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.

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.

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.

This seminar engages some key concepts in psychoanalysis to investigate learning and contemporary psychoanalytic debates in education. Foundational methodological writings in the interdisciplinary field of education and psychoanalysis and some contemporary debates posed by more recent pedagogies on education as symptomatic of crisis are considered.

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 course interrogates the relationship of women and nations in history and the present day. It begins with foundational texts from scholarship on colonial history and gender studies before delving into specific regional, national and transnational feminist contexts. The primary sources cover social reformist, nationalist and British colonial documents alongside less-commonly known literary expressions composed in different South Asian vernaculars.

This seminar examines forms, functions, influence and effects of visual and verbal self-portraiture in contemporary life writing such as autobiographical narrative, diary, travelogueand poetry. It analyzes portraiture as ways of knowing (epistemology) and ways of showing (methodologies). It studies constructions of a multiplicity of selves, fragmented selves, andconcepts of bios, performativity, alterity, and fluidity in non-chronological life writing.

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.

Drawing on an international and intersectional approach to the socio-cultural understanding of childhood, this course will use a humanities lens to explore childism in contemporary society.

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 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.