Programs and Courses

This course explores key concepts in medical anthropology, disability studies, and gender and queer studies by examining how gender and sexuality matter in the contexts of illness and disability across a range of institutional, social, and national contexts. Students will learn to think critically about the body as a site of power configured in the social and material fields of heath/illness, dis/ability, race, and gender and sexuality.

How does technology mediate our ideas about the social differences of disability, race, and gender? By rethinking the role of technology in reproducing social disparities and challenging bioethical debates about enhancement, students will emerge with the tools to reimagine the relationship between technology, the human body, and social justice.

This independent study course is designed to offer students advanced supervised reading and initial research planning 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 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.

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.

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 research course is designed to offer students advanced supervised research and writing of 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 writing program.

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.

This course explores the astrophysics of planets, Sun and stars, including their observed variety, structure, formation and evolution.

This course explores the astrophysics of the Milky Way, other galaxies, and the Universe.

This course explores the formation, equilibrium and evolution of structure on all astronomical scales, from the smallest to the largest: stars, gas clouds, clusters of stars, the Milky Way, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the whole universe.

A two-week Biology field research experience offered in one of the summer terms. The location, subject of the research, and instructor will change according to a regular cycle. Details will be made available on the Department of Biology website well in advance of a change to location. Please note that this course can only be completed once. There will be additional costs for travel and accommodation.

This course introduces students to the foundational principles and analytical tools from the management discipline that are appropriate for understanding enterprises in the context of the networked information economy. Particular emphasis is given to the interconnections between information and communications technologies, innovation, the role of managers and their decision-making processes, and related social, cultural, and economic institutions.

This course presents economic principles that explain how markets help organize exchange and production among competing but nevertheless cooperating economic units. Theories of consumer demand, the economic nature and function of business firms, optimal business decision rules of monopoly, oligopoly, and anti-combines regulations, as well as game theory, are presented. Efficiency criteria pertaining to the operation of firms and markets, the role of property rights, and the scope for public policy, are also examined.

Examines the relationship between media studies and Outer Space inhabitation and exploration. Through analysis of military, technological, industrial, scientific, design, artistic, and civilian projects, films, novels, science fictions, and other media forms, the class investigates and reveals the historical, social, cultural, and political implications of our mediated relation with Outer Space. Technologies and topics include: the space race and the Cold War, space imagery, extreme environments, space travel, space suits, space vehicles, and space habitats, satellites, extra-terrestrial intelligence, mining, extraction, terraforming, radiation, gravity, and levitation.

How is social inequality reproduced and encoded in technology systems and in digital media? In what ways do technology and media creations inform and influence perceptions, beliefs, and practices that impact girls and women, communities of colour, Indigenous groups, LGBTQ+ and other minoritized people? This course will address overlapping and intersectional issues of power, privilege, oppression, and sociotechnical imaginaries - all related to networks, big data and predictive analytics, algorithms, digital gig economies, and interactive multimedia like social media and virtual reality.

From Apple, Amazon, and Facebook to LINE, WeChat and Tik Tok, digital platforms dominate contemporary life. This course provides an intellectual voyage of the global spread of digital platforms from the days when they were not yet recognized as platforms to the contemporary era when users can hardly think of an internet without platforms. We will explore questions concerning the penetration of platforms into the social fabric of our digital life on a global scale while paying attention to the local conditions and specificity. Students will engage with key concepts, theories, and approaches related to platform studies through readings and discussions about different types of platforms, ranging from e-commerce and social media to live-streaming and on-demand service matching.

This course examines Chinese cultural traditions and values through contemporary media produced in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Background readings and literary works will provide students with the necessary historical and cultural context for each work. Class discussions will focus on the political, social and cultural transformations presented in the media. Special attention will be paid to topics such as family, class issues, gender and identity.

This course, designed for second-language learners of Mandarin Chinese, aims to: 1) develop listening and speaking skills in handling most informal and some formal communicative tasks; 2) strengthen reading and writing skills in expository and persuasive essays on familiar cultural and social topics; 3) cultivate cultural knowledge that facilitates effective intercultural communication.

This course, designed for second-language learners of Mandarin Chinese, is the second half of Advanced Chinese. It continues to: 1) develop listening and speaking skills in handling most informal and some formal communicative tasks; 2) strengthen reading and writing skills in expository and persuasive essays on familiar cultural and social topics; and 3) cultivate cultural knowledge that facilitates effective intercultural communication.

Modern metal-mediated (inorganic) reactions useful in organic synthesis. Applications of advanced organometallic chemistry. Selected solid-state compounds: metal-organic frameworks, nanoparticles and related materials for separation, catalysis, diagnostics.

This is a screenwriting course where students will be introduced to key narrative tools, scriptwriting conventions and components so they can develop an understanding and appreciation of the process from script to screen. From a comparative analysis of screenplays and completed short and feature films with varying budgets in the global cinema landscape, students will learn to use freely available specialized software to craft their own short film materials, including logline, synopsis, treatment, and screenplay.

What can the title cards and credits of a film tell us about its journey to the screen?

Outside of the studio system model adopted in various countries, there are established pathways and structures for the development, financing, production, sales, distribution and exhibition of independent cinema. This class asks how, from idea to completion, an independent film is able to find funding and reach an international audience. Focusing on the transnational ecosystems that sustain the passage of independent cinema around the world, we will examine case studies of films from Asia, Europe and North America.

This class will introduce students to low-budget aesthetic approaches to cinema across fiction and documentary genres. The class will involve a hybrid of cinema research and creation. During the first half of the semester, we will study a selection of feature-length works and shorts. The second half of the semester will be dedicated towards students creating 10-15 minute pieces of their own inspired by what they have studied.

This is a production course that introduces students to the four stages of filmmaking: development, production, post production, and release. Through learning the practical aspects of filmmaking such as scriptwriting, budgeting, key crew positions, basic technical proficiency of equipment, and understanding the film festival circuit and online platform, students will make a 5-10 minute fiction short film. Equipment and funds will not be provided but students will be able to complete the assignments on a smartphone with recommendation of free video editing software.

This course provides an introduction to Greek and Roman literature. Detailed interpretations of key works from a variety of genres are complemented by discussions of more general issues like literacy levels, orality, literary rhetoric, performance contexts and intertextuality.

This course introduces students to archaeology in the ancient Mediterranean, covering key archaeological methods and material from the Greek Bronze Age through the Roman Empire. Students develop essential skills to recognize and analyze ancient material culture.

This course discusses Greek and Roman lyric poetry in its wider literary, cultural and political contexts. Poets who will be discussed include, among others, Sappho, Theocritus, Catullus and Horace. Some of the poems featured in this course belong to the best and most beautiful literature written in Graeco-Roman antiquity.

Focusing on Roman Pompeii and Herculaneum, this course studies the experiences of townspeople: the freeborn (male and female), freed persons, and slaves; the demography of a Roman town and its public infrastructure; the interior design of Roman houses; local politics; leisure activities; economy; and religious beliefs and funerary practices.

This course provides an introduction to reinforcement learning intelligence, which focuses on the study and design of agents that interact with a complex, uncertain world to achieve a goal. The course covers Markov decision processes, reinforcement learning, planning, and function approximation (online supervised learning). Applications to computer vision, robotics, etc. are explored, and common RL algorithms are analyzed and implemented.

An introduction to the basic concepts and techniques of microeconomic theory, including: price determination through supply and demand, market failure, microeconomic theories of households and firms, and market structure.

An introduction to the basic concepts and techniques of macroeconomic theory, including: the determination and measurement of national income, money and banking, monetary and fiscal policy in closed and open economies.

Application of economics to the field of environmental and natural resource economics. This course uses economic theory and empirical evidence to address important environmental issues, such as management of renewable and non-renewable resources, and different forms of environmental regulation and pollution control. The course will focus on market based instruments, such as tradeable pollution rights, and climate change problems.

This course investigates first-hand experiences and contributions of black students and teachers in the Canadian education system. Historical, systemic barriers to access will be studied along with current policy, practice and teaching pedagogies that aim to produce systems of education without oppression. By looking specifically at research focused on black schooling in Ontario, students will engage in policy analysis and assess current Afrocentric schooling models to assess effectiveness in eliminating educational inequality. Drawing on principles of equity and diversity, Afrofuturist scholarship will be emphasized and provide the framework that seeks to understand and investigate the past to better inform education’s future.

The English language belongs not just to the British conquerors, but also (and perhaps more so) to the artists and writers, the poets and politicians of the colonized world. From Rabindranath Tagore’s mystical poetry to Slumdog Millionaire, the styles and aesthetics of South Asian English are as vast as the peninsula itself, and the literature that has emerged from this diverse region has utterly reshaped contemporary global culture. Additionally, we will take up select contemporary criticism on subaltern studies, postcolonialism, and narratology. Authors will include Anand, Naipaul, Narayan, Suleri, Rushdie, Roy, Lahiri, as well as select works of poetry, film, and visual art.

This course compares works of selected playwrights of the Global South in an effort to understand their refashioning of postcolonial perspectives and subaltern histories. Ranging beyond the West and its theatrical traditions, the course will explore innovative theatrical performances that focus on South-South affiliations and link discourses, places, and people positioned between peripheries. Students will learn about traditions of orality, cultural pluralities, and indigenous mythic/folk styles that constitute the unique syncretism of South-South theatre cultures. Writers may include Padmanabhan, Nadeem, Jinghui, Taha, Fugard, Aidoo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Miri, Walcott, Triana, and Dorfman.

This course studies Indigenous literatures from around the world. Regions may include the Americas, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Africa, Russia, and Scandinavia. Through these literatures, the course addresses topics such as: the specific and localized ways colonialism manifests and exerts power; UNDRIP (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples); the distinct experiences, histories, storytelling traditions, and decolonization processes of Indigenous peoples from different regions; how and why decolonization processes shift from one part of the world to another; and movements and experiences that bring Indigenous peoples from various regions together in solidarity.

This course examines Indigenous texts set in the Tkaronto/Toronto area to provide a fuller understanding of the ongoing Indigenous histories, treaties, laws, experiences, and stories of the area in which we live, work, and learn. Through studying Indigenous literatures to deepen this understanding, the course asks students to reflect on what it means to be treaty people within this territory, the responsibilities of living in the Tkaronto/Toronto area, and how to be more mindful residents within this space and place. Texts may include fiction, non-fiction, poetry, visual art, film, and drama. The course may also include land-based and autoethnographic components.

Applying decolonial and Indigenous methodologies, students will explore Indigenous texts, media, and/or performances, spanning traditional and innovative forms, genres, and mediums engaged by Indigenous writers and makers. Topics may vary from year to year.

In this advanced introduction to the work of Toni Morrison, we will encounter masterpieces such as Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved and pay particular attention to questions of literary tradition and inheritance, form and narrative voice, and ethics in contexts of oppression. We will read most of Morrison’s novels, alongside major essays, in the chronological order in which they were published. Students will be introduced to major themes in African American literary criticism and theory through close engagement with Morrison’s oeuvre and its critical legacy.

This course is an advanced introduction to the concept and key texts of ‘Black British literature.’ A term arising directly in response to empire and the postcolonial, Black British literature indicates texts written by both African- and South Asian- descended writers from the Caribbean, Africa, and the subcontinent. Focused primarily on the twentieth-century, we will contextualize this literary tradition within wider questions of Britain in the world and how the idea of literary influence is challenged and re-formed. Writers may include: Sam Selvon, Hanif Kureishi, Derek Walcott, Stuart Hall, Buchi Emecheta, Caryl Philips, Zadie Smith, Helen Oyeyemi, and Warsan Shire.

A multi-lingual and multi-racial archipelago, the Caribbean has a rich literary and theoretical tradition: this course will introduce students to major figures in Caribbean Anglophone literature (including Jean Rhys, Kamau Brathwaite, George Lamming, Erna Brodber, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, in addition to some texts read in English translation (including Aimé Cesaire, Alejo Carpentier, Maryse Condé, Marie Vieux Chauvet)

This course examines how Indigenous stories assert ongoing and inherent Indigenous sovereignty, with emphasis on the North American context. Indigenous stories document how Indigenous peoples continue to practice their lifeways as they always have, despite colonial encroachment. Through Indigenous writings, this course examines concepts like self-government, self-determination, and the politics of recognition. Topics covered may include Indigenous futurisms, online sovereignty, treaty-making, Indigenous feminisms, sovereign eroticism, Indigenous political movements, decolonization, and land-based organizing. Texts may include fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film, and drama from writers such as Tenille Campbell, Glen Coulthard, Winona Laduke, Tracey Lindberg, Audra Simpson, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.

This class is an advanced introduction to the field of African American literary studies, tracing its origins and emergence through the slave trade to the present day, with particular focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writing, and the criticism and theory to which it gives rise. Authors studied may include: Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison.

This course considers the relationship between poetry written by Black women (particularly June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Lucille Clifton) and Black feminist theory (bell hooks, Angela Davis, the Combahee River Collective). In addition to a grounding in this 20th-century moment, the course will also consider nineteenth-century example (including Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells) and the contemporary moment, consider a wide arc of how Black feminism produces and arises from Black poetics.

This course takes as its focus the intersection of race and gender as explored and expressed in diasporic Black women’s writing. With a focus on North America, we will ask about the relationships amongst self-expression and genre under conditions of disempowerment. This course introduces contemporary thinking about race and colonial encounters alongside fiction and life-writing by African American, Canadian, and Caribbean women from a range of historical periods. Authors may include: Mary Prince, Harriet Jacobs, Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwige Danticat, Dionne Brand.

Real or imagined geographical locations, landscapes, rooms and houses play an important role in literature. In addition to providing a narrative setting, fictional space might guide our interpretation of plot, serve as a metaphor for broader historical, sociological or psychological issues, or become a character in its own right. Ranging across a variety of literary periods and genres, this course will explore how works of fiction describe space and how these descriptions shape our responses. Authors and texts may range from the early English period to the present day, including Beowulf, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish, Jane Austen, Edgar Alan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, V.S. Naipaul, and so on.

This course offers specialists and advanced majors an opportunity to do sustained and intensive research on a topic developed in consultation with the instructor. Course instruction will consist of training in various research methodologies, advice and help in putting together reading and research lists, and guided workshops where students can practice drafting, editing, and peer editing as well as comparing notes and research materials.

From the haunted images of William Mumler in the 1860’s to contemporary manifestations of digital ghost hunting, the search for elusive and invisible spirits by means of the camera lens has been an ongoing preoccupation in the history of photography for over 150 years. Starting with the emergence of phantasmagoric visual entertainments (ca. 1800), this course reviews this rich and fascinating history in Europe and North America but also with a few non-Western cultural examples (e.g., Japan, Philippines) focusing on key case studies in spirit photographic practice. The course considers various reasons why people have wanted to believe in the veracity of these phenomena (e.g., followers of the religious movement of Spiritualism) as well as why others have wanted to debunk spirit photography as a hoax or fraud (e.g., Harry Houdini and P.T. Barnum). Exploring theories derived from deconstruction and psychoanalysis, we seek to understand the philosophical and psychological significance of spirit photography introducing constructs such as hauntology, spectrality, the uncanny, and the work of mourning. The course also reviews how contemporary artists (e.g., Oursler, Beloff) have incorporated motifs and themes related to spirit photography in their works.

The course explores Indigenous literatures in Francophone Canada including Indigenous texts and authors from Quebec. The works discussed engage with issues of sovereignty, anti-racism, Native identity and gender, and span multiple genres including fiction, theatre, poetry and essay.

This course will explore and discuss the basic role of a forensic scientist and what it means to be scientifically informed.

This course will develop students’ knowledge of forensic mental health issues throughout the criminal justice system, including the nature and extent of mental illness in our society and the various legal, social and ethical issues that arise when a mentally disordered individual comes into contact with the criminal justice system. Topics to be explored include: the medical and legal definitions of mental disorder and their relationship to each other; the criteria for state-compelled treatment and how it impinges upon individual autonomy; the changing views of the justice system’s duty to accommodate victims and witnesses with mental health issues; fitness to stand trial and the defense of not criminally responsible; and the Review Board process.

This course offers a case-based approach to forensic anthropology. Students will critically evaluate real forensic anthropological cases, in addition to completing their own mock cases - from the transfer of evidence to a mock trial.

This course offers a history of capitalism. In twelve weeks, we study nearly six hundred years of human history, examining how the profit motive has reshaped lives, landscapes, and values. We consider how the drive to accumulate capital has given rise to distinctive legal, racial, and religious regimes.

This course examines the history of sex, the history of the body, and the history of sexuality from the past to the present. Topics include the construction of sexual identities (including non-normative sexualities); desire and its regulation; and the porous boundaries between sex and gender, especially in relationship to trans history.

This writing-intensive course introduces students to critical historical thinking and writing in the humanities and social sciences and explores the emergence of History as a field of academic inquiry. By learning to reason and to write historically, students in this course will acquire the foundational skills that are essential for their educational success in higher level courses.

The movement of people, goods, and ideas across the Atlantic Ocean changed the world and shaped the modern age. This course considers how contact among Indigenous Americans, Africans, and Europeans between 1000 and 1800 contributed to ideologies of conquest and colonization; the development of a global economy; forced and voluntary migration on an unprecedented scale; and new forms of resistance.

An introduction to the historical and ongoing disruptions of colonial extraction in Canada and their treatment within the historical record. From natural resources to Indigenous lands and knowledges, this course will deepen students’ understandings of the processes, industries and technologies responsible for settler colonial extraction in Canada.

This course investigates the development of British politics and the emergence of its global empire from the early nineteenth century to 1900. It engages with key historical issues such as the development of representative government, imperialism, colonial relationships, the industrial revolution, and new political ideologies (i.e. conservativism, liberalism, socialism).

This course uses Indigenous, transnational and feminist frameworks to examine colonialism’s impact on the environment. From Turtle Island (Canada/U.S.) to Aotearoa (New Zealand), this course dismantles colonial histories, extractive industries and the state apparatuses that govern our relationship to the environment to form alternative understandings of environmental histories and futures.

This course examines how the movement of peoples, goods and ideas across land and sea has shaped South Asia’s history. In particular it analyses how far-reaching networks based on trade, pilgrimage, patronage, politics and labour that passed through the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and the Himalayas connected South Asia to Southeast Asia, and East Asia, amongst other spaces. It also foregrounds how these histories of mobility changed under colonial rule and its aftermath. The course focuses on the period from 1200 until the present.

The relationship between missionaries and colonization in New France was complicated and contested. This course will explore the links between missionary activities and colonial designs through late medieval and early modern European ideas of religion and expansion; early encounters between Indigenous peoples and Europeans; French attempts at settlement; cooperation and conflict between missionaries and the Crown; similarities and differences among different missionary groups; and Indigenous responses to missionary efforts.

This course investigates the Klondike Gold Rush (Alaska-Yukon, 1896-1900) through the lenses of North American borderlands, environmental, and indigenous history. By viewing the gold rush in the context of growing national and imperial expansion, we will see it was an essential component of a much larger historical process centering on settlement, development, and dispossession.

This course examines the everyday effects of the partition of 1947, and its aftermath, when British India gained independence and was also crafted into new nation states. Amongst other issues, it engages with sexual violence, nation-making, territoriality, rehabilitation, citizenship, and spatiality. More broadly it connects these issues to space, place and historical memory.

This course teaches quantitative literacy and numeracy skills in order to develop core competencies identified as essential for university and beyond. ISP130H5 enhances students’ ability and confidence to engage with quantitative information in a variety of contexts, by applying mathematical, statistical, and computational approaches to make informed decisions, to problem-solve, to effectively communicate and express quantitative information, and to create logical, evidence-based arguments. Rather than focusing on math specific skills, the course explores relevant concepts as they appear in diverse disciplines and authentic real-life situations, such as numbers and magnitude, patterns and relationships, financial literacy, health, probabilistic reasoning, chance and risk, and interpreting data presented in various forms.

This course provides an overview of classroom teaching methods, techniques and strategies for English as a second language, as well as ways of creating and adapting materials to particular teaching contexts such as English-as-a-second-language (ESL) in Canada, English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) abroad, and blended teaching. Theoretical issues and classroom implications for teaching and learning with technology will be discussed. Classroom management techniques will also be examined, along with ways to access and work with classroom management and technology-related resources.

This course examines theories and practices related to the teaching and learning of speaking and listening in a second language, particularly with reference to English. The course will focus on the theoretical and research-based underpinnings of second language speaking and listening on the ways in which instruction can facilitate the development of these skills. The relationship of pronunciation to listening and listening skills will be explored, and an overview of teaching pronunciation to second language learners will be provided (particularly with reference to English).

This course examines theories and practices related to the teaching and learning of reading and writing in a second language, particularly with reference to English. The course will focus on the theoretical and research-based underpinnings of second language reading and writing and on the ways in which instruction can facilitate the development of these skills. The relationship of vocabulary to second language reading and writing will be examined (particularly with reference to English).

A research or reading project undertaken by the student under the supervision of a faculty member. Written work to be completed in French/Italian for credit towards an LTL program in French or Italian.

A research or reading project undertaken by the student under the supervision of a faculty member. Written work to be completed in French/Italian for credit towards an LTL program in French or Italian.

This course is an introduction to the theory of matrix groups with a particular emphasis on applications and examples. This course will cover orthogonal transformations in two and three dimensions, quaternions, isometries of Euclidean space, Lie algebras and matrix exponentials.

This course is an introduction to the theory of curves and surfaces with a particular emphasis on applications and computational techniques. This course will cover curves in R2 and R3, curvature, torsion, differential of maps, First Fundamental Form, Parallel transport, Bishop Frames, Geodesics, Gauss-Bonnet Theorem, and Gaussian curvature.

This course will cover personal finance topics for individuals at all stages of life. Topics include budgeting, borrowing, investing, insurance and retirement planning. Tax issues associated with these topics is also covered including the basics of personal income tax. Case studies are used extensively to illustrate the material.

Targeted to business students with some programming experience, the course provides the foundation to take more advanced courses in the Department of Management that requires programming and database knowledge. Topics in this accelerated course will include data structures, algorithms, analytics (i.e. descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive) and structured query language. Students will be expected to integrate concepts from statistics as well.

This course will provide a framework for analyzing a firm’s past performance, estimating its future performance, and valuing its equity. You will understand how to interpret financial statements, analyze cash flows, make judgments about earnings quality and uncover hidden assets and liabilities. It helps you become a sophisticated user of financial accounting data.

Traditional business courses often deal with financially healthy firms. However, failure is an inevitable reality for many businesses. The problems currently being witnessed by the retail sector are a case in point. According to official Canadian government statistics, 3580 businesses filed for insolvency in 2018 alone, with more than a quarter of these businesses being from Ontario. This course aims to study the reasons why some firms find themselves in financial distress, alternative courses of action (including legal options) in response to financial distress, and the role of various stakeholders in the process.

This course represents a hands-on introduction to tools and techniques required to implement asset pricing and risk-management models in practice. The course will enable students to build computer algorithms tailored to financial problems. Emphasis is placed on portfolio optimization techniques, factor models for security pricing, risk quantification and management, option pricing, and the management of large high-frequency trading data sets.

Over just the last few years, entrepreneurs in Canada and the rest of the world have founded hundreds of start-up firms that promise to change the financial industry fundamentally. Fueled by technological innovations, these so-called FinTech firms develop products and services that promise not only great costs savings and efficiency gains, but that also threaten to eliminate century-old functions of traditional banks by digitizing and automating products and operations. And more than that, many of the technological developments allow new forms of customer-to-business interactions, new financial products, and new ways to analyze data. The course has two main objectives. First, it will introduce students to the emerging field of FinTech. We focus on two main technological innovations, blockchain technology and machine learning (which relates to artificial intelligence), that facilitate this transformation and that these FinTechs use. We will study the process of founding and financing of a FinTech startup. The second objective is to give students the opportunity to develop a viable FinTech product idea, based on a thorough analysis of the business models of two to three successful FinTech firms.

An introduction to the main systems of East Asian philosophy, including Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and Neo-Confucianism; the challenge of Western thought; the development of modern East Asian Philosophy.

An introduction to the main philosophical traditions of South Asia, focusing on their historical development and treatment of topics such as devotion, duty, ethics, consciousness, selfhood, suffering, meditation, enlightenment, knowledge, and reality. Readings may include the early Rig Veda, the Upanishads, early Buddhist thought, Jainism, Samkhya-Yoga Philosophy, and Classical Vedanta, among others.

Through a part-time, unpaid internship (150 hours), students apply the knowledge and skills gained through previous coursework in political science. Participants will develop skill sets through a professional setting combined with class meetings that include workshops, writing, oral presentations, reading and reflection. Placements are made in both the public and private sectors, such as local or regional government offices, law firms, civil society organizations or non-profit agencies.

Normally, the 150 hours will be completed by attending the work placement one full day each week from September to April. Students must confirm internship arrangements well in advance and secure departmental approval for their internship position prior to the start of term. Students will be admitted to through an online application.

In this class we will review key findings from cognitive development, cognitive psychology, and educational psychology that have implications for the development of learning experience inside and outside the classroom.

In this course we examine the intersection of material practices and senses in South Asian Islamic rituals in how religious worlds are experienced. The course also focuses on the role of ritual and material culture in shaping South Asian Muslim identities (Sunni, Shiʿi, Sufi).

This seminar introduces advanced undergraduate students to the history, genealogies, theories, and methods that have shaped the academic study of Islam and Muslims in the discipline of religious studies.

In discussions about Indigenous Peoples and law, the Indian Act is one of the most cited pieces of Canadian legislation. From explaining the history of residential schooling to violence against Indigenous womxn, critical and Indigenous scholars turn to the Indian Act as a key source and problem space. We will center the work of Indigenous feminist scholarship to understand why scholars argue that the act is still both required and a site of contestation, violence, and genocide, and how we are each affected by its governance.

This course focuses on the legal construction of international borders, with an emphasis on human rights. The course investigates a range of issues, including but not limited to, the 1951 Refugee Convention and refugee movements, the limits of citizenship rights, and the merging of criminal justice and migration enforcement, including the use of detention as a migration management tool.

Study of traditional topics of Spanish grammar from a linguistic perspective with the goal of improving students’ knowledge and usage of Spanish grammar and language understanding in general. Topics include (but are not limited to): word order variation patterns, subject types, the verbal system, and the Spanish copulas. This course employs a cross-linguistic approach, as some of these topics are discussed from a comparative perspective. This course is taught in Spanish.

This course covers probability including its role in statistical and computational modeling. Topics include classical and computational perspectives on cumulative, mass and distribution functions, random variables, expectation, limiting results, the normal distribution. Computational topics include generating and sampling random numbers, combinatorial objects and probability functions for simulation and statistical analysis. Additional techniques include resampling, hypothesis testing, model fit and cross validation.

This course engages with feminist theories of embodiment to explore the body’s intersections with gender and technology. Drawing on the interdisciplinary fields of feminist studies, science and technology studies and disability studies, it explores a range of technological and scientific policies and processes that shape and affect bodies in transnational contexts.

Sustainability considers humanity’s relationship to the environment. It reflects on a feminist politic of care and the specific ways people are affected along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship. It explores how feminist scholarship seeks to direct policy change and respond to ecological and climatic crises.

This course introduces students to LGBTIQ themed films and visual culture from Africa and the diaspora. It analyzes gender and sexuality from the perspective of black/African filmmakers, visual artists, and theorists.

Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) analyzes how society, culture, education, and intersectional power relationships shape women’s lives and their career choices and studies the underlying gendered issues in these professions.

What is the relationship between aesthetic form and sexuality? Drawing on theories and methods from feminist and sexuality studies, this course engages this question to understand the emergence of queer aesthetics as a response to social and political crisis, whilst comprehending how LGBTIQ+ artists create livable worlds by imagining otherwise.

This course provides students with an understanding of how Black Feminist Performance is read, interpreted and experienced in popular culture and everyday life. The course focuses on texts and cultural work produced by feminist scholars, critics and artists who engage with race, gender and sexuality across multiple sites.

This course challenges the notion of the archives as institutions and repositories of historical truths. It develops students’ archival analytical skills using critical feminist intersectional, decolonial, diasporic, and queer approaches. Students learn to reimagine and rethink archival spaces.

Examines conventions and standard practices when scientists write for other scientists in academic science journals, in conference and poster presentations, and in grant applications. This course focuses on presenting primary and secondary research. Humanities and social science students will gain specialized skills in technical writing and editing. Science students will learn the writing practices expected in professional labs and research groups. Students will present an article-length paper presenting primary research findings and a conference poster presenting the same findings to a scientific audience.

This course examines speculative non-fiction and explores ways writers communicate about research, projections, and plans for humanity’s future. Students will consider how writing and other cultural forms act not only as “products” of science and reportage but as tools of knowledge-making. Students will produce portfolios that respond to and add to the literature of speculative non-fiction.