Offers students opportunities to engage with the local cultural sector in order to better understand the relevancy of cultural organizations in a multicultural city. The course explores cultural relationships, combining theoretical and experiential components in a blended learning environment where students hone transferable skills and develop professional contacts.
Explores cultural expression as a social act. What happens when material culture is caught between opposing forces: artists, consumers, corporations, and governments? To the individual voices of resisting dissidents arguing for originality, individuality, and authenticity? Cultural theories provide tools for analysis of these questions. Areas of concentration include: print media, film, and other forms of […]
This interdisciplinary course will examine critically three dimensional, multi-user digital environments (or "virtual worlds") that are rapidly becoming new forms of social literacy and new forums for the fine, performing and new media arts
Introduction to emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and symbolic uses of music through case studies of individual cultures, including consideration of social, political, and historical settings
Examines the role of consumer technologies, ranging from the automobile to the iPod in terms of how they affect the cultural landscapes of contemporary culture and society.
A practical course for students wishing to develop public speaking and presentation skills. Story-telling exercises, extemporaneous speech making, and text analysis facilitate expertise in public speaking. Video feedback will be used as a developmental too.
Designed for the student who enjoys film but has no background in art or criticism. It introduces students to a variety of strategies that help the student to articulate how movies use sound and image to represent the world.
Combining historical and theoretical content, the course surveys the invention and evolution of media technologies from the invention of writing to the Internet. How technologies alter the social and cultural dynamics of a given period and the relationship between meaning and form will be among the key concerns.
Designed to introduce students to the theoretical study of contemporary culture in past and contemporary society, offering tools for questioning and decoding the social and political contexts of cultural production. Areas of focus include popular media, consumer culture, digital culture, technology, music, subcultures, issues of gender, ideology, race, nationalism, ethnicity and identity. As a subject […]
Explores the works of 11 contemporary Canadian writers who give in class readings and respond to questions about their work. Explores the concerns and voices of a new generation of Canadian authors and gives students opportunities to develop their own critical literary voices. Course does not count towards a major in English but does count […]