Course Descriptions
CTMP 3130 The Thought of Michel Foucault
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The thought of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) resists categorization. This is in large part due to its interdisciplinary nature, which crosses the boundaries of history, sociology, psychology and philosophy. This class will introduce students to some of the topics in Foucault’s major works on the history of madness, the birth of the penitentiary, the history of the human sciences, bio-power, the history of sexuality, and ethics. Readings will include selections from Foucault’s major published works as well as interviews, lectures, and shorter essays. We will pay particular attention to the evolution of Foucault’s methodology from archaeology to genealogy and Foucault’s later claim that the goal of his work from the 1960s to 1980s has been the creation of a history of the different ways in which human beings are made subjects.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3135 Reconstructing Political Modernity
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will examine several interpretations of early modern philosophers by 20th century authors who are original political thinkers in their own right. These interpretations have involved as much reconstruction of early modern thought as faithful scholarly commentary. Indeed, they sometimes shed more light on the interpreter than the thinkers being interpreted. Thus, we shall critically analyze the radical transformations of early modern texts that were undertaken in order to make these works relevant to social and political questions centuries later.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 3440.03
CTMP 3145 Leo Strauss and his Intellectual Context
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Leo Strauss was during his own lifetime a figure of controversy and has grown more so in the thirty years since his death. In recent newspaper and academic articles, Strauss has been seen through the influence of his students ("Straussians") to be the secret intellectual source of much of the Neo-Conservative movement and in particular the policies and doctrines of the Bush White House. This course will endeavour to understand Strauss's thought in terms of his own intellectual development and in the context of the issues that were particularly formative for his thinking. The course will include the influence of Husserl upon his thought, his reflections on Zionism and the Jewish intellectual tradition during the 1920s and 30s when he was still living in Germany, his critique of Carl Schmitt, his response to the thought of Martin Heidegger, his debate with Alexandre Kojeve. In short, the purpose of this course is to locate Strauss's thought in its intellectual context and thereby gain distance on the demonizing and sanctifying rhetoric that characterizes the contemporary debate about "Straussianism".
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3155 The Question of the Animal
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In this course, we will explore animality and the relationship between human and nonhuman animals. Topics include animals and cognitive awareness, the ethical status of animals, cultural representations of animals, pets and domesticity, animals and science and posthumanist concepts of animality. Readings will include selections from a number of disciplines, including philosophy, literature, art, anthropology, and ethology.
FORMAT: Seminar
EXCLUSIONS:
CTMP 2011.03/3011.03/4011.03 and
HSTC 2011.03/3011.03/4011.03 for 2013/14 academic year only.
CTMP 3170 Theories of Punishment
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In this course we will examine the development and application of a number of theories of punishment, especially liberal and utilitarian theories developed in the 18th century. Our theoretical examination will lead us to consider the social, economic, and ethical implications of different attitudes toward and understandings of punishment. We will also investigate the concrete expression of these theories of punishment in the form of large-scale institutions. These institutions include (among others) the transatlantic slave trade, penal colonies, prisons, penology, residential schools, asylums, and the police. The course will be guided by a few broad, but fundamental questions including: who (or what) should be punished, how should they be punished, and (most fundamentally) why?
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 3430.03
EXCLUSIONS:
CTMP 3410 for the 2020/21 academic year only.
CTMP 3192 The Thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most renowned philosophers of the twentieth century. His extraordinary influence is the result of his teaching small groups of dedicated students. Published for the most part posthumously, his writings, too, have made him a philosopher's philosopher. Nevertheless, his influence has extended well beyond the questions about the foundations of logic and language which preoccupied him. This course will explore some of the broader implications of his work, touching on music, art and architecture, on anthropology and psychology, and on ethics and religion, as well as on his central contributions to the philosophy of language and mind.
FORMAT:
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 2190.03
CTMP 3201 Science and Religion: Contemporary Perspectives
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course tells the story of interactions between religious belief and the study of nature from 1800 to today.
Beginning with an overview of the history and methodology of the study of science and religion, encounters between science and religion are traced from the rise of Darwinism in the early nineteenth century to the contemporary postmodern age. From an examination of nineteenth-century natural theology and the religious impact of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), this course moves on to such contemporary topics as the religious interpretations of quantum mechanics, the Big Bang, the anthropic principle, medical science, bioethics, evolutionary psychology, chaos theory, aesthetics in nature, science fiction, extra-terrestrial life (including the SETI Project) and the quest for techno-immortality. Case studies of “conflict” emanating from Darwinism, the Scopes Trial, the on-going Creation-Evolution debates and the New Atheism are contrasted with examples of harmony and interdependence between science and religion in the careers of modern scientists, along with phenomena like neurotheology and the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. The religious scope of the course is intentionally wide-ranging, and examinations of science-religion interaction within indigenous spirituality are added to treatments of traditional eastern and western religion.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
HIST 3076.03,
HSTC 3201.03.
RELS 3201.03
CTMP 3204 Human Experiments
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course explores the history, method, and meaning of experimenting on humans through a series of case studies that question how these experiments mediate between experimenters, their subjects, and the state and how these relationships have influenced our ideas of scientific objectivity, autonomy and consent, race, gender, and class divides.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 3101.03
EXCLUSIONS:
HSTC 3615.03 and
CTMP 3411.03 for the 2017/18 academic year only.
CTMP 3210 Intersecting Bodies, Selves and Environments
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The traditional view of the relation between humans and nonhuman nature is regarded by many as dualistic insofar as it posits not only a distinction and separation between humans and nonhuman nature but regards humans as superior to nonhuman nature, on either religious, metaphysical, moral, or even evolutionary, grounds. In this course, we examine three different strategies for overcoming this view. We begin by examining phenomenological attempts to overcome dualistic accounts of the relations between perceiver and perceived, mind and body, and mind and world. In the next section, we discuss attempts by radical ecologists to establish a nondualist view of the relation between humans and nature. In the concluding section of the course, we examine some postmodern strategies for overcoming dualistic thinking about culture and nature.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3215 Feminism and Science
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Science has been the subject of intense scrutiny by contemporary feminist theorists. The course will examine the various feminist critiques of natural science, as well as the positive proposals that feminism has brought to science and scientific culture. Questions that will be addressed include: Is the style of science gendered? Has feminism influenced the content of various sciences? How has science contributed to gendered constructions of nature? Is there such a thing as value-free scientific research? How do feminist theories of knowledge differ from traditional understandings of scientific knowledge and scientific objectivity? The readings for this course will include work by Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Evelyn Fox Keller, Helen Longino, and Hilary Rose.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 3411.03,
GWST 3215.03
CTMP 3220 The Aesthetics of Environments
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In this course, we consider recent approaches to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. In the first part, we will examine the role of science, perception, imagination, emotion, and ethics in the aesthetic appreciation of nature. In the second part of the course, we will discuss contemporary approaches to the aesthetics of such human environments as the city, the theme park, the garden, the shopping centre, the home and the countryside.
FORMAT:
CTMP 3250 Nature and History
CREDIT HOURS: 3
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the study of the natural world and historical thought have been closely linked. Participants in the seminar will read texts which helped to define ideas of history in the era after the Enlightenment and consider how these ideas influenced, and were influenced by, developments in scientific thought. The seminar will consider how nature and history are related in idealism, historical materialism and the thinking of the evolutionists, and how this connection is rejected by Nietzsche, Freud and Foucault.
FORMAT: Seminar
CROSS-LISTING:
HSTC 3150.03
EXCLUSIONS: CTMP 3150.03
CTMP 3302 Film Theory
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will provide an introduction to the field of film theory and criticism. Students will be provided with the tools to interpret films using the following critical and theoretical methodologies: Classical Film Theory, Auteur Theory, Genre Theory, Semiotics, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Theory, Reception Theory, Star Studies, Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory.
FORMAT: Seminar
FORMAT COMMENTS: Film Screening
EXCLUSIONS:
FILM 3330.03/
THEA 3330.03
CTMP 3305 Modern Film and the Theory of the Gaze
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will develop certain aspects of the theory of the gaze in relation to a selection of films which themselves embody or express a thinking about looking. We all like to look; and we are all given over to being seen, and both these modalities have received historically unprecedented elaboration in the moving pictures. The films and theories will raise issues about visual desire, horror, paranoia, surveillance and fascination.
FORMAT:
FORMAT COMMENTS: Film Screening
CTMP 3311 Culture, Politics and the Post Colonial Condition
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The term 'postcolonial' marks the historical passage of European colonial domination and national independence movements, and describes the contemporary condition of domination and struggle both in the new nations that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century and in Western metropolitan centres with their new populations. This course will examine recent configurations of postcolonialism as political and cultural practice, focusing on debates over globalization and cosmopolitanism, the status of refugees and migrants, and the role of the intellectual in bringing about social change.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3316 Spinozisms: From Early Modernity to the Contemporary World
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course will focus on Spinoza’s thought, and the ways thinkers have adopted and transformed his ideas from the Early Modern period to the present day. We will consider Spinoza’s contributions to ethics, political thought, optics, theology, and affect theory, as well as art and literature.
FORMAT:
CROSS-LISTING:
EMSP 3216.03
CTMP 3321 Representations of the Holocaust: Bearing Witness
CREDIT HOURS: 3
At the time when the Holocaust recedes into history, the imperative to “never forget” acquires new urgency. In this course, we focus on various modes of talking about this traumatic historical period. Why did the Holocaust happen “in the middle of civilized Europe”? Who were the perpetrators? Does the word “Holocaust” refer only to the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people or should we also consider the experiences of different victim groups (e.g., the disabled, gay people, and the Roma people)? Did men and women experience the events differently because of their biological gender and social gender norms at the time? Can horror be accommodated in language or represented by any other means? Is the Holocaust unique or should it be considered in comparison with other genocides? These and other questions will arise in this class from the examination of eye-witness accounts from the killing fields in the East, Holocaust diaries written in the ghettoes, memoirs written by survivors of the Nazi camps, and perpetrators’ diaries, as well as works by historians and literary works written by the participants of the events.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3322 Representations of the Holocaust: Remembrance
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Representations of the Holocaust: Bearing Witness is not required. Basic knowledge of Holocaust facts and some familiarity with Holocaust literature is recommended. This course focuses on memoirs and literary accounts of the Holocaust written several decades after the war, as well as on contemporary debates about the nature of Holocaust memory and commemoration. Of special interest is the struggle of both children of survivors and children of perpetrators to reckon with their parents’ past. We will evaluate the burden of responsibility for the past postulated by these texts and consider how the Holocaust has been represented in literature, film, and museum exhibits. We will look at Holocaust denial, with emphasis on anti-Semitism and white supremacy movements in Canada. Finally, we will consider the politics of Holocaust memory in comparative perspectives. The course includes excerpts from films, documentaries, and other video-taped material, and illustrated lectures on Holocaust art.
FORMAT: Seminar
CTMP 3330 Art and Atrocity: Contemporary Contexts, Gendered Perspectives
CREDIT HOURS: 3
The course focuses on representations of mass atrocities in visual art. Starting from debates about the “limits of representation” and the tensions between historical documents and creative representations of traumatic events, it asks questions about art’s ability to convey the experiences of suffering, to bear witness to traumatic events, and to engage in practices of commemoration, healing, and repair.
FORMAT: Lecture
CTMP 3340 Home and Homelessness
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course takes the current social problem of homelessness as a starting place for an inquiry into the significance of figurations of home and homelessness in the contemporary world. Home is a place of comfort and belonging; it is a domestic setting, a language, a nationality and a series of identifications that ‘place’ and maintain individuals. The notion of home is opposed to key diagnoses of the modern condition--as alienated, displaced, estranged and uncanny, for example. These diagnoses have been applied both to psychological conditions and to actual social phenomena of mass displacements, refugees, immigration and exile. The social imaginary of many historically displaced groups centres around the return to or establishment of a homeland.This course will consider literary and artistic representations of ‘home’, the phenomenology of ‘homeliness’ and of its strange double, the uncanny, and the stakes that post-war philosophy has in the notions of rootedness, place and dwelling.
FORMAT: Seminar