Courses

Course Code: THST 5051 (3.0)
Day/Time: N/A
Instructor: N/A

• THST 5051 3.0 Theatre Studies Internship
  This course is designed to give graduate students applied, professionally–oriented work experience in a field related to one of the program’s fields of specialization and/or the student’s research areas. Note: THST 5051 is REQUIRED for MA students, but PhD students may opt to take this as an elective.

Course Code: THST 6350 (3.0)
Day/Time: May 2nd to 26th - 2:30pm to 5:30pm
Instructor: Mary Bunch

2022 Queer Summer Institute - This course is intended to provide graduate students with unique opportunities to study with a range of visiting artists and scholars in applied research areas. This course is expected to be offered each summer and changes each year.

Theatre & Performance Studies Credit

Course Code: THST 6500 (3.0)
Day/Time: Application Only
Instructor: Apply to desired supervisor

• THST 6500 3.0 Independent Study
  Requests for an Independent Study course must be accompanied with an Independent Study Proposal (With the permission of the Graduate Program Director) Independent Studies Application.

Course Code: THST 5051 (3.0)
Day/Time: 0:00
Instructor: N/A

THST 5051 3.0 Theatre & Performance Studies Internship
This course is designed to give graduate students applied, professionally-oriented work experience in a field related to one of the program's fields of specialization and/or the student's research areas. Note: This course is graded on a pass/fail basis.

Course Code: THST 5052 (3.0)
Day/Time: Every other Friday, 10:00
Instructor: Ian Garrett

THST 5052 Theatre & Performance Studies Colloquium
This course discusses research approaches, pedagogical strategies, and various aspects of professional development within theatre and performance studies. This course is required for and only open to Theatre & Performance Studies MA students and first-year PhD students.

Theatre & Performance Studies Credit

Course Code: THEA 5077 (3.0)
Day/Time: Wed, 14:00 / Thur, 11:00
Instructor: Erika Batdorf

Through sourcing exercises, presentations of student-created material and feedback, students develop material for solo and collaborative performances in any medium. The focus encourages expanding out from the students current artistic base, either by collaborating with artists in other disciplines or by including other mediums themselves. The class focuses on creation rather than production. Prerequisites: Some studio training required (dance, digital media, acting, sculpture…). Submission of a resume (portfolio/video if available), interest statement and permission of Instructor.

Course Code: THST 5112 (3.0)
Day/Time: Mon, 11:30
Instructor: Ian Garrett

In Eco-scenography studio, we approach the design of performance projects from an ecological, systems-thinking approach. This course explores a range of scenarios that problematize conventional theatrical presentations including remote site-specific production; applied, socially engaged, and community-based work; integration of renewable energy and sustainable materials; collaboration with indigenous partners; and projects with human and non-human performers.

Research Methods Credit

Course Code: THST 6329 (3.0)
Day/Time: Mon, 11:30
Instructor: Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston

An overview of the field of performance ethnography from interdisciplinary perspectives bridging performance studies, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology and communication studies. Main approaches to performance ethnography will be examined, including performance as ethnographic representation, performance as collaborative ethnographic research methodology, and pedagogical applications of performance ethnography. The seminar involves the study of performance ethnography texts, performances, and practical exercises.

Theatre & Performance Studies Credit

Course Code: THST 6500A (3.0)
Day/Time: Application Only
Instructor: Students must request a specific faculty member before submitting their application.

THST 6500 3.0 Independent Study
This course is an opportunity for advanced research and in–depth reading in areas related to students’ research interests. Requests for an Independent Study course must be accompanied with an Independent Study Proposal (With the permission of the Graduate Program Director) Independent Studies Application.

Theatre & Performance Studies Credit or Canadian Credit

Course Code: THST 6600 (3.0)
Day/Time: Tues, 14:30
Instructor: Alberto Guevara

Drawing on examples from theatre and performances of the Americas (with an emphasis on First Nations Theatre and Performance), this course examines the use of theatre, spectacle, and theatricality- by the state, by oppositional groups, and by performance practitioners - to establish or challenge structures of power.

Canadian Theatre & Performance Credit or Canadian Credit

Course Code: THST 5020 (3.0)
Day/Time: Thurs, 14:30
Instructor: Mary Fogarty

• THST 5020 3.0 Performance & Culture
  Examines the current range of contemporary scholarship that employs performance as a tool for analyzing cultural processes. Inherently interdisciplinary in scope, the seminar engages with recent performance studies scholarship and its intersections with critical race theory, historiography, cultural studies, museum studies, technology studies, and popular culture.

Course Code: THST 5051 (3.0)
Day/Time: N/A
Instructor: N/A

• THST 5051 3.0 Theatre and Performance Studies Internship
  This course is designed to give graduate students applied, professionally–oriented work experience in a field related to one of the program’s fields of specialization and/or the student’s research areas. Note: THST 5051 is REQUIRED for MA students, but Ph.D. students may opt to take this as an elective.

Course Code: THST 5052 (3.0)
Day/Time: Every other Friday, 10:00
Instructor: Ian Garett

• THST 5052 Theatre & Performance Studies Colloquium
  This course discusses research approaches, pedagogical strategies, and various aspects of professional development within theatre and performance studies.  This course is required for and only open to Theatre & Performance Studies MA students and first-year Ph.D. students.

Theatre & Performance Studies Credit

Course Code: THEA 5078 (3.0)
Day/Time: Tues 11:00 / Wed 14:00
Instructor: Erika Batdorf

Business-related aspects of producing independent performance work in any medium. People will continue to show material created in previous classes but course material will focus on the business versus artistic elements of the industry; grant writing, budgeting, press materials, pitching, promo kits, documentation, touring, tech riders, fundraising, and producing - all focused on their own devised or created material. Prerequisites: Theatre 5075 3.0 OR 5077 3.0

Theatre & Performance Studies Credit

Course Code: THST 6500B (3.0)
Day/Time: Application Only
Instructor:  Students must request a specific faculty member before submitting their application.

• THST 6500B 3.0 Independent Study
  This course is an opportunity for advanced research and in–depth reading in areas related to students’ research interests. Requests for an Independent Study course must be accompanied with an Independent Study Proposal (With the permission of the Graduate Program Director) Independent Studies Application.

Course Code: INST 5000 (6.0)
Day/Time: N/A
Instructor: TBD

Theatre & Performance Studies Credit

• INST 5000 6.0 Interdisciplinary Seminar
  Discussion conducted by the Candidate's Supervisory Committee, focusing on the Candidate's thesis area and designed to integrate the knowledge gained in courses taken under other graduate programs.

• Explores 'ethnography' as an anthropological concept and practice. It aims to: 1) examine ethnographic approaches across a range of anthropological fields; 2) explore the ethnographic process from planning to writing to disseminating ethnographic material; and 3) develop proficiencies and professional skills associated with proposal and grant-writing for research projects and the presentation of research.

• Provides a general overview of research methodology. Its primary focus is on the nature of anthropological field work and the traditional data gathering techniques which flow from our role as participant observers. Lectures and class discussions are supplemented by practical exercises in interviewing, census taking, questionnaire construction and the use of computers. The course examines the multi-faceted role of the field worker in the context of the rapidly changing social reality within which modern anthropological research takes place.

• The focus of this course is on contemporary anthropological theory with attention to the discipline's history and key debates. Examines critical 'turns' in anthropological theory of the late 20th century and tracks their implications for contemporary practice, including reflexivity and experimentation in ethnographic research and writing, as well as feminist, postmodern, postcolonial and decolonial theories. Required course for MA and PhD degrees.

• Explores SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, from the anthropological perspective. SETI addresses the enduring human question, “Are we alone?”, through astronomical techniques, but also has a deep philosophical history involving ideas of Others and remarkable public appeal.

• Paradoxically, while the social meanings attached to "race" are recognized as groundless, race persists in defining and confining identities, facilitating social cohesion, and making subjectivies that transcend time and space. The focus on discourse in this course explores this paradox. We examine connections between language and different form of knowledge - of culture, History, Anthropology - in making and sustaining race. We consider how discourses of identity and difference, culture and nature, converge with discourses of the body in multiple representations to make race, like gender, one of the most naturalized discourses of our time.

• This course addresses the ethnographic exploration of the implications of the global expansion of intellectual property (IP) into new subject areas (from human cells to plant genetic resources, food, software, and pharmaceuticals) since the 1990s. We explore how anthropological research and practice has been transformed by these developments, considering copyright, trademarks, patents, and traditional knowledge, drawing examples from societies around the world, including our own.

• This course critically engages with the vast and growing body of work in anthropology, geography and science studies that addresses the discursive and material contours of society-nature relations in historically situated and geographically diverse sites.

• The disciplinary focus of anthropology, and more specifically the anthropology of the body, offers students a critical theoretical perspective and point of departure for the study of the contingency of, and relationship between, bodies and biotechnologies.

• The course deals primarily with traditional field methods used in anthropological field research. It explores the many ramifications of the role of participant observer in small-scale research settings.

• In certain instances a Candidate for the Doctoral degree may elect to do an Internship option in order to fulfill course requirements. For example, students specializing in the field of medical anthropology might work in a hospital or psychiatric setting; students concentrating on ethnicity would work with a voluntary association or agency working with immigrants, etc. Prior approval by the Graduate Program Director is required. Final Grade to be based on an evaluation by the affiliate institution, communicated in writing to the Graduate Director.

• Seminar survey of the history of museums will precede the study of cataloguing methods (accession catalogue, exhibition catalogue, catalogue raisonné and of the basic procedures of art works preservation. The ethical and legal implications of the art trade will be discussed. A demonstration of mounting an exhibition will be performed. Scientific methods of research in dating and attribution of works of art will be studied.

• This course integrates both theoretical and practical aspects of curatorial practice.  Curatorial engagements from an array of theoretical perspectives and methodologies such as cultural analysis, collaboration, institutional critique, performative interventions and networked interactivity are investigated.  Current debates concerning how exhibitions function as forms of research and knowledge production, as well as their ideological and social conditions are also examined.

• TBD

• This course examines Canadian arts and cultural policy, its historical development, and the formulation and execution of municipal, provincial and federal policies, with a particular focus on current issues and strategies for the future in the arts and cultural industries.  The course has a research focus.  Where appropriate, comparative analysis will examine other policy models with reference to the UK, the United States, Europe, and Asia.

• This course will explore the dynamics of different perspectives on the human and economic resources involved in the production, distribution, and support of the arts and cultural products in Canada. The central question of this course concerns the management issues that arise from these dynamics. This is a prerequisite course for the MBA Program in Arts and Media Administration. It is intended to service those students who have a real interest in managing in the arts and cultural sector. However, for those students who wish to discover the sector and to test their interest, this is also a useful course.

• This course identifies and examines central issues in the management of public and private television enterprises in Canada, and online programming undertakings.  Students will analyze the current environment and scenarios for the future of Canadian broadcasting; they will also investigate how broadcasters, programmers, and producers are managing content and revenue on both traditional and digital platforms and in new partnerships.  Note: This course requires an application and permission from the instructor.

• Negotiation and management of creative rights processes and people are core to the strategic competence of arts and media organizations and their relationship with audiences. Technological developments are changing the way that these organizations approach their business. This course examines this complex evolving business through such topics as: perspectives on creativity; power, conflict and politics relating to managing unions, free-lance talent and celebrities; decision-making for market-risk; financing models, and the impact of the competitive and regulatory environment on management in the cultural sector. This course will be particularly valuable for those interested in the cultural industries including film, music, publishing, broadcasting and the performing arts. Recommended Pre-requisite: ARTM 6301

• The rapidly changing global digital media economy is creating new business models for the Arts, Media, and Entertainment sector.  This course examines how such models draw on management, creative, and policy resources in radically different ways.  Students will acquire knowledge and insights to manage digital media's needs for creativity, entrepreneurship, measurement, financial structures, and monetization, in large and small organizations.

• This course builds on students' understanding of knowledge production and methods associated with the research pradigms. It examines the politics of knowledge production, including how institutions and other social structures influence research question and what knowledge is deemed legitimate.

• Provides a broad overview of definitions and paradigms of impairment and disability: medical, psychological, sociopolitical and theoretical perspectives; functionalist, role theory, interactionism, disability and human rights issue, and recent developments in feminist and postmodern approaches to disability. Attention is given to the historical and cultural development of concepts and categories of disability; disability theory and policy at provincial, national and international levels; and implications of theory and practice for the lives of persons with disabilities.

• Various frameworks for the study and description and documentation of human movement may be offered, e.g., Laban Movement Analysis or Motif Writing.  Lecture-discussion, movement work, readings, field study, and individualized projects are included.

• This seminar provides a framework within which PhD candidates meet together to explore the methodologies and approaches to scholarly writing that are relevant to their research areas.

• This course surveys the wide range of theories, methods, and issues that have animated historical research on dance and movement practices.

• This course surveys a wide range of theoretical approaches to the study of dance from ethnographic and cultural studies perspectives.  Included are the study of dance as a system of communication, dance as part of social structure, dance as ethnicity and dance as sacred art.

• This course studies one of the most popular dramatic genres of the English Renaissance: the history play.  It explores Shakespeare's two English tetralogies and the Roman plays, and investigates the meaning of history and its uses in early modern England. This course is held on Glendon Campus.

• This course examines international theatrical responses to Sophocles' Antigone. 2500 years later the tragedy resonates urgently in the 21stcentury. We study the cultural and political contexts of the Greek play and its re-visionings and interrogate philosophical, theatrical, thematic and theoretical concerns.

• The course looks at contemporary debates in the theory, practice and pedagogies of visual culture with a focus on visual representations of sexualized/gendered bodies, and the ways in which these representations may work to constitute, disrupt, complicate, etc., cultural practices.

• This course addresses the archive – institutional and informal – as a source of historical authority, and as a site of resistance. Students engage in various archival encounters to develop an understanding of archives in relation to research, learning and teaching.

• Examines both the methods and uses of life history research within the field of education. Various forms of life history research are explored through a variety of theoretical and thematic lenses. Contested terrain is also examined.

• This course examines the colonizing roots, contemporary problems, and possibilities of field-based research methodologies with relevance to education. From issues in science and positivism to anthropological questions of representation and ethics, the course asks what it means to decolonize methodology.

• The course explores the historical and ideological relationships between dominant and minority groups in Canada and the structure of social and cultural power among them. The course examines how theories and unquestioned assumptions about race and ethnicity, precipitated historically and perpetuated through myths and stereotypes, mediate the teaching-learning process today. Participants will critically evaluate the extent to which race and ethno-cultural policy, provision and pedagogy have achieved equity education for all students. A more progressive and reconstructonist approach to multicultural and anti-racist education will be explored.

• This course examines indigenous scholarship among First Nations in what is now known as Canada and the United States. The ways of knowing which give expression to indigenous conceptualizations and their intersections with western European languages and scholarly paradigms is the point of departure for this exploration.

• This course explores the practice and use of visual research methods, particularly in participatory and community-based contexts. The course will offer an introduction to visual research methods in education and across the social sciences, and will examine theories and practices of visual narrative inquiry, digital storytelling, participatory video, photo-voice, photo elicitation, story mapping, and other visual research methods.

• In his Critique of Judgment, Kant asserts that "play" is "purposiveness without purpose."  In this course we consider this and other apparent paradoxes of "play" as we examine the concept in modern and contemporary performance.

• This course introduces graduate students to scholarly conversations currently underway in Indigenous Critical Theory.  We seek to understand the major debates around tropes central to the scholarship on North American Literature and Film: Memory, Survivance, and Sovereignty, as well as the criticism of those tropes.

• This course examines Victorian representations of sexual pleasure and anxiety in a range of theoretical, historical, scientific, and literary texts.

• Many scholars contend that girlhood is a modern invention.  However, girls appear in many early modern texts.  This course examines early modern conceptions of girlhood, looking at literary as well as historical figures, and seeking to locate a space for girls within current feminist theory.

• This graduate studio course teaches advanced creative producing skills and practices relevant to the Canadian independent media landscape, focusing on the changing worlds of new media platforms and independent cinema. Independent Producing addresses every aspect of the creation of new digital media/cinema projects (development, prep, production, post-production and distribution), and is suitable for students who wish to develop advanced skills in these areas.

• Directing Actors is a studio course that critically explores the theory and practice of directing actors on screen. Each week in a hands-on workshop setting, graduate students study diverse methods for scene study, auditioning, rehearsing, visualizing relationships, blocking for the camera, directing and re-directing actors in a variety of filmed scenes.

• An intensive examination of selected precepts and principles which have influenced the practice of filmmaking and its critical evaluation.

• This course provides an overview for Film/Cinema & Media Studies graduate students (MFA, MA, and PhD) of tendencies in contemporary critical theory covering a wide range of approaches, oriented towards multiple constituencies, and emphasizing the use of theory as a speculative agent within creative work with an emphasis on moving image and sonic practice. Students will become conversant with theoretical perspectives through presentations on selected readings, culminating in a speculative proposal leveraging theory in order to imagine the future of their artistic practice.

• Methods and Research in Film Studies. A discussion of the various methodologies developed by film critics and historians to understand the moving image and its contextual relationship to the social world. Influential examples from the critical and historical literature are examined. The course also includes practical experience in bibliographical and research methods.

• Applies a variety of methodologies, including cultural materialism, ideological analysis, critical theory, affect theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, semiotics, and aesthetic theory, to cinema and media representations of capital and capitalist social and power relations.

• Data and visualization are used by powerful actors to command and control territories, peoples, and environments. Critical analysis of visualization and reframing it as a media practice that can help resist, speculate, remember, and heal is necessary to counter colonial and oppressive uses of data. In this course, we will analyse and create critical visualizations projects that do this.

• Chinese Cinema

• Examines the proliferation of film festivals around the world as integrally tied to changes in geopolitical and digital media cultures. It uses several different festivals as sites of analysis to compare social mandates, curation, marketing and outreach as well as funding. New theories of these cinephilic and community cultures inform the course of study.

• Explores key concepts, texts and debates in the field of contemporary cinema and media studies. While maintaining a focus on the intellectual and material histories of cinema studies and media studies as disciplines (and their recent convergence), including epistemological and ontological frameworks, methodological approaches, and institutional and technological supports, the course will emphasize recent developments in cinema and media studies. Three broad areas of study will structure the course: cinema and cultural theory; national and transnational cinema; cinema and technologies of the image. Open to PhD students only.

• Surveys and critically examines advanced research methods and methodologies in Cinema & Media Studies and cognate disciplines to support doctoral students in their preparation for dissertation proposals and dissertation research. Open to PhD students only.

• This course analyzes queer and feminist cultural production through the framework of affect theory and vice versa.  This course focuses on recent work in the visual and performing arts, women's studies, cultural studies, sexuality studies, critical disability studies and critical race theory in order to consider how scholars and artists take up affect, feeling and emotion through activist cultural production.

• This course is designed to introduce graduate students to the critical study of gender and sexuality.  This course is intended to enable students to identify conflicts and areas of contestation within the field of gender and sexuality studies by using a variety of feminist theoretical and methodological critiques.

• The course explores several key areas, both thematically and historiographically, in the development of modern science and technology since the Renaissance, with a particular focus upon the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis of the course will be upon social history of science and technology.

• TBA

• This course examines recent theoretical interventions in the formulation of critical practice in the field of the visual arts. Working from the premise that ‘art’ and theory are social constructions and therefore, are historically specific practices, this course addresses the intersection between theory and practice at particular moments in time, taking into consideration the implicit and explicit references of artists, critics, historians, and contemporary cultural theorists.