Course Offerings

This course invites students to consider pressing global issues through the lens of social and environmental justice. Students will develop skills for identifying theoretical frameworks, and synthesizing and integrating disciplinary perspectives. Key content may include gender inequality, unequal access to education and healthcare, economic disparity, climate change, the politics of Indigeneity, digital rights and privacy, and the impact of war. Topics will be examined in light of political, ideological and cultural influences aimed at sustaining, questioning, or overturning the status quo.

Provides students with an overview of the discipline of Indigenous Studies including the history, cultures, and experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Traditionally, scientific knowledge has been seen as a ‘neutral' tool that can be used for good or ill purposes, but is itself harmless. Some critics argue that this is a mistaken notion. There may be "non-neutral" features, such as Reductionism, that are inherent in the scientific world-view regardless of what use it is put to. These inherent features of science might be responsible for environmental degradation, spiritual malaise, cultural conflicts, and much else. This course will discuss this debate by examining contemporary issues of science in our culture. This course assumes no previous knowledge of science.

Traditionally, scientific knowledge has been seen as a ‘neutral' tool that can be used for good or ill purposes, but is itself harmless. Some critics argue that this is a mistaken notion. There may be "non-neutral" features, such as Reductionism, that are inherent in the scientific world-view regardless of what use it is put to. These inherent features of science might be responsible for environmental degradation, spiritual malaise, cultural conflicts, and much else. This course will discuss this debate by examining contemporary issues of science in our culture. This course assumes no previous knowledge of science.

This course is focused on key ideas, concepts, and skills required to effect social, environmental and political change such as anti-oppressive activism, civic engagement and community capacity development. Students will be encouraged to think about the wide variety of ways that social and environmental justice is practiced and different definitions of success.

The popular image of Indigenous people has been shaped by anthropology and the wider academy. This course will explore the interaction between Indigenous peoples and anthropology and archaeology. The course offers a brief history of anthropology, followed by examination of such topics as indigeneity, Indigenous knowledge, cultural and intellectual property, museums, archaeology and repatriation, biological research, applied anthropology, ethics in anthropology, and community-based research. The value of anthropology to Indigenous people will be debated and discussed.

This course examines environment and sustainability themes related to our local context, while working to highlight and understand how these both intersect, and are interdependent with, similar concerns elsewhere in the world. Students will draw on local and regional environment and sustainability issues, while recognizing and exploring their interconnectedness with social, economic, political and cultural themes at the global level – from the Grand to the globe.

This course provides students with the theoretical building blocks to think critically about the powerful ways that information communication technologies are taken up in social, cultural and individual practices. By surveying key themes in the emerging landscape of digital and social media, this course highlights the privacy, commodification, and surveillance implications of participation in the new media political economy.

An introduction to the social, philosophical and historical contexts in which we can understand the role that the contemporary media play in our lives. Specific topics may include the nature of writing for the media; media bias; the history and structure of mass media; changes in media technology; the media's coverage of scientific, cultural and economic issues; and issues of communication and cultural policy in Canada and a global world.

Physical and cognitive changes can be part of the aging process. How we understand, describe and respond to these changes has evolved over recent generations. This course examines social understandings and ideologies in relation to the biological changes associated with aging.

In this course, students will consider how they, and others, are positioned in the broad matrix of economic globalization. Topics include the history of capitalism, the role of law in the development of global capitalism, the changing world of work, the rise of consumer society, the ‘knowledge economy', the relationship of modern capitalism to national and global inequality, and how capitalism relates to changing experiences of gender, the family, the environment and democracy, the rule of law and democracy. Students will also consider challenges to economic globalization from indigenous peoples, labour, environmentalists, consumer activists, and a number of other social groups.

A multi-disciplinary exploration of the many contrasts found in Niagara Falls and the gorge: the sacred and profane, natural and artificial, sublime and kitsch, life and death. Topics considered will include: the area’s geology and history (especially indigenous/settler relations, the War of 1812, the Underground Railroad), representations of Niagara; hydroelectric generation and its environmental and economic consequences; and spectacle and tourism.

A look at ancient Western classics which discusses their relevance to contemporary lives and ways of thinking; and their influence on modern and contemporary language, writing and thought. The continuing relevance or permanence of 'classical themes' will be discussed.

This course analyzes past and current struggles over the meaning and practice of democracy. It compares official and critical perspectives on what ‘rule by the people' should look like, and encourages students to reflect upon their own role in systems where social and environmental affairs are organized by the principle of popular power. The course examines ongoing struggles over what aspects of life should be democratically controlled, and engages debates about core concepts such as freedom, equality, citizenship, representation, government, economy, and environmental sustainability.

Focusing primarily on civil and political rights, this course introduces students to the idea and origins of human rights, the institutions that have been designed to protect them, and contemporary controversies surrounding them. Case studies and examples of violations will be addressed as appropriate. Assessment will include a short written assignment.

Students will explore the major theories and methods that characterize the study of representation and the production of meaning through signs and symbols. Different forms of popular culture will be discussed as illustrations of the production of meaning. Possible topics for discussion include music videos, movies, new media, sports, dance, food, community festivals and fashion.

This course will discuss mainstream and alternative economic theories concerning their various concepts of economic justice, markets, wages, profits, efficiency and economic crises. We will pay particular attention to the role of class in these various economic theories, and the potential for government action to enhance economic justice. Students will apply these economic theories to the analysis of current debates in a variety of fields such as legal studies, journalism, and human rights.

This course examines the responses to environmental and sustainability issues that frame contemporary local and global discourses about changes to the environment. This will involve explorations and discussions of those responses broadly located across the public/private divide, including the diversity of approaches associated with the environmental movement, methods emerging from the public sphere such as government legislative and policy measures, and those more broadly tied to neo-liberal economic thinking and the 'free market'.

This course examines a range of media and products developed for and marketed to children. Students will analyze texts such as television shows, video games, movies, books and toys, in relation to theories about media and children's culture.

This course offers students the opportunity to explore selected topics growing out of the Social and Environmental Justice program's core curriculum. All students will discuss their topics and approaches to these topics with their professor and will normally meet on a weekly basis. Students may choose to prepare an extended conventional essay, a series of shorter essays, reports, short stories, video documentaries or other creative means of assessment, developed in consultation with their professor. A conference-style oral presentation will be a required element in the assessment. Course is taught over two terms.

Contemporary society is a complex network of relations among racial and ethnic groups and other minorities that occupy unequal economic, political and social positions in Canadian society and the world over. This course will examine how these relations are constantly negotiated and renegotiated. It will also consider efforts to advance equality and overcome social exclusion.

This course provides students with an opportunity to engage critically in an intensive international experiential learning field-course. The basic objectives of the course are to provide students a global-engagement experience, with a pre-trip preparation component, in-country learning and community-contribution activities, and post-trip debriefing and report completion.

This course will explore how gender shapes our lives and the world around us. Using theories of gender we will examine topics such as: social constructions of masculinity and femininity, the connections between gender and sexuality, and links between gender, the media and popular culture. This approach enables us to view gender as much more than a simple biological difference. As part of this examination we will look at how factors such as race/ethnicity, class, age, and ability intersect with gendered identities.

This course explores food from a variety of perspectives, underlining its centrality to notions of social justice. Issues that may be considered include food, identity and memory, local and global food distribution, ethical food production, gender roles and food, resistance to acculturation through ethnic cuisine and the fetishizing of particular foodstuffs. Students will have the chance to engage in an experiential learning opportunity, working together in groups on a food related theme.

This two-semester full-credit (1.0) course explores the concept of ‘community' both in class, and via a community service-learning experience – CSL. Students work individually and/or in teams with their selected community organization for a significant part of the year, with initial class time spent on preparation for this internship, and the final month of the year back in class devoted to sharing this experience with the other students. Assessment is focused on the student service-learning experience, and on the related in-class efforts around CSL which have both written and oral components.

This course will examine how a new form of retail capitalism has been pioneered largely by the Wal~Mart Corporation of Bentonville, Arkansas. It will explore how this new economic form emerged within an era of economic neo-liberalism, and was aided by the implementation of powerful technologies, logistical re-engineering, the reformulation of supplier relationships and powerful organizational and consumer cultures. It will also consider how this powerful new corporate entity has reshaped thousands of local communities and created radically "new" work environments for the millions of workers involved in its various supply and retail operations. Throughout these investigations students will also consider how workers, community groups and others have attempted to reshape and/or resist Wal~Mart's encompassing visions of its corporate presence.

A one semester study of a special topic of relevance to the Environment and Sustainability area of focus in the Society, Culture and Environment program. Different topics will be featured.

This course focuses on multiple dimensions of environmental justice including justice as distribution, process, recognition and inter-generational concerns. Canadian and international examples could include the siting of unwanted facilities, climate change, the distribution of green space and vulnerability to disasters. Active student participation in class discussions and activities will be a key component of this course.

In this capstone course students investigate a current struggle for social and/or environmental justice, and consider how they might contribute to it in the future. In their proposed plan of action, students will use theoretical tools, relevant data, and personal reflections to address key social and environmental justice themes. Students will complete the course with a fuller sense of their power to initiate change within a historical context not of their choosing.

This course aims to engage students in critical and creative dialogues with contemporary youth cultures. The interplay between social control and resistance in youth cultures will be a key focus. Topics may include youth marketing, theories of subcultures, queer youth, intergenerational dialogues, homelessness and grassroots activism.