Course Descriptions
CTMP 0456 Honours Thesis Seminar in Contemporary Studies Part 1
CREDIT HOURS: 0
Students intending to complete an honours thesis in CSP are required to register in the Honours Thesis Seminar Part 1. Seminars will be held four times during the semester. In addition, students will work individually with thesis supervisors to formulate the topic, write the thesis proposal, and begin writing the first draft. Students are required to submit the thesis proposal by the deadline specified in the “Honours Thesis Memo.”
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Approval of Director required.
CTMP 0456 &
CTMP 0457 or
CTMP 4456 must be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 0455X/Y
CTMP 0457 Honours Thesis Seminar in Contemporary Studies Part 2
CREDIT HOURS: 0
Students intending to complete an honours thesis are required to register in the Honours Thesis Seminar. Seminars will be held four times during the year. Students will meet with the Director to discuss the expectations and requirements of the honours thesis in preparation for a thesis defence that takes place in March. Specific topics include: selecting a topic and supervisor, thesis format and discussion of thesis proposals.
FORMAT: Seminar
PREREQUISITES: Approval of Director required.
CTMP 0456 &
CTMP 0457 must be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 0455X/Y
CTMP 2001 Modern Social and Political Thought I
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course focuses on recognition as a guiding theme in nineteenth-century social and political thought. By foregrounding related issues such as social and political visibility, equality, and mediated self-affirmation, students will be introduced to the tradition of modern political theory and will canvas some important early responses to Hegelian, liberal, and Marxist visions of individuals and society.
NOTES:
CTMP 2001.03 &
CTMP 2002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES: Completion of 24 credit hours of 1st year classes
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 2000.06
CTMP 2002 Modern Social and Political Thought II
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The modern project made great strides in advancing a large-scale politics of recognition; however, these advances also produced blind spots of their own. Drawing on diverse theoretical resources, this course will gauge efforts to identify and elucidate such blind spots regarding power and agency, the virtues of political life, freedom, and community, and will discern the continued relevance of modernity for our current condition.
NOTES:
CTMP 2001.03 &
CTMP 2002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.
FORMAT:
PREREQUISITES:
CTMP 2001.03 or permission of the instructor
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 2000.06
CTMP 2011 The Lecture Series
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In some years a lecture series course is offered. Students are allowed to take up to three such courses, one for each year of upper-level study. Each course will consist of several evening lectures given by specialists from Canada and beyond, and a weekly two-hour seminar. The lecturers will offer students reflections on a number of contemporary issues and themes. Each series explores a different theme. In 2017-18 the topic is "Automatons".
NOTE: Course Details listed here also apply to
CTMP 3011/
CTMP 4011..
FORMAT:
FORMAT COMMENTS: Seminar/evening lectures
CROSS-LISTING:
CTMP 3011.03,
CTMP 4011.03
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 2010.06, CTMP 3010.06, CTMP 4010.06
CTMP 2100 The Politics of Hope: From Romanticism to Anarchism and Beyond
CREDIT HOURS: 3
A look at the connection between revolutionary political thought and nihilism: the course focuses on the history of Romanticism and anarchism, from Fichte and some colourful literary characters (German and English) to the deadly serious Russian nihilists. Our central concern is the notion of an infinite, all-powerful human freedom.
FORMAT:
CTMP 2101 Apocalypse: The Revolutionary Transformation of Politics and Culture
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course highlights the movement from revolutionary nihilism to various forms of post-revolutionary unity and integration. Beginning with Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, the course discusses how some of the greatest contemporary thinkers (German, French, British, American) have struggled to put modern evil in the context of a larger good.
FORMAT:
CTMP 2102 Asia and the West: Centuries of Dialogue
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will explore some of the most important engagements of modern Western thinkers with various texts and traditions of East and/or South Asian thought, examine the very aspects of Asian thought that intrigued modern Western thinkers, and assess Western values and projects in their lights.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 2390,
HSTC 2811,
CHIN 2082
EXCLUSIONS:
EMSP 2460,
CHIN 2080
CTMP 2115 The Idea of Race in Philosophy, Literature, and Art
CREDIT HOURS: 3
What is race? How does racism impact our sense of self and the communities in which we live? The first part of this class examines the emergence of the modern idea of race, in relation to European expansionism, philosophical ideas of the time, and the development of science. Next, we focus on contemporary conceptions of race and their relations to culture, history, ideology, science, and everyday lived experience. We consider contemporary debates on race and racism in the works of thinkers, writers, artists, and social activists, reflecting on the intersections of race, class, and gender.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 2121 Humanism and Anti-humanism: The Dramatic Story of What Makes Us Modern
CREDIT HOURS: 3
We will begin by exploring the work of structuralist thinkers such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Lacan. Their work addresses the deep structures of signs, language, political economy, cultural production, and the psyche. We will consider the way poststructuralist thinkers, such as Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida criticize and transform structuralist interpretations of subjectivity, language and the political.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 2150 Society, Politics, and Literature
CREDIT HOURS: 3
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the possibility of individual autonomy and freedom in the face of unprecedented social upheaval has been brought into question through the novel, a literary form which came to maturity in this time. The novels read in this course have been selected for their insights into the dilemmas of an age formed by political and economic revolutions where new collective forces have been brought into play. This class will consider the politics of race, class, colonialism, gender and nationhood in literature.
FORMAT:
CTMP 2201 Mass and Digital Media Culture
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will examine the development of mass and digital media in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will consider philosophical, journalistic, and literary responses to the radical changes in our communications technologies, and the way those mediums shape our understanding of the world, ourselves, and our relationships to others.
FORMAT:
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP3411.03 for the 2015/16 academic year and CTMP3415.03 for the 2013/14 academic year
CTMP 2203 Bio-Politics: Human Nature in Contemporary Thought
CREDIT HOURS: 3
To what extent do biology and culture determine what it is to be human? Drawing on theorists ranging from Foucault to Steven Pinker, this course will examine the recent political, moral and existential issues raised by attempts to answer that question. Topics will include: evolutionary psychology, genetic screening, race, bio-engineering, and the spectre of determinism.
FORMAT: Lecture
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 2206.03
CTMP 2205 Totalitarianism and Science
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The question of who has authority over funding, direction and priorities of modern science is a central political concern. This course considers the case of totalitarian states (USSR and Nazi Germany) and consists of two parts. Part I analyses the essential features of totalitarian regimes. Part II concentrates on the fortune of particular sciences (medicine, biology, physics) under them.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 2205.03
CTMP 2206 Environmentalism: origins, ideals, and critique
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In this course, we examine the ideals of environmentalism from its origins in the late 18th century to the present. Topics include the romantic critique of industrialization, forest management and sustainability, wilderness preservation, animal rights, radical environmentalism, and environmental justice.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 2209.03
CTMP 2207 IDEAS OF THE SEA AND SEAFARING: INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
CREDIT HOURS: 3
A survey of intercultural ideas of the sea and seafaring from ancient to modern times. Topics include oceanic myths and origin stories, the myth of Atlantis, marine natural history, sea monsters, mermaids, the law and freedom of the sea, Black Atlantic identity, scientific sea voyages, oceanic science fiction, modern sea power, and marine conservation.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 2490.03,
HSTC 2220.03
CTMP 2301 Pain
CREDIT HOURS: 3
What does pain mean? This course will investigate the question of suffering in the contemporary world, and in doing so, it will approach various sites where pain matters, examining different discursive practices which attempt to speak of pain - or alternatively, claim that pain is what cannot be spoken. We will discuss the experience of the body in pain and the relation of pain to knowledge. Topics to be addressed will include pain in a medical context; torture and the political uses of pain; sexuality and pain; the expressibility of pain. We will examine two archetypes of “the tortured artist”, Frida Kahlo and Jackson Pollock, and will inquire whether pain can be made meaningful.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 2303 Narrative and Meta-narrative
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will explore twentieth-century theories of the narrative and the increasingly broad claims made for the role of narrativity in politics, psychology and literature. Starting from Lyotard's characterization of the post-modern as an incredulity towards meta-narratives, the course will look at literary narratives (for example, Balzac, Borges, Thomas Pynchon and Alice Munroe) as well as theories of the narrative (Levi-Strauss, Freud, Lacan, Lyotard, and Roland Barthes). Topics to be considered include the constitution of social narratives, possible grounds for the interpretation of narrative, the relation of narrative to ideology and the explanatory power of meta-narratives
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 2313 The Vampire: Modernity and the Undead
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Since the emergence of vampire stories in the late sixteenth century, the vampire has served as a complex symbol for forces that defy or challenge modernity. This course will examine the figure of the vampire as it appear in folklore, philosophy, fiction, poetry, film, and television. Throughout the course we will consider the works in their historical and cultural context, considering what changing ideas of the vampire can tell us about early modern and contemporary views of death, morality, national identify, sexuality, and gender.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 2313.03
CTMP 2316 The “Pictorial Turn” in Recent Thought, Art and Theory
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The world is increasingly saturated with visual representations. This class considers the proliferation of the image in contemporary culture, and will reflect on vision and visuality, particularly in the fine arts. This class will introduce students to the work of artists and the writing of several key theorists and debates in visual culture studies.