Due to public health guidelines all winter courses will be online for the month of January 2022.
Please note: students are responsible for ensuring that their selected courses meet the program requirements stated in the Calendar. If, however, you feel that you need additional information or guidance please contact us.
Ph.D. in Cultural Mediations
Course Listings for the Academic Year 2021-2022
The PhD in Cultural Mediations offers graduate students a range of engaging research seminars with a strong interdisciplinary focus. Most of these seminars are cross-listed and can be applied towards different graduate programs.
Fall Courses 2021-2022
CLMD 6101T: Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity in Cultural Theory
Instructor: Peter Hodgins
This course will address the theory and practice of interdisciplinary studies of culture. Attention will be paid to those themes and issues in cultural theory of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that inform contemporary interdisciplinary work in literature, film, music, art and new media. This course is continued in the second semester. Method of delivery: Hyflex: in-person section with flexible online/on campus attendance
CLMD 6900T: Interdisciplinary Research Methods
Instructor: Paul Theberge
The primary goal of this year-long, workshop-based course for second-year doctoral students is to help students prepare for the second comprehensive examination and dissertation research. The class will offer students a supportive space in which to workshop their second comprehensive examination lists and their preliminary dissertation proposals. Students will work together to develop and exchange ideas about their teaching fields and dissertations with their peers and to benefit from constructive criticism. Be prepared to engage with other students’ scholarship fully and constructively as we discuss, develop and refine plans for future research. The second major goal of the course is to foster practical skills and knowledge necessary for academic success at the doctoral level and beyond. The course will help students master various aspects of the academic profession including: writing OGS and SSHRC plans of study, becoming acquainted with library resources, academic publishing, conference paper presentations, research ethics and other professional concerns. Further topics will be introduced in response to student need. This course is continued in the second semester. Method of delivery: Hyflex: in-person section with flexible online/on campus attendance
CLMD 6902F/ARTH 5115: The Temporal Diversity of Our Time: Pluralizing time and unlearning the modern Western temporal regime
Instructor: Birgit Hopfener
What are multiple concepts of time, plural and entangled temporal structures and regimes that constitute the present and our contemporary conceptual frameworks of knowing, being, creating art and cultural artifacts, and relating to each other and the world? This interdisciplinary seminar takes this question as the starting point to “unlearn” (G. Spivak) the universalized modern Western temporal framework and its ongoing effects on ways of knowing, being and creating and to explore the long ignored cultural and historical multiplicity of temporalities of the present through critical engagements with scholarly writings and art (visual art, film, music, literature etc.). The seminar takes the new critical attention to temporality and the heightened temporal and historical consciousness evident in current theoretical and artistic conceptualizations of what constitutes or could constitute our world temporally now and in the future as the starting point, to uncover, map and transform contemporary temporal frameworks and their effects on concepts and practices of knowledge, art, self and social relations. Method of delivery: Online Blended: an online course with a mixture of synchronous meetings and asynchronous activities.
CLMD 6104F/ENGL 5610F: Issues in Cultural Politics: Documentary and Crisis
Instructor: Franny Nudelman
This course considers crisis documentary from 1945 to the present. We will study documentary filmmakers, photographers, and writers who respond to the unanticipated and often incomprehensible crises of their age and, in the process, create new forms of documentary expression. Taking an expansive view of the field, we will consider documentary texts that deal with war, forced migration, climate emergency, poverty, and a resurgent white supremacy. We will ask: How do documentarians represent what they cannot yet fully understand? What role does literary and visual culture play in making disruptive change real? How have documentarians helped to define an ethics of witnessing? How are the methods and aims of documentarians transformed by new technologies and alternative forms of collectivity? Cases may include: Lee Miller’s photographs from Dachau; Spike Lee’s reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; Maggie Nelson’s narrative account serial murder; Richard Mosse’s immersive rendering of contemporary migrations; recent essays that grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout, we will explore the power of documentary to respond to catastrophic events and uncharted social conditions as they unfold. Method of delivery: Online Synchronous: an online course with synchronous meetings only.
CLMD 6903F/MUSI 5200: Ecologies of Music and Sound in Canada
Instructor: Ellen Waterman
This course offers a situated look at the complexities of ecologies of music and sound—Canadian artists, scenes, and institutions—in terms of the entanglement of people, places, processes, more-than-human entities, and things. We will examine theories of ecology, agency, and subjectivity drawn from music and sound studies, assemblage theory, ANT, new materialism, anthropology, and science and technology studies, including intersectional and Indigenous approaches. We will articulate these diverse theories with case studies in Canadian music and sound including artistic works and practices, institutions, and spaces/places. You do not need a background in music to be successful in this course. An ecological analysis is transferrable to any artistic field. Method of delivery: Online Synchronous: an online course with synchronous meetings only.
CLMD 6904F/SOC 5308/ WGST 5901: Feminist Analyses
Instructor: Nahla Abdo
Existing literature on feminisms seems to lack sufficient attention and consideration for the settler colonial context, and a seeming stark sidelining, if not ignorance, of the lives and experiences of indigenous women. This seminar focuses on studying critical feminist approaches to indigeneity and the settler colonial state from a comparative perspective (countries considered may include: North America, Australia, Algeria South Africa and Israel). In addition, this seminar will engage in a critical reconsideration of some existing feminist perspectives, including: Intersectionality, and Transnational and Post-Colonial Feminism. In this Seminar, we aim to build on existing anti-Orientalist and anti-colonial feminism, working towards an anticolonial, anti-imperialist feminist perspective. In addition to our Epistemological engagement, this Seminar will address the significance of Oral History as a method and methodology for studying genocide and settler colonialism. Along with Seminar presentation, class discussions, book review and a final paper, this Seminar will include a number of film/documentary reviews directly related to our topics. Method of delivery: Online Blended: an online course with a mixture of synchronous meetings and asynchronous activities.
Winter Courses 2021-2022
CLMD 6101T: Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity in Cultural Theory
Instructor: Candace Sobers
Please note: This course is a continuation of CLMD 6900 in the first semester.
This course will address the theory and practice of interdisciplinary studies of culture. Attention will be paid to those themes and issues in cultural theory of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that inform contemporary interdisciplinary work in literature, film, music, art and new media. Method of delivery: Online Synchronous: an online course with synchronous meetings only.
CLMD 6900: Research and Professional Development: Interdisciplinary Research Methods
Instructor: Paul Theberge
Please note: This course is a continuation of CLMD 6900 in the first semester.
The primary goal of this year-long, workshop-based course for second-year doctoral students is to help students prepare for the second comprehensive examination and dissertation research. The class will offer students a supportive space in which to workshop their second comprehensive examination lists and their preliminary dissertation proposals. Students will work together to develop and exchange ideas about their teaching fields and dissertations with their peers and to benefit from constructive criticism. Be prepared to engage with other students’ scholarship fully and constructively as we discuss, develop and refine plans for future research. The second major goal of the course is to foster practical skills and knowledge necessary for academic success at the doctoral level and beyond. The course will help students master various aspects of the academic profession including: writing OGS and SSHRC plans of study, becoming acquainted with library resources, academic publishing, conference paper presentations, research ethics and other professional concerns. Further topics will be introduced in response to student need. Method of delivery: Online Synchronous: an online course with synchronous meetings only.
CLMD 6102W/MDGS 5002B/ENGL 5004W: Issues in Transnationalism: Diaspora Literature
Instructor: Aaron Kreuter
Focusing on a range of diasporic communities (Jewish, Black, Indian, Palestinian, Chinese, Japanese) living in diverse locales (Canada, America, Brazil, Kuwait), this seminar will compare and explore how the novels under study fictionalize the relationship between diasporic, Indigenous, and national forms of collective belonging. Novels will tentatively include:The Yiddish Policemen’s Unionby Michael Chabon,Burning Shadowsby Kamila Shamsie;Brazil Maruby Karen Tei Yamashita,Sevenby Farzana Doctor,A Map of Homeby Randa Jarrar,How Much of These Hills is Goldby C Pam Zhang andAmericanahby Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The course’s theoretical and secondary texts—including work by Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin, Stephane Dufoix, David Chariandy, Paul Gilroy, and Rey Chow—will unpack the radical potential of diasporic community and belonging, and map out how the fiction represents diasporic relationships to the home country and host countries. Method of delivery: Online (additional details TBC)
CLMD 6103W/ARTH 5218W/CURA 5003W: Issues of Cultural Mediation and Representation: Indigenous Issues in Curation
Instructor: Carmen Robertson
This seminar offers students a hands-on experience to curate an exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art from the Indigenous Art Centre’s permanent collection (CIRNAC) at their gallery in Gatineau. The seminar investigates issues related to Indigenous curation by analysing exhibition histories, new models, and voices in Indigenous curation in order to fully engage in the experience. Students will work as a group to collaboratively design all aspects of the exhibition for display over the course of the semester. Method of delivery: in-person, not suitable for online students
CLMD 6104W/FILM 5002W/DIGH 5902: Issues in the Technologies of Cultural Politics: Digital Humanities, Media & Social Justice
Instructor: Laura Horak
Please also register in CLMD 6104WF (screening)
This course will introduce students to the theories and methods of intersectional feminist, Black, Indigenous, queer, and trans digital humanities (Lothian and Phillips 2013; Bailey 2015; Risam 2015; Bailey et al. 2016; Wernimont and Losh 2018). It will bring together the insights of critical race studies, Indigenous studies, feminism, queer, and transgender studies with new digital methods, and explore the ways that scholars are using new digital tools to work collaboratively for social justice. We will investigate the ways that colonialism, race, gender, sexuality, and ableism shape the digital technologies we use our everyday lives (e.g. Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.) as well as how Indigenous, Black, queer, and trans scholars and activists are using digital tools to reconnect with ancestors, reveal unseen patterns governing everyday life in the past and the present, and create new forms of community. We will examine a range of digital humanities projects through the lens of intersectional digital humanities, examining how they work in terms of: power (e.g. What kinds of power do team and community members bring to the table? Who is not in the room? How is the project governed?); labor (e.g. Who does what kind of labor? How are they recognized? How fairly and quickly are they compensated? How sustainable are these ways of working?); value (e.g. Who benefits?); credit (e.g. Who get credit for their labor? Who is cited?); privacy (e.g. What kind of things should not get put online? What are the appropriate protocols for sharing things with various people?); and harm (e.g. Does the work leave people vulnerable to harm? Does it gravely misrepresent them?). We will also explore the challenges of capturing the complexities of identity in data structures. Method of delivery: in-person, not suitable for online students (additional details TBC)
CLMD 6105B/FILM 5007W: Issues in the Technologies of Culture: Topics in Film History
Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
Please also register in CLMD 6105BF (screening)
This course will explore the history, theory and practice of moving image archiving. It will be in conversation with fields outside the moving image but that inform the moving image in its relation to the archival, that is, history and historiography, philosophy, archival studies, library studies, postcolonial, anticolonial and decolonial studies, women and gender studies, indigenous studies, heritage studies, memory studies. It will also examine and interrogate institutions, practices, procedures, the political economy and the archival as an apparatus consisting of discourses, institutions and practices and the ways they inform and interrogate each other. It will examine the categories of the archival through the various debates that animate them, from selection, to appraisal, to cataloguing, inventorying, preservation, restoration, access, curation, etc. Finally, it will examine the implications of cine-archival history, theory and practice for film studies, film history, film theory and other incarnations. Method of delivery: in-person, not suitable for online students
CLMD 6904W/ENGL 5002W Special Topics: The Instant of My Death
Instructor: Stuart Murray
How might we read the (non)representational practices that surround death today? Aesthetic or anaesthetic, ours is a time when death is quietly cultivated and calculated by neoliberal biopolitics – deaths dismissed (or justified) as collateral damage, opportunity costs, negative externalities. This differential power is summed up by Foucault as the power to “make live and let die.” Crucially, those we “let die” stand in relation to the lives that we “make live”; dying is the bloody secret of life, even as “letting die” is disavowed, refused, silenced. Whether it is “slow death” (Berlant) wrought by austerity, fast death in the digital mediascape, or more coordinated ways of “letting die,” including war, systemic ethnic/racialized violence, or pandemic policies, these deaths nevertheless speak to belie our “culture of life.” Method of delivery: in-person