Culture & Expression is a flexible, interdisciplinary degree program, structured around two core courses (CLTR 2100 Questioning Culture and CLTR 3100 Culture, Meaning and Form) that introduces students to some of the theoretical, methodological issues and terminology in the study of culture. Beyond the core courses, students select their remaining credits from an extensive list of program courses that touch on many periods and places and focus on a variety of cultural forms. In order to expose students to a range of disciplinary perspectives, courses are divided into four groups:
- Culture & Expression
- Literature & Humanities
- Communications Studies/Equity Studies/Philosophy/Social Science
- Science/Geography/Anthropology/Administrative Studies
Search our Courses
Browse through the database below to explore courses that will fulfill certain degree requirements in the Culture & Expression program.
When registering for classes on the Course Timetable website, be sure to carefully read through the “Notes/Additional Fees” section of each course you select.
Note: We urge you to ensure you have complete all prerequisites for each course you wish to take. Prerequisites will not be waived for CLTR.
AP/CLTR 1953 6.00 Canadian Writers In Person
Explores the works of 11 contemporary Canadian writers who give in class readings and respond to questions about their work. Explores the concerns and voices of a new generation of Canadian authors and gives students …
AP/CLTR 2100 6.00 Questioning Culture
Designed to introduce students to the theoretical study of contemporary culture in past and contemporary society, offering tools for questioning and decoding the social and political contexts of cultural production. Areas of focus include popular …
AP/CLTR 2210 6.00 Media, Culture & Technology
Combining historical and theoretical content, the course surveys the invention and evolution of media technologies from the invention of writing to the Internet. How technologies alter the social and cultural dynamics of a given period …
AP/CLTR 2243 6.00 Understanding Movies
Designed for the student who enjoys film but has no background in art or criticism. It introduces students to a variety of strategies that help the student to articulate how movies use sound and image …
AP/CLTR 2420 3.00 Communication, Presentation Skills and Voice
A practical course for students wishing to develop public speaking and presentation skills. Story-telling exercises, extemporaneous speech making, and text analysis facilitate expertise in public speaking. Video feedback will be used as a developmental too.
AP/CLTR 2510 6.00 Popular Technologies
Examines the role of consumer technologies, ranging from the automobile to the iPod in terms of how they affect the cultural landscapes of contemporary culture and society.
AP/CLTR 2610 6.00 Music In Human Experience
Introduction to emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and symbolic uses of music through case studies of individual cultures, including consideration of social, political, and historical settings
This interdisciplinary course will examine critically three dimensional, multi-user digital environments (or “virtual worlds”) that are rapidly becoming new forms of social literacy and new forums for the fine, performing and new media arts
AP/CLTR 3100 6.00 Culture, Meaning, and Form
Explores cultural expression as a social act. What happens when material culture is caught between opposing forces: artists, consumers, corporations, and governments? To the individual voices of resisting dissidents arguing for originality, individuality, and authenticity? …
AP/CLTR 3150 6.00 Doing Culture
Offers students opportunities to engage with the local cultural sector in order to better understand the relevancy of cultural organizations in a multicultural city. The course explores cultural relationships, combining theoretical and experiential components in …
AP/CLTR 3160 3.00 Sound, Politics and Media Art
This course considers sound as a social, aesthetic, historical, material, and political phenomenon, highlighting how it integrates with contemporary artistic practices. Students will learn about sound art experimental music; be introduced to the physics of …
AP/CLTR 3165 3.00 Culture, Performance and Spoken Word
Explores the form, function and content of Spoken Word, in terms of language, rhythm, historical developments, social- political contexts, as well as key artists of poetry, rap, dub, slam, lyricism and spoken word as live …
AP/CLTR 3220 3.00 Memory, Meaning and Community
An experiential learning course on the study of memory from a cultural perspective. Topics include: collective vs. individual memory; memory and trauma; memory and media; historical memory; oral memory and testimony.
AP/CLTR 3225 6.00 Performance and Resistance
Explores strategies artists and activists use to create performance poetry, art and political theatre by combining discussion, practice and theory to understand how a variety of performance strategies provoke and enliven audiences, and call for …
AP/CLTR 3230 6.00 Illness In The Popular Eye
Addresses illness as a narrative device in film and other forms of media and by so doing, raises social and cultural concerns regarding the body, protest, transcendence and healing, as well as gender/sexual politics.
AP/CLTR 3250 6.00 Contemporary History Through Film
Explores how history has been depicted through popular culture in cinema and other electronic media. Focuses on WWII and its aftermath when filmmakers began to rethink the function of cinematic representation and its political and …
AP/CLTR 3255 3.00 Indigenous Film Studies
This course introduces students to Indigenous cinema in the United States and Canada, although films from Mexico, the Andes (Quechua) and Brazil will be screened when available. Students view approximately ten films and read works …
AP/CLTR 3318 3.00 Black Popular Culture
Analyzes popular Black popular culture in Diaspora, including music, film, television, style, contemporary visual arts, and including such issues as production, reception and commodification, through the lens of Black cultural theory.
AP/CLTR 3520 3.00 The Arts and the Law: Policies and Perspectives
Examines the interaction between the creative arts and contemporary legal and social issues presented by new forms of technology, the relationship between copyright and creativity, the concept of creative works as private property, and the …
AP/CLTR 3523 3.00 Feminism and Film
Feminist filmmakers deploy film as a provocative cultural form to explore women’s complex social and cultural locations and issues. This course explores theoretical and practical points of contact between feminism and film to encourage new …
AP/CLTR 3542 6.00 Consumer and Popular Culture
Examines individual and collective expression within the context of popular and consumer culture, including such areas as music, activism, the Web, fashion, subcultures, shopping, car culture, fan clubs, zines, TV and film.
AP/CLTR 3570 6.00 Experiencing Canadian Culture
An exploration of how a unique Canadian sensibility manifests itself in contemporary cultural forms. Students are encouraged to attend contemporary plays, movies, readings, art shows, and concerts to supplement reading materials.
AP/CLTR 3590 6.00 Contemporary Popular Culture
Surveys historical and contemporary approaches to the texts and contexts of fiction, film, television, music, folklore and fashion. Themes include the industrialization of culture; changing definitions of the popular; genre and gender; the politics of …
AP/CLTR 4000 6.00 Independent Study
Open to advanced students only, this course offers the highly motivated student an opportunity to pursue intensive study pertaining to a theme emanating from culture and its expression on his or her own under the …
AP/CLTR 4000 3.00 Independent Study
Open to advanced students only, this course offers the highly motivated student an opportunity to pursue intensive study pertaining to a theme emanating from culture and its expression on his or her own under the …
AP/CLTR 4520 3.00 Social Movements and The Expressive Arts
Examines the specific role that art and artists have played in selected social movements.
AP/CLTR 4810 3.00 Architecture & Social Change
Probes the complex relationship between architecture and social/cultural change in the 20th and 21st centuries with an emphasis on specific architectural “visions” and their intended/unintended consequences. Modern architecture and design has often been based on …
AP/CLTR 4820 3.00 Fetish Appeal: Desire and Consumption
Probes the role of pleasure, desire and power in contemporary consumer culture, especially around objects of consumption, such as so-called designer goods or iconic products such as the Kitchenaid mixer or the Ipod.
AP/CLTR 4850 3.00 Propaganda and Culture
Investigates the employment of the created environment and other expressions of culture for propagandistic purposes, meant to advance privileged ideologies in politics, religion, and social interchange. Discusses examples chosen from different eras and communities, including …
AP/CLTR 4851 6.00 Modernism Across The Arts
The underlying project of the course is the analysis of how we make meaning through art forms. More specifically, we will investigate the literary, music, and visual cultures of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to …