Courses

For M.A. Students. Permission of Program Director required.

For M.A. Students. Permission of Program Director required.

For M.A. Students. Permission of Program Director required.

Provides MA students with the core tools for interdisciplinary Humanities scholarship. It introduces basic techniques and methodologies of conducting, presenting and publishing research, with an emphasis on qualitative methods. Students practice, and reflect on, the process of planning, carrying out, and presenting research in ways that are adequate for specific contexts, topics, and problematics in the Humanities.

For Ph.D. Students. Permission of program director required.

For Ph.D. Students. Permission of program director required.

For Ph.D. Students. Permission of program director required.

This course examines a selection of black women's writing from four geographic locations in the African Diaspora: the Caribbean, United States, Canada and Britain. The texts, written after the 1970s, cover a wide generic range including novels, poetry, theoretical and autobiographical texts.

This course offers a historical examination of the multiple, overlapping processes through which Asian identities and regions were constituted. It will also examine new directions in Asian studies in an era of intensified global flows, transnationalism, and the presence of Asian diaspora in Canada and elsewhere.

Introduces students to the conditions of emergence and development of the discipline of Comparative Literature from its beginnings in nineteenth-century Europe to its most recent global iteration of World Literature. Students will experience how expanded understandings of cultural translation and textuality have radically altered and expanded the Eurocentric character of the discipline. Questions for investigation includes: How have the aesthetics and politics of Comparative Literature changed over the past two hundred years? What factors have influenced those changes? How is World Literature related to Comparative Literature? How do both relate to colonial, post-colonial, diasporic, cultural and translation studies and digital humanities?

Introduces students to the conditions of emergence and development of the discipline of Comparative Literature from its beginnings in nineteenth-century Europe to its most recent global iteration of World Literature. Students will experience how expanded understandings of cultural translation and textuality have radically altered and expanded the Eurocentric character of the discipline. Questions for investigation includes: How have the aesthetics and politics of Comparative Literature changed over the past two hundred years? What factors have influenced those changes? How is World Literature related to Comparative Literature? How do both relate to colonial, post-colonial, diasporic, cultural and translation studies and digital humanities?

This interdisciplinary course introduces students to debates and perspectives on Latin American and Caribbean studies and links theory with practice in the field. Supported by numerous CERLAC Fellows from a range of disciplines, students from different graduate programs and areas of study will collaborate together in teams on applied research projects.

This course engages a critical examination of writing by Black people in English or in translation. What does it mean to write black life? What forms does that work take? We will read short fiction, novels, poetry, essays, experimental works and theoretical writing. The majority of the works that we read will be contemporary (mid twentieth century to the present). This course wants to familiarize students with the rich and varied materials of Black writing, with form, and style and argument.

Examines the ideas and principles of secularism as enacted against the backdrop of religious resurgence in several cultural contexts. It explores different interpretations of the secular idea in an attempt to understand, through comparison, the patterns of religious/secular interaction.

This course explores the history of category religion and its deployment in the colonial projects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The rise of secularism in Europe was a process of defining certain discourses, practices and experiences as religious and isolating them as distinct from social and political aspect of life, a worldview and orientation. This way of knowing and ordain the world did not easily translate into the cultures colonized by European powers. Looking at case studies from Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, this course will explore how religion became a vector of colonial power in the hands of missionaries and others and a means of resisting colonial hegemony for colonial subjects. Furthermore, it will investigate the ways in which contesting the meaning and definition of religion became a way of negotiating the limits of colonial authority. Key texts would include Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion, Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, Markus Dressler and Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Secularism and Religion Making, Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age, Penny Edwards Cambodge.

Examines the literary, musical, and visual cultures of modernism to create better understanding of the forms, meanings, and significance of interdisciplinary art practices.

This course explores critical debates and interdisciplinary research methods employed in the study of material objects. It draws on case studies and theoretical work on material culture, display, and representation to consider the influence of the 'material turn' on contemporary scholarship and on historical and curatorial practices.

This course sorts through the various, often discordant, ideas and practices gathered under the umbrella of environmentalism. It considers conservative, liberal, and radical framings of environmental protection in tension with demands for, and projects of, liberation (racial, sexual, disability, and working-class) within industrial societies.

Provides PhD students with advanced tools for interdisciplinary Humanities scholarship. As the only mandatory course in their degree, it ensures that students are well versed in conducting, presenting and publishing research, with an emphasis on qualitative methods. Students practice, and reflect on, the framing of research topics and fields as well as the design and conducting of courses.