Communication Studies Course Offerings

CS240B Introduction to Mobility Studies
Intersession 2027 (May-June)
Prerequisite: senior student

All the world is on the move, including digital nomads, international students, vanlifers, commuters, trends, tourists, long-haul truckers, smartphones, and shipping containers. How can we differentiate, research, and interpret the significance of such wide-ranging movement in our times? This course introduces Mobility Studies, first by considering its founding manifesto, “the new mobilities paradigm,” which defines mobility as movement plus meaning plus power. We will then discuss key concepts, methods, and theories in Mobility Studies with attention to case studies drawn from areas that may include, but are not limited to, automobilities, tourist mobilities, protest mobilities, homeless mobilities, outer space mobilities, and cargomobilities. Case studies will help us to interpret “the politics of mobility” through building understanding of how mobility is a resource that is differently accessed in specific periods, places, and contexts.

CS240C Toward Freedom
Crosslisted with KS240A (taking both CS240C and KS240A would be considered repeating).
Fall 2026
Prerequisite: senior student

This Black Studies course highlights Black voices and their cultural expressions to not only think through how the histories of slavery and colonialism inform structures of racial capitalism, but more importantly, to center how the Black imagination offers moments of rupture and possibility. This course considers how freedom is conceptualized and practiced by people of African descent who are located throughout the Americas by exploring questions such as, how is freedom defined, obtained, and/or bestowed? How does one grapple with present-day calls for freedom despite living in an era of post-emancipation? And what is the relationship between Black Studies and societal understandings of freedom? Students in Toward Freedom are routinely encouraged to think critically about the various ways that their own lived-experiences intersect with these discourses which include themes such as, Black Art and Artists, Storytelling, Black feminism and womanism, Freedom Dreams, Allyship, Black joy, and world-building. Together, we will study a range of Black intellectual/creative practices that offer capacious implications for our ability to think, dream, and re/build the world.

CS240H Ethnography and Communication
Winter 2027
Prerequisite: senior student

This course introduces students to ethnography (the customs of individual peoples and cultures) as a form of cross-cultural communication and inquiry. Through engagement with classic and contemporary ethnographic texts, students will explore how people in different cultural settings experience and interpret the world. The course examines the history of ethnography, the evolution of its methods and representational styles, and ongoing debates about ethics, power, and globalization. Emphasis will be placed on both the possibilities and challenges of ethnography as a tool for understanding cultural difference in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world.

CS240L Canadian Cinema
Crosslisted with FS244 (taking both CS240L and FS244 would be considered repeating).
Winter 2027
Prerequisite: senior student

A study of Canadian film, from 1895 to the present, based on the screening and analysis of selected films.

CS240M TBA
Spring 2027
Prerequisite: senior student

CS340D TBA

CS340E TBA

CS340Z Being Black in Diaspora
Crosslisted with KS340M (taking both CS340Z and KS340M would be considered repeating).
Prerequisite: senior student

This course complicates understandings of place and space by thinking through and with various Black and African Studies perspectives to discuss what it means to be Black in diaspora. By considering the ongoing legacies of slavery and colonialism, we will prioritize Black perspectives that are attentive to Black life in ways that illuminate both the overlapping and nuanced experiences of Black people globally. We will also decentre North American experiences, particularly those of African Americans, by prioritizing Black/African cultural expressions emerging out of Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle Passage. This course will allow students to think about the dynamic implications of neocolonialism and Black resistance worldwide.

CS400J Environmental Communication
This course is focused on the critical study and analysis of environmental communication. It will provide students with insight into the history of contemporary strategies of environmental communication in a variety of contexts. Particular attention will be paid to how media and other forms of representation are used to promote and/or contest action for conservation and climate action. Topics may include the representations of nature, green consumerism, environmental education, eco- and nature-based tourism, resource extraction, media and the environment, digital technologies and the environment, social movements, and decolonizing environmental communication.

CS400K Cyberlibertarianism & Critics
TBA

CS400M Semiotics of Qualification
How do consumers make discernments between products attaching themselves to some while possibly detaching themselves from others? A cultural-economy approach examines the processes by which qualities of goods are attributed, stabilized, objectified, and arranged. How this happens is not only a matter of the intrinsic qualities of the good but it is also derived through the attribution of extrinsic qualities which are expressed in evaluations and judgements. In this seminar we shall reflect upon these processes and examine the ways in which the presentation of goods and services to consumers works to endow them with desirous qualities. In particular, our focus will be on product packaging and promotion and the way in which discourses of healthism, sustainability, and ethical consumption are articulated to add value to otherwise difficult to distinguish products.

CS400N TBA

CS400R Racial Icons
An “icon” evokes quasi-religious feelings. Not merely passing celebrity figures, but symbolic lightning rods for public adoration, emulation, identification, disidentification and disdain, celebrity icons are enduring objects of cultural “veneration” and “denigration” (Fleetwood 2015). This is doubly-true for the racial icon, whose iconicity is multiplied by the iconic status of race itself.

This course takes the racial icon as its primary figure of investigation. In so doing, it argues that celebrity is always already raced and gendered, so much as race and gender cohere with ideas about publicity, privacy, and the self-possessed vs. commoditized self. Drawing on scholarship across celebrity studies, audience studies, critical race theory, gender studies, visual cultural studies, and performance studies, we will investigate the racial icon as both object and subject of cultural representation and debate. Figures and topics to be discussed include the diva, the dandy, the ingenue, the Blues Woman, the Race Man, tropical women, mascots and racial kitsch, and glamour. Individual celebrities to be discussed through both scholarly, archival, and creative texts might include Saartjie Baartman, Afong Moy, Pauline Johnson, Josephine Baker, Carmen Miranda, Paul Robeson, Bruce Lee, Selena Quintanilla, and Grace Jones.

CS400T Risk Communication
We live in a world we have come to understand as increasingly “risky,” from the food and water we consume, the viruses and bacteria we encounter, the technologies on which we increasingly depend, and to the global political scene that seems more and more volatile. In the words of Ulrich Beck, we live in what might best be characterized as a Risk Society in which the concept of risk permeates our everyday lives. In this senior seminar, we will explore how health, environmental, economic, social, and technological risks are represented and the role communication plays in their management. We will address the ways that information (and misinformation) about risk works as a tool of governance, and how we as individuals come to understand, negotiate, and assess risk as a fixture in our daily lives. This seminar will hinge on working through case studies that address a variety of topical risk issues, including the role of communication practices in producing our ideas about risk and the response to, say, viral pandemics, Superbugs, climate change, nuclear meltdowns, economic crises, lab-grown meat, Artificial Intelligence, or even unidentified aerial phenomena (AUPs, formerly UFOs).

CS400U Digital Media & Aural Cultures
This course explores the development of digitally-based technologies of sound production, distribution, reception, and archiving, and how the socio-technical affordances of these new sound technologies fostered the emergence of new cultural practices of sociality and community, particularly in the fields of popular music and radio. Specific attention will be paid to the convergence of radio and the internet over the past thirty years, and how this convergence has been manifested in the development of new platforms for distribution and circulation of sound creations, such as iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and Mixcloud, as well as new aural practices of radio such as podcasting.

CS400V Robotic Intimacies
This course will explore the growing societal prominence of robots and the emergent field of human–robot communication. While robots have long been a part of human society, especially in relation to areas such as manufacturing, mining, and sea and space exploration, we are seeing an exponential growth of robots being used for other purposes, such as the military and security use of drones and other robot automatons, the use of care robots in the health industry, and the commercial use of robots in the service industry. Robot companions (both animal, humanoid, and other) are proliferating across markets and for use with children, adults, and the elderly. In addition, AI and cyborg experiments are further blurring the lines between biological and synthetic entities. Finally, as we wake daily to headlines about bionic eyes, campaigns against sex robots, racist AI rants, autonomous Google cars, and weaponized sentry bots, we find ourselves inching closer and closer to the science-fictional figurings of how societies where humans and robots co-exist might function—from practical coexistence to utopian/dystopian destinies. We will consider sources from theory to sci-fi to journalism to explore the current state of robotic intimacies in all of these use-cases, addressing related issues such as labour, agency, sexuality, surveillance, imperialism, war, healthcare, ability, and the Singularity, with a dual focus on present discourses and possible futures.

An examination of the current literature and debates in the subfield of media and communication history. Topics may include media and communication historiography, media archaeology, and periods and thinkers in media and communication history.

Students required to take one of CS401, CS402, CS403 or CS405 may take one of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416 or KS400.

CS411K Museum Studies
This course examines the social, political, and economic role of the museum. Since the creation of the Louvre as the first bourgeois art museum, states, corporations, and private individuals have used museums as a way to create national identity, discipline and control viewing audiences, enhance social prestige or encourage economic development. We will critically survey the literature relevant to these issues with a view to expanding our understanding of the role of the museum in contemporary society.

An examination of the current literature and debates in the subfield of media and cultural theory. Topics may include discourse analysis, performative theories, gender and representation, rhetorical analyses, new media technologies, theories of meaning and politics of language.

Students required to take one of CS401, CS402, CS403 or CS405 may take one of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416 or KS400.

CS412L Video Game Theory
Description TBA

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of visual communication. Topics may include semiotic and social semiotic approaches to the visual, scientific imaging, lens-based media, information display and design, art, architecture and cultural production.

Students required to take one of CS401, CS402, CS403 or CS405 may take one of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416 or KS400.

CS413K Videogames as Visual Culture
From early arcade games and spaces; to the Atari age and early pixel art, and the rise of home consoles and home computers; to 3D graphics, online game cultures, casual and mobile games; and now virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), videogames form the centre of dynamic, evolving visual cultures. Paratexts such as advertising, packaging, store displays, fan art, clothing, cosplay, conventions, fictions (from comic books/manga to television shows and films) also contribute. This class will touch on how this visual culture shifts over time and geography, as well as how the temporality and location of videogames can occasionally be complicated (e.g., retrogaming, glocalization).

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of global communication studies. Topics may include globalization, intercultural communication and cultural citizenship, political economy and policy, identities and media representation, and non-Western media.

Students required to take one of CS401, CS402, CS403 or CS405 may take one of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416 or KS400.

CS414F Global Automobilities
Automobiles are everywhere but rarely discussed in Communication Studies as mobile media. This course considers how the automobile is as significant for global communication as other mobile media such as cinema and television. Drawing primarily from scholarship in Critical Mobility Studies, we examine the technological infrastructures, normative representations, and human experiences that connect and sustain automobilities, or the global assemblage of hegemonic car culture. Topics may include the elite mobilities and environmental costs of global car racing circuits, the global circulation of ideology about masculinity and youth in movies about car racing and car heists, the lure and risks of road trips and speed tourism, as well as counter-mobilities and creative expression through car subcultures in Western and non-Western contexts. We will also consider the sustainability of global automobilities and create future scenarios for and against this.

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of cultural and creative industries. Themes may include labour, policy, the specificity of the cultural commodity, geography, distribution/production processes and networks.

Students required to take one of CS401, CS402, CS403 or CS405 may take one of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416 or KS400.

CS415H The Sharing Economy
This course will examine the social and economic impact of the so-called sharing economy. Ridesharing (Uber) and home sharing (Airbnb) are now firmly integrated into the global economy, as are other sharing initiatives such as peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding, and co-working. We will examine numerous sectors of the sharing economy to assess the broader impact of these platforms/industries, assessing their advantages and disadvantages and their impact on our everyday lives.

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of contemporary digital and social media. Topics for study may include digital networks and communicative power, the internet and the emergence of social media platforms, broadcast vs. social media, media convergence, and “big data.”

Students required to take one of CS401, CS402, CS403 or CS405 may take one of CS411, CS412, CS413, CS414, CS415, CS416 or KS400.

CS416g Critical AI Studies
This course offers an in-depth exploration of the recent emergence of generative AI in relation to the media. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, it situates generative AI within the broader history of artificial intelligence, automation, and algorithmic practice. Key topics of study include: the political economy of AI, safety and regulation frameworks, algorithmic bias, military applications, public reception and media hype, labour implications and the future of work, Canadian law in a global context, among others. In addition to theoretical insights, the course provides practical understanding of generative AI technologies. Students will gain hands-on experience with various AI tools, enhancing their comprehension of these technologies’ implications. Students will learn basic coding skills enabling them to build their own chatbots and AI agents using Python in Mac OS, Windows, and Linux environments. No prior coding knowledge is required.

CS416K TBA
Description TBA