New and returning WRDS courses for upper year students

The ever-popular WRDS 340 course is being offered again this upcoming 2026 Winter Term

As the name suggests, WRDS 340: Multimodal Writing deals with the many different modes of writing—including the use of colours, images, layout, sound, and other factors that go into the writing process—and how they converge to communicate meaning.

The course challenges colonial assumptions of monomodal writing and instead emphasizes the importance of adaptability in a world where the popular means of writing and communication are constantly in flux. Today, visuality and aurality are just as, if not more, important means of communication as textuality. Any aspiring writer in the 21st century must learn how to negotiate between different modes of expression and navigate the ever-changing landscape of modern communication. WRDS 340 explores the ways in which multimodality is an integral facet of writing.

If you are someone who wants to push the boundaries of what it means to be a writer and expand your repertoire to encompass multimodal writing forms, this is the perfect course for you. It questions normative ideas of knowledge production through an exploration of the accessibility and ethical concerns that come with different modes of writing.

For instance, the course delves into the power of photography and how images can become imbued with meaning derived from shared sentiments such as patriotism or nationalism. However, multiplicity of modes can also raise public awareness around critical societal issues. As such, it explores different modes of communication as channels that can convey a depth of meaning and influence people to a great extent.

In addition to the weekly assignments responding to class material, students are encouraged to exercise their creative freedom when working on major assignments. These projects have a lot of scope for innovation; they can be as ambitious as desired, with some of the projects produced in the class including (but not limited to) podcasts, video essays, interviews, news broadcasts, ambient soundscapes, infographics, and photo collections. Through incorporation of the principles of accessibility and ethicality into the projects, students are encouraged to find practical application for the theoretical framework developed in class texts and lectures.

WRDS 380 is a brand new course being offered this upcoming 2026 Winter Term

Within a Western context, universities are considered to be primary sites of knowledge-making, and academics are generally considered to be the agents of that work. Such views negate recognition of the role communities outside of university spaces play in producing and communicating knowledge, consequently limiting the possibilities for communicating research findings with those communities.

WRDS 380 approaches communication between researchers and the concerned communities in a much different manner. The objective of the course is to construct a reciprocal relationship—one that is built on active engagement with the communities involved in research and recognizes them as active participants in the process of knowledge-making. It also strives to dispel the myth of a top-down approach to knowledge sharing, focusing instead on an exchange of knowledge within which the participating communities are all on equal footing.

For Term 1, the Collective for Parks, Conservation, Innovation and Leadership (CPCIL) will be the community partners for the course. The goals of CPCIL’s project are closely related to WRDS 380’s course objectives—to bridge the gap between researchers and people in the Parks Conservation sector and to facilitate nuanced and meaningful conversations between the two parties. Students in WRDS 380 will have the opportunity to communicate firsthand with park conservation agents, and to identify accessible ways for communicating university research to them.

Dr. Rebecca Carruthers den Hoed, the instructor for the Winter Session 2026/27 course, explains that the course was inspired by her own experiences in science communication. Popular myths within science communication consider knowledge-making to be a one-way street wherein the masses are enlightened by academic works written by university researchers. WRDS 380 strives to deconstruct these myths, explore knowledge-making beyond the ivory tower, and interrogate what it means to be a knowledge-making community.

As it concerns Parks and Conservation, this course is ideal for LFS and Forestry students looking to fulfill their writing requirement. Students will read a range of academic articles and transform them into easily accessible and recognizable forms for the park officers. Throughout the course, they will be encouraged to make evidence-based decisions as a result of their research and communication with CPCIL. They will have a considerable amount of freedom to translate academic research into different genres, while simultaneously balancing that work with the needs of the partnering community. As a result, the scope of the project may extend beyond the realm of digital communication to include tangible and analog communication, in accordance with the needs of the park conservation officers. Students will also have the opportunity to receive direct feedback on their projects from a panel of practitioners from CPCIL.

Additionally, students will have the opportunity to participate in a national e-summit that brings together Indigenous communities, parks officers, and academics. This will allow them to obtain firsthand experience with reciprocal community conversations and knowledge exchange.

WRDS 498 is a Special Topics course being taught for the first and only time this 2026 Winter Term

WRDS 498 is a Special Topics in Writing course that explores a different theme each year, allowing students to engage with novel and innovative ideas in the field of writing studies, which might not typically be found in the department’s regular courses. This year, the course focuses on Translingual Writing and Performance. The term translingualism refers to expressions that ‘move across/between more than one language system’.

Taught by Dr. Louis Maraj, a scholar whose research focuses on theoretical Black studies and rhetoric, this Special Topics course deals with the fluidity of language and the ways in which people communicate across and between language systems. As a Caribbean-born immigrant in North America, Dr. Maraj explains that the course is rooted in his own experiences with language, which were ‘marked by a clash between the colonial classroom and the creole expressed most everywhere else in “post-colonial” Trinidad’. According to Dr. Maraj, the course emerged from his understanding of how translingual expressions ‘defy dominant logics of capture inherent in standardized languaging and language learning’ and challenges standards of what is considered to be ‘right/wrong’ in terms of language and how people communicate. Students are encouraged to engage outside the sphere of conventional writing and expand the horizons of their own understanding of writing. Dr. Maraj states that ‘monolingualism unfurls still as an oppressive force’—a notion that the course works to deconstruct.

Rather than approaching the course as a way to acquire marketable skills, Dr. Maraj hopes students will engage with it out of a genuine desire to learn and to open themselves up to ideas of communication they may have previously brushed off. The course invites students to think about writing and communication beyond the scope of utility and extraction.

WRDS 498 is ideal for any student who might want to learn about translingual writing, regardless of their familiarity (or lack thereof) with different language systems. Dr. Maraj encourages students to determine for themselves the ways in which they choose to engage with the course material. Though he does not position himself as someone who could ‘allow’ freedom to anyone (operating instead from the belief that students already possess that freedom), the course offers considerable flexibility in how students approach their coursework.