Historical and Cultural Studies


For more information, visit the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies website.

The courses identified below are offered for Historical and Cultural Studies.

Experiential Learning and Outreach

For a community-based experiential learning opportunity in your academic field of interest, consider the course CTLB03H3, which can be found in the Teaching and Learning section of the Calendar.

Historical and Cultural Studies Courses

HCSC01H3 - Experiential Learning in Historical and Cultural Studies

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.

Prerequisite: Students must be in Year 3 or 4 of their studies, and enrolled in an HCS subject POSt, and must have completed 3.0 credits of their HCS program
Exclusion: CTLB03H3, WSTC23H3
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

HCSD05H3 - Intellectual Property in Arts and Humanities

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.

Prerequisite: Any 2.0 credits; and an additional 2.0 credits at the C-level in ACM, Language Studies, HCS, ENG and PHL
Enrolment Limits: 30
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

HISB05H3 - History of Information for a Digital Age

This course provides a general introduction to digital methods in History through the study of the rise of information as a concept and a technology. Topics include the history of information theory, the rise of digital media, and, especially, the implications of digital media, text processing, and artificial intelligence for historical knowledge. Using simple tools, students learn to encode texts as data structures and transform those structures programmatically.

Exclusion: DHU235H1
Recommended Preparation: 0.5 credit at the A or B-level in CLA, FST, GAS, HIS or WST courses
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

HISB22H3 - Histories of Black Feminism Canada: From ‘Runaway Slaves’ to #BlackLivesMatter

This introductory survey course connects the rich histories of Black radical women’s acts, deeds, and words in Canada. It traces the lives and political thought of Black women and gender-non-conforming people who refused and fled enslavement, took part in individual and collective struggles against segregated labour, education, and immigration practices; providing a historical context for the emergence of the contemporary queer-led #BlackLivesMatter movement. Students will be introduced, through histories of activism, resistance, and refusal, to multiple concepts and currents in Black feminist studies. This includes, for example, theories of power, race, and gender, transnational/diasporic Black feminisms, Black-Indigenous solidarities, abolition and decolonization. Students will participate in experiential learning and engage an interdisciplinary array of key texts and readings including primary and secondary sources, oral histories, and online archives.


Same as WSTB22H3
Canadian Area


Prerequisite: 1.0 credit at the A-level in any Humanities or Social Science courses
Exclusion: WSTB22H3, WGS340H5
Recommended Preparation: WSTA01H3 or WSTA03H3
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies
Course Experience: University-Based Experience

HISC07H3 - Data, Text, and the Future of the Past

This course prepares students to work in the field of digital history. We focus on the development of concrete skills in spatial and visual analysis; web technologies including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Components; and multi-media authoring. Each year, we choose a different thematic focus and use techniques of digital history to explore it. Students completing this class will acquire skills that qualify them to participate in ongoing Digital History and Digital Humanities projects run by department faculty, as well as to initiate their own research projects.

Prerequisite: HISB05H3
Exclusion: HIS355H1, HISC06H3
Recommended Preparation: 0.5 credit at the A or B-level in CLA, FST, GAS, HIS or WST courses
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

HISD33H3 - Black Reconstruction: W.E.B. DuBois, African American History, and the Politics of the Past

This course focuses on three interrelated themes. First, it explores the social and political history of Reconstruction (1865 to 1877) when questions of power, citizenship, and democracy were fiercely contested. Second, it considers W.E.B. Du Bois’s magnum opus, Black Reconstruction, a book that not only rebutted dominant characterizations of this period but anticipated future generations of scholarship by placing African American agency at the centre of both Civil War and Reconstruction history, developed the idea of racial capitalism as an explanatory concept, and made a powerful argument about race and democracy in the USA. Third, the course looks at the politics of historical writing and knowledge in the past and today.

Prerequisite: Any 8.0 credits, including: HISB03H3 and [0.5 credit at the A- or B-level in HIS courses] and [0.5 credit at the C-level in HIS courses]
Recommended Preparation: HISB30H3, HISB31H3
Enrolment Limits: 14
Breadth Requirements: History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

HISD69H3 - Sufis and Desert Fathers: Mysticism in Late Antiquity and Early Islam

This course is an introduction to mystical/ascetic beliefs and practices in late antiquity and early Islam. Often taken as an offshoot of or alternative to “orthodox” representations of Christianity and Islam, mysticism provides a unique look into the ways in which these religions were experienced by its adherents on a more popular, often non-scholarly, “unorthodox” basis throughout centuries. In this class we will examine mysticism in late antiquity and early Islam through the literature, arts, music, and dance that it inspired.

The first half of the term will be devoted to the historical study of mysticism, its origins, its most well-known early practitioners, and the phases of its institutionalization in early Christianity and early Islam; the second part will look into the beliefs and practices of mystics, the literature they produced, the popular expressions of religion they generated, and their effects in the modern world. This study of mysticism will also provide a window for contemporary students of religion to examine the devotional practices of unprivileged members of the late antiquity religious communities, women and slaves in particular.

Same as CLAD69H3.

Prerequisite: Any 8.0 credits, including: [0.5 credit at the A- or B-level in CLA or HIS courses] and [0.5 credit at the C-level in CLA or HIS courses]
Exclusion: CLAD69H3
Recommended Preparation: CLAB06H3/HISB11H3, CLAB09H3/HISB09H3
Enrolment Limits: 15
Breadth Requirements: Arts, Literature and Language

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