WRDS 150A Topics – Term 1

Instructor: Andrew Connolly

Sections: 151, 191

Available Times: 1:00 – MWF – In-Person, 7:00pm - M - Online

It’s hard to get away from celebrity news. Whether it’s Kanye’s political stunts in the White House, Ariana Grande’s public split with Pete Davidson, Demi Lovato’s struggles with addiction, or Prince Harry and Meghan Markle leaving the royal family and moving to Canada, our lives seem saturated with information about the famous. To read an endless supply of commentary, analysis, and gossip about celebrities, all you need is an internet connection. So why do scholars study celebrities? What do academics do differently?

In this course we will look at articles about celebrities written by academic scholars. They ask questions like: Why do people develop attachments to celebrities? Why do celebrities share so much about their lives? Why do companies hire celebrities to endorse their products? Do celebrities actually have an impact on the way we think and talk about sex, gender, and race? What kind of impact do celebrities have on politics? These questions are framed by the disciplines that the scholars work in, including cultural studies, sociology, economics, gender studies, and media studies. Each of these disciplines has its own methods and conventions. In other words, a particular discipline influences what scholars ask questions about, how they phrase the questions, how they answer the questions, and how they present their findings. As a result, this course will not only introduce you to the academic study of celebrities, it will also introduce you to the various disciplinary approaches to research and writing in the arts and humanities.

Part of this introduction will be training you to participate in scholarly discourse. You will learn how to do scholarly research: how to find the information you are looking for, how to understand it, and how to evaluate it. You will also learn how to write and present your findings in a way that engages with scholars in a particular discipline or disciplines. In addition to instruction in the classroom, you will have multiple written assignments that will give you a chance to experiment with different aspects of academic research and writing, and receive attentive feedback on your work. This training will help prepare you to succeed in your academic career.

Instructor: Tom Andrews

Sections: 020, 030

Available Times: 9:30, 11:00 - MW

This section of WRDS150 is focused on Critical Thinking in the Digital Era. These modules cover issues including social networking behavior and privacy, climate change denial and hyper-critical thinking, and ‘slacktivism’ and bandwagon political engagement in the 21st century.  We will read articles from scholarly and non-scholarly sources from social science, political science, and humanities backgrounds as well as watching interviews, Ted Talks, and discussion panels.  In doing so, we will endeavor to answer such questions as: does the internet still offer users a place to share and consume information honestly?  Do the harms caused by social media use outweigh its many advantages in contemporary society?  How have internet communication platforms changed political engagement and awareness?  What biases or fallacies are perpetuated by an online world?

Instructor: Laila Ferreira

Sections:  050

Available Times:   2:00 - MW

What are the definitions of a disabled body and mind? How were these definitions established and how have they impacted the ways in which we structure our society, from the design of our buildings and city streets to our education system and employment practices? In this section of WRDS 150A, we will grapple with these questions and more through the analysis of research articles from a range of Arts disciplines on the topic of disability. More specifically, we will look at how each discipline’s methods of research and style of writing reflect their definitions of disability and the kinds of knowledge they produce on the topic. Students will have the opportunity to engage in research and research writing on a Disability related topic that is of interest and importance to them.

Instructor: Kirby Mania

Sections:   111, 122, 141, 153

Available Times:   9:00, 10:00, 12:00, 1:00 - MWF

This course focuses on scholarly discourse published on the topic of environmental justice (EJ). It will consider discursive practices ranging from critical race theory, ecofeminism, social movement theory, media studies, geography, sociology, political ecology, and economics. Emerging as a movement in the early 1980s in the United States, EJ – now considered a global movement and a matter of global concern – recognizes the unfair distribution of environmental hazards on marginalized populations. Studies have shown that environmental harms disproportionately affect vulnerable social groups (which includes, but is not limited to, people of colour, indigenous communities, immigrants, women, minority groups, low-income communities, and climate refugees). EJ scholars research and monitor cases of socially produced environmental injustice and critically evaluate how multi-scalar policy decisions (such as neoliberal reform) continue to affect at-risk communities. EJ scholarship examines the social mobilization potential of communities against the uneven distribution of environmental hazards (or the lack of the fair distribution of environmental resources), and also considers how grassroots activists – in their campaign for greater recognition and participation in decision-making processes – hold governments and corporations accountable in their calls for justice. We will be tracing a number of scholarly conversations around the globalization of the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM) – looking at literature from the US, Canada, and other parts of the world – whilst discussing terms like environmental racism, climate justice, intersectionality, ecological debt, degrowth, food sovereignty, hydric justice, and environmentalism of the poor.

The course’s discursive approach invites students to engage with scholarly conversations and published research across a range of disciplinary perspectives. The course will entail writing about these research perspectives as well as producing research of your own.

Instructor: Diane Burgess

Sections:  031, 032, 034

Available Times:   8:00, 10:00, 12:00 WF

With their hashtags, newsfeeds, and status updates, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, blurring the boundaries between personal and professional networks and impacting how we gather and disseminate information. At the same time, micro-blogging has altered the public sphere, challenging journalistic norms and influencing potential forms of political engagement. By definition, social media are both networking technologies and information conduits. Drawing examples from media studies, psychology, journalism and political science, this section of WRDS 150 explores how scholars approach the qualities of social networks, their uses and their users.

Instructor: Jennifer Cowe

Sections:   121, 131, 142, 161

Available Times:   10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 2:00 - MWF

This course will aim to explore how different academic disciplines engage with the concept of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a word, or more usually a feeling, that most people have used or felt; however, very few understand its constant presence in everyday life. We will study nostalgia from its earliest appearance in academia as a form of mental illness in the seventeenth century and follow its growing influence over, and manipulation of, contemporary ideas of national identity, consumerism, class, social media and the environment. We will attempt to understand how the politics of memory, belonging and collective remembrance reflect and inform current political discourse.

Instructor: Meredith Beales

Sections:  060, 070

Available Times:   3:30, 5:00 - MW

In The Lion King, on the BBC, on stages and classrooms around the world—the work of William Shakespeare is often encountered as a classroom text, theatre, or film.  But Shakespeare is now also used as inspiration for academic research ranging from history and film studies to archeology, mathematics, and cognitive science.  In this class, we will examine how this one sixteenth-century English playwright has galvanized research in a variety of disciplines beyond the traditional starting point of English literature.  We will ask why this particular writer has such a large impact on academic study, and whether, in research on, for example, supernovae or twenty-first century Afghan politics, Shakespeare has much to do with the research at all.  Does simply adding the name Shakespeare make it more likely to be taken seriously?  Does it matter that the motivation for an archeological dig comes from trying to prove Shakespeare wrong?  What, if anything, does Shakespeare have to do with the research done in his name?

No prior knowledge of Shakespeare is expected, nor will we be reading his literature (the plays or poems themselves) in WRDS 150.

Instructor: Mary Ann Saunders

Sections:   152, 171, 181

Available Times:  1:00, 3:00, 4:00 - MWF

In WRDS 150, our course focus will be the multidisciplinary research field of transgender studies. A fundamental premise of trans studies is that ethical research about trans lives and experiences must be attentive to and prioritize the knowledge which trans people have about themselves. This, then, is also the stance we adopt in WRDS 150, understanding trans lives as legitimate and valuable, and trans people as the experts on their own experience. We will examine trans studies research from several academic disciplines to develop an understanding of how different disciplines construct knowledge in ways unique to each. Throughout the term, you will use the knowledge and skills you gain to develop your own transgender studies research and writing project. What do trans people say about their lives and experiences? How can you, as apprentice researchers, ethically translate that lived experience into research scholarship of your own.

Instructor: Stephen Dadugblor

Sections:  221

Available Times:   11:00 - T/R

The proliferation of digital technologies has enabled the generation, storage, and processing of data on unprecedented scales, with implications for our social and political lives. In this course, we will focus on social networking sites as an example of such technologies to examine how they shape citizens’ participation in politics and democratic processes. We will discuss key concerns regarding the practice of politics and democracy today: digital activism, fake news, misinformation/disinformation, and demagoguery, among others. We will read research by scholars across multiple disciplines who study the connection between social networking sites and political participation across cultures. As we discuss these scholarly articles, we will gain familiarity with knowledge-making in the disciplines, learn scholarly conventions of academic discourse communities, and participate effectively as apprentice members.

Instructor: Jonathan Otto

Sections:  201, 211, 222, 232

Available Times:   8:00, 9:30, 11:00, 2:00 - T/R

Designed to introduce you to the world of scholarly research and writing, this section of WRDS 150 will do so with a focus on the concept of “sustainability.”  As a concept, “sustainability” gained international popularity following discussions about “sustainable development” at the 1992 United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Twenty-three years later, the UN created the “Sustainable Development Goals,” consisting of a broad set of principles aimed at guiding the sustainability efforts of member countries.  The popularization of the concept has inspired significant “sustainability”-related work by inter-governmental organizations, governments, and non-governmental actors, including researchers, businesses and universities.  In order to understand the influence “sustainability” as a concept, it is important to review its origins, explore the diverse ways individuals, governments and other actors use it, and to assess how it inspires these actors’ relationships with the natural environment.

In this course, we will do so by reading sustainability research from scholars in multiple academic disciplines within the Faculty of Arts and in fields within other faculties like engineering and the natural sciences.  Given their diverse training, scholars within these disciplines understand “sustainability” to mean different things, analyze it in different ways, and write about it in genres that are unique to their disciplinary communities.  We will examine how knowledge about “sustainability” is produced and communicated in each of these disciplinary contexts and highlight commonalities and differences across them.  We will also draw on scholarly research to consider alternative ways of conceptualizing human-environment relations that extend beyond the concept of “sustainability.”  In addition to reading scholarly research, you will have the opportunity to conduct your own research on “sustainability” and to communicate your findings in scholarly genres.  In doing so, you will be able cultivate a critical understanding of the concept of “sustainability” and to develop your own identity as a novice researcher and member of the university.

Instructor: Kimberly Richards

Sections:  001, 002, 003

Available Times:   9:00, 11:00, 12:00 - M/T/R

From public apologies issued by politicians for historical violences to theatrical strategies activists deploy to draw attention to injustice, performance is an important mode and medium of political communication. In this course, we will study some of the ways that political actors use performative strategies on stage and in everyday life with real consequences in the world. We will examine how diverse actors use scripts, choreographies, rehearsal practices, acting strategies, stage design, and recording technologies to persuade audiences of their righteousness, legitimacy and authority, and gain social, cultural, political and/or economic power in the process of doing so. We will observe how scholars working in social movement studies, critical Indigenous studies, discourse studies, celebrity studies, gender and women’s studies, and critical media studies describe, analyze, interpret and critique how power is gained, invoked and maintained through performance analysis. Doing so will help us to become more attentive and engaged citizens.

Instructor: Meredith Beales

Sections:  241, 251

Available Times:   3:30, 5:00 - T/R

In The Lion King, on the BBC, on stages and classrooms around the world—the work of William Shakespeare is often encountered as a classroom text, theatre, or film.  But Shakespeare is now also used as inspiration for academic research ranging from history and film studies to archeology, mathematics, and cognitive science.  In this class, we will examine how this one sixteenth-century English playwright has galvanized research in a variety of disciplines beyond the traditional starting point of English literature.  We will ask why this particular writer has such a large impact on academic study, and whether, in research on, for example, supernovae or twenty-first century Afghan politics, Shakespeare has much to do with the research at all.  Does simply adding the name Shakespeare make it more likely to be taken seriously?  Does it matter that the motivation for an archeological dig comes from trying to prove Shakespeare wrong?  What, if anything, does Shakespeare have to do with the research done in his name?

No prior knowledge of Shakespeare is expected, nor will we be reading his literature (the plays or poems themselves) in WRDS 150.