How have audiences learned to perceive and understand 'race' in visual mass media? How do photographic and cinematographic technologies shape our understandings of ourselves, others, and the world? This course uses anti-racist and decolonial approaches to study the imperial legacies of film and photography, from colonial-era projects through contemporary globalization and militarization, within broader cultural […]
Students in this course analyze various activist rhetorics from around the world, engage with critical theory about the forms and functions of politically effective discourses, and learn to produce their own activist rhetorics.
An introduction to the African American literary tradition across genres, from its slavery-era origins until today, exploring representations of selfhood, consciousness, solidarity, conflict, power, literacy, voice, heritage, and destiny.
Explores the many ways people of African descent contributed to building the Province of Ontario. By piecing together clues from such sources as archival documents, archaeological site reports and material culture, coupled with critical analysis of secondary sources, students learn to identify, analyze, interpret and share through on-line publication previously undiscovered evidence for Ontario's rich […]
This course considers how Black peoples and Black artists shape and encounter the city of Toronto through sound. It uses analytical frameworks and key areas of concern in Black Studies and Sound Studies to understand the social, historical and political contexts of listening as a critical practice.
This course centres "the nowhere of the ghetto and the nowhere of utopia" (Hartman, xiii) to understand the social, historical and political contexts of the wayward practices of Black Women. It uses key issues and debates in contemporary Black Feminist Thought to grapple with the conundrum of social dispossession that around the way Black women […]
This course examines the burgeoning corpus of Black Canadian film to consider the ways in which Black cinematic culture in Canada has developed in the last 40 years and continues to develop today. It addresses a range of genres, including dramatic feature films, documentaries, short and experimental films. Guest speakers including Black Canadian film makers […]
This course examines systemic social exclusion and intersectional inequalities embedded in business in Canada and in other industrialized countries. The course rethinks social exclusion and examines how excluded groups, particularly racialized groups, respond to structural barriers in business. Business people in the classroom help students understand workplace oppression and exclusionary discrimination.
This course explores the ways that ideas and discourses about race and ethnicity shape how social policy is debated, adopted and implemented. Identifying the uneven policy effects on different social groups, it seeks a critical understanding of issues of inequity, oppression, and social exclusion from a social policy framework. The course confronts various ethnicity- and […]
This course provides practical experience analyzing issues through the lens of Black Canadian Studies. Placement will be in the offices of school trustees and MPPs.