Fall 2020-Winter 2021 Undergraduate Courses

CDNS 1000 Introduction to Canadian Studies

This is a full year 1.0 credit online, asynchronous course.

Course Description:
The core question that Canadian Studies asks is: what drives people to come together as a national community? Is it a shared language, history, or ethnic background? Is it a set of symbols or narratives? Is it the rights and responsibilities that being part of a nation entails? Is it the political boundaries or the country’s physical landmass? This course attempts to make sense of these questions by examining some of the ways that identity is produced and maintained in Canada.

CDNS 1001 Studying Canada

Instructor: Jiyoung An

What is Canada? What constitutes Canada? How do people come together as a national community? How do Canadians define themselves and construct Canadian identity? How do Canadian Studies scholars research Canada? This course introduces various theoretical concepts and approaches and empirical research to study Canada as an object of academic inquiry.

Course Description

CDNS 2210  Introduction to the Study of Canadian Culture

Instructor: Peter Thompson

This course will introduce students to key concepts in cultural studies, Canadian Studies and interdisciplinary research in the humanities. It will focus on the development of Canadian national culture over time and the way in which it is created and contested by cultural production. Since the state plays such an integral role in Canada’s cultural industries, the relationship between nationalism, political engagement, and artistic expression is a very important topic within Canadian Studies. 

Course Description

CDNS 2300   Critical Nationalism

Instructor: Paul Litt

This course explores Canadian nationalisms. We will look at definitions and theories that attempt to conceptualize nations and nationalism, then explore how well they apply to Canada, past and present. The fabled Canadian identity will be one topic of discussion. We’ll look critically at the myths, symbols and stories that evoke it.

We’ll also explore other forms of collective identity that compete with Canadian nationalism for legitimacy within Canada (such as French-Canadian nationalism) and ask similar questions about them. The concept of race and its relationship to nationality is another major issue, but there are a host of others. Where do First Nations fit into the picture? Can a country that is multicultural achieve national unity? Is it possible to build a nation on civic values alone?

Course Description

CDNS 3550 Interfaces between English and French Canadian Cultures

Instructor:

Exploration of intercultural encounters between French and English Canadians in political, popular and “official” cultures, through an examination of media, art, music, literature, cinema and the built environment.

Course Description

CDNS 3600 Cultural Politics and Identities in Canada

Course Instructor: Peter Hodgins

The term “cultural politics” has been defined as referring to “the processes through which relations of power are asserted, accepted, contested, or subverted by means of ideas, values, symbols, and daily practices. Power is the ability to make somebody do something, and relations of power include domination, oppression, discipline, struggle, resistance, rebellion, co-option, subversion, and sedition.” (Glick Schiller, 1997). In this course, we will read the Canadian literature on cultural politics and discuss how it can shed light on some of these current cultural political controversies.

Course Description

CDNS 3901: Selected Topics in Canadian Studies
Title: Towards Racial Justice: A critical study of Canadian multiculturalism and anti-racist movements in Canada

Instructor: Jiyoung Lee-An

Poster

In this third-year course, we explore theoretical and empirical insights from critical race studies and carefully pay attention to the voices of racialized groups in Canada. This course aims to study diverse forms of historical and contemporary struggles of racialized Canadians and immigrants and to develop collective knowledge to contribute to racial justice and solidarity. Some may argue that Canada is ‘better’ than the United States because Canada took multiculturalism as an official policy and thus is more immune from racism and racial inequality. However, the history of Canada clearly demonstrates that racism has been deeply ingrained in Canadian society as part of racialized nation-building processes. Different racial and cultural groups have fought against settler-colonial violence against Indigenous communities, anti-Black racism, anti-Asian racism, Islamophobia, state violence, structural exclusion, cultural oppression, systemic racism and microaggression in Canada.
Course Description

CDNS 4000  Capstone Seminar in Advanced Research in Canadian Studies

Instructor: Eva Mackey

This capstone course is an opportunity for Honours students in SICS to bring together the knowledge and skills developed during their degrees to conceptualize and carry out their own substantial research projects within a guided and collective context. Students refine and practice their analytic and research skills to apply interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches to their selected research projects. They learn how to carry them out from concept to completion.

Course Description

CDNS 4500  Canada and The World
Instructor: Jiyoung An

This course engages with diverse theoretical perspectives and empirical research to critically analyze Canada’s relation to the global world. How do Canada and Canadians respond to and address pressing global challenges such as climate change, the global refugee crisis, peace keeping, pandemics, global inequalities, food insecurity, etc.? What values and principles have Canada and Canadians portrayed and spread as global actors? How have they changed throughout history? How do Canadians play their role as global citizens? In this course, we examine the practices of diverse Canadian actors working globally including the Canadian government, Canadian foreign aid agencies, Canadian companies and individual Canadians, and critically analyze the impacts of these actors on both Canadian and global communities.

Course Description

This is a full year 1.0 credit course.

This First Year Seminar (1) introduces you to a broad range of social movements for change in Canada and (2) facilitates development of your academic reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. This course prepares you for ongoing success throughout your degree by focusing on five learning outcomes:

1.      Identify how available university support services can contribute to your academic success;

2.      Distinguish between opinion and evidence-based arguments about social rights;

3.      Closely analyze texts to synthesize information about how social inequality manifests in people’s lives and potential solutions;

4.      Communicate ideas to a variety of audiences through the purposeful development and expression of academic ideas in written and/or oral formats;

5.      Comprehensively explore the relationships between social inequalities, social movements, and national identity – including interpreting available data or evidence and formulating an argument or conclusion that is supported by the examined resources.

This is a full year 1.0 credit course.

This course is designed to help explore the current debates in Canadian society while simultaneously building key academic skills that will serve you throughout your undergraduate degree. We are going to focus extensively on how the social debates in contemporary Canada are interconnected and co-emerge. We will question what underlying assumptions define these social issues and will explore our own (and our community/national/global) investments in these debates.

INDG 1010 Introduction to Indigenous Peoplehood Studies

This course discusses Indigenous worldviews, ways of living, ecological relationships, inter-Indigenous relations and diplomacy among Indigenous peoples. Course materials are rooted in self-situated and collective understandings of Indigenous peoples.

Course Description

INDG 2015 Indigenous Ecological Ways of Knowing

Instructor: Zoe Todd

This course will provide an overview of diverse Indigenous cosmologies and perspectives on land, water, atmospheres, and more-than-human beings. We will draw on Indigenous knowledge from
nations/societies/communities around the globe.

Course Description

INDG 3001 Indigenous Governance

This course examines the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of Indigenous
Governance and is designed to lead students through the concepts they will need in order to
gain a full understanding of the complex issues Indigenous peoples face with respect to
governance.

Course Description

INDG 4011   Indigenous Representations

Instructor: Carmen Robertson

This seminar will facilitate an in-depth examination of how Indigenous artists have formulated a politicized discourse of resistance through their artistic expressions in order to prompt transformative and decolonizing healing within communities.

Course Description

CDNS 1002 Themes in the Study of Canada: Monuments Museums and Memory Activism

Instructor: Andrew Gemmell

Course Description: This year, Themes in the Study of Canada uses theories of identity to interrogate and critique political and cultural formations within the Canadian context. This course aims to help students think about their own identity claims, as well as those made by the people and communities around them, in terms of a vibrant and interesting field of scholarship.

Click here for complete description.

CDNS 1102 Introduction to Canada and the World
Instructor: Jiyoung Lee-An

How is Canada connected to the world? How do you understand Canada’s role in the world? What differentiates Canada from other countries? Do you think of yourself as Canadian? If so, what defines you as Canadian? If not, how do you see your position in Canada and the world? Do you see yourself as a global citizen? What are your responsibilities as a global citizen? How does Canada respond to and address pressing global challenges such as climate change, the global refugee crisis, and global inequalities?

In this course, we will discuss various theoretical perspectives and approaches to understand Canada’s hegemonic role in the world as part of western hegemonic power in both historical and contemporary contexts. We will critically engage with diverse forms of (neo)colonialism, global capitalism, imperialism, and neoliberalism that have constituted and perpetuated global inequalities.

Course meets:  6:05 pm – 7.55 pm Mondays

Discussion A1 8:35 am to 9:25 am Tuesdays
Discussion A2: 9:35 am to 10:25 am Tuesdays

 Course type: Blended Course with some meetings at the scheduled class meeting time. TWO synchronous lecture dates in the entire course.

CDNS 2000 Debating Canada
Instructor: Jiyoung Lee-An

This course aims to explore diverse controversies and debates surrounding Canada as a settler-nation and Canadian-ness as a national identity. Instead of having a unitary understanding of what Canada is, this course invites you to develop a multi-faceted and complex understanding about Canada. By foregrounding decolonial and anti-racist approaches, we disentangle historical and contemporary controversies and debates surrounding settler colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, global capitalism, racism, patriarchal oppression, multiculturalism, and Canadian political economy. More specifically, we will discuss the topics of defunding police, cultural appropriation, im/migration and refugee policies, the abolition of prison and immigration detention, resource extraction as a business in and outside Canada, universal social welfare system including healthcare, childcare, basic income, etc. Along with in-depth analyses of these controversial topics, this course also aims to create nuanced and complex alternative social and political solutions together.

Course meets:  11:35 am – 1:25 pm Tuesdays

Discussion Group A1: 2:35 pm to 3:25 pm Tuesdays
Discussion Group A2: 6:05 pm to 6:55 pm Tuesdays

 Course type: Blended Course with some meetings at the scheduled class meeting time. TWO synchronous lecture dates in the entire course.

CDNS 3000/GEOG 3001 Producing Knowledge
Instructor: Sophie Tamas

How do we produce ethical, useful knowledge? This small seminar course investigates the theory and methods used in qualitative inquiry, offering students both hands-on experience as knowledge producers and rigorous discussion of the beliefs and claims that shape what counts as knowledge and who counts as knowledge-holders. We will wrestle with the ethical and practical dilemmas confronting researchers, and develop our skills in gathering, interpreting, and presenting knowledge, with a particular focus on the (mis)use of stories, especially in inquiries that aim to ‘help.’

CDNS 2400 Heritage Conservation in Canada
Instructor: Casey Gray

Heritage conservation as a practice in Canada has come of age, and is shifting in response to new ideas, issues and related social and environmental movements. While it began with grass roots advocacy, today the internationally recognized professional field includes integrated national and local
inventories, an array of pioneering conventions and charters, evolving heritage legislation, established multi-disciplinary practices, and governments and non-governmental organizations with decades of experience.

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 and international theories, practices, and tools to continue to move the field ahead in stimulating and critical directions.

This will be a blended online course.

CDNS 4300  Contested Spaces and Communities
Instructor: Jiyoung Lee-An

This course examines the contested nature of spaces and communities and delves into multiple intersections of identities, subjectivities, spaces, and community building. We begin with the question of what community means and how different communities in Canada have been contested and negotiated over time. We analyze multiple mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that shape, shift, transform, dismantle and/or recreate the boundaries of different communities and spaces. What constitutes certain communities and spaces? Who belongs to certain spaces and communities and who does not? Who has power to cross the boundaries of communities and spaces? Who does not? Who is situated in the liminalities of spaces within and beyond the border of the nation-state and how?

We will engage with diverse communities in Canada that have changed Canadian society through challenging different social norms surrounding gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, ableness, and public spaces. Rather than approaching different communities separately, our focus will be more on the intersections of different communities and the contested nature of different communities and spaces. In addition to developing academic knowledge, this course also aims to encourage you to be actively involved in community building and to develop collective community-oriented solutions with your peers. These processes will also be explored based on thorough reflections upon our positionalities and their impact on our relationship with communities.

Course meets:  11:35 am to 2:25 pm every Wednesday

Course type: Blended Course with some meetings at the scheduled class meeting time.

CDNS 4510/FINS 4510  Quebec Studies

Instructor: Catherine Khordoc   Course Poster

In this course, we’ll read contemporary works of Québécois literature that are considered to be examples of ‘migrant writing’, or ‘écriture migrante’, a term coined in the 1980s by Haitian-Québécois writer Robert Berrouët-Oriol. Since then, this body of literature has attracted significant critical interest as more and more writers who have immigrated to Québec weave into their writing themes relating to immigration, exile, belonging and identity. We’ll examine how some of these issues are reinforced in the writing itself through the use of narrative techniques, intertextuality, plurilingualism, historical discourse, and different forms of story-telling.

Course Description

INDG 1011 Introduction to Indigenous-Settler Encounters
Instructor: Eva Mackey

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples’ encounters with colonialism and Canadian nation-building. The course will examine select encounters with the aim of gaining an understanding the ways in which past moment/sites of encounter frame the contemporary relationship between First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, the Canadian state, and settler populations.

Course Description

INDG 2011  Framing Contemporary Indigeneous Issues
Instructor: Julie Tomiak

Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives on issues since the 1960s. Topics include: contemporary explorations of treaty relationship and governance, cultural appropriation, identity politics, urban Aboriginality and contemporary social and cultural issues.

INDG 2020 Decolonizing Gender, Sex and Sexuality
Instructor: Geraldine King

This course examines the effects of colonization in unbalancing Indigenous peoples’ lives through the imposition of constructions of gender, sex, and sexuality, and the ways that Indigenous peoples are working to restore balance to their families and communities.

Course Description

INDG 3011 Indigenous Rights, Resistance and Resurgence
Instructor: Kanatase Horn

Working from within an appreciation and responsibility towards Indigenous knowledge systems, our class will explore pivotal moments in Indigenous moves towards liberation in their homelands. We will focus on the ways First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples express, contest, mobilize, and activate rights, resistance, and resurgence. We will navigate this course using Dene scholar Glen Coulthard’s pivotal work, Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Politics of Recognition (2014) to understand diverse strategies of Indigenous liberation and resistance.

Course Description

The relationship between Indigenous traditional ecological knowledges and the academy. Topics include: linguistic barriers, tensions in diffuse ways of knowing, research ethics with respect to Indigenous traditional knowledge, and working with knowledge holders.

Course Description

INDG 3901 Selected Topics in Indigenous Studies

Instructor: Benny Michaud

INDG 4001 Indigeneity in the City

This course aims to benefit all students that are eager to expand their knowledge of urban Indigeneity; to develop critical thinking and analytic and evaluative competency when applying theoretical/practical understandings of identity, race, culture and power relations that are inscribed on Indigenous lands, peoples and places; and to prepare students for future career opportunities in policy-making and/or program administration.

This is a full year 1.0 credit course.

This First Year Seminar (1) introduces you to a broad range of social movements for change in Canada and (2) facilitates development of your academic reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. This course prepares you for ongoing success throughout your degree by focusing on five learning outcomes:

1.      Identify how available university support services can contribute to your academic success;

2.      Distinguish between opinion and evidence-based arguments about social rights;

3.      Closely analyze texts to synthesize information about how social inequality manifests in people’s lives and potential solutions;

4.      Communicate ideas to a variety of audiences through the purposeful development and expression of academic ideas in written and/or oral formats;

5.      Comprehensively explore the relationships between social inequalities, social movements, and national identity – including interpreting available data or evidence and formulating an argument or conclusion that is supported by the examined resources.

This is a full year 1.0 credit course.

This course is designed to help explore the current debates in Canadian society while simultaneously building key academic skills that will serve you throughout your undergraduate degree. We are going to focus extensively on how the social debates in contemporary Canada are interconnected and co-emerge. We will question what underlying assumptions define these social issues and will explore our own (and our community/national/global) investments in these debates.