Courses

Course: ANTH 497: Topics in Anthropology | Biocultural Anthropology
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Hugh McKenzie

The concept of a 'biocultural anthropology' has been variously described as: a distinct subfield of anthropology; a useful concept that unites all of anthropology's subfields; and, a harmful concept that imposes an false and even destructive holism on anthropology. In this seminar, we will explore the diverse ways that 'biocultural anthropology' is understood and applied. And we will consider to what extent this concept might be helpful (or not) in addressing contemporary issues that simplistically consider biology & culture.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in one of ANTH 206, ANTH 207, ANTH 208, or ANTH 209 and a minimum grade of C- in any 300-level ANTH course

Permission Required: No

Course: ANTH 497: Topics in Anthropology | Anthropology of Africa & China
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS02
Instructor: Dr. Jing Jing Liu

Africa-China relations have taken a front and center stage in the international imaginary in multiple ways: a realignment of geopolitics towards South-South partnerships, a challenge to Western hegemony, and a view of China as engaging in neocolonialism through its infrastructure projects in exchange for natural resources. These new developments not only ignore a long history of Africa-China engagement, but also the life of everyday people and their material realities. This course critically explores this new international imaginary through practices of migration and mobility, intersections of language and race, and the politics of commodities and trade.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in one of ANTH 206, ANTH 207, ANTH 208, or ANTH 209 and a minimum grade of C- in any 300-level ANTH course

Permission Required: No

Course: ECON 357: Topics in Applied Economics | Introduction to Financial Economics
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Aslan Behnamian

This course introduces some of the main topics in financial economics and provides some simple but highly useful economics tools and financial concepts that can be used in day-to-day situations. Specifically, the course starts with a simple introduction to the time value of money, and then introduces the concept of financial risk. You will learn a framework with which to make decisions when faced with financial risks, and learn how it is possible to maximize the return on your financial assets in risky situations. The course is not about making money, but it is about making informed decisions in risky situations. In the end, you will learn about the main characteristics of the most famous financial products / tools in which you can invest. This course focuses on economic concepts through a non-quantitative approach.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in ECON 101

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 349: Topics in Global Politics | Qualitative Empirical Research Methods in International Security
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Jeffrey Rice

How do we study the causes of war and how do we study people’s experiences in times of conflict? This course introduces students to the primary methods used to investigate questions of war and peace in international relations. Rather than focusing on the answers themselves, this course is interested in examining how we arrived at those answers in the first place. Students who take this course will, thereby, learn to develop methodologically rigorous qualitative research programmes in the field of international security and will learn the key approaches to conducting qualitative research, including: historical sequence elaboration, qualitative comparative analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography, and more. Students can also expect to develop the foundational skills needed for conducting primary research by learning how to conduct archival research, interviews with elites and non-elites, and how to develop and conduct surveys.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in POLS 264.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 410: Topics in Political Philosophy | Literature and the Politics of Crisis
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Gaelan Murphy

This course examines how literature is used as a way to diagnose cultural illness, articulate and express political and philosophical ideas in response to crisis, and redeem suffering in an uncertain world. Through the direct study of primary texts, both fiction and non-fiction, students will confront the role literature can play in understanding spiritual and political crisis. Authors to be studied include Earnest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Chinua Achebe, Walter Miller Jr., and Walker Percy.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 214 and POLS 215, or consent of the department.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 461: Topics-International Politics | The Global South in International Relations
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Chaldeans Mensah

The course offers a critical understanding of the emergence of the Global South or Third World in International Relations. It discusses the ideational and institutional underpinnings and relevance of the Third World movement in international relations.  The course addresses specific issues and concerns of the Global South in international relations including the following: the changing nature of North-South relations; the pursuit of development in the global economy; global governance and the Global South, trends in developmental regionalism; role of emerging economies in the Global South; and perennial issues such as trade, official development assistance, South-South cooperation, sustainable development, and alleviation of poverty.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 264.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 490: Advanced Study in Political Science | Corruption and Development
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Andrea Wagner

The orthodoxy of the political economy literature posits that corruption represents the greatest obstacle to the progress of democracy, good governance, rule of law and economic development. Global and regional organizations have wholeheartedly embraced this wisdom. For instance, in the last two decades the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank viewed corruption as a disruptive phenomenon and have compelled the borrowing countries to tackle it with priority and diligence. The seminar focuses on the rise of independent anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) in East Central Europe and Asia and examines the endogenous and exogenous forces that contribute to their success or failure in undermining corruptive practices. In addition to ACAs, we will also shed light on the peculiar dynamics of corruption and development. We will discuss the findings of studies that have focused on the determinants of corruption, emphasizing variables that indicate a negative association between corruptive practices and economic growth. The second part of the seminar will focus on the reasons why corruption stays pernicious in the post-communist context as well as international efforts to undermine it.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in POLS 200, POLS 214, POLS 215, POLS 224, POLS 225, POLS 264, and either POLS 244 or POLS 265, or consent of the department.

Permission Required: No

Course: ECON 357: Topics in Applied Economics | Future Studies
Term: Spring 2023
Section: OP01
Instructor: Dr. Junaid bin Jahangir

The objective of this course is to introduce students to an interdisciplinary approach to address the pressing issues of our times, including climate change, economic inequality, the future of work with automation, weakening democracy, refugees, terrorism, pandemics, and conspiracy theories. Students will learn about planning for surprises, trends for plausible futures, and strategies to achieve goals for desired futures. The feature of this interdisciplinary approach is that while it uses economic principles, it underscores advocacy and policy change. The topics covered include the application of economic principles like trade-offs and opportunity costs, the importance of broad-based consensus and balance between diversity and core values, and how collective efforts can move us towards desired futures. In short, students in this course will learn mechanisms through which they can facilitate a meaningful change in the world.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in ECON 101

Permission Required:> No

Course: POLS 490: Advanced Study in Political Science | Hermeneutics as Politics
Term: Spring 2023
Section: OP01
Instructor: Dr. Gaelan Murphy

This course considers the problem of hermeneutics, of interpretation, through a close reading of the works of Hans-georg Gadamer and Alasdair MacIntyre. The course is organized around two main sets of questions. First, how do I read a text? What philosophical problems are embedded in the act of reading and, given these issues, how should we approach a text as readers? Second, on the basis of this set of hermeneutical questions, what is the relationship between hermeneutics and our ability to engage in practical reason that informs political action?

Students will be required to demonstrate understanding of the problem of hermeneutics, and, on that basis, provide a close reading of a primary text in relation to a problem of practical reason.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in POLS 200, POLS 214, POLS 215, POLS 224, POLS 225, POLS 264, and either POLS 244 or POLS 265, or consent of the department.

Permission Required: No

Course: ANTH 389: Topics in Anthropology | Verbal Art and Performance
Term: Fall 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Jenanne Ferguson

In this course we will focus on orality and performance cross-linguistically, and examine a variety of genres and speech events in which verbal artistry is central, from slam poetry, storytelling and comedy routines to political speeches and prayers. We will also analyze the intersections of orality and literacy practices, and what this means for the maintenance and transmission of verbal art forms in a variety of cultures.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in ANTH 208 or department consent.

Permission Required: Yes

How to Enrol: Students can request a permission number from the Arts and Science Advising Office at artsandscience@macewan.ca starting at 8:30 a.m. on the morning of their enrolment appointment. Permission numbers will be given to students who fulfill the prerequisites in the order in which they are received. One permission number request per email please.

Course: ANTH 497: Topics in Anthropology | Anthropology of Food
Term: Fall 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Franca Boag

Whereas food is a physiological necessity, it is a cultural phenomenon, a basic component of social life with historical, symbolic and material realities. This seminar course examines the cross-cultural role of food in political, symbolic, economic and other historical and contemporary social processes. Food is helpful in thinking about themes such as social inequalities – hierarchies of status, race, class, and power. It is also an especially rich font for exploring food production, exchange and consumption. Food speaks to cultural identity, terroir, slow food, and memory, gender and ritual, nationalism, globalization, and the political economy of food and protest. Seminar participants will engage with foundational readings and contemporary ethnography but are also encouraged to contribute topics of special interest for discussion.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in one of ANTH 206, ANTH 207, ANTH 208, or ANTH 209 and a minimum grade of C- in any 300-level ANTH course.

Permission Required: No

Course: ANTH 497: Topics in Anthropology | Historical Archaeology
Term: Fall 2023
Section: AS02
Instructor: Dr. Paul Prince

This course is about the problems addressed by the archaeology of the recent past and the methods and interpretive frameworks employed. Students will learn how the analysis of archaeological materials is used along with documents and oral historical data to study events, aspects of life, and groups of people under-represented in written histories. Emphasis will be upon examples drawn from colonial and industrial contexts in North America.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in one of ANTH 206, ANTH 207, ANTH 208, or ANTH 209 and a minimum grade of C- in any 300-level ANTH course.

Permission Required: Yes

How to Enrol: Students can request a permission number from the Arts and Science Advising Office at artsandscience@macewan.ca starting at 8:30 a.m. on the morning of their enrolment appointment. Permission numbers will be given to students who fulfill the prerequisites in the order in which they are received. One permission number request per email please.

Course: ECON 357: Topics in Applied Economics | Sustainable Development
Term: Fall 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Shahid Islam

This course will introduce sustainable development from economics as well as a wider perspective. Focusing on the links between the economy, social relations, and the dynamics of nature, this course will take an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability and identify where economic principles can contribute to the concept and achievement of sustainability. We expect to bring applications from social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in ECON 101

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 424: Advanced Topics in Canadian Politics | State Authority in Canada: Anti-constitutionalism, Uprisings, Separatism, and other Challenges
Term: Fall 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. John Soroski

Both recent and past history in Canada offers numerous examples of large and small, sometimes direct sometimes indirect, challenges to the constitutional authority of the state, contestation between contending authorities, or oversteps of authority by state actors. What are the implications of these different contests and what claims of morality are at issue in assessing such events? How should the state or contending governments respond to such challenges? How should citizens, groups, and courts respond when the state is the offender?

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 225, or consent of the department.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 461: Topics in International Politics | Ethics in International Affairs
Term: Fall 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Jeffrey Rice

What are the moral duties and responsibilities that states have to one another? To their own citizens? What about to non-citizens? And how far might those responsibilities extend? While International Relations is often studied from the perspective of power, normative statements, claims, and judgements form an integral part of a state’s foreign policy. This course aims to unpack the normative underpinnings of state behaviour by looking at the moral responsibilities that states have to one another and aims to assess whether we are living in a system of states, or a society of states. Topics covered in this course include: just war theory; genocide prevention and humanitarian intervention; the use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapon systems in conflict; migration and refugees crises; foreign aid and global distributive justice; climate change and sustainability, and more.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 264

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 470: Selected Topics in Comparative Politics | Politics of Social Movements in East Asia
Term: Fall 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Chong Su Kim

The ‘sudden’ eruptions of violent as well as non-violent insurgencies in East Asia since the mid-1980s—from the Tiananmen-Square-Protests in China, protest waves in Hong Kong in the second millennium, and to the Candlelight rallies in South Korea—shattered the region’s homogeneous image that portrayed its society as compliant and passive. The widespread image of rapid economic growth under authoritarian regimes still prevails among Western knowledge on the politics of East Asia, which has continuously nurtured such a docile image but has overlooked the other politics of the region: the politics of social movements.
Unlike the established politics of the region and Western knowledge of it, which is still busy producing a static and homogeneous image of East Asian society, the politics of social movements reveals the dynamics and heterogeneity of East Asian politics.

This course aims to introduce students to the politics of social movements in East Asia. Based on the basic approaches and concepts of social movements, their effects, and case studies, the course provides students with comparative and comprehensive perspectives on the politics of social movements in East Asia. This course consists of three sections: 1) an overview of diverse social movement approaches and basic concepts; 2) the interactions between social changes—in particular democratization, counter-democratization, and/or democratization of democracy—and social movements in East Asia; and 3) specific movements—labour, women’s, and environmental/urban social movements—in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 200

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 490: Advanced Study in Political Science | Theories of Public Governance
Term: Fall 2022
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Brendan Boyd

As a concept, governance defies a single succinct definition, but clearly involves questions of authority, decision making and accountability. In plain language, it is how groups of people establish the rules and processes that control and shape their conduct. Public governance refers to the systems by which a population, community or country governs itself, as opposed to the governance of a private corporation or business. In this course, we investigate the evolution of modern public governance, since the mid-1800s, by examining the theoretical approaches and organizational forms of governance and how they have been applied in practice. The themes and debates that are examined include: how do different governance approaches distribute power and authority, how do they make and enforce decisions about policy and the distribution of public resources and how do they secure accountability and legitimacy from the public that is bound by these decisions.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in POLS 200, POLS 214, POLS 215, POLS 224, POLS 225, POLS 244, and POLS 264, or consent of the department.

Permission Required: No

Course: ANTH 389: Topics in Anthropology | Anthropology of the Body
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Leslie Dawson

Beginning in the 1980s, the body, as a social and cultural artifact, became a central focus for anthropology and related fields. Moving beyond the initial refutations of “the body” as a natural, universal object, this course highlights current understandings of the body as simultaneously subject and object, meaningful and material, individual and social. We problematize the body and explore various conceptualizations from the lived experience of the individual body as self, to representative uses of the social body as a symbol of nature, society, and culture, to the surveillance, control, and regulation of political bodies and ways in which bodies resist mechanisms of power. Through the lens of embodiment, this course emphasizes the multiplicity of bodies and how lived and emplaced bodies reflect sociocultural practices, discourses, identities, images, and (unequal) relationships in a variety of ethnographic, socioeconomic, and political contexts.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in one of ANTH 206, ANTH 207, ANTH 208, or ANTH 209.

Permission Required: No

Course: ANTH 389: Topics in Anthropology | Indian Residential School Experience
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS02
Day and Time: Mondays from 9:00 a.m. to 11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Shelby LaFramboise

This course is designed for participants to intersect with the legacy of the Canadian Indian Residential Schools’ experience. Participants will have the opportunity to explore foundational knowledge to garner deeper understandings of the legacy of colonial policy and practices on Indigenous children. These experiences have marked not only First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children but continue to have long-lasting and intergenerational effects and affects on both the lived Indigenous experience and the relational lived experience of non-indigenous Canadians. Students will consider the implications for language, culture, and ceremonial loss. This course will help participants unpack the legacy of fractured individual and familial roles and current revitalization efforts and/or sustainability towards healthy relationships. Students will understand the significance of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission towards truthful Canadian history and bringing this dark period of time to light so all Canadians might understand the false and/or void history. This knowledge is crucial towards ethical relational space/s. Participants are encouraged to get curious, interrupt their personal understandings and/or familial knowledge systems. Participants will work together to unpack learning, interrupt frameworks and work together towards cultural and historical safety telling practices.

Prerequisites: Minimum second year standing (24 credits) and department consent.

Permission Required: Yes

How to Enrol: This section of ANTH 389 is open to all degree students. Students can request a permission number from the Arts and Science Advising Office by filling out this Google form. Permission numbers will be given to students who fulfill the prerequisites in the order in which they are received.

Course: ANTH 497: Topics in Anthropology | Paleopathology
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Treena Swanston

This seminar course is an examination of ancient disease, nutrition, and activity in past populations focusing on the gross description, diagnosis, and interpretation of human skeletal and dental lesions. The first part of this course will provide background information including the history of, and current issues in paleopathology, osteobiographical methods, skeletal and dental biology, and paleopathological techniques. This will be followed by an introduction to the most common pathological conditions affecting human remains.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in ANTH 209 and a 300-level ANTH required; ANTH 390 recommended.

Permission Required: Yes

How to Enrol: Students can request a permission number from the Arts and Science Advising Office at artsandscience@macewan.ca starting at 8:30 a.m. on the morning of their enrolment appointment. Permission numbers will be given to students who fulfill the prerequisites in the order in which they are received. One permission number request per email please.

Course: ANTH 497: Topics in Anthropology | The Anthropology of Immigration
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS02
Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Long

This seminar course explores anthropological approaches to immigration and human movement. Anthropology is uniquely suited to inquire about everyday experiences of migration as they connect to national discourses, legal processes, and transnational trends concerning the movement of bodies around the globe. Ethnographic studies of migration center questions of power, access, and resources in a way to help us reflect on our assumptions about who migrates, and why? In this course, we will explore studies that have delved into questions surrounding the legality of migration and investigated the ways host communities react to the presence of non-nationals. Each class will begin with a 'framing lecture', followed by students' analysis and debate about our weekly readings and media.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in one of ANTH 206, ANTH 207, ANTH 208, or ANTH 209 and a minimum grade of C- in any 300-level ANTH course.

Permission Required: No

Course: ECON 357: Topics in Applied Economics | Introduction to Financial Economics
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Yixuan Li

This course is an introduction to financial economics. We will examine how individuals and financial firms allocate scarce resources over time, as well as the markets on which they rely to do so. The first part of the course will cover the main tenets of mean variance portfolio theory with the purpose of determining efficient portfolios and selecting the optimal portfolio. The second part will focus on standard equilibrium pricing models, such as CAPM. As a final part of the course, we will cover the pricing of debt and equity instruments in their respective markets, along with an introduction to the pricing of options and other derivatives.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in ECON 101

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 304: Topics in European Politics | Policy Making in the European Union
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Andrea Wagner

This course is designed to provide students with in-depth knowledge and foster in them a sound understanding of the achievements and challenges of the European Union (EU) specifically during the current global pandemic. The course is divided into three parts. The first part seeks to familiarize the students with the institutional structure of the EU with a heavy focus on the functioning of the institutions of the European Union and the provisions of the Treaties on which the institutional life of the EU is premised. The study of the institutional life, political dilemmas and historical background of the European integration process will allow us to critically examine policymaking in the EU. The second part of the course will observe the complex processes that underpin decision-making in the EU, the juxtaposition and harmony between supranational and intergovernmental modes of decision-making, the co-existence and interaction between European and national policies. The third part of the course covers the current developments within the European Union and will address the EU’s role in the fight of COVID-19, the problem of enlargement and the rise of right- wing/ left-wing populist parties and other Eurosceptic actors.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in POLS 200.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 349: Topics in Global Politics | International Security
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Jeffrey Rice

This course examines contemporary and emerging threats in international security, with a focus on both international and regional dynamics. The objectives of this course are three-fold: First, to familiarize students with the major theories, concepts, and debates in contemporary security studies. Second, to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of some of the most pressing security issues facing the international system today, including: nuclear proliferation, civil wars and state fragility, civil-military relations, and military coups, among others. Third, to critically examine why some issues become ‘security issues’ as opposed to others and what the effect of securitizing an issue has on how we try to address it.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in POLS 264.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 390: Topics in Political Science | Urban Crises and Wellness
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Marielle Papin

In this course, we will identify the different environmental, social, and economic crises urban residents recurrently experience. The interconnectedness and simultaneity of these crises have forced us to reconsider municipal siloed problem-solving processes. Urban wellness offers a holistic perspective of how to deal with compound urban crises and improve the lives of urban dwellers.

We will discuss current policies and governance interventions to manage these crises and their limitations, while reflecting on the phenomenon and concept of urban wellness, which offers promising answers to the challenges of compound urban crises and their management. We will pay particular attention to how urban wellness considers questions of inclusion and social justice.

Seeking answers from a variety of fields, this course will feature interventions from diverse scholars and practitioners of urban wellness policies and governance. It is meant as an introductory course on urban wellness.

Prerequisites: Third year standing with at least 6 credits in any combination of courses from Anthropology, Economics, and Political Science.

Permission Required: Yes

How to Enrol: Students can request a permission number from the Arts and Science Advising Office at artsandscience@macewan.ca starting at 8:30 a.m. on the morning of their enrolment appointment. Permission numbers will be given to students who fulfill the prerequisites in the order in which they are received. One permission number request per email please.

Course: POLS 410: Topics in Political Philosophy | Politics of Reasonableness
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Gaelan Murphy

This course is an attempt at a return to the philosophic mode of posing practical and political questions through the art of dialectic and awareness of the ontological significance of hermeneutic consciousness, and the cultivation of phronesis, reasonableness, a non-rule governed mode of deliberation and judgement. To do this we have to understand the terms under discussion, both what they might mean and what their justification might be. This involves reading and learning what Hans-georg Gadamer has to say, from whom these ideas are drawn. However, in the spirit of practical philosophy we should also do this, that is we will attempt to cultivate and apply reasonableness to areas of common and contemporary concern.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 214 and POLS 215, or consent of the department.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 424: Advanced Topics Can Politics | State Authority in Canada: Anti-constitutionalism, Uprisings, Separatism, and Other Challenges
Term: Winter 2023
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. John Soroski

Both recent and past history in Canada offers numerous examples of large and small, sometimes direct sometimes indirect, challenges to the constitutional authority of the state, contestation between contending authorities, or oversteps of authority by state actors. What are the implications of these different contests and what claims of morality are at issue in assessing such events? How should the state or contending governments respond to such challenges? How should citizens, groups, and courts respond when the state is the offender?

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 225.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 444: Topics in Policy Studies | Theory and Practice of Policy Evaluation
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Brendan Boyd

How do we know whether a policy has met its goals or what impact it has? This course focuses on the outputs of the political and the policy process to measure and assess the effectiveness of government policy interventions. The question is a critical, although understudied, component of public policy and democratic governance. The course includes the study of theories, approaches and models of policy evaluation and the role of evidence in policy decisions. Working with government, private or community partners, students will perform an actual evaluation on a policy, program or initiative to determine its impact and whether it has met its intended goals. Students will complete the course with practical skills and knowledge that can applied while working in the field of policy making and analysis.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in POLS 244.

Permission Required: No

Course: POLS 490: Advanced Topics in Political Science | Politics of Memory, Truth, Reconciliation and Beyond
Term: Winter 2024
Section: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Chong Su Kim

“Learning from history” or “what the past can teach us” presupposes both a solid line separating the past from the present and the out-there history assuring the stable past with archived lessons waiting to be excavated. While history served as a key architect for nation-state building since the Enlightenment, memories have emerged as a key building-block of post-colonial, -modern, and -truth eras. In recent decades, politics of memory is deeply embedded into key political and historical events such as Holocaust, Apartheid, democratic transitions, and the war in Ukraine. Politics of memory uneathes the past and buries the future, while it looks backward to move forward.

This course explore how politics of memory invervenes into the present and remember the future and how critical memory reclaims and negotiates the past. This course examines basic concepts of collective and counter-memory; key mnemonic themes including commemoration, amnesia, nostalgia, and guilt and repentance; and cases of memory practices such top-down truth and reconciliation commissions around the world including Canada and bottom-up memory activism.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in POLS 200, POLS 214, POLS 215, POLS 224, POLS 225, POLS 244, and POLS 264, or consent of the department.

Permission Required: No