2024-25 Courses
Fall, Winter, and Fall-Winter courses 2024-25
Fall-Winter
GENG-7103-050 Research Methods & Practices
Prof. Peter Ives, Wed. 6-9pm
This course aims to equip students with an understanding of how an indefinite plethora of intersecting research skills and methodologies are relevant to and inform the critical, academic, and political project of cultural studies. It also includes discussions of some of the contemporary ethical, political, and material challenges (and potentialities) affecting the work of scholars, artists, and intellectuals in 21st Century academe, as well as other public institutions of knowledge production and dissemination simultaneously invested and troubled by critical cultural theorists, scholars, and curators.
During the Fall term, students will obtain certifications in CORE (TCPS 2) and Oral History Research and will develop a seminar presentation on a research methodology of particular interest to them. Over Fall and Winter terms, students will participate in a key aspect of being an active and engaged graduate students of cultural studies by attending a range of local events related to cultural studies/curatorial practices.
GHIST-7831 Practicum
Prof. Derek Dunlop, Wed. 2.30-5.15pm
This course combines the theory and practice of curatorial work, public history and experiential learning for students interested in achieving a university credit by working with a local museum or art gallery. The Practicum provides opportunities to explore a range of placements with host institutions in order to learn about being a curator. Students are expected to work 6-8 hours a week in the host institution. Program partners will provide training for the interns who have chosen to work with them. Partnerships opportunities include, but are not limited to, Â鶹´«Ã½ Art Gallery, Plug In Contemporary Art Institute, Buhler Gallery, and other local galleries and museums.
Fall 2024
GENG-7104-001 Concepts in Cultural Studies
Prof. Matthew Flisfeder, Mon 9.30am-12.20pm
This course aims to unpack the historical emergence of Cultural Studies as a field, while at the same time introducing students to concepts central to the theories and methodologies that tie together its aims. This includes concepts such as: ideology and cultural hegemony; subjectivity and identity; humanism, anti-humanism, and posthumanism; the periodizing concepts of modernity and postmodernity; as well as cultural geographic and historicizing concepts, such as nationalism, colonialism, postcolonialism, and indigeneity.
Cultural studies also reflects on the cleavages between high and mass culture, and the role that media, popular culture, and subculture play in practices of ideological interpellation, as well as in practices of resistance.
By the end of this course, students will gain knowledge about the historical and broader context of Cultural Studies as an interdisciplinary field, an understanding of contemporary issues in Cultural Studies, and an ability to grasp and identify their own project and research agendas within this field.
GENG-7112-002 Indigenous Literatures, Listening, and Beading
Prof. Celiese Lypka, Fri 9.30am-12.20pm
This course will focus on the connection between Indigenous storytelling and material art by combining hands-on learning in traditional beadwork with listening to and reading works of resistance and resurgence. Beading can be an Indigenous research methodology used to resist colonial violence by maintaining and preserving Indigenous identity, transmitting stories and knowledge, and enacting cultural resurgence. The class will reflect on and put into practice how Indigenous ways of knowing are activated through listening while working with your hands.
GENG-7112-050 Performance Studies
Prof. Sandy Pool, Mon 6-9pm
In this course, students will be introduced to the interdisciplinary field of Performance Studies, a practice-based mode of inquiry that considers performance as both an object of study and method of analysis. We will consider the field, which draws from the social sciences, the humanities and the arts, focusing on the pervasiveness of performance as a central element of social and cultural life. Particular attention will be paid to avant-garde performance art, and interactive theatre but we will also consider other expressive behaviours as performance including rituals, storytelling, curation, public speaking, drag performance, political demonstrations, civil disobedience, electronic performance and more. By the end of the course, students will have a rich sense of how performance contributes to constructions of personal and cultural identity and how these identities can also be transgressed via performative modes. It will provide a valuable set of questions for thinking about culture as performative practice. While students need not have acting experience to participate, they should expect to do a combination of ethnographic observation, fieldwork, performance ‘experiments’ and performance ‘research-creation’. Final projects will be site-specific research-based ‘performances’ taking place in and around the city of Â鶹´«Ã½.
GENG-7820-001 Cultures of the Past - Miyeu Pimaatshiwin, Beading, and Métis Kitchen Table Talk
Prof. Cathy Mattes, Mon 2.30-5.15pm
This course provides students opportunities to spark miyeu pimaatshiwin (the way to a good life, naming how one leads a good and enriching life), through encounters with ancestral and contemporary Métis beadwork and cultural ways of visiting and hosting. Métis beadwork will be discussed and contextualized in ways that allows for dialogue about the historical and contemporary cultural struggles and achievements of Métis peoples. Students will learn basic beadwork skills, and the importance of visiting and hosting when we gather in-person during Métis Kitchen Table Talk gatherings.
WINTER 2025
GENG-7112-001 Identity Politics
Prof. Peter Ives, Wed 9.30am-12.20pm
This course traces the trajectories of the heavily laden concept of ‘identity politics.’ It explores how ‘identity politics’ developed as a narrative or concept combining race, ethnicity, religion, language, sexuality and gender, Indigeneity, and ableness often in distinction to ‘class.’ We look how other discourses pit ‘identity politics’ against individualism or human universalism. This course uses the concept of ‘identity politics’ to think through the politics of culture. The course engages a wide range of authors such as Gary Younge, Franz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Yasha Mounk, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Sara Ahmed, Riley Snorton, Kim Tallbear, and Darryl Leroux.
GENG-7740-001 The Black Atlantic
Prof. Kerry Sinanan, Tu 2.30-5.15pm
This course focuses on the narratives of enslaved people and the visual cultures of slavery, race, and the Caribbean plantation from the 17th century to the present day. We will examine autobiographies, testimonios of the enslaved, alongside portraiture, prints and material culture, especially glass and present-day virtual commemorations of slavery and read these in the context of the discourse of Enlightenment race-making and critical race theory responses.
We will discuss how visual media, such as statuary and portraiture, is used to forge race, paying attention to enslaved ‘servants’ in British and European conversation pieces and portraiture. We will look at the picturesque plantation and its role in white supremacist discourse. We will examine how glass as an ornamental material evolved in tandem with the history of transatlantic slavery and we will look at the work of contemporary artists such as Titus Kaphur and King Cobra to unmake the race-craft of material culture.
GENG-7820-002: Residual Media
Prof. Andrew Burke, Mon 2.30-5.15pm
This course examines the history of analog media through the hands-on use of these technologies themselves. By familiarizing students with a range of analog formats, from 8mm and 16mm film to audio reels and cassettes to 35mm photos and Polaroid, the course explores a history of media use, the importance or digitization and archival projects, and ways in which contemporary artists are drawn in their practice to older technologies and processes. Residual Media is supported by UÂ鶹´«Ã½’s Experiential Learning Grant and will include hands-on work with analog technologies and workshops at the Â鶹´«Ã½ Film Group and UW’s Oral History Centre.
GENG-7820-003 The Idea of the Museum
Prof. Stephen Borys, Th 2.30-5.15pm
Museums and galleries do more than collect and exhibit objects; they participate in the packaging and presentation of the materials and ideas of culture, engaging with a diverse public and multiple stakeholders. Students examine the collecting, exhibiting and presentation practices of European and North American museums and galleries over the last two centuries with the goal of understanding their evolving role. The class explores how museums developed and are changing in response to the ideas of collecting and connoisseurship, the disciplines of art history and museology, and how these institutions reflect or relate to different ideologies, such as nationalism and colonialism.
Special Studies Forms
Directed Study Application Form
Course Outline Template: Instructors will use their department's template for the appropriate term.
*Please note that there are multiple time formats for Spring/Summer courses; your outline should indicate which one you are adhering to. See academic dates here.
The deadline for submitting final grades for Spring/Summer courses vary in accordance with time format, another fact to keep in mind as you design a special studies course. Faculty members are typically given two weeks after the end of the course to submit final grades, but they should consult the Coordinator for specific dates.