Although oriented toward different modes of inquiry, both ARTS 130 and 140 will support instruction in the communication competencies outlined by the Steering Committee for the English Language Competency Initiative (SCELCI) and both support instruction in analytical thinking. This is the approved Undergraduate Calendar text for these courses:
ARTS 130 – Inquiry and Communication
This course provides an introduction to diverse intellectual modes of inquiry in the social sciences and humanities with an emphasis on the development of communication skills. In a small seminar setting, students will explore a variety of topics based on instructor expertise in order to build social awareness, ethical engagement, and communication competencies in comprehension, contextualization, and conceptualization. Students will be expected to engage with the work of others, articulate positions, situate writing and speaking within contexts, practice writing and speaking for situations beyond the classroom, engage in basic forms of research, and workshop, revise, and edit writing.
ARTS 140 – Information and Analysis
This course introduces students to diverse ways of finding, examining, and using data and information in the social sciences and humanities. In a small seminar setting, students will explore a variety of topics based on instructor expertise in order to understand quantitative and qualitative methods of data gathering and build competencies in conceptualizing, contextualizing, and comprehending methods of information analysis. Students will be expected to investigate, use, and assess the presentation of information in their own work and the work of others so that they can better understand the range of social, ethical, and political challenges of our world.
Please also review the ARTS 130 and ARTS 140 learning outcomes.
2020-2021 Course topics
Topics are listed in alphabetical order below, however they are not listed in alphabetical order in Quest.
Winter 2021 - ARTS 130
ARTS 130 – Arts and Science, Science and Art
This course breaks down institutional boundaries and explores the rich and reciprocal connections between the arts and sciences. Given a context of climate change, political upheaval, and resistance towards meaningful interdisciplinary engagement, this course asks students to build bridges between fields and articulate the need for creative collaboration.
Class number: 3912
ARTS 130 – Consent and Commitment
We will explore (sexual) consent and (relationship) commitment as they relate to language, literature, and other media to analyse how these issues affect individual and social power. Students will engage with the language of contemporary relationships, investigate campaigns for consent, and evaluate sex strikes as a means of withholding consent.
Class number: 3916
ARTS 130 – Conspiracy and Fake News
Conspiracy theories are an expression of the social anxieties, fears, and in some instances desires of individuals in their relationship with the modern state and the public sphere. Through an interdisciplinary examination of the role of hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and fake news, both historical and contemporary, we will examine the social and historical reasons that allow these ideas to take hold and seem believable.
Class number: 3904
ARTS 130 – Denial and the Future of Climate Change
What sort of planet will future people inherit? What, if anything, should be do now to protect that inheritance? In this course, we will learn to connect the present and the future.
Class number: 3908, 3909
ARTS 130 – Exploring TechnoFutures
Considering issues that affect our encounters with each other and technology, including race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability, as well as agency, culture, and power, this course encourages students to work together to develop understandings of human communication processes and technocultures to cultivate digital toolkits and languages for public good.Class number: 3975
ARTS 130 – Humans & the Non-Human World
Humans are the animals that have forgotten they are animals. We live in a complex community of diverse species (humans, mammals, birds, insects, plants, and trees), and yet have come to think only of our human selves. This course explores the stories and interconnections between species in a range of contexts.
Class number: 3917, 3918
ARTS 130 – Intersecting Identity and Image
This course asks students to consider the relationship between images and the way that we think about ourselves and each other. How might popular culture and other image-based sources help “mediate” our identities, and what impact might it have on our everyday lives?
Class number: 7761, 9194
ARTS 130 – Just a Game? Sports and Society
Sports have always been important in broader society. This course uses sports to explore larger themes, such as race, gender, postcolonialism, and meaning-making. Using disciplinary lenses from Anthropology, Sociology, History, and more, students will explore the larger implications behind the seemingly simple movement of bodies according to prescribed rules.
Class number: 3915
ARTS 130 – Life Stories
Every human being has a story. This course examines the stories of a diverse array of people. In engaging the narratives of others, we not only expand our horizons, but also consider our own stories, and the contexts in which we live. How does one describe a life? How does knowledge about the lives of others offer insight about our own life?
Class number: 3902
ARTS 130 – Media Cities
How have media and new technologies changed our engagement with each other in the modern city? Has new media made us more disconnected from place and from others? How has the pandemic altered our material and psychological landscapes? Do cities even matter in a time when we can work remotely from anywhere? This course will try to answer some of these questions place our intensified mediated experiences in some historical context.
Class number: 3907
ARTS 130 – Perspectives on Migration
Why are so many people on the move? What are the effects of migrating from one place to another? Are all migrant stories the same?
Class number: 3905, 3906
ARTS 130 – Realizing Reproductive Justice
Reproductive decisions occur within social, cultural, economic, and political structures that shape and limit one’s bodily autonomy. This course examines factors that constrain people’s reproductive freedom and how we can identify and overcome those barriers by employing the human rights approach that is a defining characteristic of reproductive justice.
Class number: 3919
ARTS 130 – Refuse: Canadian Literature in Ruins
In this course we explore how contemporary Canadian literature mirrors radical changes in Canadian culture, establishing new boundaries that reflect current conversations about sexism, racism, and colonialism.
Class number: 3801
ARTS 130 – Technological Utopianism
We will explore narratives and images of large-scale social, economic, cultural, and political transformation (both utopian and dystopian) in which technology is positioned as a key feature or prime mover. A range of genres and forms in media culture may be considered, such as advertising, journalism, digital culture, popular music, film, television, and theme parks.
Class number: 3920
ARTS 130 – The Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds in Video Games
This course will explore the ways in which video games and the cultures of Greece and Rome have been intertwined from the beginning. From using Greek mythology, setting a game during a Roman war, using ancient art as inspirations, or using ancient story telling techniques, video games have always looked to the Classical past.
Class number: 3914
ARTS 130 – The Brain in Popular Culture
Significant findings from research on the brain and nervous system—neuroscience—reach the public imagination in a range of ways: from media pieces (print and radio), to literature to movies. For the uninitiated, it is challenging to sort out the truths contained in the research that spawned the popular representation of them. This course will encourage students to trace popular understandings of how the brain works back to the original sources and vice versa.
Class number: 3911
ARTS 130 – The Cold War ReLIVEd
The year is 1984, governments fall and tensions rise. The world teeters on the edge of oblivion, and it is your turn to act. What do YOU do…? That will be your challenge in this online historical role-play course. The Cold War was a truly global war that still informs our cultural and political realities. Now the past comes alive as you consider often overlooked cultures, genders and races. Taking on these roles will connect you to these people in meaningful and unparalleled ways as you become immersed in their experiences, hopes and fears. Will you give voice to the voiceless or silence your opposition? The goal isn’t just to win, but to engage and improve your communication, research, and teamwork competencies as you study Cold War history in a unique online experience you will never forget!
Class number: 3910
ARTS 130 – The Simple Life
This course will examine the notion of Voluntary Simplicity (VS) as a real and potentially transformative alternative to the prevailing system of globalization and its associated challenges of climate change, economic insecurity and social conflict.
Class number: 3903
ARTS 130 – What Are You Saying? (EMLS)
Note: This section is only open to learners of English as an additional language.
What you say and how you say it is determined by more than just your own ideas. Come explore how social, global, and local influences affect your communication.
Class number: 3800
ARTS 130 – Why Do We Tell Stories?
An introduction to story-telling and telling stories. We will discuss the craft of short fiction, and will then write our own short, and sometimes, flash, fiction. The aim is to give you the necessary skills for appreciation of this art form while encouraging you to write short stories.
Class number: 3913
Winter 2021 - ARTS 140
ARTS 140 – Diasporas and Food Cultures
Over the last two centuries, globalization and the migration of communities have made available a medley of new foods available to the public. This course looks at how diasporas and the movement of cuisine have transformed the global food market and the dietary patterns of people.
Class number: 4044
ARTS 140 – Emotions and Self-Regulation
This course addresses the following questions: How do emotions and our self-regulation strategies affect our academic achievements? How can we use emotions to self-regulate our behaviour? Using scaffolded writing assignments, presentation forums and collaborative group activities, students will carry out a mini-research project on the relationship between emotion and self-regulation.
Class number: 4041, 4042
ARTS 140 – Everyone's a Detective
With ever-present surveillance, online data-mining, and a 24 hour news cycle, it seems like anyone can be a detective. This class also aims to critically examine our cultural imperative for more knowledge, our notions of the criminal/victim, and the scientific discoveries and technological inventions which have our made armchair detecting possible.
Class number: 4040
ARTS 140 – Extractive Industries & Canada
At home and around the world, Canada is a central player in mining, oil, and gas project development. However, these projects are often disruptive to the local community and the environment. In this course, we will work together to explore the roots of these challenges and to consider solutions.
Class number: 3930
ARTS 140 – Fake News and Digital Tools
Can we trust the information that we find online? This course will examine how Digital Humanities tools can be used to help counter the proliferation of fake news. Topics covered will include using diverse sources like social media for academic research, automated data collection, the archived web, and ethics.
Class number: 3934, 3935
ARTS 140 – How the Sausage is Made
We all gotta eat! And yet, we often have very different opinions and views on food. This course will explore topics that include the culture of food markets and marketing, nose-to-tail eating and farm-to-table movements, health and diet claims, food accessibility and insecurity, and the future of food. We will examine various genres that explore food — an examination likely to inspire us to reconsider our own perspectives on how and what we should eat. We will investigate how information, methods of analysis, and communication in food industries and the food sciences, for example, create knowledge (and influence attitudes) about our food. Gaining skills to assess, examine, and evaluate both qualitative and quantitative data, we will be better at determining differences between facts and values regarding food and health claims.
Class number: 3806
ARTS 140 – How to Win a Trade War
Globally, regionally, locally, and individually, people have been engaging in exchange for a very long time. Sharing a small interrelated planet makes cooperation a compelling and enduring practice. Yet globalization is portrayed so dramatically in the media, and power imbalances are rife in economic relationships. This class looks at the irresistible incentives that people and countries have to engage in mutually advantageous trade and how the rules of trade matter to global good outcomes.
Class number: 3921, 3922, 3928
ARTS 140 – Images at Work
An examination of the impact of visual and material culture by introducing the idea that images constitute a complex system. In this section of ARTS 140, our "information" is visual and material culture and our "analysis" involves applying critical theories to our understanding of the visual and material culture.
Class number: 3923
ARTS 140 – Kinds of Minds
This class will examine what it means to have a mind and how we might have to change our traditional conception of a ‘mind-haver’ in philosophy, psychology, theology, and the law if we recognize non-human animal minds and (possibly) machine minds, too.
Class number: 4043
ARTS 140 – Language Learning Truths (EMLS)
Note: This section is only open to learners of English as an additional language.
Are you multilingual? Is it easy for you to learn languages? Multilingualism can be foundational to success in personal, academic, and professional fields. Therefore, learning languages efficiently is an important skill to develop. Our goal in this course is to become more efficient language learners by analyzing language in our environments. We will also consider prior research in the field of language learning.
Class number: 3764
ARTS 140 – Media Literacy and Research
Students will explore how the medium affects the message by isolating different forms of media and exploring their individual limitations and affordances. Students will analyze forms of media like comics, video games, photography, html, etc.
Class number: 3803
ARTS 140 – Mobile Technology & Society
This course investigates modern mobile technologies, like smartphones, and the impact they have on the lives of individuals and the organization of society. Students taking this course will develop their information and analysis skills through the exploration of cross-disciplinary concepts like identity, behavior, relationships, and the place of politics.
Class number: 3932, 3933
ARTS 140 – Monuments, NOW!
Monuments have come crashing down in the calls for racial justice. Why is this such a powerful act? Old monuments are usually statues; today, they might be balloons that float away. They are about memory but whose memory? We will ask these questions as we consider monuments for our time.
Class number: 3927
ARTS 140 – Research in Video Game Studies
Video games are more than just time-killers or hobbies; they are complex social, cultural, and political products worth studying! You don’t have to be a “gamer” to do well in this class; just be ready to read, write, and think about games--and how we play and study them.
Class number: 3924, 3925
ARTS 140 – Selling the Self
This course explores the role of neoliberal ideology in shaping our knowledge of ourselves. Students will learn to recognize, define, and reflect on the relationship between economic and social agency, developing an understanding of the connections between consumer culture and the contemporary liberal self.
Class number: 3869
ARTS 140 – Slums: Poverty & Compassion
We will examine how, within a world of inequality, compassion and interests are often entwined. ‘Slums’, or urban places of material and social marginalisation, will act as our case study. Who does research on, and policies toward, slums serve? How can social concern be both authentic and self-interested?.
Class number: 3929
ARTS 140 – Social Change and Social Development
Drawing on the work of social theorists, activists, artists, film-makers, writers, poets, and pop icons, this course asks: How can everyday people work together to effect social change? Through experiential learning and a case study approach, students will explore the possibility of turning social justice goals into action.
Class number: 8604, 9182
ARTS 140 – Solving the Climate Crisis
We will discuss the climate crisis (its origins, impacts, trends, and who is bearing the brunt of the crisis). But our focus is on solutions: the actions that are needed, and how to overcome barriers to these solutions. This course welcomes you to grapple with these issues in a way that is meaningful to you.
Class number: 3926
ARTS 140 – Youth and Global Politics
Greta Thunberg says “young people are unstoppable”. Malala argues that “one child…can change the world.” Why do some teenagers join ISIS and others become climate activists? Through analysis and activism you will consume, produce, and communicate knowledge about how children and youth shape and are shaped by global politics.
Class number: 3931
Spring 2021 - ARTS 130
ARTS 130 – Plagues and the Pandemic
Can stories about plagues, whether historical or fictional, speak to the issues and experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic? This course investigates plague texts by Defoe, Poe, Camus, Soderbergh and others to better understand our moment. Although the topic can be grim, we will uncover resources of resilience and hope.
Class number: 4740
ARTS 130 – Social Justice and Social Development
Note: This section is reserved for Social Development Studies students.
In this course students will be asked to critically reflect on social justice issues from diverse and multiple perspectives.
Class number: 4741
ARTS 130 – What Are You Saying? (EMLS)
Note: This section is only open to learners of English as an additional language.
What you say and how you say it is determined by more than just your own ideas. Come explore how social, global, and local influences affect your communication.
Class number: 2493
Spring 2021 - ARTS 140
ARTS 140 – How to Win a Trade War
Globally, regionally, locally, and individually, people have been engaging in exchange for a very long time. Sharing a small interrelated planet makes cooperation a compelling and enduring practice. Yet globalization is portrayed so dramatically in the media, and power imbalances are rife in economic relationships. This class looks at the irresistible incentives that people and countries have to engage in mutually advantageous trade and how the rules of trade matter to global good outcomes.
Class number: 4744
ARTS 140 – Mobile Technology & Society
This course investigates modern mobile technologies, like smartphones, and the impact they have on the lives of individuals and the organization of society. Students taking this course will develop their information and analysis skills through the exploration of cross-disciplinary concepts like identity, behavior, relationships, and the place of politics.
Class number: 5360
ARTS 140 – Social Change and Social Development
Note: This section is reserved for Social Development Studies students.
Drawing on the work of social theorists, activists, artists, film-makers, writers, poets, and pop icons, this course asks: How can everyday people work together to effect social change? Through experiential learning and a case study approach, students will explore the possibility of turning social justice goals into action.
Class number: 4745
