Forensic anthropologists are responsible for the search, recovery, and analysis of human skeletal remains in modern contexts. This course will explore the knowledge and skills used by forensic anthropologists to reconstruct the biological profile of the deceased, make an identification, contribute to the determination of manner and mode of death, understand the events that took place at the scene, and to provide an estimate of time since death.
This course provides students with problem-based, experiential learning in bioarchaeology, including methods of analysis, theoretical issues, and the excavation, documentation and interpretation of a burial. Labs will address analyses and approaches used in CRM when consulting for Indigenous groups and contract archaeologists. Students will collaborate to excavate, analyze, and interpret data, generating a bioarchaeological report of the excavated cemetery.
The presence of toxic chemicals is a defining feature of contemporary life. But while toxicity is everywhere, it is not everywhere the same. Considering toxicity through medical and environmental anthropology, science and technology studies, and environmental justice, we will gain new perspectives on the politics of evidence, the nature of health, and the nature of nature. Creative, hands-on assignments will help us understand the toxic worlds around us at UTM.
Survey of major theoretical perspectives developed in social and cultural anthropology. The main ideas and underlying assumptions of each perspective will be critiqued and evaluated for their contributions to the field.
This course is concerned with contemporary medical knowledge practices, with particular emphasis on Western medicine and Public Health. Through a set of key readings in sociocultural medical anthropology, students will explore topics such as the art and science of medicine, end of life rites and rituals, expertise, and the politics and perils of intervention. This is an advanced, writing -intensive seminar that will particularly appeal to sociocultural anthropology students, and those interested in pursuing a career in the health professions.
This class delves into the topic of water from an anthropological perspective by thinking of water not only as resource but also as meaningful substance, symbol, and mediator of human and non-human relations. Class will consist mainly of discussions of ethnographic readings but also of hands-on class exercises, field-trips, and auto-ethnographic work. In some years, students may additionally have the option of participating in an international learning experience during Reading Week that will have an additional cost and application process.
“Coal is Dead” is a phrase often heard these days, and yet it is quite emphatically not. While coal prices are plunging, countries like China are currently building new coal plants all over Africa. Coal, in other words, is increasingly declared dead even as it is decidedly undead, raising the question of what social, political, cultural, and economic processes make this so-called transition so protracted and piece-meal. This class thus offers a social and cultural approach to the protracted energy transition, asking how the study of coal offers insight into questions of history, politics, race, class, and gender. In some years, students may additionally have the option of participating in an international learning experience during Reading Week that will have an additional cost and application process.
This course offers an upper-level overview of anthropological research on Islam and cultures of the Muslim world. In this seminar-style class, we will critically examine how anthropologists have approached the study of Islam and Muslim communities and whether there is something we can call the “anthropology of Islam.” We will approach these questions through the critical reading of challenging theoretical texts from the mid-20th to 21st century, but also by examining various manifestations of the Islamic tradition and the diversity and complexity of Muslim cultures around the world, including in sub- Saharan Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.
The contemporary world is profoundly shaped by mass media. We might even ask if media technologies have changed what it means to be human. Democratic politics, globalized economic flows, and new religious practices all depend on modern technologies of communication, as does the discipline of anthropology. How might we make sense of how social media, television, radio, and film have shaped our lives from an ethnographic perspective? In this course, we will pursue this question through a series of studies of media use, production, and circulation in a wide range of cultural contexts, including the exploring centrality of media to the production of anthropological knowledge. Developing some of the themes that students might have been exposed to in ANT102H5 (Introduction to Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology) and ANT204H5 (Sociocultural Anthropology), students will also be guided in pursuing their own research interests in this upper-level seminar.
This independent study course is designed to offer students advanced supervised reading, research and planning for a publishable report on an anthropological topic not covered in other courses, or covered only briefly. Students who wish to pursue this option with a specific faculty member should approach the faculty member early - before the start of the academic term - to negotiate the research and study program.
This independent study course is designed to offer students advanced supervised reading, research and planning for a publishable report on an anthropological topic not covered in other courses, or covered only briefly. Students who wish to pursue this option with a specific faculty member should approach the faculty member early - before the start of the academic term - to negotiate the research and study program.
This independent reading course is designed to offer students advanced supervised reading on an anthropological topic not covered in other courses, or covered only briefly. Students who wish to pursue this option with a specific faculty member should approach the faculty member early - before the start of the academic term - to negotiate the reading program.
This independent reading course is designed to offer students advanced supervised reading on an anthropological topic not covered in other courses, or covered only briefly. Students who wish to pursue this option with a specific faculty member should approach the faculty member early - before the start of the academic term - to negotiate the reading program.
This course provides senior undergraduate students who have developed some knowledge of a discipline and its research methods an opportunity to work in the research project of a professor in return for course credit. Students enrolled have an opportunity to become involved in original research, develop their research skills and share in the excitement and discovery of acquiring new knowledge. Based on the nature of the project, projects may satisfy the Sciences or Social Sciences distribution requirement. Participating faculty members post their project descriptions for the following summer and fall/winter sessions in early March. See Experiential and International Opportunities for more details.
This course provides senior undergraduate students who have developed some knowledge of a discipline and its research methods an opportunity to work in the research project of a professor in return for course credit. Students enrolled have an opportunity to become involved in original research, develop their research skills and share in the excitement and discovery of acquiring new knowledge. Based on the nature of the project, projects may satisfy the Sciences or Social Sciences distribution requirement. Participating faculty members post their project descriptions for the following summer and fall/winter sessions in early March. See Experiential and International Opportunities for more details.
This course introduces the Arab culture in general terms and familiarizes students with some fundamental realities of the Arab world (e.g. family, gender roles, social etiquette, etc.) with a general introduction to values and religious practices. The course is taught in English.
This introductory course is designed for beginners, i.e., students with NO prior knowledge of the Arabic language. The course provides a basic proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic. The students will have ample practice of reading and writing the Arabic alphabet and will master the Arabic sounds and their phono-syntactic features. A foundation of grammar will familiarize the students with word formation, word order, and sentence structures. By the end of the course, the students should be able to fully read Arabic, comprehend simple reading, produce complete sentences to express basic information orally and in writing, and to conduct basic conversations in Modern Standard Arabic. All students are REQUIRED to complete the Arabic Language Assessment Questionnaire before enrolling in this course. Please visit https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/language-studies/language-course-assessment-questionnaires and complete the Arabic Language Assessment Questionnaire by no later than August 29th. Late assessment submissions will not be accepted.
This is an Arabic language course for heritage students, i.e. of Arab origins, who may have had passive exposure to Arabic but have never formally studied the reading and writing of Arabic. This course is also designed to help students with interest in Islamic studies who may have been exposed to elementary Qur’anic teaching but were never taught the alphabet, and who cannot communicate in spoken or written Arabic. In this course, students will begin by learning how to sound, read and write the Arabic alphabet. They will study Arabic grammar, develop reading comprehension, and practice writing skills that advance gradually throughout the course. Each unit of the course is fully supported by a range of comprehension, vocabulary-building, grammar reinforcement activities, and reading & writing exercises. Language analysis will be based on the reading of excerpts of authentic Arabic texts from contemporary literature, magazines and newspapers. By the end of this course, students will have completed the prerequisites to take Arabic reading, literature, and advanced language courses. Please visit https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/language-studies/language-course-assessment… and complete the Arabic Language Assessment Questionnaire by no later than August 29th. Late assessment submissions will not be accepted.
This is an introductory course designed for high beginner level students, who desire to acquire fluency in spoken Egyptian Arabic, commonly known as Egyptian or Cairene Arabic. The course follows a teaching approach that places emphasis on the development of the listening and speaking skills of spoken Egyptian Arabic. This course develops communicative skills in Egyptian colloquial Arabic along parallel tracks of vocabulary and grammar. Therefore, student must be independently comfortable with the Arabic alphabet and must have developed elementary reading ability. The course is designed for students who have completed the beginner level of modern Standard Arabic ARA212Y5Y, and are now ready to branch out into their first experience of a major spoken dialect.
This course is for students who have basic background information in formal Arabic. To study this course, students should be able to write and speak simple sentences to express basic information in formal Arabic. The course builds on the skills that students have learned in ARA212Y5. By the end of this course, students should be able to use formal Arabic at an intermediate low level using ACTFL guidelines. Everyday language in the Egyptian and Levantine accents will be provided occasionally as supplementary materials for students' information only. However, students' skills will be assessed using formal Arabic only, which is the focus of this course.
This course develops the student's communication skills in grammar, writing, reading, and formal registers of speaking, into an advanced level. It caters to the students who have completed the intermediate high level: ARA300, or whose language assessment reflects an intermediate level of proficiency of Arabic as a heritage language. The teaching of this course will also focus on error analysis to develop the student’s ability to distinguish between their version of heritage spoken language and that of the erudite Arabic, الفُصْحى, as used formally across the Arab world. By the end of the course, the student will be able to write in a formal academic register, sustain oral expressions and deliver oral presentations in formal Arabic.
(Offered in English).This survey course examines representative fiction and non-fiction texts, painting, films, operas, comics and video games to explore salient incidences of encounter, impact, and reception of the Arabs in medieval and modern Western thought. Examples of topics of analysis are Islamic imagery in Dante’s Inferno, motifs of storytelling and narrative structures from the One Thousand and One night in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales…From the Moors in Spain, to the Arabs in Sicily, from Shakespeare’s Othello to the Victorian Gothic Vathek, the course will move on to explore the extension of the French Orientalists’ influence beyond European painting to operas, and later in cinema, exploring works such as Il Seraglio, Lawrence Arabia, Casablanca and others. Current representations of the Arabs in Western films, TV shows, comics, and video games will be analyzed to trace continuity and discontinuity of the earlier reception. Students who take this course to be counted towards the Language Citation must complete written course work in Arabic.
This is the first of two intensive advanced reading courses in the Arabic language. Throughout this course, the students will also be familiar with different sacred texts such as Tafsīr (Quranic exegesis) and Qiṣas al-Anbiyā’ (Tales of the Prophets) to the fables focused on the description of amazing and mythological creatures such as Qazvīni’s ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt wa Gharā’ib alMawjūdāt (Marvels of Creatures and Strange things existing) and Kalīla wa Dimna as well as the epic of the legendary Arabic heroin Dhāt al-Himma in Sīrat Dhāt al-Himma.
This is the second of two intensive advanced reading courses in the Arabic language. This course will concentrate on works relating to history which includes universal histories in the world from creation up to their own eras; biographies of individuals and biographical dictionaries, advice literature that guide rulers to govern efficiently; poetry by poets and poetesses; maqãmãt or works of rhymed prose; mystical texts; travelogues that describe the adventures and observations of travelers to faraway lands; annalistic chronicles that record events from year to year; and chancery documents that shed light on the way medieval administrations worked.
This course uses differentiated instruction and assessment methods to provide Arabic language instruction to two groups of students: 1) advanced learners of Arabic as a foreign language, and 2) heritage students who may have native or native-like proficiency in the Arabic language. Both groups of learners will have customized study materials and assessment schemes that provide for their specific learning needs and language abilities.
This course explores Earth's local family, consisting of two types of major planets, newly identified dwarf planets, many moons orbiting the planets, and millions of smaller objects such as comets and meteoroids. This course examines how these groups are similar and different, how the solar system formed, and how our solar system compares to the systems of other stars.
This course gives a quantitative, scientific introduction to observing, concentrating on objects that can be seen with the naked eye or with binoculars. The measurements will be combined with calculations to yield quantitative conclusions and predictions. This is the first course for students following the major in astronomy or the specialist in astronomical sciences, but it is also suitable for students with the appropriate background who want to understand more fully the celestial phenomena visible to them.
This course will explore the historic and ongoing relationship between astronomy and human culture. In this course, students will approach astronomical concepts through the lens of archaeoastronomy – the exploration of astronomical practices in ancient cultures, and ethnoastronomy – the study of modern astronomical practices by cultures around the world. Topics will include cultural interpretations of the motions of the stars, planets, moon, and sun, methods of navigation and timekeeping, puzzles that have inspired important shifts in our understanding of the Universe, and varying cultural conceptions of what science is and how it is done.
The Universe extends from the Sun to the most distant regions we can observe. This course explores our Sun, the other stars, the Milky Way galaxy in which our Sun lives, other galaxies that are far outside our Milky Way, and the most distant objects we can observe. In addition, the course presents evidence that everything we observe is just a small fraction of what exists in the Universe. The course content considers how the Universe began and evolved over time and the possibility of life beyond Earth.
This course explores the astrophysics of planets, Sun and stars, including their observed variety, structure, formation and evolution.