AP/HUMA 3208 6.00

Thinking Culture: Critical Issues, Skills and Approaches for Humanities Majors

This course focuses on issues, skills and approaches to develop a critical attitude to forms of knowledge and underlie any cultural production. The course also emphasizes strategies for reading, writing, research and analysis, as ell as situating knowledge in historical and political contexts. It pays special attention to the four streams of Power, Diaspora and Race; Arts, Material, and Popular Cultures; Digital, Technological and Natural Worlds; Texts, Contexts and Canons. It will be divided into four major sections: Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing; Knowledge, Power, and Canonicity; Rhetoric and Argumentation; and, Research Methodologies. Each section will be grounded in a central text with a series of connected readings. Students will read different genres from multiple media across several disciplines: for instance, comparing encyclopedia entries from different historical eras, reading scholarly dictionaries for more than a simple meaning, analyzing "fake" news, and looking at current debates on such topics as White Privilege and Cultural Appropriation, the Neo-Liberal University, and Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. The course will work to foster a critical attitude, enabling students to establish reasoned positions to question and analyze accepted norms and received ideas, while weighing alternative positions. *Humanities majors will be required to take one of two capstone courses in either their third or fourth year depending on their degree type (BA General or Honours)
Pre-requisites: AP/HUMA 1781 6.00, HUMA 2001 6.00
Course credit exclusion: AP/HUMA 4208 6.00