Canadian Studies Courses for 2024-2025
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Canadian Studies may be completed听as a Minor or Major Please see the 2024-2025 Undergraduate e-Calendar听for information about program requirements.
For any general questions, please contact David Roseman听at david.roseman [at] mcgill.ca
PLEASE NOTE the opportunity for community-engaged learning internships in well-known Montreal organizations as part of the courses CANS 300/QCST300 and CANS413/QCST440. Both are open to all 平特五不中 students.
Please also note that the course syllabi posted here are for reference purpose only. Official course syllabi will not be posted until start of classes.
Winter 2024
CANS 203 Making Canada (CRN 7237) M 11:35-2:25 Instructor: Dr. Jodey Nurse
CANS 312 Topics in Cdn Public Affairs 2 (CRN 1367) Instructor: Dr. Jodey Nurse Topic: Values and Public Affairs
What are Canada鈥檚 core values? How are these values reflected in our society? In what ways are these values taught and communicated? These are just some of the questions you will encounter in CANS 312. In this course, you will investigate a variety of Canadian public affairs topics to examine what they reveal about Canadian values. This will include analyses of Canadian political institutions, policies, media, corporations, non-profits, community groups, and citizens. You will explore what Canadians purport to value in their society, how those values are reflected in public and private institutions and organizations (or not), and how values are taught and communicated more generally. You will also examine how sets of values or attitudes in Canada have changed over time and the resulting effect. These topics will be discussed in lectures and group discussions and addressed through persuasive writing and research assignments that allow you to develop your knowledge, critical thinking, and writing and communication skills.
CANS 315 Indigenous Art and Culture(CRN 1368) 
arth_315_final_syllabus.pdf
Canadian Gateway Cities and Urban Democracy
In this seminar, we will examine how Canadian gateway cities - cities that partly define themselves through the international mobility of goods, people and ideas - serve as connectors between local communities and regions around the world. We will look at how they formulate and implement their plans in terms of hard infrastructure (i.e., rails, roads, ports, airports) and soft infrastructure (i.e., immigration regulations, business incentives). We will pay particular attention to citizen participation in the development and implementation of these gateway designs and the repercussions on the communities that are directly affected.
Seminar designed for U3 students. Open to all 平特五不中 students.
Class schedule : Fridays 1135-1425
For information: stephan.gervais [at] mcgill.ca
How do communities and neighborhoods play an important role in defining a sense of identity? What are the main narratives and key assumptions made around the sense of identity to Quebec and to diverse communities and neighborhoods? This course will encourage students to explore how different communities in Quebec, both urban and rural, from the nineteenth century to the present day, have expressed a sense of identity. The narratives with which identity has been expressed can take the form of a shared sense of history (often, to an extent, imagined or sanitized), the experience of formative institutions (school above all, but also community centres, libraries, etc), and solidarity in the face of prejudice or oppression. Students will have an opportunity to meet these custodians of narrative and to work directly with community organizations through Experiential Community Engaged Learning and Research placement.
Language of instruction is English. Passive language skills in French are necessary.
**Note: CANS 408, 480, 481, 492D1, 492D2, 499 - students must find their own supervisor for these courses. For any questions, please contact David Roseman at david.roseman [at] mcgill.ca. Please note that all students considering an internship (CANS 499) need to follow procedures outlined here: /arts-internships/students/credit.
Fall 2024
CANS 200 Understanding Canada(CRN 1516) Instructor: Dr. Jodey Nurse
What is Canada? Canadians have not always agreed on what Canada is: what its national symbols should be, where its borders are, what stories its history should include, what central values it promotes. Indeed, what Canada represents is not a stable idea, but a debated concept wielded by various actors in the past and the present to legitimize divergent agendas or beliefs. In this course, we will explore these different ideas about Canada by examining some of the country鈥檚 defining events and institutions and interrogating many important topics such as colonialism, liberalism, nationalism, identity, multiculturalism, race, the welfare state, human rights, gender equity, public health, international affairs, climate change, and reconciliation. Throughout this investigation, we question what stories we tell about Canada and why, while also exploring the voices and experiences that have commonly been silenced. The assignments for this course are specifically created to allow for a strong overview of these important subjects but also to encourage you to focus on more specific topics for which you have a particular interest. Throughout the course, you will develop important interchangeable skills such as critical thinking and persuasive writing in an inclusive and collaborative environment and gain a greater understanding of Canada.
CANS 300 Topics in Canadian Studies 1 (CRN 1517) Cross-listed with QCST 300 Instructor: Dr. Jodey Nurse Topic: Canada and Food: Connecting Food, Society, and the State
In this course, we will focus on Canada broadly, and Quebec in particular, as we investigate how our food choices are informed by cultural, religious, social, environmental, health, economic, and political contexts. When thinking about our contemporary food cultures and systems in Canada, we need to understand the mediating forces at play, from culinary traditions and material conditions to cultural politics and state policies. Today, discussions of food security, sustainability, and sovereignty are increasingly important, and recent crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation, and Russia鈥檚 war in Ukraine, have affected the production and distribution of foodstuff and stimulated important conversations about our food supply chains and the related systems that influence the stability of our food sources. This course offers you an interdisciplinary approach to better understand how Canadians鈥� food choices (past and present) have shaped the nation. Important themes will include the connection between food and colonialism, immigration, national and regional identities, social identities, economic conditions, concerns about safety and security, and ideas about health and the environment.
Note about the ExCELR Placement opportunities offered in this course: For the first time this year, this course will offer an opportunity for a select number of students to participate in an Experiential Community-Engaged Learning and Research (ExCELR) placements with a community organization in Montreal that is working to address food related issues. This opportunity will require participating students to commit to a total of 40 hours over the course of the term. These placements offer an invaluable opportunity to gain practical experience and sector knowledge alongside the implementation and development of course-based knowledge and ideas.
CANS 301 Topics in Canadian Studies 2 (CRN 1518) Instructor Jodey Nurse Topic: Leadership in Canada Who are Canada鈥檚 leaders? What is the source and legitimacy of their power? What is the relationship between those who lead and those who follow (or resist following)? In this course you will investigate the notoriously slippery subject of leadership and analyze the topic as it relates to both individuals and groups in Canada鈥檚 past and present. Central elements of investigation will include the social, cultural, political, and economic sources of power that have legitimized different methods of leadership and types of leaders; the relational, structural, and systemic forms of power that exist in these relations; and the existence of arenas for contestation and collaboration. Case studies of leadership during times of crisis, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, will also be used to highlight how leadership has been practiced and the resulting outcomes.
CANS 306 Topics in Indigenous Pub Affrs (CRN 1519) Instructor Christopher Reid
CANS 401 Canadian Studies Seminar 1(CRN 1520) Topic for fall 2024: The Lives of Girls and Womxn: Feminist Writing in
Canada with Visiting Professor:
Students will examine the ways Canadian literature has shaped鈥攁nd been shaped by鈥攆eminist discourse, with a special emphasis on the developments that have taken place in the 20th and 21st centuries. Writers in this period pushed the boundaries of gender and genre, encoding their resistance to normative social roles in texts that experimented with form and rejected stereotypical models of femininity. They also carved a new space for women by founding feminist publishing houses, magazines, and literary networks that transformed the cultural landscape. Students will learn the cultural history, aesthetics, and political engagements of modern and contemporary feminist writing in Canada. Using an intersectional lens, they will moreover demonstrate the capacity to assess and critique this legacy by weighing how issues of gender, sexuality, race, Indigeneity, class, and language were variously interpreted, debated and often overlooked throughout the 20th-century. This background will allow them to unpack the concerns of the contemporary moment, analyzing how these topics remain both central and contentious in the present.
