Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this seminar is devoted to analysis and discussion of advanced theoretical and methodological issues in Environmental Geography. Specific content will vary from year to year. Seminar format with active student participation.
Area of focus: Environmental Geography

How do gender relations shape different spaces? We will explore how feminist geographers have approached these questions from a variety of scales - from the home, to the body, to the classroom, to the city, to the nation, drawing on the work of feminist geographers.
Area of focus: Social/Cultural Geography

Examines links between health and human sexuality. Particularly explores sexually transmitted infections. Attention will be given to the socially and therefore spatially constructed nature of sexuality. Other themes include sexual violence, masculinities and health, reproductive health, and transnational relationships and health. Examples will be taken from a variety of countries.
Area of focus: Social/Cultural Geography

Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this reading-intensive seminar course develops analytical and methodological skills in socio-spatial analysis. We explore major theoretical/methodological traditions in geography including positivism, humanism, Marxism, and feminism, and major analytical categories such as place, scale, and networks. Particularly recommended for students intending to apply to graduate school.

Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this seminar is devoted to analysis and discussion of current theoretical and methodological issues in human geography. This course is an unique opportunity to explore a particular topic in-depth, the specific content will vary from year to year. Seminar format with active student participation.

This course focuses on the practice of ethnography in geographic research and allows students to design and conduct their own ethnographic research projects. Utilizing various approaches in geographic scholarship, in the first part of the course students will learn about ethnographic research methods and methodologies and finalize their research proposals. In the second part, they will carry out their research under the supervision of the course director and with support from their peers. Course assignments will assist each student throughout their research design, ethics approval, ethnography, and writing a final paper. Course meetings will be conducted in a seminar format.

Examines links between politics of difference, social justice and cities. Covers theories of social justice and difference with a particular emphasis placed on understanding how contemporary capitalism exacerbates urban inequalities and how urban struggles such as Occupy Wall Street seek to address discontents of urban dispossession. Examples of urban social struggles will be drawn from global North and South.
Areas of focus: Urban or Social/Cultural Geography

How do sex and gender norms take and shape place? To examine this question, we will explore selected queer and trans scholarship, with a particular emphasis on queer scholars of colour and queer postcolonial literatures. Course topics include LGBTQ2S lives and movements, cities and sexualities, cross-border migration flows, reproductive justice, and policing and incarceration.

As major engines of the global economy, cities are also concentrated sites of work and employment. Popular and political understandings about what constitutes "fair" and "decent" work, meanwhile, are currently facing profound challenges. From the rise of platformed gig work to the rising cost of living in many cities – this course introduces students to approaches within Geography that help to conceptualize what "work" is, and to major forces shaping the laboured landscapes of cities, with a focus on the Greater Toronto Area. In this course students will get the opportunity to explore the varied forms of production and reproduction that make the GTA function and thrive, and to develop a vocabulary and critical lens to identify the geographies of different kinds of work and employment relations. Students will also have the chance to develop labour market research skills, and to critically examine the forms of work they themselves undertake every day.

Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this seminar is devoted to analysis and discussion of current theoretical and methodological issues in urban geography. Specific content will vary from year to year. Seminar format with active student participation.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

Students will design, manage and complete a research project using GIS. Students will work in teams of 4-6 to pose a research question, acquire a dataset, and organize and analyze the data to answer their question. The course will teach research design, project management, data analysis, team work, and presentation of final results.

Independent research extension to one of the courses already completed in Human Geography. Enrolment requires written permission from a faculty supervisor and Associate Chair, Human Geography. Only open to students who have completed 13.0 credits and who are enrolled in the Human Geography Major, Human and Physical Geography Major programs, or Minor Program in GIS sponsored by the Department of Human Geography.

This course explores various ways of making claims to possess or use land by first unsettling commonsense ideas about ownership and then tracing these through examples of classed, gendered and racialized property regimes. Through this exploration, the course shows that claims to land are historically and geographically specific, and structured by colonialism, and capitalism. Informed by a feminist interpretation of “conflict,” we look at microprocesses that scale up to largescale transformations in how land is lived. We end by engaging with Black and Indigenous epistemologies regarding how land might be differently cared for and occupied. 
Areas of focus: Environmental or Social/Cultural Geography

Whether corporate, not for profit or governmental, modern organizations require leaders who are willing to take on complex challenges and work with a global community. Effective leaders must learn how to consider and recognize diverse motivations, behaviours, and perspectives across teams and networks. Building upon content learned in GLB201H5 and focusing on applications and real-life case studies; this course will provide students with knowledge and skills to become global leaders of the future. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to adapt culturally sensitive communication, motivation and negotiation techniques, preparing them to apply new principled, inclusive, and appreciative approaches to the practice of global leadership. In preparation for GLB401Y1, this course will include group-based activities in which students collaborate on current issues of global importance. An experiential learning component will help develop skills through interactions with guest lecturers and community partners. Community partners will present real-world global leadership problems to the class, which students will work to analyze and solve. At the end of the term, students will meet in person for final group presentations to deliver key solutions to community partners. This course will be delivered primarily online through synchronous/asynchronous delivery, with specific in-person activities scheduled throughout the course.

How – and why – do societies remember? How do institutions like museums and archives work, and how do they connect to their political, social, and cultural environments? What is the relationship between memory, knowledge and power? This course examines the ways in which groups conserve, commemorate, and contest memories, as well as the roles played by institutions and professional practices, political and social factors, and community stakeholders in their development. Students will explore key methodological and conceptual frameworks, meet practitioners in the field, and develop original research in collaboration with community partners.

What do ‘things’ tell us about the society that made them? This is a fundamental question for historians, anthropologists, and anyone studying social or cultural issues. By interpreting the material evidence produced – from monuments and buildings to everyday items or images – we find clues about how a society thinks, works, lives, and presents itself. This course will teach you how to recognise and interpret the ‘stuff’ that societies have made as a way of understanding those societies. It will introduce you to a range of examples of material evidence produced in different time periods and how this is studied by different disciplines. You will interact with ‘things’ and develop your critical, analytical, and communication skills.

This course prepares students to actively use a wide variety of research methods in the Humanities. Students will develop hands-on skills in key methods and interpretive perspectives, cultivating skills and knowledge applicable to their future research and professional lives. These will include textual, visual, and material analysis; digital humanities methods; community-engaged research; feminist research methods; archival research; and oral interviewing methods. The course also specifically prepares students to contribute to faculty-led research projects.

This course offers students the opportunity to collaborate in ongoing faculty research in Historical and Cultural Studies. Working alongside faculty mentors, students will engage hands-on with key methods and interpretive perspectives, and contribute directly to project outcomes. In the process, they will cultivate skills and knowledge applicable to their future research and professional lives.

In this experiential learning course, students will have opportunities to apply their HCS program-specific knowledge and skills, develop learning, technology and/or transferable competencies, and serve the GTA community. This experience will allow students to meaningfully contribute to and support projects and activities that address community needs by completing a placement at a community organization.

The course provides an introduction to Canada’s intellectual property (IP) systems, copyright, patent, trademark and confidential information. Topics include use, re-use and creation of IP, the impact of the digital environment, the national implication of international agreements and treaties and information policy development.

The course investigates licit and illicit drugs over time and place to reveal shifts in how they have been used, understood, controlled, and represented. Zooming in and out on specific drugs in specific historical contexts, we will look at how they have played a role in religious ceremonies, imperial struggles, criminal enterprises, medical treatments, cultural movements, and attempts at consciousness expansion.

We live in a world that has been profoundly altered by technology. Our homes, our work, our relationships, even our bodies all give evidence of our complex historical and cultural relationship with the tools we use. In this course, we examine how technology makes our world by studying pivotal moments in which technology has deeply transformed economic, social, and cultural relationships. We end by considering some of the ways in which contemporary technology is changing how we think and act. Students will explore theories of technological change and apply them to historical and cultural analysis, including an examination of their own experience. We pay particular attention to the ways that information technology both enable and constrain our work as investigators of historical and cultural phenomena, and we make extensive use of tools from the digital humanities to enhance our understanding and abilities.

For those who reside east of it, the Middle East is generally known as West Asia. By reframing the Middle East as West Asia, this course will explore the region’s modern social, cultural, and intellectual history as an outcome of vibrant exchange with non-European world regions like Asia. It will foreground how travel and the movement fundamentally shape modern ideas. Core themes of the course such as colonialism and decolonization, Arab nationalism, religion and identity, and feminist thought will be explored using primary sources (in translation). Knowledge of Arabic is not required.

Africa and Asia Area

An introduction to history that focuses on a particular theme in world history, which will change from year to year. Themes may include migration; empires; cultural encounters; history and film; global cities.

An introduction to history that focuses on a particular theme in world history, which will change from year to year. Themes may include migration; empires; cultural encounters; history and film; global cities.

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 GASA01H3

Africa and Asia Area

An introduction to the main features of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean world from the development of agriculture to the spread of Islam. Long term socio-economic and cultural continuities and ruptures will be underlined, while a certain attention will be dedicated to evidences and disciplinary issues.
Same as CLAA04H3
0.50 pre-1800 credit
Ancient World Area

This course explores the rise of capitalism – understood not simply as an economic system but as a political and cultural one as well – from roughly the 14th century to the present day. It aims to acquaint students with many of the more important socio-economic changes of the past seven hundred years and informing the way they think about some of the problems of the present time: globalization, growing disparities of wealth and poverty, and the continuing exploitation of the planet’s natural resources.

The British Empire at one time controlled a quarter of the world's population. This course surveys the nature and scope of British imperialism from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, through its interactions with people and histories of Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and the British Isles.
Transnational Area

Practical training in critical writing and research in History. Through lectures, discussion and workshops, students will learn writing skills (including essay organization, argumentation, documentation and bibliographic style), an introduction to methodologies in history and basic source finding techniques.