See below for our list of graduate seminars for the 2025-26 academic year. Please note that course outlines and courses crosslisted with other departments will be added on a later date.
Fall 2025:
Sophie Marcotte-Chenard
PHIL 5000 – Contemporary Political Theory
The interwar period in Europe (1918–1939) was marked by profound and overlapping crises—political, social, economic, philosophical, and existential. It was also a time of intense transformation and innovation across multiple spheres, including politics, philosophy, literature, cinema, architecture, and music. Nowhere were these dynamics more vividly expressed than in Germany during the Weimar Republic, often described as a “laboratory of modernity,” where competing political ideologies—from the far left to the radical right—contended for dominance. At the same time, this period witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented form of government that would later be identified as totalitarianism. This course explores how political thinkers of the interwar and postwar periods diagnosed the crises of their time. What does the concept of totalitarianism mean, and why did this new concept become necessary? How can we understand the moral and political implications of the Second World War and the Holocaust? In the wake of such catastrophes, how does one reimagine social and political life in a world seemingly stripped of certainty? What grounds remain for a belief in the solidity or legitimacy of democracy after the experience of total domination? Designed as both an introduction to major themes in continental thought in the first half of the twentieth century and a focused study of key thinkers, this course will engage with the works of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, Max Horkheimer, Simone Weil, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir among others.
Josh Redstone
PHIL 5200 A – Technology and Freedom: A Critical Exploration of Jacques Ellul’s Philosophy of Technology
French Philosopher and Sociologist Jacques Ellul was concerned with technology’s impact on modern society, particularly with respect to human freedom. Ellul famously characterized technology as ‘technique,’ i.e., “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” As Val Dusek (2006) remarks, Ellul’s characterization of technology as technique is a characterization of technology as ‘rules,’ not ‘tools.’ In this seminar we will engage in a close reading of Ellul’s monumental work, The Technological Society (1964). We will explore Ellul’s characterization of technology as technique and its impacts upon human freedom by paying close attention to the technological and societal events that influenced his thinking. At the same time, we will use Ellul’s work as a lens through which to view our relationship with technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and “Big Data” in the 21st century.
Myrto Mylopoulos
PHIL 5701 A – Fall Colloquium
Students attend each talk in the departmental colloquium series, preparing by doing mandatory background readings, and submit in writing a critical analysis of some aspect of the presentation.
Dave Matheson
PHIL 5850 A – Proseminar: Philosophical Naturalism
As a philosophical movement, naturalism eschews the nonphysical and emphasizes scientifically respectable methods of inquiry. The objective of this seminar is to familiarize you with the roots and guises of contemporary naturalism and with its presence in three main areas of philosophy—the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. Particular topics to be discussed include the historical origins of contemporary naturalism, its ontological and methodological commitments, the causal closure of the physical domain, varieties of physicalism about the mental, whether a naturalized epistemology vitiates traditional epistemology’s reliance on intuition and the a priori, naturalist challenges to metaethical realism, and the implications of naturalism for the perennial question of life’s meaning.
Geoff Kellow
PHIL 5600 A – Nietzsche & Zarathustra
This seminar examines three of Nietzsche’s late works, The Twilight of the Idols, Beyond Good & Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The primary object of our attention will be the last of these. We will read Twilight and Beyond as texts meant to explain and draw readers further into Zarathustra, to read them as Nietzsche intended, as Zarathustra’s “fishhooks.” We will endeavour to unpack some of the key concepts contained in these texts including the will to power, the superman, the last man and the decline and decadence of the current moment.
Winter 2026:
Christine Koggel
PHIL 5350 A – Relational Theory: Past and Present
This course will explore relational accounts of human beings and the implications for moral, social, and political theory. Relational accounts can be contrasted with Modern and especially Western liberal accounts that tend to focus on individuals and the rights and freedoms that attach to individuals apart from contexts and conditions. We start with readings by philosophers such as Aristotle, Mary Wollstonecraft, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx. We then turn to more recent relational accounts in readings by African, Indigenous, communitarian as well as (a few) continental theorists before turning to more recent developments in relational theory by feminists using approaches and frameworks such as an ethic of care, epistemic injustice, standpoint epistemology, anti-oppression theory, and intersectionality. Throughout we contrast and compare relational and liberal approaches to accounts such as virtue ethics, the capabilities approach, agency and autonomy, justice, and ideal theory. In some cases, we will juxtapose readings from the past and present to provide critical perspectives on accounts that have focused on sociality as such or on individuals in order to explore implications and applications of relational approaches to contemporary issues, contexts, and conditions in the global North and South.
Gabriele Contessa
PHIL 5500 A – Misinformation
According to a popular narrative, we live in a world increasingly awash with information and misinformation; and ordinary people ill-equipped to distinguish between the two, which has significant negative consequences at the individual, social, and political levels. In this seminar, we will explore some of the key questions related to this narrative, which might include: What exactly is misinformation? How does it differ from disinformation? What explains the spread of misinformation? And what are the best approaches to addressing it? Is it possible to study misinformation and its spread scientifically?
Kyla Bruff
PHIL 5600 B – Schelling and Adorno on Nature in relation to the Ecological Crisis
F.W.J. Schelling and Theodor W. Adorno have both been read as ecologically important thinkers. A productive comparison of their analyses of nature in their core texts could potentially help us to better understand the irreversible, destructive, human-caused changes in nature characteristic of the Anthropocene, as well as assess the stakes and grounds of our moral response and critically examine our norms and actions in relation to the ecological crisis. In this seminar, we will read texts from Schelling and Adorno that address (a) the human being’s paradoxical place within it, (b) natural history, and (c) aesthetics. We will extract important, critical insights from these texts, entering them into a productive dialogue for understanding and responding to the ecological crisis.
Myrto Mylopoulos
PHIL 5751 B – Winter Colloquium
Students attend each talk in the departmental colloquium series, preparing by doing mandatory background readings, and submit in writing a critical analysis of some aspect of the presentation.
Christine Koggel
PHIL 5900 A – Research Seminar
Mandatory seminar course for all first-year MA students. The primary objective of this seminar is to develop topics for theses or research essays. Students will consult with potential supervisors during this process.