Location: 3rd Floor
New Academic Building
University of King’s College

Phone: (902) 422-1271, ext. 204
Fax: (902) 423-3357

Director
Stephen Boos, BA (Queen’s), MA, PhD (York)

Teaching Staff at King’s
Michael Bennett, BA (Vind), MA (Western), PhD (McMaster)
Stephen Boos, BA (Queen’s), MA, PhD (York)
Daniel Brandes, BA (Toronto), MA, PhD (Northwestern)
Tim Clarke, BA (Memorial), MA (Queen’s), PhD (Ottawa)
Sarah Clift, BA (Western), MA (Trent), PhD (York)
Susan Dodd, BA (Vind), MA, PhD (York)
Dorota Glowacka, MA (Wroclaw), MA, PhD (SUNY, Buffalo)
Nicole Go, BA, MA (Toronto)
Hamza Karam Ally, BA (Toronto), MSc (University of Glasgow), PhD (York)
Kenneth Kierans, BA (McGill), DPhil (Oxon)
Laura Penny, BA (Vind), MA (Western), PhD (SUNY, Buffalo)
Neil Robertson, BA (Vind), MA (Dalhousie), PhD (Cantab)

I. Introduction

The “contemporary period” might be described as one of constant transformation, with new challenges and opportunities emerging all the time. The Contemporary Studies Program engages with the ideas, thinkers, and movements of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries that have contributed to new understandings of the world, community, self and other.

The annual “core” courses give students a framework for understanding political, scientific, and aesthetic phenomena in the contemporary period. The elective courses explore ideas about ethics, aesthetics, and politics; contemporary art, modern film, and digital media; new biotechnologies, nature, environment and the body, and many others.

II. Program Options

Students registered in the BA degree can pursue a degree in the Contemporary Studies Program: (a) as a Combined Honours degree; or (b) as a Minor.

Students registered in the BSc degree can pursue a degree in the Contemporary Studies Program: (a) as a Combined Honours degree with the Science subject as the primary subject and Contemporary Studies as the secondary subject; or (b) as a Minor.

Students in the Bachelor of Journalism (Honours) degree can pursue a degree in the Contemporary Studies Program: (a) as a Combined Honours degree with the Journalism subject as the primary subject and Contemporary Studies as the secondary subject; or (b) as a Minor. See the Journalism degree requirements section for the requirements for this program option.

Students may also take Contemporary Studies courses as electives towards any BA, BSc or BJH degree program.

III. Degree Requirements

A. Combined Honours

The Contemporary Studies Program (CSP) offers a Combined Honours BA or BSc program offered jointly by the University of King’s College and Dalhousie University.  Students combine Contemporary Studies with a second honours subject.

For the second honours subject, please see the degree requirements for BA and BSc Combined Honours (120 credit hours).

Contemporary Studies can also be taken in combination with Environment, Sustainability and Society and, as a second subject in a Combined Honours in the Bachelor of Journalism (Honours) degree at King’s.

All students must meet the general requirements for their degree type as detailed in the Degree Requirements section of this calendar. Students who are eligible to take an honours degree are urged to apply to the Contemporary Studies Program. Because it is an honours program, the quality of work required is higher than that required in a 90-credit hour minor or 120-credit hour major program.

Applications for admission must be made to the Dalhousie department concerned and to the Contemporary Studies Office at King’s on forms available online, from the Contemporary Studies office or from the Registrar at either King’s or Dalhousie. Students normally enroll in CTMP 2001.03 & CTMP 2002.03 (the first “core” courses) in their second year, and apply for the Combined Honours program in either second or third year. For each individual student the entire degree program, including elective courses, is subject to supervision and approval by the Dalhousie department concerned and by the Director of Contemporary Studies.

All Contemporary Studies Program students are encouraged to acquire competence in languages through appropriate courses which are relevant to their degree, interests, and future plans.

The joint King’s/Dalhousie Contemporary Studies combined honours program is based on the general requirement that the 120 credit hours required to graduate include:

1. Completion of either the King’s Foundation Year Program or at least 12 credit hours of first year courses at Dalhousie.

2. A minimum of 66 and a maximum of 84 credit hours beyond the 1000-level in the two honours subjects, but not more than 48 nor fewer than 30 credit hours being in either of them.

3. The three “core” course doublets in Contemporary Studies (must normally be taken in the same academic year to meet this requirement): CTMP 2001.03 & CTMP 2002.03 (OR CTMP 2000.06), CTMP 3001.03 & CTMP 3002.03 (OR CTMP 3000.06), CTMP 4001.03 & CTMP 4002.03 (OR CTMP 4000.06).

4. At the conclusion of an honours program a student’s record must show a grade which is additional to the grades taken to complete the required 120 credit hours. In a combined honours program, students usually obtain this grade in their primary subject (in which they have completed more credit hours); permission may be required from the primary subject advisor if a student wishes to obtain the grade in the secondary subject. Students fulfilling this requirement in Contemporary Studies submit a research paper and defend it at an oral examination. They must enrol in both parts of the honours thesis seminar and choose one of the following options:  Non-credit CTMP 0456.00 & non-credit CTMP 0457.00 Honours Thesis Seminar or non-credit CTMP0456.00 & 3 credit hours CTMP4456.03 Honours Thesis Seminar.

B. Minor in Contemporary Studies

Students may complete a minor in Contemporary Studies. A minor in Contemporary Studies can be added to any BA or BSc degree program offered by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences or Faculty of Science. This minor may also be added to a BJH degree. Refer to the Journalism section of this calendar for further information.

Students seeking a minor in Contemporary Studies must complete between 18 and 27 credit hours at the 2000 level or above. This must include:

1. One of the core course doublets (must normally be taken in the same academic year to meet this requirement):
CTMP 2001.03 & CTMP 2002.03 (or CTMP 2000.06)

CTMP 3001.03 & CTMP 3002.03 (or CTMP 3000.06)

CTMP 4001.03 & CTMP 4002.03 (or CTMP 4000.06)

2. 6 Credit hours at the 3000 or 4000 level. *CTMP 3001.03 &
CTMP 3002.03 (or CTMP 3000.06) OR CTMP 4001.03 & CTMP 4002.03 (or CTMP 4000.06) will also fulfil this requirement.

3. 6 Credit hours at any level.

DALHOUSIE SELECTIVES 

Students enrolled in the Combined Honours or Minor program in CSP can opt to take a maximum of one 3-credit hour “selective” course at Dalhousie University to count towards the CSP part of their degree. The Registrar’s Office at King’s should be notified if students wish to pursue this option.  Not all selectives are offered each year.  Please consult the current timetable for this year’s offering.

Approved selectives are: 

• CHIN 3050/FILM 3350 Topics in Asian Cinema
• CHIN 3062 Modern Chinese Literature in Revolutionary Times
• ENGL 2070 African American Literature
• ENGL 3086 Post-Colonial Literatures
• GWST 2011 Queering Foundations
• HIST 3380 Slavery and Freedom in the Americas
• INDG 3400 Contemporary Indigenous Art
• INDG 3401 Indigenous Representation in Film
• POLI 3385 Politics of the Environment
• SOSA 3215 Migration and Identity
• SOSA 3225 Culture, Rights and Power

IV. Courses Offered

CTMP 0456.00: Honours Thesis Seminar in Contemporary Studies Part 1
Students intending to complete a honours thesis are required to register in the Honours Thesis Seminar. Seminars will be held four times during the year. Students will meet with the Director to discuss the expectations and requirements of the honours thesis in preparation for a thesis defence that takes place in March. Specific topics include: selecting a topic and supervisor, thesis format and discussion of thesis proposals.

Prerequisite: Approval of Director required
Note: CTMP 0456.00 & CTMP 0457.00 or CTMP 0456.00 & CTMP 4456.03 must be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined honours degree.
Exclusion: CTMP 0455X/Y.00

CTMP 0457.00: Honours Thesis Seminar in Contemporary Studies Part 2
Students intending to complete a honours thesis are required to register in the Honours Thesis Seminar. Seminars will be held four times during the year. Students will meet with the Director to discuss the expectations and requirements of the honours thesis in preparation for a thesis defence that takes place in March.

Prerequisite: Approval of Director required
Note: CTMP 0456.00 & CTMP 0457.00 must be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined honours degree.
Exclusion: CTMP 0455X/Y.00

CTMP 2001.03 Modern Social and Political Thought: Politics of Recognition 

This course focuses on recognition as a guiding theme in nineteenth-century social and political thought. By foregrounding related issues such as social and political visibility, material inequality, and self-consciousness, students will be introduced to the tradition of modern political theory and will also canvas some important early responses to Hegelian, liberal, and Marxist visions of individuals and society. Alongside these theoretical resources, the course also includes literary meditations on religious, colonial, and feminist themes—including contributions by Harriet Jacobs, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf and others—and the way these anticipated the transformative and turbulent century to follow.

Instructor: Hamza Karam Ally
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Exclusion: CTMP 2000.06

NOTE: CTMP 2001.03 & CTMP 2002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfil the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.

CTMP 2002.03 Modern Social and Political Thought: Challenging Recognition 
The emergence of the ‘modern world’, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, greatly expanded the possibility of a viable large-scale politics of recognition; however, these advances also produced antagonisms of their own. Drawing on diverse theoretical and literary resources, this course will explore the unfolding of often devastating consequences resulting from these blind spots, especially regarding state power and individual agency, the problem of freedom, and notions of community. Particular areas of focus will include colonization and post-colonialism, revolution and war, mid-century and later feminism, gender studies, and alienation in post-modernity. The syllabus includes contributions by Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Maria Campbell, bell hooks and Arthur Koestler.

Instructor: Hamza Karam Ally
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Prerequisite: CTMP 2001.03 or permission of the instructor
Exclusion: CTMP 2000.06

NOTE: CTMP 2001.03 & CTMP 2002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfil the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.

CTMP 2011.03, 3011.03, 4011.03: The Lecture Series:
In some years a lecture series course is offered. Students are allowed to take up to three such courses, one for each year of upper-level study. Each course will consist of six bi-weekly evening lectures, given by specialists from Atlantic Canada and beyond, and a weekly two hour seminar. The lecturers will offer reflections on various contemporary issues and themes.  Each series explores a different theme.

Instructors: Staff
Format: Seminar/Evening Lectures

CTMP 2100.03: The Politics of Hope: From Romanticism to Anarchism and Beyond
A look at the connection between revolutionary political thought and nihilism: the course focuses on the history of Romanticism and anarchism, from Fichte and some colourful literary characters (German and English) to the deadly serious Russian nihilists. Our central concern is the notion of an infinite, all-powerful human freedom.

Instructor: Kenneth Kierans
Format: Lecture/Tutorial

CTMP 2101.03: Apocalypse: The Revolutionary Transformation of Politics and Culture
This course highlights the movement from revolutionary nihilism to various forms of post-revolutionary unity and integration. Beginning with Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, the course discusses how some of the greatest contemporary thinkers (German, French, British, American) have struggled to put modern evil in the context of a larger good.

Instructor: Susan Dodd
Format: Lecture/Tutorial

CTMP 2102.03: Asia and the West: Centuries of Dialogue
This course will explore some of the most important engagements of modern Western thinkers with various texts and traditions of East and/or South Asian thought, examine the very aspects of Asian thought that intrigued modern Western thinkers, and assess Western values and projects in their lights.

Instructor: Simon Kow
Format: Lecture/Seminar
Cross-listing: EMSP 2390.03, HSTC 2811.03, CHIN 2082.03
Exclusions: EMSP 2450.03, CHIN 2080.03

CTMP 2115.03: The Idea of Race in Philosophy, Literature, and Art
What is race? How does racism impact our sense of self and the communities in which we live? The first part of this class examines the emergence of the modern idea of race, in relation to European expansionism, philosophical ideas of the time, and the development of science. Next, we focus on contemporary conceptions of race and their relations to culture, history, ideology, science and everyday lived experience. We consider contemporary debates on race and racism in the works of thinkers, writers, artists, and social activists, reflecting on the intersections of race, class, and gender.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 2121.03: Humanism and Anti-humanism: The Dramatic Story of What Makes Us Modern
We will begin this course by exploring the work of structuralist thinkers such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Lacan. Their work in the fields of semiotics, anthropology, Marxist critique, and psychoanalysis sought to elucidate the deep structures of signs, language, political economy, cultural production, and the psyche. We will consider the way poststructuralist thinkers, such as Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida criticize and transform structuralist interpretations of subjectivity, language, and the political.

Instructor: Kenneth Kierans
Format: Seminar

CTMP 2150.03: Society, Politics and Literature
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the possibility of individual autonomy and freedom in the face of unprecedented social upheaval has been brought into question through the novel, a literary form which came to maturity during this time. The novels read in this course have been selected for their insights into the dilemmas of an age formed by political and economic revolutions, in which new collective forces have been brought into play. This class will consider the politics of race, class, colonialism, gender and nationhood in literature.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Lecture/Tutorial

CTMP 2201.03 Mass and Digital Media Culture
This course will examine the development of mass and digital media in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will consider philosophical, journalistic, and literary responses to the radical changes in our communications technologies, and the way those mediums shape our understanding of the world, ourselves, and our relationships to others.

Instructor: Laura Penny
Format: Lecture/Discussion

CTMP 2203.03: Bio-Politics: Human Nature in Contemporary Thought
To what extent do biology and culture determine what it is to be human? Drawing on theorists ranging from Foucault to Steven Pinker, this course will examine the recent political, moral and existential issues raised by attempts to answer that question. Topics will include evolutionary psychology, genetic screening, race, bio-engineering and the spectre of determinism.

Instructor(s): Michael Bennett
Format: Lectures and Student Workshops
Cross-listing: HSTC 2206.03

CTMP 2205.03: Totalitarianism and Science
The question of who has authority over funding, direction and priorities of modern science is a central political concern. This course considers the case of totalitarian states (USSR and Nazi Germany) and consists of two parts. Part I analyses the essential features of totalitarian regimes. Part II concentrates on the fortune of particular sciences (medicine, biology, physics) under them.

Instructor(s): Staff
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Cross-listing: HSTC 2205.03

CTMP 2206.03: Environmentalism: Origins, Ideals, and Critique
In this course, we examine the ideals of environmentalism from its origins in the late 18th century to the present. Topics include the romantic critique of industrialization, forest management and sustainability, wilderness preservation, animal rights, radical environmentalism, and environmental justice.

Instructor: Stephen Boos
Format: Lecture/Seminar
Cross-listing: HSTC 2209.03

CTMP 2207.03:  Ideas of the Sea and Seafaring:  Intercultural Perspectives
A survey of intercultural ideas of the sea and seafaring from ancient to modern times. Topics include oceanic myths and origin stories, the myth of Atlantis, marine natural history, sea monsters, mermaids, the law and freedom of the sea, Black Atlantic identity, scientific sea voyages, oceanic science fiction, modern sea power, and marine conservation.

Instructor:  Simon Kow
Format:  Lecture/Discussion
Cross-listing:  EMSP 2490.03, HSTC 2220.03

CTMP 2301.03: Pain
What does pain mean? This course will investigate the uses of pain in the contemporary world, and in doing so, it will approach various sites where pain matters, examining different discursive practices which attempt to speak of pain—or, alternatively, claim that pain is what cannot be spoken. We will discuss the experience of the body in pain, and the relation of pain to knowledge. Topics to be addressed will include pain in a medical context; torture and the political uses of pain; the relation between pain and privation; and the expressibility of pain. We will examine two archetypes of ‘the tortured artist,’ Frida Kahlo and Jackson Pollock, and will inquire whether pain can be made meaningful.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 2303.03: Narrative and Meta-narrative
This course will explore twentieth-century theories of the narrative and the increasingly broad claims made for the role of narrativity in politics, psychology and literature. Starting from Lyotard’s characterization of the post-modern as “an incredulity towards meta-narratives,” the course will look at literary narratives (for example, Balzac, Borges, Thomas Pynchon and Alice Munroe) and as well as theories of the constitution of social narratives, the possible grounds for the interpretation of narrative, the relation of narrative to ideology and the explanatory power of metanarratives.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 2313.03: The Vampire: Modernity and the Undead
Since the emergence of vampire stories in the late sixteenth century, the vampire has served as a complex symbol for forces that defy or challenge modernity. This course will examine the figure of the vampire as it appears in folklore, philosophy, fiction, poetry, film and television. Throughout the course we will consider the works in their historical and cultural context, considering what changing ideas of the vampire can tell us about early modern and contemporary views of death, morality, national identity, sexuality, and gender.

Instructor: Kathryn Morris
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: EMSP 2313.03

CTMP 2316.03: The “Pictorial Turn” in Recent Thought, Art and Theory
The world is increasingly saturated with visual representations. This class considers the proliferation of the image in contemporary culture, and will reflect on vision and visuality, particularly in the fine arts. This class will introduce students to the work of artists and the writing of several key theorists and debates in visual culture studies.

Instructor: Laura Penny
Format: Seminar

CTMP 2322.03: The Experience of Others in Philosophy, History and Literature
This class examines modern theories and narratives regarding the issue of alterity, the condition of being different or ‘other’. We will focus on the many political, social and ontological mechanisms (often integral to the structure of contemporary societies) which marginalize or erase the ‘other’. Equally, we will consider the perspectives of many of these ‘others’ and their overcoming of these antagonisms in pursuit of agency and dignity. The course readings include contributions from Albert Camus, Kamel Daoud, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Levinas, G.W.F. Hegel, bell hooks, J.M. Coetzee, Chinua Achebe and Mohsin Hamid.

Instructor: Hamza Karam Ally
Format: Seminar

CTMP 2330.03: Reflections on Death
The texts in this course consist of literary and philosophical reflections on death, the “permanent and irreversible cessation of life” (J.M. Fischer). With references to Plato and Hegel, we will consider the ways in which death has been understood as giving meaning and structure to life. The focus will be on contemporary confrontations with “pure negativity” and on different thinkers’ attempts to articulate death as an ontological condition. In addition to reading literary and philosophical texts, we will consider representations of death in contemporary art, literature and film.

Instructor: Tim Clarke
Format: Lecture/Seminar

CTMP 2335.03: The Artist and Society
A preoccupation of 20th century cultural life has been the relation between the creative artist and society. To what extent should the artist engage in the social and political currents of her/his time, or retreat into solitude? What responsibility does the artist have to society, or society to the artist? This course often concentrates on a particular artist or group of artists in relation to popular culture.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 2336.03: East Meets West in Popular Culture.
This course is devoted to examining intersections between “West” and “East” through the study of cross-cultural influences in popular literature, cinema, music and comics in Europe, North America and East Asia.

Instructor: Nicole Go
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Cross-Listing: CHIN 2052

CTMP 2340.03: Art, philosophy and politics
This course attempts to make sense of the philosophical, political and artistic aims, accomplishments and influences of futurism, expressionism and surrealism.  Students will read primary texts, including prose, poetry, literature and manifestos as well as examine selected works from the visual arts and film.  Topics for discussion include the death of art, the reintegration of art and life, modernism, art and the unconscious, anti-aesthetics, art and kitsch,  the autonomy of art, and art and politics.  Writings about art will include works by Burger, Lukacs, Benjamin, Kracauer, Adorno, Lyotard, Greenberg, Agamben, and Foster.

Instructor: Stephen Boos
Format: Lecture/Seminar

CTMP 2350.03 Feminisms: The First Three Waves
In this course we will consider major developments in feminist theory from the 19th century to the present, concentrating on primary philosophical and literary texts. We will read representative works from all three waves, and consider Black, lesbian, and postcolonial feminisms, as well as writing by trans authors.

Instructor: Laura Penny
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: GWST 2350.03

CTMP 3001.03 Science and Culture I: The Discourses of Modernity
This class engages one of the main questions of our modern world: what is science and how does it relate to the rest of modernity? It explores the rise of a “scientific” world view, the clashes over methodologies, the disputed meanings of technology and the oppositions between the social/cultural and the natural, introducing recent crises of rationality and its defence.

Instructor: Michael Bennett
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Cross-listing: HSTC 3031.03
Exclusion: CTMP 3000X/Y.06 HSTC 3030X/Y.06

NOTES: CTMP 3001.03 & CTMP 3002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfil the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.

CTMP 3002.03 Science and Culture II: Resetting the Modern
This class follows on CTMP 3001.03/HSTC 3031.03, using case studies and recent debates within Science and Technology Studies, feminist theory, postcolonial and ecological thinking, to deepen the critical engagement with science and reset the place of science and technology in our contemporary world.

Instructor: Michael Bennett
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Prerequisite: HSTC 3001.03 or permission of the instructor
Cross-listing: HSTC 3032.03
Exclusion: CTMP 3000X/Y.06 HSTC 3030X/Y.06

NOTES: CTMP 3001.03 & CTMP 3002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfil the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.

CTMP 3103.03: Critiques of Modernity
What is the status of the Modern World? Is it a source of freedom and truth or rather of the destruction of religion, humanity and nature? The contemporary period has defined itself in many ways through the critique of modernity. These critiques have come from an array of perspectives: philosophic, aesthetic, religious, moral, political. This course will provide a survey of a number of such critiques seeking to grasp both points of commonality, disagreement and development.

Instructor: Neil Robertson
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: EMSP 3203.03

CTMP 3104.03: The Rise of Nietzscheanism
This course will show the origins and growth of Nietzsche’s fame and influence from the late nineteenth century to around the middle of the twentieth, and consider his impact on many different and conflicting trends of thought, including Nazism and avantgarde art, depth psychology, existentialist philosophy and anarchist social theory.

Instructor: Kenneth Kierans
Format: Seminar
Restriction: Restricted to students in their 2nd year or above

CTMP 3105.03: The Nietzschean Legacy
This course surveys the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on Western thought and culture, from the middle of the twentieth century to present day. We will see Nietzscheanism at work in many different schools of thought, from French existentialism and American liberalism to various forms of contemporary anti-humanism and post-humanism.

Instructor: Kenneth Kierans
Format: Seminar
Restriction: Restricted to students in their 2nd year or above

CTMP 3110.03: The Ideal World of Enlightenment: Desire and Freedom
By the end of the 18th century, science, morality and art were seen as different realms of activity in which questions of truth, justice and taste could be separately determined, that is, evaluated according to their own specific criteria of validity. This course will consider how these differences compelled European philosophers and theologians, artists and social theorists, to develop and expand their self-understanding to the point where enlightened reason could properly reflect the formal divisions of culture and make critical judgements in relation to them. Special attention will be paid to the relationship between faith and knowledge and the growing sense of conflict between religion and secular freedom.

Instructor: Kenneth Kierans
Format: Seminar
Crosslisting: EMSP 3210.03

CTMP 3113.03 Kant and Radical Evil
This course will examine the roots of the modern conception of radical evil in the late work of Immanuel Kant. Beginning with the traditional, pre-Kantian conception of evil as a merely negative phenomenon – as a lack or privation of being – we will trace the emergence of Kant’s radical innovation, his positive conception of evil as the ineradicable “knot” at the very heart of human freedom.

We will consider at some length the subsequent career of Kant’s doctrine in 19th and 20th Century thought.

Instructor: Daniel Brandes
Format: Seminar
Crosslisting: EMSP 3213.03

CTMP 3115.03: The Real World of Enlightenment: Time and History
In enlightened European culture, religion, state and society as well as science, morality and art were gradually separated from one another under exclusively formal points of view, and subordinated to a critical reason that took on the role of a supreme judge. By the beginning of the 19th century, many Europeans began to question the self-understanding evoked by the principle of critical reason. This course will consider how enlightened freedom and reason moved European philosophers and theologians, artists and social theorists, to conceive of themselves historically, that is, to become conscious of the dissolution of tradition, and of the need to ground the divisions of culture in ideal forms of unity derived from the tradition. The course will pay particular attention to the relationship between religion and the demand that the unifying force in culture come from a dialectic residing in the principle of enlightened reason itself.

Instructor: Kenneth Kierans
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: EMSP 3220.03

CTMP 3116.03: Heidegger: Science, Poetry, Thought
In this course, we shall examine the complex relations that obtain in Heidegger’s early and later work between science, poetry and thought. From his early identification of phenomenology as “philosophical science” to his mature insistence on the irreducibility of philosophy to science (and his new emphasis on the essential kinship of philosophy and poetry), we shall trace the contours of this powerful and inescapable path of thinking.

Instructor: Daniel Brandes
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3121.03: Genocide: Comparative Perspectives
This course inquires into the concept of genocide, taking into account its cultural, socio-political and historical contexts. Which atrocities are included in this concept and why? Does the fact that the term was coined in a specific context (after WWII) limit its applicability. We will consider several documented instances of genocidal violence and reflect on the relations between genocide and the politics of memory, including museum displays, public commemorations, and popular culture. We will look at competing claims from victim groups and ask questions about the impact of racism in targeting specific populations; and the role of world powers in deciding about intervention or non-intervention.

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Lecture/Seminar

CTMP 3125.03 The Concept of Memory in Late-Modernity: Commemoration, (Re)presentation, Trauma
This course will involve an examination of the relations between memory, theory, and representation in the context of proliferating ‘cultures of memory’. Differing theoretical approaches to memory from the 19th and 20th centuries will be explored, alongside various genres & practices of memory (political, memorial, artistic, and critical).

Instructor: Sarah Clift
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3130.03: The Thought of Michel Foucault
The thought of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) resists categorization. This is in large part due to its interdisciplinary nature, which crosses the boundaries of history, sociology, psychology and philosophy. This class will introduce students to some of the topics in Foucault’s major works on the history of madness, the birth of the penitentiary, the history of the human sciences, bio-power, the history of sexuality, and ethics. Readings will include selections from Foucault’s major published works as well as interviews, lectures, and shorter essays. We will pay particular attention to the evolution of Foucault’s methodology from archaeology to genealogy and Foucault’s later claim that the goal of his work from the 1960s to 1980s has been the creation of a history of the different ways in which human beings are made subjects.

Instructor: Stephen Boos
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3135.03: Reconstructing Political Modernity
This course will examine several interpretations of Early Modern philosophers by 20th century authors who are original political thinkers in their own right. These interpretations have involved as much reconstruction of Early Modern thought as faithful scholarly commentary. Indeed, they sometimes shed more light on the interpreter than on the thinkers being interpreted. Thus, we shall critically analyse the radical transformations of Early Modern texts that were undertaken in order to make these works relevant to social and political questions centuries later.

Instructor: Simon Kow
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: EMSP 3440.03

CTMP 3145.03: Leo Strauss and his Intellectual Context
Leo Strauss was during his own lifetime a figure of controversy and has grown more so in the thirty years since his death. In recent newspaper and academic articles, Strauss has been seen through the influence of his students (“Straussians”) to be the secret intellectual source of much of the Neo-Conservative movement and in particular the policies and doctrines of the Bush White House. This course will endeavour to understand Strauss’s thought in terms of his own intellectual development and in the context of the issues that were particularly formative for his thinking. The course will include the influence of Husserl upon his thought, his reflections on Zionism and the Jewish intellectual tradition during the 1920s and 30s when he was still living in Germany, his critique of Carl Schmitt, his response to the thought of Martin Heidegger and his debate with Alexandre Kojeve. In short, the purpose of this course is to locate Strauss’s thought in its intellectual context and thereby gain distance on the demonizing and sanctifying rhetoric that characterizes the contemporary debate about “Straussianism.”

Instructor: Neil Robertson
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3155.03: The Question of the Animal
In this course, we will explore animality and the relationship between human and nonhuman animals. Topics include animals and cognitive awareness, the ethical status of animals, cultural representations of animals, pets and domesticity, animals and science and posthumanist concepts of animality. Readings will include selections from a number of disciplines, including philosophy, literature, art, anthropology, and ethology.

Instructor: Stephen Boos
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3170.03: Theories of Punishment
In this course we will examine the development and application of a number of theories of punishment, especially liberal and utilitarian theories developed in the 18th century. Our theoretical examination will lead us to consider the social, economic, and ethical impactions of different attitudes toward and understandings of punishment. We will also investigate the concrete expression of these theories of punishment in the form of large-scale institutions. These institutions include (among others) the transatlantic slave trade, penal colonies, prisons, penology, residential schools, asylum, and the police. The course will be guided by a few broad, but fundamental questions including: who (or what) should be punished, how should they be punished, and (most fundamentally) why?

Instructor: Mark Burke
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: EMSP 3430.03

CTMP 3192.03: The Thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most renowned philosophers of the 20th century. His influence has extended well beyond the questions about the foundations of logic and language which preoccupied him. This course will explore some of the broader implications of his work, touching on music, art and architecture, on anthropology and psychology, and on ethics and religion, as well as on his central contributions to the philosophy of language and mind.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar/Tutorial
Exclusion: CTMP 2111.03, CTMP 2190

CTMP 3201.03: Science and Religion: Contemporary Perspectives
This course tells the story of interactions between religious belief and the study of nature from 1800 to today.

Beginning with an overview of the history and methodology of the study of science and religion, encounters between science and religion are traced from the rise of Darwinism in the early nineteenth century to the contemporary postmodern age. From an examination of nineteenth-century natural theology and the religious impact of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), this course moves on to such contemporary topics as the religious interpretations of quantum mechanics, the Big Bang, the anthropic principle, medical science, bioethics, evolutionary psychology, chaos theory, aesthetics in nature, science fiction, extra-terrestrial life (including the SETI Project) and the quest for technoimmortality. Case studies of “conflict” emanating from Darwinism, the Scopes Trial, the ongoing Creation-Evolution debates and the New Atheism are contrasted with examples of harmony and interdependence between science and religion in the careers of modern scientists, along with phenomena like the new Intelligent Design (ID) movement. The religious scope of the course is intentionally wide ranging, and examinations of science-religion interactions within Indigenous spirituality are added to treatments of traditional eastern and western religion.

Instructor: Stephen Snobelen
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: HSTC 3201.03 RELS 3201.03 HIST 3076.03

CTMP 3204.03 Human Experiments
This course explores the history, method, and meaning of experimenting on humans through a series of case studies that question how these experiments mediate between experimenters, their subjects, and the state and how these relationships have influenced our ideas of scientific objectivity, autonomy and consent, race, gender, and class divides.

Instructor: Melanie Frappier
Format: Lecture/discussion and seminar
Cross-listing: HSTC 3101.03
Exclusion: HSTC 3615.03 and CTMP 3411.03 for the 2017/18 academic year only.

CTMP 3210.03: Intersecting Bodies, Selves and Environments
The traditional view of the relation between humans and nonhuman nature is regarded by many as dualistic insofar as it posits not only a distinction and separation between humans and nonhuman nature but regards humans as superior to nonhuman nature, on either religious, metaphysical, moral, or even evolutionary, grounds. In this course, we will examine different strategies for overcoming this view. We will begin by examining phenomenological attempts to overcome dualistic accounts of the relations between perceiver and perceived, mind and body, and mind and world. In the next section, we discuss attempts by radical ecologists and ecofeminists to establish nondualist views of the relation between humans and nature. In the concluding section of the course, we will examine some postmodern strategies for overcoming dualistic thinking about culture and nature and consider the great wilderness debates.

Instructor: Stephen Boos
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3215.03: Feminism and Science
Feminism and Science has been the subject of intense scrutiny by contemporary feminist theorists. The course will examine the various feminist critiques of natural science, as well as the positive proposals that feminism has brought to science and scientific culture. Questions that will be addressed include: Is the style of science gendered? Has feminism influenced the content of various sciences? How has science contributed to gendered constructions of nature? Is there such a thing as value-free scientific research? How do feminist theories of knowledge differ from traditional understandings of scientific knowledge and scientific objectivity? The readings for this course will include work by Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Evelyn Fox Keller, Helen Longino and Hilary Rose.

Instructor: Kathryn Morris
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: HSTC 3411.03, GWST 3215.03

CTMP 3220.03:  Environmental Aesthetics
In this course, we consider differing approaches to the aesthetics of both natural and human environments.  In the first part of the course, we will examine the role of science, art, perception, imagination, emotion, and ethics in the aesthetic appreciation of nature.  In the second part, we will discuss contemporary approaches to the aesthetics of the city, the theme park, the garden, the shopping center, the home, and the countryside. In the concluding part, we will think about environmental art and aesthetics in the Anthropocene.

Instructor: Stephen Boos
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3302.03: Film Theory
This course will provide an introduction to the field of film theory and criticism. Students will be provided with the tools to interpret films using the following critical and theoretical methodologies: Classical Film Theory, Auteur Theory, Genre Theory, Semiotics, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Theory, Reception Theory, Star Studies, Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Film Screening/Seminar
Exclusion: CTMP 3303.06, THEA 3330.03

CTMP 3305.03: Modern Film and the Theory of the Gaze
This course will develop certain aspects of the theory of the gaze in relation to a selection of films which themselves embody or express a thinking about looking. We all like to look; and we are all given over to being seen, and both these modalities have received historically unprecedented elaboration in the moving pictures. The films and theorists will raise issues about visual desire, horror, paranoia, surveillance and fascination.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Film Screening and Lecture/Discussion

CTMP 3311.03: Culture, Politics and the Post Colonial Condition
The term ‘postcolonial’ marks the historical passage of European colonial domination and national independence movements, and describes the contemporary condition of domination and struggle both in the new nations that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century and in Western metropolitan centres with their new populations. This course will examine recent configurations of postcolonialism as political and cultural practice, focusing on debates over globalization and cosmopolitanism, the status of refugees and migrants, and the role of the intellectual in bringing about social change.

Instructor: Hamza Karam Ally
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3316.03 Spinozisms: From Early Modernity to the Contemporary World
This course will focus on Spinoza’s thought, and the ways thinkers have adopted and transformed his ideas from the Early Modern period to the present day. We will consider Spinoza’s contributions to ethics, political thought, optics, theology, and affect theory, as well as art and literature.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Lecture and discussion
Cross-listing: EMSP 3216.03

CTMP 3321.03: Representations of the Holocaust: Bearing Witness
At the time when the Holocaust recedes into history, the imperative to “never forget” acquires new urgency. In this course, we focus on various modes of representing this traumatic historical period. Why did the Holocaust happen “in the middle of civilized Europe”? Who were the perpetrators? Does the word “Holocaust” refer only to the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people or should we also consider the experiences of different victim groups? Did men and women experience extreme events differently? Can horror be accommodated in language or represented by any other means? Is the Holocaust unique or should it be considered in comparison with other genocides? These and other questions will arise in this class based on the examination of eye-witness accounts from the killing fields in the East, Holocaust diaries written in the ghettoes, memoirs written by survivors of the Nazi camps, and perpetrators’ diaries, as well as works by historians and literary works written by the participants of the events.

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3322.03: Representations of the Holocaust: Remembrance
(CTMP 3321.03 Representations of the Holocaust is not required. Basic knowledge of Holocaust facts and some familiarity with Holocaust literature is recommended.) This course focuses on memoirs and literary accounts of the Holocaust written several decades after the war, as well as on contemporary debates about the nature of Holocaust memory and commemoration. Of special interest is the struggle of both children of survivors and children of perpetrators to reckon with their parents’ past. We will evaluate the burden of responsibility for the past postulated by these texts and consider how the Holocaust has been represented in literature, film, and museum exhibits. We will look at Holocaust denial, with emphasis on anti-Semitism and white supremacy movements in Canada. Finally, we will consider the politics of Holocaust memory in comparative perspectives. This course includes excerpts from films, documentaries and other videotaped material, and illustrated lectures on Holocaust art.

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3330.03:  Art and Atrocity: Contemporary Contexts, Gendered Perspectives
The course focuses on representations of mass atrocities in visual art. Starting from debates about the “limits of representation” and the tensions between historical documents and creative representations of traumatic events, it asks questions about art’s ability to convey the experiences of suffering, to bear witness to traumatic events, and to engage in practices of commemoration, healing, and repair.

Instructor:  Dorota Glowacka
Format:  Lecture

CTMP 3340.03: Home and Homelessness
This course takes the current social problem of homelessness as a starting place for an inquiry into the significance of figurations of home and homelessness in the contemporary world. Home is a place of comfort and belonging; it is a domestic setting, a language, a nationality and a series of identifications that ‘place’ and maintain individuals. The notion of home is opposed to key diagnoses of the modern condition– as alienated, displaced, estranged and uncanny, for example. These diagnoses have been applied both to psychological conditions and to actual social phenomena of mass displacements, refugees, immigration and exile. The social imaginary of many historically displaced groups centres around the return to or establishment of a homeland.

This course will consider literary and artistic representation of ‘home’, phenomenology of ‘homeliness’ and of its strange double, the uncanny, and the stakes that post-war philosophy has in the notions of rootedness, place and dwelling.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3345.03: The Theory of the Gift
Is it possible to give, freely, without expectation of return? That is, can generosity ever really exist? Or are we trapped in restricted economies of exchange which find us always calculating some profit to ourselves, whether in this world or the next? The problem of the possibility of generosity and altruism is of central importance to current deliberations about ethics and economics. This seminar will read its way through the modern genealogy of the thinking of the gift, beginning with its foundation in anthropological studies of so-called ‘primitive’ economies. It is of some interest that the modern concern with the gift appears in the guise of anthropology rather than from its well-established place in the Christian theological tradition. This course will consider the debate over the gift among anthropologists such as Mary Douglas and Marshall Sahlins, in the extraordinary theses of Georges Bataille, and will place special emphasis on the importance of the gift in the work of Jacques Derrida.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 3350.03: Rewriting Gender
This class dissects the dominant, binary (male/female) understanding of gender, as it has been constructed in relation to heteropatriarchal norms and systems of signification. We look at the dissolution of these rigid concepts and consider alternative (and multiple) sites of gender-identification through the lens of gender theory, fictional works (novels and poetry), and visual material (art, film and music). We ask in what way these gendered subversions of traditional discourses engage (or fail to engage) with gender with race, sexuality, class, ability and other identity categories.

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Lecture/Seminar
Crosslisting: GWST 3350.03

CTMP 3355.03:  Girls and Girlhood
In this course, we will consider depictions of the girl in literature, theory, and popular culture. We will begin the class with some theoretical readings about girlhood that will inform our reading of literary texts ranging from Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Tracey Lindberg’s Birdie. The novels we read will shape our discussion of topics including the social construction of girlhood, conflicting attitudes about impending womanhood, body image and sizeism, sexual exploitation, and girls as consumers and producers of popular culture. We will consider girlhood through the lens of intersectionality by reading texts that depict the experiences of Black and Indigenous girls and conclude by considering attempts to reclaim or redefine the term “girl”.

Instructor:  Laura Penny
Format:  Lecture/Discussion
Crosslisting: GWST 3355.03
Exclusion: CTMP 3415.03 for the 2016/17, 2018/19, 2022/23 academic years only and CTMP 4415.03 for the 2020/21 academic year only.

CTMP 3410.03: Studies in Contemporary Social and Political Thought in the 20th Century
Topics vary each year.

Format: Seminar
Prerequisite: Students must have completed at least two years of university study (minimum 60 credit hours) prior to enrolment.

NOTE: No more than two studies courses (six credit hours) can be taken for credit towards the Contemporary Studies program. Students can enroll only once in CTMP 3410.03.

CTMP 3411.03: Studies in Contemporary Science and Technology
Topics vary each year.

Format: Seminar
Prerequisite: Students must have completed at least two years of university study (minimum 60 credit hours) prior to enrolment.

NOTE: No more than two studies courses (six credit hours) can be taken for credit towards the Contemporary Studies program. Students can enroll only once in CTMP 3411.03.

CTMP 3415.03: Studies in Contemporary Aesthetic and Critical Theories
Topics vary each year.

Format: Seminar
Prerequisite: Students must have completed at least two years of university study (minimum 60 credit hours) prior to enrolment.

NOTE: No more than two studies courses (six credit hours) can be taken for credit towards the Contemporary Studies program. Students can enroll only once in CTMP 3415.03.

CTMP 3610.06: Memory, Politics, Place: Berlin’s Twentieth Century
This course provides an introduction to the themes of collective memory, public space, inter-generational responsibility, and historical trauma, with a focus on Berlin. Taught entirely on site, this course offers students the opportunity to consider the ethical, aesthetic, and public struggle to memorialize the victims of Nazi fascism and Cold War Stalinism through daily visits to museums and public art installations, as well as more informal explorations of memorial initiatives ‘from below.’

Instructor: Sarah Clift
Format: Seminar
Format Comments: Taught on-site in Berlin
Cross-listing: GERM 3610.06

CTMP 4001.03: The Deconstruction of the Tradition: Language and Dispossession
This class focuses on deconstruction as a philosophical movement which aims to challenge totalizing models of thinking in favor of forms of discourse that can accommodate pluralism and alterity. The ‘linguistic turn’ – so important for deconstruction – foregrounds the promise and limits of language, and invites inquiry into its epistemic, ethical, political, and cultural determinations.

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Exclusion: CTMP 4000.06

NOTE: CTMP 4001.03 & CTMP 4002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfil the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.

CTMP 4002.03: The Deconstruction of the Tradition: Precarities  
While the main practitioners of deconstruction sought to interrogate traditional concepts of identity, selfhood, representation, truth, essence, and origin, their own writings are not free of epistemic – and even ontological violence. We will re-examine these texts through the lens of post-colonial, feminist and race theory and inquire into the continuing value of deconstruction in the contemporary world.

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Prerequisites: CTMP 4001.03 or permission of the instructor
Exclusion: CTMP 4000.06

NOTE: CTMP 4001.03 & CTMP 4002.03 must normally be taken in the same academic year to fulfil the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.

CTMP 4105.03: European Nihilism
In the latter half of the 19th century a number of European thinkers and writers came to sense a profound loss of meaning and significance at work in their culture. The term that was coined to describe this experience was “nihilism.” The purpose of this course is to explore the thought of those who gave expression to this new phenomenon. We will begin with the literary explorations of Dostoyevsky and Baudelaire, and then turn to the thought of Nietzsche as the most complete explication of European nihilism. The course will conclude by considering the 20th century’s most important commentator on nihilism, Martin Heidegger. In particular, the course will consider Heidegger’s set of lectures from the late 1930s that were published as Nietzsche. This set of lectures on Nietzsche’s account of European nihilism formed, according to Heidegger’s own recounting, a crucial transition in his own thought, the famous “turn” from the “early” to the “late” Heidegger. This course will examine the lecture series in the context of Heidegger’s other writings at this time and his much-debated involvement with Nazism to try to understand the exact nature and import of his “turn”. In all of this, the course will be exploring the connections between a deep cultural experience– that of European nihilism– and its social and political implications.

Instructor: Neil Robertson
Format: Seminar

CTMP 4110.03: Modernity in Ruins
This course explores the current preoccupation with ruins in two ways: first, we shall establish lines of continuity between older forms of the pleasure of ruins (Ruinenlust) from the Renaissance to Romanticism. Second, we shall consider what characterizes the contemporary admiration for decrepitude and decay: We will consider modern and contemporary examples of ruins, wreckage, and decay to highlight a critical blurring of boundaries, in the ruin, between the present, past, and future; between presence and absence; between nature and history; between destruction and disclosure.

Instructor: Sarah Clift
Format: Lecture/Seminar

CTMP 4117.03: Beginning with Being: Reading Parmenides from Plato to Heidegger
In this course, we shall stage an encounter between the two great thinkers – Plato and Heidegger – whose thought has often been thought to mark the ‘beginning’ and the ‘end’ of Western philosophical tradition. Taking Parmenides’ pregnant insight (“Being and Thinking are the same”) as the poietic site of this encounter, we will ask what it still means to engage in philosophy today.

Instructor: Daniel Brandes/Eli Diamond
Format: Seminar
Cross-listing: CLAS 4117.03

CTMP 4124.03: Walter Benjamin’s Materials
Following the diversity of Benjamin’s own interests: “literature, philosophy, architecture, journalism, photography, the city, film, children’s toys, fashion, rubbish,” we will read his essays on culture and the media alongside writings by Baudelaire, some artworks, and selections from The Arcades Project, Benjamin’s collection of quotations and observations about mall life and modernity in Paris.

Instructor: Laura Penny
Format: Seminar

CTMP 4125.03: Hannah Arendt: Terror, Politics, Thought
In this course, we examine the trajectory of Hannah Arendt’s long path of thinking: from her early political writings (on the state of Israel, on totalitarianism), to the more theoretically ambitious writings of the 1950’s and 1960’s (on action, power, and the creation of political spaces), to the late work on the life of the mind (on thinking, willing, and judging). We will attempt to understand how Arendt’s overarching ‘love of the world’ informed her thought at every stage of its development, giving rise to a powerful critique of liberal democracy and preparing the groundwork for a new ‘posttotalitarian’ thinking of the political.

Instructor: Daniel Brandes
Format: Lecture/Seminar

CTMP 4126.03: Kafka, Scholem, Benjamin: On Law and Crisis in 20th Century Jewish Thought
In this course, we will examine the illuminating disagreement between Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin – two of the giants of 20th Century Jewish thought – on the meaning of the Law in Franz Kafka’s stories. We will see how their respective interpretive strategies have dramatically informed the theoretical landscape of contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish thought.

Instructor: Daniel Brandes
Format: Lecture/Seminar

CTMP 4130.03: Marxism, Critical Theory and Society
This class examines writings by members and associates of Critical theory from the 1920s to the present. Topics include freedom and individuality, monopoly capitalism, the psychology of fascism, the culture industry and art, Marxism and psychoanalysis, antisemitism, technology and liberation, the revolutionary subject, and culture and nature. The course will pay close attention to first generation Critical theorists, including Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse, Benjamin, and Fromm but will also consider representatives of the so-called second and third generations of Critical theory, which include Habermas and Honneth.

Instructor:  Stephen Boos
Format:  Seminar

CTMP 4140.03: Phenomenology and its Legacy: Back to the ‘Things Themselves’
This course examines some of the major figures in the phenomenological movement. We begin with an examination of Edmund Husserl’s attempt to establish a “radical” science of phenomenology. The method of phenomenology, the intentionality of consciousness, perception, and the Lebenswelt are among the topics we consider. We then turn to various reformulations and critiques of Husserl’s conception of phenomenology in selected works from Heidegger to Derrida. Topics and concepts for discussion include Being-in-the-world, the nature of consciousness, the lived body, temporality, the priority of otherness and hermeneutics.

Instructor: Stephen Boos
Format: Seminar

CTMP 4150.03: Derrida and Deconstruction
This class is an in-depth examination of one of the most challenging and provocative thinkers of the last century. We will examine Derrida’s thought – from the development of deconstruction, through his innovative exploration of works of art and literature, to his politically inflected late writings on the gift, forgiveness, and hospitality. We will look at deconstruction as a “method” and at its relation “to the tradition”.

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Seminar

CTMP 4200.03: Philosophies of Technology: From Techne to Technology
What does it mean to live in a “technological society”? In a certain sense, technology forms the very ground of what it means to be “modern.” We moderns are technological beings. This course will explore the history, structure and associated problems of our coming to be Technological, beginning with technical arts and Instrumental reasoning of Enlightenment and Industrial ideology. Post Enlightenment critiques polarising around the place of “machine” and alienation in Karl Marx, and in the “question concerning technology” in Martin Heidegger, will then be examined, leading up to the present state of technological discourse.

In each case, we shall mark the importance of contextualising the debate by examining the actual historical evolution of technology. Weekly lectures will be devoted to presenting a social and historical background to the development of modern technologies, Student led seminars will focus on the reading of primary texts in the field.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar/Lecture
Crosslisting: HSTC 4200.03

CTMP 4201.03: Contemporary Technologies: Living with Machines
This topical seminar course will explore in detail the implications of powerful contemporary debates concerning the meaning and place of technology. What do we mean by technology? Can there be a philosophy of technology? What are the political and cultural ramifications of “going technological”? Topics will include: technological determinism in history; feminist critiques; technology and development; the meaning of expertise; technology, art and the “lifeworld”; social-construction vs. actor-network theory; Donna Haraway’s concept of cyborg culture; and the “modern technological sublime.” The course will be conducted in seminar format with particular emphasis placed on the elucidation of historical and contemporary case-studies. Whenever possible, guest lecturers from the “real world” of technology will be invited to participate in course.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar/lecture
Crosslisting: HSTC 4201.03

CTMP 4301.03: Freud, Lacan and the Critique of Psychoanalysis
Is psychoanalysis a medical practice, a method of interpretation, or an account of the social symbolic? The modern scepticism about consciousness and conscious life is most thoroughly voiced in Psychoanalytic thought as first developed by Freud and pursued in the work of Jacques Lacan. This course will consider the question of the modern psyche, the nature of symbolic practices in art and literature, and the construction of libidinal economies in society. The central question of the course will concern the way in which the individual subject is incorporated in symbolic practices.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 4302.03: Recent French Feminist Theory
This course will concentrate on some of feminism’s most challenging voices, those that emerged from France at the end of the last century: Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray. The course will attempt to illuminate the Intellectual background against which these women write, particularly in the areas of linguistic and anthropological structuralism, and in psychoanalytic theory. The course will be organized in part by the historical evolution of feminist thought, in part by the consideration of central feminist concerns.

Instructor: Laura Penny
Format: Lecture/Tutorial
Exclusion: Former CTMP 2030.06 and former CTMP 4300.06
Crosslisting: GWST 4402.03

CTMP 4315.03: Psychoanalysis and Politics
Freudian psychoanalysis and its Lacanian successor have added new dimensions to the analysis of contemporary political issues. In the mid-20th century, Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious was drawn upon to supplement liberal and Marxist analyses of fascism. Lacanian psychoanalysis has recently been employed in the understanding of nationalism, ethnic conflict and religious fundamentalism through such categories as identification, recognition and trauma. The course will begin with some key texts by Freud and Lacan, and then move to a consideration of recent examples of the conjunction of psychoanalytic and political theory.

Instructor: Staff
Format: Seminar

CTMP 4330.03: Ethics after the Holocaust
Shortly after World War II ended, thinkers such as Arendt, Adorno and Buber reflected on the causes of the genocide and its impact on humanity. It has taken decades, however, for others (such as Fackenheim, Habermas or Derrida) to confront “Auschwitz.” In this course, we will inquire into the challenges the Holocaust poses to philosophy, and to ethics in particular. The thinkers discussed in this course reflect on the collapse of traditional ethical systems in the wake of National Socialism. In various ways and in different and cultural contexts, they try to find an alternative moral foundation “after Auschwitz.”

Instructor: Dorota Glowacka
Format: Seminar

CTMP 4340.03:  Giants of 20th Century Jewish Thought
This course introduces students to a constellation of seminal 20th Century Jewish thinkers and writers – Franz Kafka, Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Abraham Heschel – and examines their enduring significance, not only for Jewish thought but for contemporary developments in literature, theology, and political theory.

Instructor:  Daniel Brandes
Format:  Lecture/Seminar
Exclusions:  CTMP 4415.03 for the 2018/19 academic year only and CTMP 4410.03 for the 2020/21 academic year only

CTMP 4410.03: Special Topics in Contemporary Social and Political Thought in the 20th Century
The Special Topics courses focus on one author or one particular school of thought in an interdisciplinary context. Topics vary each year.

Format: Seminar
Pre-requisite: Students must have completed at least two years of university study (minimum 60 credit hours) prior to enrolment.

NOTE: No more than two special topics courses (six credit hours) can be taken for credit towards the Contemporary Studies program. Students can enroll only once in CTMP 4410.03.

CTMP 4411.03: Special Topics in Contemporary Science and Technology
The Special Topics courses focus on one author or one particular school of thought in an interdisciplinary context. Topics vary each year.

Format: Seminar
Prerequisite: Students must have completed at least two years of university study (minimum 60 credit hours) prior to enrolment.

NOTE: No more than two special topics courses (six credit hours) can be taken for credit towards the Contemporary Studies program. Students can enroll only once in CTMP 4411.03.

CTMP 4415.03: Special Topics in Contemporary Aesthetic and Critical Theories
The Special Topics courses focus on one author or one particular school of thought in an interdisciplinary context. Topics vary each year.

Format: Seminar
Pre-requisite: Students must have completed at least two years of university study (minimum 60 credit hours) prior to enrolment.

NOTE: No more than two special topics courses (six credit hours) can be taken for credit towards the Contemporary Studies program. Students can enroll only once in CTMP 4415.03.

CTMP 4456.03: Honours Thesis Seminar in Contemporary Studies Part 2
Students intending to complete an honours thesis in CSP are required to register in the Honours Thesis Seminar Part 2. One seminar will be held during the winter term in preparation for a thesis defence that takes place in March. Students will work individually with thesis supervisors on completing their theses. Students are required to submit drafts and final copies of the theses by the deadlines specified in the “Honours Thesis Memo.”
Format:  Seminar
Pre-requisite:  Approval of Director required. CTMP 0456 & CTMP 4456 must be taken in the same academic year to fulfill the requirements of the CTMP Combined Honours degree.
Exclusion:  CTMP 0455X/Y, CTMP 0457

CTMP 4510.03/CTMP 4511.03: Independent Readings in Contemporary Studies
In a reading course the student is assigned to a member of staff for regular meetings to discuss readings in a selected area. Papers and research projects are expected.

Format: Individual instruction
Prerequisite: Honours registration in Contemporary Studies and permission of the instructor and Director

NOTE: Students make take an independent reading course only when they reach their third or fourth year. Only one full course or equivalent may be taken in a year. No more than two full courses of this type may be taken during the course of study.