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BF190: Modernity and the Contemporary World

Both BF190: Modernity and the Contemporary World and BF199: Modernity: Critique and Resistance familiarize you with a set of foundational ideas that will help you in your university education, in your career, and in your life as a citizen of our global world.

In particular, BF190 and BF199 are focused on ethical and political questions: How do we relate to each other as human beings? How should we relate to each other as human beings?

BF190 focuses on Enlightenment thought, which grounds many of the things we take for granted in our daily lives, including democratic politics, the scientific method, and capitalist economic relations. BF199 focuses on contemporary problems that challenge Enlightenment ideas, including environmental issues, multiculturalism, and the effects of mass communication.

The ideas presented in BF190 and BF199 are foundational to thinking across the disciplines taught at Laurier Brantford. This gives you a leg up in understanding your coursework and gives you a common language with which to communicate and think with your peers across disciplinary boundaries.

The ideas presented in BF190 and BF199 circulate around the practice of critical thinking, which involves challenging assumptions, asking complicated questions, and being open to new and innovative solutions. This practice is useful across a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional career paths, and allows you to become the kind of flexible thinker that contemporary employers are looking for.

Finally, the ideas presented in BF190 and BF199 give you the tools to understand the assumptions made and positions taken by others in the face of important contemporary problems. In turn, this allows you to develop and express your own assumptions and positions so that you become an empowered, active, and responsible citizen of our global world.

Skills Developed

You will:

  • Read primary source course material.
  • Identify and summarize key ideas in the tradition of social and political critique.
  • Compare and contrast the ideas of key authors in the tradition of social and political critique.
  • Apply key ideas in the tradition of social and political critique to contemporary news media objects.
  • Articulate your own position on contemporary news media objects and relate your position to the ideas of key authors in the tradition of social and political critique.
  • Practice academic integrity in the correct referencing of sources.

BF190 Key Ideas

Some of the key ideas covered in BF190 include:

BF190 Thinkers

Thinkers covered in BF190 include:

Course Outlines

For past BF190 course outlines, please email Jennifer Beam (jbeam@wlu.ca) and provide:

  • the course number(s)
  • the year and term the course was offered (e.g. Winter 2015)
  • and your WLU student ID

The outlines will be forwarded to you as a PDF attachment.