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.

A city - and Toronto is no different - isn't just built; it's imagined into existence. In this course, we will discover the many Torontos that are mapped by the imaginations of authors and readers who are eager to build, amplify, and revise the meanings of Canada's largest urban region.

Cross-listed: ENGL-5312H

This course will explore practical and theoretical conflicts between public violence and its cultural artifacts, including literature, film, murals, sculpture and parades. Our focus will be on twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts, images and public displays from Ireland, usually relating to the Irish Republican Army. We will question why modern cultural formations and political structures condemn violence even as they rely on it; and we will ask what place public violence has in a modern culture defined by its faith in the possibility of reasoning and debating all conflicts away. (Excludes CUST-4512H.)

Cross-listed: ENGL-5315H

This course examines theories of subjectivity that have informed work in cultural studies, media studies, and related disciplines. What is the relation between the desiring function of subjectivity and the forces of construction and production variously attributed to power, discourse, or society? How do we conceive of the limits of determination and of the possibility of freedom and agency?

Cross-listed: ENGL-5305H

This course explores the interdisciplinary practice and knowledges of political theory, including futurities. Contemporary critical thinkers traversing disciplinary boundaries (e.g. Indigenous, Critical Race Theory, Feminism, Queer, Disability, Aging) and theoretical trajectories (e.g. structuralism, post-structuralism, new materialism) will povide insight into crises of our time and (re)imagined possibilities and worlds.

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 addresses the question of place in its variety of forms: "What place is this?" "Where is this?" "What is a place?" Drawing on readings including Sophocles, Leibniz, von Humboldt, Freud, Simmel, Benjamin and Deleuze, the seminar works at the intersection of cultural studies and the environmental humanities.

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.

A reasoned bibliography, accompanied by a brief text of description and justification, of the student's special field(s) of competency within the larger domain of cultural studies, which evolves under the supervision of the Supervisory Committee. A first draft should be attempted by the student by August 31 of Year One and presented in CUST 6200; the bibliography and accompanying text should be submitted not later than August 31 of Year Two.

By August 31 at the end of Year Two, the student's first project must be completed at a level considered by the Supervisory Committee to be of publishable quality. The student will receive a satisfactory grade (PASS) when the student's Supervisory Committee confirms that the project is completed. Receiving a satisfactory grade (PASS) on this component does not prejudge the outcome of the oral defence in Year Four.

A Dissertation Proposal, normally up to 2,000 words, is due by August 31 of Year Two for the approval (PASS) of the Supervisory Committee. The proposal is expected to provide convincing links between the completed first project, the second project about to be undertaken, and the third project hypothetically contemplated and conceptualized.

By August 31 of Year Three, the student's second project must be completed at a level considered by the Supervisory Committee to be of publishable quality. The student will receive a satisfactory grade (PASS) when the student's Supervisory Committee confirms that the project is completed. Receiving a satisfactory grade (PASS) on this component does not prejudge the outcome of the oral defence in Year Four.

By January 1 of Year Four, the student's third project must be completed at a level considered by the Supervisory Committee to be of publishable quality. The student will receive a satisfactory grade (PASS) when the student's Supervisory Committee confirms that the project is completed. Receiving a satisfactory grade (PASS) on this component does not prejudge the outcome of the oral defence in Year Four.

In Year Four, students are expected to bind their three projects together into a dissertation as a coherent whole. The Director will appoint a Supervisory Committee for the final dissertation and oral defence. The student will receive a satisfactory grade (PASS) for CUST 6475 when all members of the student's Supervisory Committee sign the evaluation form stating that the dissertation is completed and of sufficient quality to proceed to formal examination.