Fall 2024 – Winter 2025 Course Offerings

CDNS 1001 Introduction to the Study of Canada (online: combined course)

Instructor: Richard Nimijean

Course Descriptor: This course examines various approaches to the study of Canada. Students will learn about the rise of interdisciplinary Canadian Studies as an academic discipline, how it has evolved, and the different approaches to study Canadian issues.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 1101 Power, Places and Stories in/of Odawang/Ottawa – In Person

Instructor: Orly Lael Netzer

In this course we will explore historic and contemporary Odawang/Ottawa through stories, monuments, and locations. Attuned to local, national, and global perspectives of the city, we will interrogate the politics of place-making, asking who shapes the story of a place, for whom, and how.

Review the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 2001 A Canada and Global Issues – (Online Synchronous)

Instructor: Timothy Browne

Course Descriptor: This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of Canada and Canadians as global actors, examining key global issues that Canada is addressing. We look at how Canada approaches global issues and reflect on how these issues affect Canada and Canadians.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 2301 Immigrants, Migrants and Diasporas – In Person

Instructor: Orly Lael Netzer

Course Description:  The course examines dynamic relations in the interplay between drivers, agency, material and ideological boundaries and territories. We study the state’s role and international conventions that regulate migration and distinguish between refugees, people seeking temporary international protection, seasonal or temporary workers, permanent migrants and diasporas through the policy categories. 

Read the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 2510 Memory and History in Québec — ONLINE Synchronous

Instructor: TBD

Course Descriptor: This fully online second year course is intended to provide students with a broad understanding of the narrative of Quebec history, incorporating the main themes that continue to shape Quebec’s culture and especially its relationship to memory, especially since “Je me souviens” is its motto. Experiential learning activities including research and creative projects are an essential part of the curriculum.

Read the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 3620 Canada-US Relations — Online Synchronous

Instructor: TBD

Course Descriptor: This course is a comparative, interdisciplinary examination of the Canada-US relationship, focusing on Canadian perspectives. We will look at key issues that define and influence the relationship, including:

• Anti-Americanism and values differences between the countries;
• Economic and defence/security integration; and
• Cultural similarities and differences

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 3000  A– Situating Research in Indigenous Studies and Canadian Studies – In Person

Instructor: Gale Franklin

Course Descriptor: Students examine the underlying research design and methods of selected works in order to reflect on the political, ethical and intellectual conequences, possibilities and limitations of a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary resarch practices.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 4020 – Injury, Memory and Redress in Canada – In Person

Instructor: Orly Lael Netzer

Course Description: Students will examine the politics of redress and (re)conciliation in Canada, including the ways in which historic wrongs, trauma and injury are re(imagined) and memorialized.

CDNS 4403 A Heritage Conservation and Sustainability in Canada – in person
This course is offered at the graduate level, as CDNS 5403, with different requirements.

Instructor: Heather Thomson

Course Descriptor: Theory, principles, practices and policy of heritage conservation in Canada and around the world. Connections with environmental, social and economic sustainability are explored.

CDNS 4500 Canada And the World–In Person

Instructor: Richard Nimijean

Course Description: In this research-based seminar, students will examine Canada’s role in the world and how Canadian governments over the year have acted globally and tried to shape Canada’s image in the world and how others see Canada. We will explore the politics of branding Canada and learn how Canada’s role globally has an important domestic dimension.

Course Descriptor

FYSM 1409 A Controversies and Social Change in Canada Today–In Person
This is term 1 of a full-year 1.0 credit course.

Instructor: Robyn Green

Course Descriptor: The story of Canada is often told through the acts of elected officials who have shaped provincial, national policies and legislation as well as Canada’s role in the international sphere. Viewing Canada through this lens does not account for how powerful social movements located in anti-racism, Indigenous sovereignty, disability justice, fat liberation as well as queer and trans liberation have contested the formation and influence of nation-state.

CDNS 5001 MA Core Seminar: Conceptualizing Canada — In Persoon

Instructor:Richard Nimijean

Course Descriptor: This course is designed to equip you with a basic understanding of the mechanics, ethics, dilemmas, and rewards of scholarly research on Canada : asking a research question, reviewing the field, planning a project in terms of research, methodology, and organization of findings.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 5002 F Interdisciplinary Methods / GEOG 5003 F – Critical Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry — In Person

Instructor: Patricia Ballamingie

Course Description: this course will survey issues raised by problem-directed methodologies.

Read the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 5003 / ARTH 5218 / CLMD 6103 – – Selected Topics in Canadian Studies–In Person

Title: Museum Studies and Curatorial Practice: Interrogating Indigenous Curatorial Practice

Instructor: Carmen Robertson

Course Description: Pathways toward articulating Indigenous aesthetics emerge from deep considers of cultural epistemologies and ontologies of Indigenous arts. Because this is an emergent area of study within the Academy, few scholarly readings exist and as a result we will consider written texts from a variety of sources.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 5003 B / ENGL 5120 F — Special Topics in Canadian Studies — In Person 

Title: Small-Press Publishing In Canada

Instructor: Jody Mason

Course Description: A book arts workshop that will be conducted in the Book Arts Lab in MacOdrum Library and taught with the assistance of Master Printer Larry Thompson, the course brings together the history and theory of small-press activity in Canada with experiential learning activities that will help us to think in material terms about small-press objects and their production processes.

Read the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 5102 F / GEOG 5600 F/ PECO 5501 B – Indigenous Politics and Resurgence in Canada/Empire and Colonialism — In Person

Instructor: Emilie Cameron

Course Description: This course focuses on the geographic articulations of empire and colonialism. We will begin by engaging with some key theoretical approaches to empire and colonialism both within and beyond the discipline of geography, including feminist, Indigenous, antiracist, Black, Marxist, and post-structuralist approaches. Next, we will consider a range of “sites” of colonial and imperial formation, including land, territory, the body, and the non-human. In the third part of the course we will focus on forms of resistance, resurgence, and decolonization, as well as emerging scholarship that both questions the limits of past approaches to the study of empire and aims to conceptualize imperial, colonial, and decolonizing processes in new ways.

CDNS 5201 F/ ENGL 5804 F/ WGST 5902 A — Critical Perspectives on Canadian Feminism /
Studies in Canadian Literature I / Advanced Topics in Women’s and Gender Studies — In person

Instructor: Jennifer Henderson

Course Description: This course takes a historical materialist and intersectional approach to the ‘Women’s Liberation’ movement of the 1970s, as we look at recent scholarship on the rhetorics and affects of the movement and dig into its Canadian archive. Recent scholarship has been revising settled views of this moment of political eruption. Working with concepts of eventfulness, articulation, and ghostly trace, we question a progressivist view of history that would assume either our own relative advancement or the finishedness of this past.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 5401 Heritage Conservation: History, Principles, and Concepts

NOTE: This course is being offered over two nights but students need to register only once into crn 30873.
in person on Tuesday evenings 1735-1925 and
online synchronous on Wednesday evenings 1735-1825

Instructor: Jerzy Elzanowski

Course Descriptor: In light of global struggles against climate disaster, racial discrimination, disease, misinformation, and war, CDNS 5401 is changing.  I am preparing a new course that aims to theorize the impacts of these and other struggles on heritage conservation, while maintaining a sense of hope and joy.

I’ll be updating the following Google Doc as the course description takes shape: https://bit.ly/CDNS_5401_Fall_2024_Description

CDNS 5403 Heritage Conservation and Sustainability in Canada — IN Person
This course is cross-listed with CDNS 4403

Instructor: TBD

Course Descriptor: Theory, principles, practices and policy of heritage conservation in Canada and around the world. Connections with environmental, social and economic sustainability are explored.

CDNS 1101 Power, Places and Stories in/of Odawang/Ottawa – Winter term – In Person

Instructor: Orly Lael Netzer

Course Description: In this course we will explore historic and contemporary Odawang/Ottawa through stories, monuments, and locations. Attuned to local, national, and global perspectives of the city, we will interrogate the politics of place-making, asking who shapes the story of a place, for whom, and how.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 2000 Debating Canada — In Person

Instructor: Orly Lael Netzer

Course Description: Over the past decades, scholars of cultural studies in Canada have demonstrated that the foundation of the nation-state and the continued development of national identity in Canada rely on three central myths: Peacekeeping turned Humanitarianism, Multiculturalism, and Reconciliation. In this course we will explore how debates about Canadian identity and culture are shaped through the dynamic tensions between the three foundational myths, and the shared thread of settler-colonialism which ties them together.

Review the Course Descriptor

CDNS 2002 Language, Culture and Power — IN Person

Instructor: TBD

Course Description: Students will study the relationship between language and power, politics, identity and culture in Canada. Using experiential learning methods including field trips, we will explore the interplays between power, language, and the constitution of social norms.

Each class will use a case study to examine the struggles over discourse and how we describe and understand the world.

Read the Course Descriptor

CDNS 2300   Nationalism and Multiculturalism in Canada –  ONLINE Combined

Instructor: TBD

Description: This course is a critical examination of nationalism, colonialism, racialization, ethnicity, and multiculturalism in Canada. In this condensed blended asynchronous/synchronous course, students will explore belonging, citizenship, social inclusion/exclusion and inequality through a series of live and pre-recorded lectures, group discussions, testimonials, and contextual and experiential learning activities.

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 2302/INDG 2302   Land, Water, Capitalism — In Person

Instructor: Julie Tomiak

Course Descriptor: This course provides students with the opportunity to study the political economy of settler capitalism and its consequences. Centering Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and ethics grounded in place, the course foregrounds Indigenous anti-capitalism. The role of Indigenous land, water, and relationality is discussed not only in terms of capitalist dispossession and destruction, but also with a focus on resistance, healing, and Indigenous futurities. Students will examine a range of case studies that will bring the contestations, complexities, and contradictions of capital accumulation and anti-capitalist struggles into focus.

Read the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 2400 Heritage Places and Practices in Canada– In Person

Instructor: Susan Ross

Course Descriptor:  This course, intended for students studying in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Architecture and Engineering, will build on the lessons we can learn from Canadian, Indigenous and international theories, practices, and tools to continue to move the field ahead in stimulating and critical directions.

Read the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 3020 is being offered as CDNS 3901A during Winter 2025  – IN person

Practicing Research in Canadian Studies

Instructor: TBD

Course Description: This course engages with the practice of interdisciplinarity in Canadian Studies and builds on CDNS 3000. Approaches may include: mixed methods; authoethnography; research-creation; collaboration; and community based research.

CDNS 3560 Black Studies in Canada — ONLINE Synchronous

Instructor: TBD

Course Description: Theories and methods of Black Studies in Canada. Students could explore regional, national and/or transnational histories; anit-Blackness; racial capitalism; identities, experiences and cultures of Black Canada.

Read the Course Descriptor.

CDNS 3901B / FILM 2206 B Canadian Cinema — In Person
This course involves both a lecture AND a film screening scheduled on the same evening.
Students need only register into CDNS 3901 B; the screening component is linked to the lecture.

Title: Canadian Cinema

Instructor: TBD

Course Descriptor: A critical examination of Canadian cinema and media and how it relates to other aspects of Canadian culture.

CDNS 4400 A/ 5400 W/ INDG 4901 C  Space, Landscape and Identity in Canada — ONLINE Synchronous

Instructor: Kenneth (Jake) Chakasim

Course Description: Critical in its approach, this course brings into focus the contemporary role indigenous literature and design plays in the realm of indigenous space, landscape, and identity practices. Whether one is ‘tricked into believing’ or ‘mistreated to take action’, we can no longer escape the chaos, disorder, and destruction of indigenous landscapes and its supporting infrastructure (or lack thereof).

Read the full Course Descriptor.

FYSM 1409 A Controversies and Social Change in Canada Today
This is term 2 of a full-year 1.0 credit course.

Instructor: Robyn Green

CDNS 5301 / CLMD 6105 W / ENGL 5900 Y   Canadian Cultural Studies–In Person

Instructor: Orly Lael Netzer

Course Description: In this course we will contend with urgent socio-cultural challenges in Canada through contemporary approaches to the study of national culture on Turtle Island. Grounded in an understanding of “Canada” as settler-colonial and racialized, we will begin the course with the work of education scholar Dwayne Donald (Papaschase Cree descendant) who argues that colonialism is “an extended process of denying relationship” (“On What Terms Can We Speak?”).

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 5400 W /4400 A / INDG 4901– Space, Landscape and Identity in Canada–ONLINE Synchronous

Instructor: Kenneth (Jake) Chakasim

Course Descriptor: Critical in its approach, this course brings into focus the contemporary role indigenous literature and design plays in the realm of indigenous space, landscape, and identity practices. Whether one is ‘tricked into believing’ or ‘mistreated to take action’, we can no longer escape the chaos, disorder, and destruction of indigenous landscapes and its supporting infrastructure (or lack thereof).

Read the full Course Descriptor.

CDNS 5402 W / ARCH 5002 A   Heritage Conservation: Theory in Practice

Instructor:  Susan Ross

Course Description: This is a core course for students in the M.A. in Canadian Studies (Concentration in Heritage Planning and Studies), and the Graduate Diploma in Architectural Conservation. It is also open to graduate students in architecture, engineering, public history, art history, curatorial studies, anthropology, environmental studies and many other related fields.

Building on CDNS 5401* this graduate seminar/workshop format introduces students to diverse contexts of heritage planning practice, with an emphasis on the evolving values of places, and the ethical questions to consider in the protection and planning for regeneration of the built environment. Literature from critical heritage studies, sustainable heritage planning, cultural landscape and decolonizing research methodology inform the approach. *Please contact the instructor if you have not taken this companion course.

Read the Course Descriptor

CDNS 5501 Decolonizing Canada — ONLINE Synchronous

Instructor: TBD

Course Description: In this interdisciplinary graduate seminar, we explore the possibilities and limitations of the concept of “decolonization” in what is now known as Canada.

CDNS 5700 W / GEOG 5005 A — Changing Dynamics of the Canadian North / Global Environmental Change: Human Implications – IN Person

Instructor: Karen Hebert

Course Description:  This course will explore a range of interdisciplinary social science perspectives on global environmental change. Course content will examine the drivers, features, and implications of socioecological processes including climate change, biodiversity loss, and various forms of environmental degradation, as well as how these are being experienced, contested, engaged with, and transformed in sites around the world. Readings and discussions will involve case studies that address topics such as natural resource extraction, shifting dynamics of environmental protection, and struggles over proposed climate crisis solutions.