Courses

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.

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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.