This course will examine the histories, meanings and sites of contemporary art in a globalizing world. Students will become familiar not only with the works themselves, but with shifts in critical conceptions and popular media that affect the production, display, circulation, and reception of contemporary art.

The course introduces students to critical theories and debates on NGOs governance, state-society relationships and democracy. The course begins with a broad look at theories of international development and how our understanding of the process of development has changed over time.

Through a focus on literary responses to environmental violence, and by paying special attention to the Indigenous Knowledges and voices currently leading many of these discussions, this course will examine the ways in which literature—such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake—respond to the increasing threat of irreversible environmental destruction. By focalizing these larger ecocritical conversations and theories through the individual, the relationship between literature and the environment have become more urgent than any previous time in human history. 

This course is an introduction to critical studies in sexual and gender diversity and is designed to familiarize students with a myriad of theories and topics in the field. Students will learn about classical and contemporary theories of sex, gender, and sexuality and explore the spectrum of identities and experiences, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual, intersex, queer, Two-Spirit, non-binary, and asexual. Students will furthermore examine how these diverse gender and sexual identities intersect with experiences of race, Indigeneity, class, age, and (dis)ability. 

A course exploring the many meanings of “Canada”, “Canadian”, and “Canadien” from the 1300s to today. Asking “What is Canada?” The course is a historical overview giving particular attention to the political, demographic, ethnological and colonial changes that altered these definitions over time and what/who the name refers to.

The course will work towards crafting a definition of the term ‘digital humanities’ through examining the way in which we create, use, and think about digital resources in humanities disciplines. Students will: learn the basic skills needed to create digital civilizations and think of the humanities in terms of digitalization.

An interdisciplinary analysis of contemporary events and Indigenous cultural politics, with a focus on how Indigenous writers, filmmakers, artists, and community members participate in and recount defining moments. Indigenous knowledges and epistemological considerations will be one of main focus of this course.

An examination of whether life has ‘meaning’, and a consideration of different philosophical interpretations of the meaning of life, the significance of death for the meaning of life, and whether it even makes sense to speak of life as having meaning.

What is computation? What has computer science taught us about ourselves and the world? Topics to be addressed include: the relationship between computability, logic, and mathematics; computation and cognition; the simulation hypothesis; infinity and paradox; natural computation; the nature of information; artificial intelligence; and more.