Arts First course descriptions
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.
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.
Arts First course topics
Arts First course topics are listed in alphabetical order in the drop-down menu below, however they are not listed in alphabetical order in Quest.
Spring 2022 - ARTS 130
ARTS 130 – The Danger of a Single Story (note: title updated from 'The Majority and the Minority')
Note: Topic description updated April 4. Course content has not changed.
It is natural and common human behavior to put the people and things we encounter in the world into groups. But often these groups are based on our incomplete and simplistic knowledge of others, that is a single story of them. What makes us who we are? How do our “single stories” influence our identities, or how we view others and the choices we make? In this course, we analyze the processes of categorizing others based on incomplete stories or debunked concepts and explore strategies of communication between different groups in our society. We will primarily focus on only a few groups and on strategies, that promote conflict-free interaction.
Delivery mode: Online
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.
Delivery mode: Online
Spring 2022 - ARTS 140
ARTS 140 – How the Sausage is Made: An Exploration of What and How We Eat
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.
Delivery mode: Online
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.
Delivery mode: Online
Winter 2022 - ARTS 130
ARTS 130 – 19th Century Hysteria & Pop Culture
In this course students will advance their communication skills by developing quantitative and qualitative research skills, approaches to critical analysis using key vocabulary, and experience exploring media archives. The objective is discover how language, representation, and varying forms of media shape how we see and make meaning in the world.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – 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!
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Consent and Commitment
We will explore (sexual) consent and (relationship) commitment as they relate to communication and language to analyse how these issues affect individual and social power. Students will engage with the concept of consent, investigate campaigns for consent, and explore causes of forming and dissolving romantic relationships.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Digital Feminist Futures
How can we understand current efforts to challenge the biases inherent to our technologies and digital cultures? In this course we’ll consider themes of media literacy, gendered digital identities and personas, colonialism and whiteness, platforms and power, algorithmic bias, surveillance, and everyday activism to encourage each other to unpack the politics of technology. In doing so, we will identify, negotiate, and challenge existing norms around technologies, digital culture, and mediated communication.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Ethics for Today’s World
This course will study today's ethical dilemmas. We will explore academic literature on issues that you may currently connect with through social media and politics. Topics include racism, medical aid in dying, and economic justice.Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Extreme Texts: Extreme Writing Approaches of Contemporary Writers
This course “Extreme Texts” introduces students to contemporary writers who have adopted formal, thematic, and material extremes – via digression, excess, maximalism, minimalism, bathos, affective extremity, and other high-risk writing methods and concerns. It is fundamentally concerned with the intersection between literature’s rhetoric of intimacy and confession and public/political discourse. Through the course I hope to lead students through an exploration of how contemporary literature operates within the “extreme” as a thematic and formal abstraction as well as a political reality with devastating quotidian impacts for both writing and survival, thereby helping students to appreciate the possibilities open to literature as a kind of survival.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
ARTS 130 – Freedom in Today's World
The value of freedom is given in modern society, but the meaning of freedom and how it is best achieved are points of contention. Far from having a universal definition, freedom means different things to different people at different moments and is communicated through different means. This course provides students the opportunity to develop analytical and communication skills by exploring the issue of freedom and how it functions in our modern discourse.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Friendship: Relationships of C
This course will examine various perspectives on friendship, as we try to come to understand this powerful and perplexing relationship. Friends make our lives sweet, but they can also trouble us with their fleeting natures. We will read some of the classic texts on friendship, but we will also consider how contemporary technology affects our friendships. One of our key questions will be whether our modern world is threatening friendship with attenuation or supporting its growth in unique and healthy ways. Finally, we will consider friendship as more than a personal relationship, as we ask whether friendship is a necessary condition for a sustainable and participatory democracy.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Hamilton: A Musical Biography
This course examines the musical modes of history telling used in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton. Miranda's Hamilton is fearless, outspoken, and prolific. This course will analyze the role of musical theatre conventions in Miranda's telling of American history, and the communicative power of musical genres and styles to tell the history. This course will also ask what history is not told in the musical, and what role music has in telling history accurately.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Homelessness and Addiction (title updated from 'Extreme Poverty and Social Suffering')
In this course, we will examine contemporary homelessness, urban poverty and social exclusion (as well as related issues such as addiction and mental illness) cross-culturally (comparing North America to Brazil) through a perspective that brings into sharp and sometimes disturbing focus the lived-experience of everyday life on the margins of society.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – How Should We Be Working?
Work is something that we are going to be doing for most of our lives and so it is crucial to read, discuss, research, and write about how we might make our working lives as productive, fulfilling, and enjoyable as possible by asking how much control should we have over the work we do, how many types of “jobs” should we be doing, who should be the ones doing the work, what conditions should we work in, and how long should we be working?
Delivery mode: In-person
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.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Intersecting Identity & Image
Students are asked 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?
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
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?
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Poetry and Knowing
Lucille Clifton, once said, “poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing.” We will ask, in Tim Lilburn’s words, “what does poetry know and how does it know”? We will read and write poetry to explore the concept of knowing in poetry, to think about how poems are made and make them.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Pop Goes the People – Populism, Panics, & Pandemics
Moral panics create a foundation for two possible outcomes: an establishment response that soothes public fears by allowing experts and institutions to guide, lead, and resolve the situation; or a populist response which encourages the public to focus on the spectacle of the crisis and suggest it is irresolvable without populist input. Course materials will examine the context and history of populism and moral panics and provide critical thinking skills to analyze and interrogate social issues that allow these ideas to gain credence.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 130 – Reading Race
This course will explore the representation of race in Canadian newspapers to determine the ways that the mainstream media perpetuate racist stereotypes while positioning Canada as a multicultural and racially harmonious society. We will also examine counter-narratives that resist these representations and challenge perceptions of Canada as an inclusive nation.
Delivery mode: In-person
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.
Delivery mode: Online
ARTS 130 – Shop 'Til You Drop
This course uses film and television to analyse the workings and meanings of consumerism.
Delivery mode: In-person
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.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
ARTS 130 – Sound, Text, and Voice
This course will be concerned with two things: the meaning of sound and voice in everyday life and culture (including movies and music); and the ways in which writers “translate” actual noise into written representation and explore the power of voice in text, speech, and song.
Delivery mode: Online synchronous
ARTS 130 – The Importance of Fantasy
From fairy stories to epic adventures to space travel, and everything in between, fantasy can be a precursor to collaboration, community, ethical engagement, and imaginative problem-solving. This course explores the rich and peculiar world of fantasy as a genre, as an activity, and as a mode for change.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
ARTS 130 – The Majority and the Minority
This course takes us on a journey on interpersonal communication amongst a variety of sociolinguistic groups from around the globe. We are going to reflect on best possible approaches to achieve mitigated and conflict-free interaction between predominant groups and juxtaposed minorities.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
ARTS 130 – What a Waste! Finding Meaning Through Reflection
When are your possessions no longer worth investing further time and effort to keep? By examining how we think about what we waste, we inextricably reflect on what we value. Topics include: zero-waste movements, psychology of wastefulness, time-wasters and productivity, and the fear we all have of wasting our potential.
Delivery mode: In-person
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.
Delivery mode: Online synchronous
Winter 2022 - ARTS 140
ARTS 140 – Arts & the 4th Industrial Revolution
This course will prepare students to excel in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We will review the technological progress of society over the past 120 years, and examine key forces driving the current paradigm shift: Machine Learning, Autonomous Systems, Cyber-Physical Systems, Quantum Computing, Nanotech, Additive Manufacturing, and other breakthrough technologies.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Can We Measure Originality?
Can we quantify Shakespeare's literary talent? How innovative are the films of Christopher Nolan? Is originality a fact or a value? This course explores the dynamic between cultural innovation and tradition and the data behind it.
Delivery mode: In-person (one section), online asynchronous (one section)
ARTS 140 – Cognitive Detectives
How do you know what a human adult is thinking? You ask them. But how do you know what a newborn baby, your dog, or a monkey or rat is thinking, or what they are capable of knowing? In this course we will re-examine our own conceptions of intelligence from a multi-disciplinary perspective by exploring these mysterious minds and the creative ways in which researchers investigate them.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Collective Intelligence in Media Formats
Students will cultivate an understanding of research methods through the analysis and exploration of the intersections between individual media forms (such as film, TV, the internet) and the collective intelligence of the society that uses them.
Delivery mode: In-person
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 cuisines have transformed the global food market and the dietary patterns of people.
Delivery mode: In-person
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.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – How the Sausage is Made: An Exploration of What and How We Eat
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.
Delivery mode: In-person
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.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Kinds of Minds
This class will explore 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, moral theory, creative industries, and the law if we adopt a more expansive view of mindedness. This new view includes artificial and non-human animal minds, but also minds that are environmentally extended by technology and even social or “hive” minds.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Love, Sex and Society
How and why do we study love and sexuality? This course explores the various ways scholars have investigated love and sex — the methods they’ve used, the theories they’ve devised and tested, and the conversations that have emerged as a consequence of their work. To understand why sociologists are interested in love and sex, we will examine the connections between sexuality and inequalities (i.e., race, class, gender etc.). The course is global in scope and will look at research from different parts of the world and also from different time periods.
Delivery mode: In-person
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, behaviour, relationships, and the place of politics.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Modern Protest Movements
Comparative analysis and deep roots of selected modern and historic protest movements through reflection, biography, and applying tools of discourse analysis and validating sources. Exploring leadership, individuals, motivation, effectiveness, limits, and impact of today's influential protest movements and their historic precedents and connections.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – On 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.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Pipelines or Pipe Dreams?
Fossil fuel production and the climate crisis are inexplicably linked. This course delves into the political ecology of the climate crisis through the lens of corporate power, extractivism, inertia, and resistance to fossil fuel production, with a uniquely Canadian look at the opportunities and challenges of pipeline development.
Delivery mode: In-person
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 a person who wants to learn about games and how we study them. This class will explore the field of game studies through qualitative data collection and practice analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data about video games and/or games culture. Be ready to never say "It's just a game" again!
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Say that again? (EMLS)
Most of us make errors when learning another language - that’s a natural part of learning. However, the impact of an error may depend on who you’re talking or writing to. Come explore possible sources of error and consider the thin line between error and creative choice.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
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.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
ARTS 140 – Suburban Dreams
In the twentieth century, suburbs came to represent the American Dream, both in the US and elsewhere. What does suburban living represent now? This course explores suburbs as myth and reality, examining the social, cultural, and ecological complexities of the place many of us grew up and still live today.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
ARTS 140 – The Science of Happiness
What is happiness, and why do we strive for it? Can we become happier? Should we? Is happiness a good thing? Together we will explore these questions and others.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
ARTS 140 – This Is Your Brain On...
This course examines how our brains work and why we think the way we think, especially when under the influence of certain forces like addiction, technology, love, and our smart phones.
Delivery mode: In-person
ARTS 140 – Understanding Poverty & Addiction
In this course, we will examine contemporary homelessness, urban poverty and social exclusion (as well as related issues such as addiction and mental illness) cross-culturally (comparing North America to Brazil) through a perspective that brings into sharp and sometimes disturbing focus the lived-experience of everyday life on the margins of society.
Delivery mode: Online asynchronous
