.
• to identify different forms of GbV and VaW and the historical, social, discursive, political, and institutional (primarily, legal and medical) contexts in which they unfold.
• to critically discuss the role of states and state institutions in producing, sustaining, and reinforcing GbV and VaW in Canada and globally.
• to outline and define the historical and contemporary social and political processes, forces, and structures that shape and inform people’s individual and institutional experiences of GbV and VaW.
• to identify and explore individual and collective strategies of resistance and transformation.
• to apply course content and class discussions to contemporary everyday life (what we read and discuss in class is very relevant to our lives!).
• to improve your critical thinking, reading, and writing skills to use academic sources to make convincing and well-grounded arguments through engagement with the course materials and your classmates.
• to demonstrate competence in critically evaluating, synthesizing and communicating information, arguments, and analyses accurately and effectively orally and in writing.

Format: Each class will have a lecture component that will focus on and elaborate the daily/weekly readings. To succeed in this course, you will need to put in time and effort in class and out of class each week. You are expected to attend the lectures, come to class having completed the assigned materials, and actively engage with course material so that you can take part in class discussions and do well in the assignments. As course instructor, I will act primarily as a facilitator, assisting you all to achieve both the course learning objectives and your own individual learning goals and work hard to make this course successful for everyone.

Textbooks and Other Materials: No book is required for this course. All readings will be available through the Course Reserve (ARES) system (see https://ares.lib.uoguelph.ca) on CourseLink. Other course content will be provided via websites and as multimedia (e.g., PowerPoint slides, documentaries, videos, etc.).

Evaluation Components: This course has different evaluation components, including five-minute papers, term tests, a final (group) project with a presentation component, peer reviews, and end-of-semester reflections.

Note: This draft outline is for informational purposes only and may be subject change. A complete syllabus will be shared with the students during the first class. In the meanwhile, if you have any questions about the course, please email me at tugce@uoguelph.ca.