SFU Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

08/27/2026

Join SFU Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies for a conversation with groundbreaking trans scholar Susan Stryker about her new book, Changing Gender, a provocative, genre-bending call to reconsider the story we tell about gender itself.

Changing Gender: The History and Future of a Concept
Susan Stryker in Conversation with Helen Leung
• Thursday, September 24, 2026
• 6-8 pm
• SFU Harbour Centre 1700 (515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC)

Reserve your free tickets and learn more at Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/1998812490967?aff=oddtdtcreator

What are we talking about when we talk about gender? Where did the concept itself come from, and where might it go?

In Changing Gender, the leading trans scholar Susan Stryker invites readers to ride along on her lifelong quest to uncover what gender means and does. She traces the gender concept's roots in grammar and tells the story of how it transformed into a battleground of the culture wars.

From the origins of “Yankee Doodle” to acid trips in Joshua Tree National Park, from nineteenth-century phrenology to present-day anti-trans conspiracy theorists, Stryker finds surprising places to tune in to the origins, idiosyncrasies, and generative possibilities of the gender concept. Along the way, she weaves stories drawn from her lifetime as a pathbreaking historian, filmmaker, activist, and founding figure of transgender studies.

Learn more: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/news-events/news/2026/susan-stryker.html

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

08/26/2026

2026 is almost here!

Join us for Real Talk: Consent & Care: Sexual Wellness and Relationships Resource Fair on Wednesday, September 16 from 12:00pm to 4:00pm.

Grounded in a sex-positive approach, this event invites the SFU community to explore consent, healthy relationships, intimacy, and sexual health in an inclusive and welcoming space.

Connect with campus and community organizations, discover resources and support, ask questions, and learn more about consent and sexual wellness.

✨ Everyone is welcome. More information through the link in our bio.

We can't wait to see you there!

Our booth guest include:

SFSS Out on Campus Collective
SFSS Women’s Centre
Health Sciences Student Union
Reaffirm
HIM
Foundry

This resource fair is a collaboration between the SFU’s Sexual Violence Support & Prevention, SFSS Out on Campus and Women’s Centre.

08/19/2026

What did the GSWS Feminist Book Club think of "The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones?

Read the review at our website: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/community/gsws-feminist-book-club/2026/gsws-feminist-book-club-aug-2026.html

Interested in joining? The new meeting dates and books have been announced! Learn more and sign up today: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/community/gsws-feminist-book-club.html

07/28/2026

Come say hi to SFU OOC Collective & check out amazing vendors & join the raffle & explore many more cool things today at the SFSS Pride Fair! If you need a quieter space, drop by the Out on Campus lounge - we’re always happy to see you!

07/28/2026

🌿 We're pleased to share Michelle Cyca is our special guest moderator for the Our City Hall Forum: Council Candidates Debate!

🗞️ Michelle is an award-winning freelance journalist and an editor for The Narwhal, a digital publication focused on investigative journalism about the natural world.

🪱 Outside of work, you can often find her organizing literary events with Upstart & Crow on Granville Island, running the trails in Pacific Spirit Park, or mapping baby change tables across the city. She is a lifelong Vancouver resident and a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 6.

📢 On Wed, Sept 16 at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, the Our City Hall Forum is your opportunity to get to know some city council candidates as they vie for your vote in the 2026 Vancouver municipal election!

🎟️ Free event. In-person and live stream available.⁠

👇🏼 Registration is required. Get your tickets here:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/our-city-hall-forum-council-candidates-debate-tickets-1991423215445⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
[Michelle smiles, tilted head to the side. Hair is down and pinned back. She wears a dark reddish orange blouse.]

07/23/2026

SFU Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies offers the Traveling Speakers Series to communities in BC and Yukon.

Reema Faris has visited Haida Gwaii, Vernon, Nelson, and Prince George as part of the Traveling Speakers Series.

Most recently, Faris traveled to Prince George to speak at an International Women’s Day event organized by the Faculty Association of the College of New Caledonia. This journey inspired Faris to reflect on community outreach and what it means to cross boundaries as an academic.

“How does one cross over from the fortress of academia into the world of every day?

To make the knowledge one fosters into applications, practices, and insights that allow others to live their lives with more understanding, more awareness, and — ultimately for me and how I see the world — with more empathy?

I have found myself grappling with this question more often since beginning my PhD journey in 2016."

Read the blog post at our website: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/community/traveling-speakers/faris-attraversiamo.html

Photo credit: Reema Faris; Crossing boundaries: Lions Gate Bridge from the West Vancouver Seawall.

07/22/2026

Congratulations to SFU GSWS's Megh Marathe on being awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant to support research titled "Designing for Inclusion: Representing Trans and Gender Diverse People in Information Systems."

From the study of 18th century manuscripts to government debt to biases in the criminal justice system, nine researchers from FASS have been awarded SSHRC Insight Grants to pursue research in these topics and many more.

07/21/2026

What did the GSWS Feminist Book Club think of "And Then She Fell” by Alicia Elliott?

“This novel took our club on an unsettling, deeply moving journey that felt raw, incredibly creative, and terrifyingly real.”

Full review: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/community/gsws-feminist-book-club/2026/gsws-feminist-book-club-july-2026.html

07/21/2026

students: looking for a course this fall? Space is available for GSWS 321-4 ST: Global Approaches to Indigenous Feminisms.

This course brings together conversations about Indigenous feminisms from across Asia and Africa as well as Australia, Europe, and the Americas.

Browse our upcoming course outlines: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/undergraduate/courses/future.html

07/14/2026

In her new book, "Archives of Intimacy: Racial Mixing and Chinese Lives in the Colonial Port City, 1905–1949," Nadine Attewell illuminates the once forgotten histories of vibrant multiracial communities that flourished in London, Liverpool, and Hong Kong in the early twentieth century.

To understand what life and survival was like for people of mixed Chinese descent in three British-controlled port cities linked by global trade and migration, Attewell, an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and Simon Fraser University Global Asia Program, examined diverse sources ranging from archival photographs to family histories to intelligence records.

We asked Attewell to tell us about the research behind "Archives of Intimacy," the stories readers can discover within its pages, and how this research connects to her teaching.

Read the interview at our website: https://www.sfu.ca/gsws/news-events/news/2026/attewell-archives.html