Courses

Course: FREN 370: Topics in Francophone Culture | La chanson en français (Songs in French)
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. S. Hayman

Songs are part of daily life and reflect the societies, cultures, and eras in which they are rooted. In this course, students explore songs in French from around the French-speaking world (Europe, Canada, Louisiana, the Caribbean, Africa). Focussing primarily on the early twentieth century to the present day, students study the cultural and historical background behind the works of some of la francophie’s most prestigious artists and songwriters while analyzing the literary value of the lyrics. Many different musical genres will be examined such as pop, folk, rock, reggae, raï, hip-hop, rap, indie, etc. This course is conducted in French.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in FREN 298 or any 300-level FREN course

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 301: Topics in World History | World Waterways
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: TBD

This intermediate course explores a variety of ways societies have utilized waterways from the fifteenth century through the beginning of the twenty-first century. Course readings, lectures, and class discussions embrace environmental, socioeconomic, political, and cultural approaches to history and historical geography. Meanwhile, the topics addressed in this course are equally diverse and range from the cultural currency of Indigenous canoes and aquaponics to the global geopolitical ramifications of China’s recent efforts to become a “sea power nation.” We will also consider how human interaction with oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, and canals can be understood within processes integral to continuity and change, including the manner in which Edmonton’s River Valley was subject to “creative destruction” during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in any 100- or 200-level HIST course

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 410: Topics in European History | Global Paris
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. K. Summers

Since the eighteenth century, Paris has functioned as a cosmopolitan site of Enlightenment and existentialism; revolution and counter-revolution; occupation and resistance; free speech and censorship; empire and decolonization; and Jacobin, anarchist, and Islamist terror. Using the tools of transnational urban history, this course situates the rich political, social, and cultural history of modern France and its empire in the cafés, grand boulevards, criminal underworld, universities, and immigrant suburbs of its capital city.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST, including one of HIST 205, HIST 209, or HIST 210

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 411: Topics in Med & EM Brit. Hist. | Household Material Cultures in Early Modern Britain
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. R. Falconer

Coffee and chocolate, silks and cotton, shoes and spices, furnishings and food, the demand for such items from nearly every level of society reflected changing attitudes towards consumption and changing household priorities from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century. In particular, the period 1600 - 1800 saw a marked increase in the consumption of luxury items across the British Isles. According to the historian Jan de Vries, a new range of consumer goods available in England and Scotland from the 17th century led to an increase in ‘family labour’ in order to achieve the new ‘consumption possibilities.’ Using what de Vries has called an ‘Industrious Revolution’ as a theoretical model, in this course we will examine conspicuous consumption, trade networks, shopping, labour and leisure, household spending priorities, material cultures, trade expansion, and a host of other subjects related to early modern social and cultural history. In the words of Craig Muldrew: “before the widespread harnessing of machine energy based on carbon fuel, almost all labour had to be done by men and animals. Bread and beer were the petrol of this world.”

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST, including at least 3 credits from HIST 206, HIST 211, or HIST 311.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 490: Topics in Social History | The Early Modern Household
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. R. Falconer

Contemporaries in Early Modern Europe argued that marriage and the ‘family’ were essential for forging social relations. As such, the ‘family’, or more accurately, a well–maintained household, was idealised as the cornerstone of a well–governed, well–ordered society. And while the function or rationale behind early modern households can be questioned – location of economic development, place of residence and authority – there is no disputing that local magistrates regarded the ‘family’ as key to establishing stability within the community. By examining the role of patriarchy, the construction of hierarchy and discipline, the nature of structure and place, and the influence of gender and sexuality within the household this course will encourage students to think more broadly about the important place of the household within early modern European societies.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 303: Studies in Philosophy and Religion | Kierkegaard, Johannes Climacus, and Socrates
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Cyrus Panjvani

In this course offering, students read and examine the following works written by Kierkegaard under the pseudonym ‘Johannes Climacus’: Philosophical Crumbs, also known as Philosophical Fragments, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Crumbs/Fragments. These are both important yet ironically titled works by Kierkegaard that explore themes of subjectivity, truth, faith, and the relation to the divine. In addition, the course will consider the bearing of Socrates in these works. In particular, we will examine the relation between Socrates and Johannes Climacus in the Philosophical Crumbs/Fragments. Students will also read the Apology and at least one other selection from Plato.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in 3 credits of 200-level PHIL.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 341: Studies in Early Modern Philosophy | Descartes, Malebranche, and Liebniz
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. S. Mills

The goal of this course is to gain a critical understanding and appreciation of the rigorously systematic and awesomely ambitious philosophies of three early modern continental European philosophers: Descartes (1596-1650), Malebranche (1638-1715), and Leibniz (1646-1716). As we will discover through close study of various primary texts by these philosophers as well as secondary source articles by contemporary scholars, there are ties among these three philosophers that go much deeper than time and place. Our study will highlight the complexity of their respective—yet related—philosophical systems of thought as we focus particularly on the theme of relationships, including God’s relationship to the natural world, the metaphysical and moral relationship between God and humans, the cause-and-effect relationships among corporeal objects, and the psychophysical relations of minds and bodies.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in 3 credits of 200-level PHIL.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 403: Topics in Moral Philosophy | The moral and religious philosophy of Simone Weil
Term: Winter 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Cyrus Panjvani

In this course, students study the philosophy of religion of Simone Weil. In addition to being a philosopher and prolific writer, Weil was an activist committed to several compassionate endeavours, and has been characterized as a mystic. The relation between her life and thought is a point of focus in the course. Students will read primary and secondary source materials, be expected to participate regularly, do presentations, and complete a major paper.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level PHIL, with a least 3 of those credits at the 300-level.

Permission Required: No

Course: CLAS 315: Topics in Roman History | A Cloud in the West: Rome, Macedonia and Empire
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Collin Bailey

This offering examines Rome's confrontations with the kingdom of Macedonia between c. 230 and 146 BCE. In this period, Rome fought a series of wars which gradually led to the establishment of a Roman hegemony over Macedonia, Greece and their neighbours. In this course, we will consider the beginnings of Rome's involvement with Macedonia and Greece and examine Rome's subsequent interventions in Macedonian affairs. We will also evaluate ancient and modern explanations and rationalizations of Roman expansion in this period, including issues of Roman imperialism and hegemony through Realist and Constructivist lenses.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in one of CLAS 208, CLAS 210, CLAS 270, CLAS 274 or CLAS 280.

Permission Required: No

Course: GREK 301: Reading Greek Prose | Greek Prose
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Jessica Romney

In this course, students will increase their translating proficiency in ancient Greek by reading a prose text in the original, unadapted Greek. By the end of the term, students will be able to explain intermediate to advanced grammatical constructions and translate ancient Greek prose into idiomatic English. The class will choose one of the following options to read over the term: Plato’s Crito (a dialogue on the laws), Plato’s Symposium (a series of speeches praising Eros), Cebes’ Tablet (a dialogue on the paths of luxury versus philosophy), Lysias Against Eratosthenes (a speech charging Eratosthenes with an extra-judicial murder), Herodotus Book 1 (the Croesus and Cyrus chapters) or Xenophon Anabasis Book 4 (the march through Armenia to finally reach the sea).

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in GREK 102 or 201.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 411: Topics in Medieval and Early Modern British History | The Social History of Witchcraft in Early Modern Britain
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Robert Falconer

In 1569, Agnes Bowker testified before the Archdeacon of Leicester that she had given birth to a cat. Her explanation for how this had come to pass, as David Cressy tells us, was: "that a thing came unto her as she was in bed and lay the first night very heavy upon her bed but touched her not. The next night, she saw it, and it was in the likeness of a black cat. By the moonlight, it came into her bed and had knowledge of her body on several occasions." The circumstance by which Bowker had become pregnant, the reasons for her deceit and the response of her neighbours to her behaviour shed light on contemporary attitudes towards gender, sex, popular beliefs and witchcraft.

This seminar explores the history of “witchcraft” and “witch-hunts” in Scotland and England during the 16th and 17th centuries. Were witches real? Did they make pacts with the Devil? Were they the cause of misfortune in local communities? By examining the historical treatment of contemporary social change; attitudes towards the poor, gendered and patriarchal institutions; early modern legal developments and economic instability, the answers to these and other questions related to the early modern witch craze may be determined.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 460: Topics in Canadian History | Transformation of the Canadian Prairies, 1867–1914
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Robert Irwin

Canada’s acquisition of British claims to Rupert’s Land and the Northwestern Territories in 1869 provoked the Red River Resistance and set the stage for a radical transformation of the social, political, cultural, economic and ecological landscapes of the Canadian prairies. Canada established a system of government, made treaties with Indigenous people, imposed Canadian law, built a transcontinental railway, surveyed and settled the land, encouraged agriculture, ranching and mining, and fought battles against the Metis and First Nation communities. In the period prior to World War I, hundreds of thousands of immigrants took up residence on the land. The transformation led to the creation of the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and set the foundations for the prairies' political culture of resentment toward the federal government. This seminar examines this era of change and discusses the lasting impacts.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST courses, including either HIST 260 or HIST 261.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 490: Topics in Social History | Lived Experiences in Modern Korea
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Jihyun Shin

This course explores the social history of Korea in the 20th century. Students discuss, critique and analyze readings to imagine and understand the lived experiences of “ordinary” Koreans in the past. Topics include Koreans’ experience under Japanese colonial rule, the emergence of two Koreas, the Korean War and the nation-building processes of North and South Korea. The course investigates how the field of social history is closely related to the study of families, gender, religion, poverty, media and culture. Students engage primary sources from visual and material culture, popular media and oral histories to supplement more traditional archival sources.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST, including at least 3 credits from HIST 204, HIST 205, HIST 304 or HIST 308.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 370: Studies in Political Philosophy | Plato’s Gorgias
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr.Edvard Lorkovic

In this course, students study Plato’s Gorgias. Because the Gorgias dramatizes an encounter between Socrates, the great philosopher and Gorgias, the famous sophist and teacher of rhetoric, we will consider the confrontation between philosophy and sophistry and the political relevance of this confrontation. In so doing, we will examine how philosophy and sophistry employ language for political ends. How should we speak to promote a just and orderly polity? How should we speak to cultivate a good life?

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in 3 credits in 200-level PHIL courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 402: Topics in the History of Philosophy | Philosophy of Space and Time
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Craig Fox

Look around the room you’re in. It seems that the physical things—the tables, chairs, people and so on—exist in some kind of space. But what does this mean? What is space? Is space a thing that physical things exist within? When we move, do we move with respect to space itself? And what about time? What is that? These are all questions concerning the “metaphysics” of space, time and motion. The aim of this course is to examine the views of three main historical figures: Descartes, Newton and Leibniz, and to see how the tensions between their conceptions of space, time and motion have had a lasting influence on the development of our concepts today. Readings will include primary and secondary sources, and students will be expected to participate in discussions, make presentations and complete a major paper.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level PHIL with at least 3 of those credits at the 300-level.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 403: Topics in Moral Philosophy | The Moral Imagination
Term: Fall 2025
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Alain Beauclair

In this class, we will explore the role the imagination plays in moral inquiry by examining both classic and contemporary texts that engage this issue.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level PHIL with at least 3 of those credits at the 300-level.

Permission Required: No

Course: CLAS 314: Topics in Greek History | Imperial Athens: Success or Failure of the Democratic Experiment?
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Jessica Romney

Athens is the first Greek democracy. It is also the first Greek empire. Are those two facts necessarily related, and if they are, how? This course examines the relationship between democracy and empire through the history of the Athenian polis. Focusing on the so-called Golden Age period of the 5th century BCE (478–404), we will examine the creation of demokratia—rule by the demos—in 508 BCE as a response to over 100 years of inter-elite conflict through the Athenian empire of the 5^th century to the end of Athenian democracy in 322 BCE. As we study the development of Athenian democratic government and institutions alongside the transition into empire, we will also examine the relationship between citizen and non-citizen identities, artistic creations and empire, democracy and unfree labour and other contradictions that are at the heart of Athenian democracy. As modern democracies grapple with the legacies and ongoing policies of empire and colonialism, this course asks whether democracy’s relationship with empire has been hardwired into democratic systems ever since the Athenians experimented with demokratia.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in CLAS 209, CLAS 210 or CLAS 271 or a minimum grade of C- in CLAS 280 and permission of instructor.

Permission Required: No

Course: FREN 370: Topics in Francophone Culture | Animals
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Marla Epp

This course focuses on the representation of animals in literature and film. Students will study a variety of films and literary texts, taken from different historical moments and geographical contexts, as we analyze the multiple ways encounters with animals can be represented. We will interrogate the effects produced by the appearance of an animal in a literary text or film as well as consider how human-animal relationships and the ways we represent them have evolved over time. This course is conducted in French.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in FREN 298 or any 300-level FREN course.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 301: Topics in World History | Global History of Childhood
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Caroline Lieffers

This course examines experiences and ideologies of childhood across different cultures, exploring broad questions in the historiography of childhood as well as specific case studies. Key themes include the notion of the child genius, literature by and for children, the role of education in children’s lives, children’s experiences of colonialism, incarceration, and conflict and the rights of the child in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in any 100- or 200-level HIST course.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 301: Topics in World History | The Cold War, East Asia and the World
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS02
Instructor: Dr. Jihyun Shin

This course explores the global context of the Cold War in East Asia from 1945 to 1991. Despite our common understanding of the Cold War as a period of ideological tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War in East Asia involved not only ideological conflict, but also several “hot” military conflicts including the Chinese civil war, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. By studying these major events, students learn how the power struggles between the United States and the Soviet Union impacted the origins and development of East Asian nation-states. The global context is also highlighted through comparisons of decolonization in East Asia and in Africa and analyses of Asian countries’ relations with Latin American countries. In addition, students investigate social and cultural dimensions of the Cold War through the themes of propaganda, gender and public memory.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in any 100- or 200-level HIST course.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 364: Topics in Western Canadian History | The Northwestern Fur Trade, 1650–1870
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Robert Irwin

The topic of the course this year is the Northwest fur trade. The course investigates the Montreal and Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade operations in Western Canada from the first fur trade contacts established by Radisson and Groseilliers in the 1650s until the fur trade declined in significance following Canada’s acquisition of Rupert’s Land and the Northwest. The fur trade was the primary mechanism through which Indigenous people and European empires intersected in this era. The course investigates fur trade colonialism and the distinctive relationships that were forged in that process.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in any 100- or 200-level HIST course.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 410: Topics in European History | Migration, Asylum and Revolution
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Kelly Summers

The borders of France expanded and contracted dramatically during its Age of Revolutions (c. 1789–1848). As populations shifted accordingly, the state developed new ways to track both immigration and emigration, from passports to elaborate residency and citizenship laws, the violation of which risked banishment and even death. Some migrants left home of their own volition to pursue economic opportunities or political alternatives abroad; others fled persecution and war or were deported as criminals and aliens. Using the tools of migration studies, this course will explore the diasporas of migrants, exiles and refugees that left but also formed within France, some temporarily and others permanently, as Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and revolutionary universalism came into conflict with emergent nationalism.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST, including one of HIST 205, HIST 209 or HIST 210.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 490: Topics in Social History | Disability History
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Caroline Lieffers

This seminar course explores the history of disability from the eighteenth century to the present. Through scholarly readings in disability history and theory, as well as primary sources, students will examine key topics like disability’s intersections with slavery and settler colonialism, military service and citizenship, eugenics and institutionalization, activism, sports, and assistive and adaptive technologies.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: HIST 491: Topics in International History | History of the Vietnam Wars
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Michael Carroll

The topic of this course will be the Vietnam Wars. Brutal, futile, quagmire, divisive, massacre—these are but a few words that have been commonly used to describe the conflict. Almost two million Vietnamese lost their lives in this epic struggle, and for what? Throughout the term, we will explore the political, economic, social and military aspects of the Vietnam Wars and its impact on Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, France and the United States.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level HIST courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 337: Studies in Christian, Islamic and Jewish Philosophy | Evil in Medieval Philosphy
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Celia Hatherly

This class attempts to answer various questions about how the Medievals understood evil. These will include What is evil? Why does it exist if God is good and created the world? Does its existence undermine God’s Providence (i.e., knowledge and control of our world)? Does it disprove His existence? We will consider these questions as posed and answered in Medieval Islamic, Jewish and Catholic philosophy.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in 3 credits of 200-level PHIL courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 383: Philosophy of Film | American Dreams and Nightmares
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Alain Beauclair

In this class, we will examine the kinds of fantasies—both aspirational and horrifying—that comprise Hollywood’s vision of a good life.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in 3 credits of 200-level PHIL courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: PHIL 403: Topics in Moral Philosophy | Weakness of Will
Term: Winter 2026
Session: AS01
Instructor: Dr. Celia Hatherly

We are all aware that we do things we know will harm ourselves and others. However, philosophers are traditionally puzzled about how we could do this. This class will explore the different accounts of akrasia (weakness of will) in Plato and Aristotle. We will also examine how various Medieval philosophers used the concept to explain the angelic fall and how the angels could knowingly choose to do evil, become demons and be eternally punished.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 9 credits of 200- or 300-level PHIL with a least 3 of those credits at the 300-level.

Permission Required: No