This course introduces the Environmental Studies major and the interdisciplinary study of the environment through a team-teaching format. Students will explore both physical and social science perspectives on the environment, sustainability, environmental problems and their solutions. Emphasis will be on critical thinking, problem solving, and experiential learning.

Introduces students to the geography of Indigenous-Crown-Land relations in Canada. Beginning with pre-European contact and the historic Nation-to-Nation relationship, the course will survey major research inquiries from the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Students will learn how ongoing land and treaty violations impact Indigenous peoples, settler society, and the land in Canada.

Same as GGRB18H3

In this course students will learn about sustainability thinking, its key concepts, historical development and applications to current environmental challenges. More specifically, students will gain a better understanding of the complexity of values, knowledge, and problem framings that sustainability practice engages with through a focused interdisciplinary study of land. This is a required course for the Certificate in Sustainability, a certificate available to any student at UTSC.

Same as VPHB69H3.

Addressing the climate crisis is a profound challenge for society. This course explores climate change and what people are doing about it. This course emphasizes the human dimensions of the climate crisis. It introduces students to potential solutions, ethical and justice considerations, climate change policies and politics, and barriers standing in the way of effective action. With an emphasis on potential solutions, students will learn how society can eliminate greenhouse gas emissions through potential climate change mitigation actions and about adaptation actions that can help reduce the impacts of climate change on humans. This course is intended for students from all backgrounds interested in understanding the human dimensions of the climate crisis and developing their ability to explain potential solutions.

This course provides a conceptual and qualitative overview of climate science and a discussion of climate science misinformation. The course is intended to be accessible to arts and humanities students seeking to better understand and gain fluency in the physical science basis of climate change. Major topics will include the Earth’s climate system, reconstruction of past climates, factors that impact the Earth’s climate, climate measurements and models, and future climate change scenarios.

This course is intended for students who would like to apply theoretical principles of environmental sustainability learned in other courses to real world problems. Students will identify a problem of interest related either to campus sustainability, a local NGO, or municipal, provincial, or federal government. Class meetings will consist of group discussions investigating key issues, potential solutions, and logistical matters to be considered for the implementation of proposed solutions. Students who choose campus issues will also have the potential to actually implement their solutions. Grades will be based on participation in class discussions, as well as a final report and presentation.

Same as EESC34H3

In this course students will engage critically, practically and creatively with environmental controversies and urgent environmental issues from the standpoint of the sociology of science and technology (STS). This course will contribute to a better understanding of the social and political construction of environmental science and technology.

Most environmental issues have many sides including scientific, social, cultural, ethical, political, and economic. Current national, regional and local problems will be discussed in class to help students critically analyze the roots of the problems and possible approaches to decision-making in a context of pluralism and complexity.

This course will address energy systems and policy, focusing on opportunities and constraints for sustainable energy transitions. The course introduces energy systems, including how energy is used in society, decarbonization pathways for energy, and the social and political challenges of transitioning to zero carbon and resilient energy systems. Drawing on real-world case studies, students will learn about energy sources, end uses, technologies, institutions, politics, policy tools and the social and ecological impacts of energy. Students will learn integrated and interdisciplinary approaches to energy systems analysis and gain skills in imagining and planning sustainable energy futures.

“The Anthropocene” is a term that now frames wide-ranging scientific and cultural debates and research, surrounding how humans have fundamentally altered Earth’s biotic and abiotic environment. This course explores the scientific basis of the Anthropocene, with a focus on how anthropogenic alterations to Earth’s atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere, have shifted Earth into a novel geological epoch. Students in this course will also discuss and debate how accepting the Anthropocene hypothesis, entails a fundamental shift in how humans view and manage the natural world.
Same as EESC38H3

Addressing the climate crisis requires designing and implementing effective climate change mitigation targets, strategies, policies and actions to eliminate human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. In this course, students will learn the various technical methods required in climate change mitigation. Students will explore the opportunities, barriers, and tools that exist to implement effective climate change mitigation in the energy, industry, waste, and agriculture, forestry and land-use sectors. The emphasis of the course is on the technical methods that climate change mitigation experts require.

Students will select a research problem in an area of special interest. Supervision will be provided by a faculty member with active research in geography, ecology, natural resource management, environmental biology, or geosciences as represented within the departments. Project implementation, project monitoring and evaluation will form the core elements for this course.
Same as EESD16H3

This course is designed to provide a strong interdisciplinary focus on specific environmental problems including the socioeconomic context in which environmental issues are resolved. The cohort capstone course is in 2 consecutive semesters, providing final year students the opportunity to work in a team, as environmental researchers and consultants, combining knowledge and skill-sets acquired in earlier courses. Group research to local environmental problems and exposure to critical environmental policy issues will be the focal point of the course. Students will attend preliminary meetings schedules in the Fall semester.
Same as EESD17Y3

This course will be organized around the DPES seminar series, presenting guest lecturers around interdisciplinary environmental themes. Students will analyze major environmental themes and prepare presentations for in-class debate.
Same as EESD18H3

A practical introduction to the concept of 'risk' as utilized in environmental decision-making. Students are introduced to risk analysis and assessment procedures as applied in business, government, and civil society. Three modules take students from relatively simple determinations of risk (e.g., infrastructure flooding) towards more complex, real-world, inclusive considerations (e.g., ecosystem impacts of climate change).

Climate change affects all sectors of society, natural ecosystems, and future generations. Addressing climate change, either in terms of mitigation or adaptation, is complex due to its pervasive scope, the heterogeneity of its impacts and the uneven distribution of responsibilities, resources and capacities to respond to it between different levels of government, stakeholder groups, and rightholder groups. This course focuses on nexus approaches in climate policy development and assessment across different public policy domains. In this course, students will learn about how different levels of government frame climate change and climate policy objectives, how they interact with stakeholders (e.g., economic interests and environmental groups) and rightholders (Indigenous people), and how to approach complexity in climate governance.

An introduction to the critical study of cinema, including films from a broad range of genres, countries, and eras, as well as readings representing the major critical approaches to cinema that have developed over the past century.

In this course, students will learn to write critically about movies. We will watch movies and read film criticism, learning to write about film for various audiences and purposes. Forms of writing covered will include movie reviews, blogs, analytical essays, and research-based essays. This is a writing-intensive course that will include revision and peer review. Students will learn how to write academic essays about movies, while also learning about the goals and tools for writing about film for other audiences and venues.

An investigation of film genres such as melodrama, film noir, and the western from 1895 to the present alongside examples of twentieth-century prose and poetry. We will look at the creation of an ideological space and of new mythologies that helped organize the experience of modern life.

An introduction to cinema’s relationship to colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonialism. How has film constructed, perpetuated, and challenged colonial logic? We will explore this question by examining colonial cinema, ethnography, Hollywood genres, anti-colonial film, and postcolonial film practices.

This course examines representations of race in cinema, focusing on methods for analyzing the role of race in the politics and aesthetics of various cinematic modes. Topics may include: ideology, stereotypes, representation, dominant and counter-cinemas, cultural hegemony, and popular culture. Contemporary and classic films will be studied through the lens of race and representation.

A study of the relation between self and other in narrative fiction. This course will examine three approaches to the self-other relation: the moral relation, the epistemological relation, and the functional relation. Examples will be chosen to reflect engagements with gendered others, with historical others, with generational others, and with cultural and national others.

An exploration of the relationship between written literature and film and television. What happens when literature influences film and vice versa, and when literary works are recast as visual media (including the effects of rewriting, reproduction, adaptation, serialization and sequelization)?

This course will look at the depiction of childhood and youth in contemporary film and television, especially focusing on films that feature exceptional, difficult, or magical children. The course will explore how popular culture represents children and teens, and how these films reflect cultural anxieties about parenting, childhood, technology, reproduction, disability and generational change. Films and television shows may include: Mommy, The Babadook, Boyhood, Girlhood, A Quiet Place, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Shining, Looper, Elephant, Ready Player One, Stranger Things, Chappie, Take Shelter, and Moonlight.

An exploration of negative utopias and post-apocalyptic worlds in film and literature. The course will draw from novels such as 1984, Brave New World, Clockwork Orange, and Oryx and Crake, and films such as Metropolis, Mad Max, Brazil, and The Matrix. Why do we find stories about the world gone wrong so compelling?

This is a course on the nation as a framework for film analysis. The topic will be the cinema of a single nation, or a comparison of two or more national cinemas, explored from several perspectives: social, political, and aesthetic. The course will look at how national cinema is shaped by and in turn shapes the cultural heritage of a nation. The course will also consider how changing definitions of national cinema in Film Studies have shaped how we understand film history and global film culture.

A variable theme course that will feature different theoretical approaches to Cinema: feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and semiotic. Thematic clusters include "Madness in Cinema," and "Films on Films."

A study of Non-Western films. This course analyzes a selection of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern films both on their own terms and against the backdrop of issues of colonialism and globalization.

This course introduces students to cinema by, and about, immigrants, refugees, migrants, and exiles. Using a comparative world cinema approach, the course explores how the aesthetics and politics of the cinema of migration challenge theories of regional, transnational, diasporic, and global cinemas.

An introduction to the major theorists and schools of thought in the history of film theory, from the early 20th century to our contemporary moment. What is our relationship to the screen? How do movies affect our self-image? How can we think about the power and politics of the moving image? We will think about these questions and others by watching movies in conjunction with theoretical texts touching on the major approaches to film theory over the last century.