This seminar will expose students to advanced subject matter and research methods in Food Studies. Each seminar will explore a selected topic.

This course introduces students to a range of writing about food and culture, exposing them to different genres and disciplines, and assisting them to experiment with and develop their own prose. The course is designed as a capstone offering in Food Studies, and as such, asks students to draw on their own expertise and awareness of food as a cultural vehicle to write in a compelling way about social dynamics, historical meaning, and - drawing specifically on the Scarborough experience - the diasporic imaginary.

This course combines elements of a practicum with theoretical approaches to the study and understanding of the place of food in visual culture. It aims to equip students with basic to intermediate-level skills in still photography, post-processing, videography, and editing. It also seeks to further their understanding of the ways in which scholars have thought and written about food and the visual image, with special emphasis on the “digital age” of the last thirty years.

This course examines the central place of cuisine and ecology to cultures around the world, with a focus on community growing, home cooking, food preservation, and experiences of gardens, restaurants, kitchens and marketplaces. Learning methods include oral interviews, field trips, sensory tasting and cooking sessions, multi-media experiential learning, as well as critical reading and writing.

Experiential learning in Food Studies is critical for understanding the complexities of the global food system. This course provides exciting and inspiring experiential learning opportunities with food innovators across Canada and internationally. The course entails a 7-10-day field camp with destinations potentially changing yearly, that prioritizes innovative production methods, agroecological understanding, food cultures and communication, and taste analysis.

This course introduces Global Asia Studies through studying historical and political perspectives on Asia. Students will learn how to critically analyze major historical texts and events to better understand important cultural, political, and social phenomena involving Asia and the world. They will engage in intensive reading and writing for humanities.
Same as HISA06H3

This course introduces Global Asia Studies through the study of cultural and social institutions in Asia. Students will critically study important elements of culture and society over different periods of history and in different parts of Asia. They will engage in intensive reading and writing for humanities.

This course examines the role of technological and cultural networks in mediating and facilitating the social, economic and political processes of globalization. Key themes include imperialism, militarization, global political economy, activism, and emerging media technologies. Particular attention is paid to cultures of media production and reception outside of North America.
Same as MDSB32H3/(MDSB05H3)

What are marriage and love in South Asia? What do we understand about South Asian societies by studying about marriage, love, and sexuality? In South Asia, marriage is classically understood as an alliance between families or social groups for economic and political reasons, and as an instrument for maintaining a particular normative social order and perpetuating certain hierarchies. Marriage is seen as an institution which legitimizes sex and engineers social/biological reproduction. It is also placed within the private domain of society. However, recent studies on marriage show how, in this era of globalization, mobility, the notions of love, marriage and sexuality intersect with larger political, social, legal and global structures, on the one hand, and notions of gender, class, caste, morality, and modernity on the other. In these ever-changing global South Asian societies, ‘alternative’ and ‘non-normative’ conjugal relationships, love, and sexuality have been seen as part of the globalization and modernizing process. Through this course, we will critically analyse such claims and examine how love, marriage sexuality and kinships are constructed, shaped, governed and constituted politically, culturally, legally, and ideologically. How do the larger structures such as state, legal institutions, colonialism and globalisation, migration processes, class and caste configurations, gender formations, and new communication/visual technologies shape the everyday life of people by entering their private domains through the notions of love, and marriage? Moreover, by studying marriage, kinship and love in South Asia, we critically examine and unpack the dualistic ideas of private vs public, individual vs community, global vs local, modern vs traditional, change vs stagnation, and ‘normative’ vs ‘non-normative’ in South Asian societies.

The course will provide students with an introduction to the arts of South Asia, from classical to modern, and from local to global. Fields of study may include music, dance, drama, literature, film, graphic arts, decorative arts, magic, yoga, athletics, and cuisine, fields viewed as important arts for this society.

This course examines the role of gender in shaping social institutions in Asia.

This course examines the close relationship between religions and cultures, and the role they play in shaping the worldviews, aesthetics, ethical norms, and other social ideals in Asian countries and societies.

This course examines the global spread of different versions of Buddhism across historical and contemporary societies.

This course surveys central issues in the ethnographic study of contemporary South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). Students will engage with classical and recent ethnographies to critically examine key thematic fault lines within national imaginations, especially along the lines of religion, caste, gender, ethnicity, and language. Not only does the course demonstrate how these fault lines continually shape the nature of nationalism, state institutions, development, social movements, violence, and militarism across the colonial and post-colonial periods but also, demonstrates how anthropological knowledge and ethnography provide us with a critical lens for exploring the most pressing issues facing South Asia in the world today.

Same as ANTB42H3

Why does Southern Asia’s pre-colonial history matter? Using materials that illustrate the connected worlds of Central Asia, South Asia and the Indian Ocean rim, we will query conventional histories of Asia in the time of European expansion.
Same as HISB53H3

A survey of South Asian history. The course explores diverse and exciting elements of this long history, such as politics, religion, trade, literature, and the arts, keeping in mind South Asia's global and diasporic connections.
Same as HISB57H3

This course provides an overview of the historical changes and continuities of the major cultural, economic, political, and social institutions and practices in modern Chinese history.
Same as HISB58H3

A survey of the art of China, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia. We will examine a wide range of artistic production, including ritual objects, painting, calligraphy, architectural monuments, textile, and prints. Special attention will be given to social contexts, belief systems, and interregional exchanges.
Same as VPHB73H3

An introduction to modern Asian art through domestic, regional, and international exhibitions. Students will study the multilayered new developments of art and art institutions in China, Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as explore key issues such as colonial modernity, translingual practices, and multiple modernism.
Same as VPHB77H3

Using the experience of the Tamil diaspora as a case study, this course examines how ideas of home, identity, gender, politics, belonging, kinship and citizenship are transformed by migration and globalization. Tamil mobility has a long history. It has been shaped by colonial and post-colonial forces, war, labor and global business markets. What are the lived experiences of transnational/refugee families of Tamil communities? How is Tamil romance, marriage and intimacy actualized across national borders? How has mobility shaped Tamil politics, ideas of belonging and home? Through these questions about lived experience and drawing on ethnography fiction, and film, the course will explore debates about race, migration and diaspora, exile and nationalism, gender and immigration regimes. Prior knowledge of Tamil is not required.

This course offers students a critical and analytical perspective on issues of gender history, equity, discrimination, resistance, and struggle facing societies in East and South Asia and their diasporas.

This course critically examines different aspects of Buddhism in global context.

This course examines the complex and dynamic interplay of media and politics in contemporary China, and the role of the government in this process.
Same as MDSC32H3/(MDSC40H3)

This course introduces students to media industries and commercial popular cultural forms in East Asia. Topics include reality TV, TV dramas, anime, and manga as well as issues such as regional cultural flows, global impact of Asian popular culture, and the localization of global media in East Asia.
Same as MDSC14H3/(MDSC41H3)

This course offers students a critical perspective on film and popular cultures in South Asia. Topics include Bombay, Tamil, and other regional filmic industries, their history, production, and distribution strategies, their themes and musical genres, and a critical look at the larger social and political meanings of these filmic cultures.

This course explores the development of colonialism, modernity, and nationalism in modern Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan. Key issues include sexuality, race, medicine, mass media, and consumption.

This course offers students a critical perspective on film and popular cultures in East Asia. The course examines East Asian filmic industries, and the role they play in shaping worldviews, aesthetics, ethical norms, folk beliefs, and other socio-cultural aspects in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

This course examines the history of South Asia's partition in 1947, in the process of decolonization, into the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. Major course themes include nationalism, violence, and memory. Students will read historical scholarship on this topic and also engage with literature, film, oral histories, and photography. Partitioning lands and peoples is an old colonial technology of rule. Why did it become such a compelling solution to the problems of group conflict in the Indian subcontinent and beyond in the twentieth century even after 1947? How did the emergence of different ideas of nationalism – Indian, Pakistani, Hindu, Islamic, and beyond – contribute to this? Why was the Partition of India so violent? What happened to the people who were displaced at the time of Partition? How has the Partition been remembered and narrated and how does it continue to echo through national and regional politics? Beyond the subcontinent's partition into India and Pakistan, the course will introduce comparative case studies of Burma and Sri Lanka, among others.

An introduction to the distinctive East Asian legal tradition shared by China, Japan, and Korea through readings about selected thematic issues. Students will learn to appreciate critically the cultural, political, social, and economic causes and effects of East Asian legal cultures and practices.
Same as HISC56H3

This course addresses literary, historical, ethnographic, and filmic representations of the political economy of China and the Indian subcontinent from the early 19th century to the present day. We will look at such topics as the role and imagination of the colonial-era opium trade that bound together India, China and Britain in the 19th century, anticolonial conceptions of the Indian and Chinese economies, representations of national physical health, as well as critiques of mass-consumption and capitalism in the era of the ‘liberalization’ and India and China’s rise as major world economies. Students will acquire a grounding in these subjects from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.

Same as HISC51H3