Course Listing

The seminar brings together all first-year students enrolled in the program for an exploration of different contemporary theoretical perspectives bearing on culture and politics. The focus will be on problems of interpretation, language, cultural forms and political action, and on preparing students for their thesis or major research project.

This course explores human-environmental relationships from a variety of perspectives using both academic and public policy debates as source material. Selected topics will draw from historical and political ecology, environmental protection and activism, heritage law, land tenure and land rights, tourism, public parks, and notions of wilderness in Canadian identities.

Cross-listed: CSID-5401H, CAST-6201H, SUST-5401H

The course covers selected topics in media studies varying from year to year. Theoretical approaches may include the critical political economy of communication, media archaeology, infrastructuralism, cybernetics, and so on.

Popular music started to attract scholarly attention in the 1940s. Most of that attention was negative. Since then, however, a vast amount has been written about the meaning, uses, perils, and possibilities of popular music. Philosophers, musicologists, ethnographers, anthropologists, sociologists, cultural theorists, and literary scholars have all weighed in. In this course we will consider (a selection of) their contributions to our understanding of popular music and its relationship to commodification, mass culture, political agency, technology, subcultural formations, memory and a range of other topics.

Students will write a major research paper of 50-60 pages. The grade will be the average of grades assigned by the supervisor and second reader. A grade of 70% will be required to pass.

This course explores the scholarly interpretations, debates, and theories that have shaped our understanding of women and gender in the Canadian and North American context. The historical and social construction of gender identity, culture, and sexualities are explored, and topics such as work, reproduction, 'race,' colonialism, political engagement and social movements.

Cross-listed: CSID-5701H, HIST-5701H, SUST-5701H, CAST-6501H

This course enables students to pursue topics of particular interest which are not presented in existing courses. It allows concentrated, integrated study on a topic or problem that is specifically relevant to a student's approved program. It enables the student and instructor the opportunity to explore shared interests.

Courses may be offered in a variety of areas as a way of introducing students to new subject matter, research techniques or methodologies. After one year, these courses will be reviewed for inclusion in the regular program curriculum.

A year-long seminar concerned with questions, problems and traditions in Cultural Studies and organized around the materials selected for the Comprehensive Exam that year. CUST 6100 will help students prepare for the exam (CUST 6125) and, indirectly, to integrate their research into the field of Cultural Studies. Excludes CUST 6110H.

An introduction to the practices of theory in Cultural Studies through the demonstration of approaches, models, and keywords by colleagues in fields such as visual studies, semiology, psychoanalysis, ethnography, narratology, cultural history, archival research. The seminar addresses topic formation and supplements the materials in CUST-6100. (For example 19th century preparations for 20th century cultural theory).

A seminar in discourse formation with the aim to ensure that the dissertation arises from a continuous practice of research and writing in the context of academic and professional consideration. The main focus of the seminar is the elaboration of the students' work in progress, having three outcomes, initial draft of the first project, special field bibliography, and a prospectus. Students will present a version of their first project at a Colloquium in May.