WRDS 150 is offered to students in a variety of Faculties across UBC – other than the Faculty of Arts.
Attendance is mandatory at the scheduled class time for both online and in-person WRDS sections.
2026S Term 1
Below are course descriptions for each topic, as well as instructor and scheduling information. Course topics and descriptions are subject to change depending on the instructor and their availability.
Instructor: Kimberly Richards
Sections: M69 (online)
Available Times: T/R 7:00-10:00PM (online)
Online attendance is mandatory in this course.
As the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the future seems to accelerate in local and global contexts with massive socio-environmental planetary challenges, there is an increasing interest in reimagining futures beyond dystopias and utopias. Futures studies is an interdisciplinary effort to aggregate and analyze trends to predict what is likely to continue, and what could plausibly change. Predicative techniques, such a forecasting, are being used to develop design solutions to wicked problems, like the impacts of rising waters on coastal communities. Planners and policy-makers also attempt to prevent, manage, and/or minimize crisis through methods of systems analysis and futures study. Such efforts at strategic foresight are always bound up in cost-benefit analyses, and decision-making processes that either reify existing inequities, or strategically undermine entrenched colonial and supremacist thought. The exploration of alternative futures by Indigenous futurists and Afro-futurists and other traditional knowledge perspectives marginalized within modernity invites investigation of the worldviews and mythologies that underlie possible, probable, and preferrable futures. Together, we will explore critical concepts in futures studies alongside personal and collective practices for creating desirable futures at the individual, collective, and societal level.
Instructor: Nazih El-Bezri
Sections: M60 (online)
Available Times: T/R 8:00-11:00AM (online)
Online attendance is mandatory for this section.
This section of WRDS 150 focuses on the relationship among globalization, identity formation, and the literacy practices needed in the 21st century. In today’s technologically-interconnected world, people, ideologies, food habits, fashion, and movies flow easily through borders with a speed unforeseen in the recorded human history. Due to the shrinkage of our world—which has been called a global village—we are faced with questions concerning the knowledges or literacies required to succeed in a highly competitive world, and the impact of these knowledges on our own identities. The focus on the 21st century literacies operates in conjunction with crucial life literacies, such as health literacy, ecoliteracy, second/additional language literacies, religious literacy, financial literacies, and even food literacy studies. As a result of these multiliteracies, individuals in the 21st century are now required to possess and use a variety of literacy competencies that span across various academic disciplines. Individuals’ literacies are thus multiple, dynamic, adaptable, and multidimensional. Due to the significance of these literacies on identity formation, researchers, including novice university students, explore literacies to improve knowledge transmission at every stage of individuals’ lives.
Instructor: Michael Schandorf
Sections: M62 (in person), M65 (in person)
Available Times: T/R 9:00AM-12:00PM (in person), T/TR 2:00-5:00PM (in person)
The idea of competition is so fundamental to Western culture that we often take it for granted as a natural good. Nearly every aspect of our lives involves competition: we compete in school and for jobs, we compete both socially and at work, we compete in games for fun, and when we’re not competing ourselves we spend much of our time enjoying watching others compete. But our obsession with competition has complications. For example, a world divided into winners and losers is an inherently inequitable world: there will always be more “losers” than “winners”. Competition also has interesting relationships with our need for social cohesion. Attempting to disentangle cooperation from competition, in fact, can undermine both: a lack of either can lead to unproductive stasis, and worse, but a complete integration of cooperation and competition can lead to us-versus-them thinking and even war (which American rhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke called “the ultimate disease of cooperation”). This seminar will explore some of the ways that competition has been investigated in recent scholarship, and students will design and produce a research project of their own contributing to that scholarly conversation.
Instructor: Meredith Beales
Sections: M68 (online)
Available Times: T/R 6:00-9:00PM (online)
Online attendance is mandatory for this section.
Living in the modern world means being immersed in a sea of textual and internet-based media: we are constantly reading and responding to the infinite variations of electronic texts, videos, images, and memes. But how do the different media in which we encounter these messages change the way we respond to them? And how do our brains and our societies interact under the impact of these new media? In this section of WRDS 150 we will explore how different societies responded to new forms of communication, now and in the past. We will explore, as well, how our brains respond to these same challenges, and how the rise of electronic communication has altered (or not) the ways we respond to it and to each other.
Instructor: Laura Baumvol
Sections: M61 (online), M64 (online)
Available Times: T/R 8:00-11:00AM (online)/ T/R 1:00-4:00PM (online)
Online attendance is mandatory in this course.
In this section of WRDS 150, we will focus on how various disciplines, such as environmental sciences, health sciences, natural sciences, and computer science investigate and write about the communication of scholarly knowledge. This communication can involve the knowledge popularization to a broad, popular audience through a recontextualization process of text relocation from a primary scholarly context (e.g., academic journals) to a secondary popularized context (e.g., mass media, news media, magazines, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, Q&A websites, etc.). Considering advancements over time in the relationship between scholarly knowledge and discourse and “popular talk”, the traditional deficit model of science communication involving the “hierarchical transmission” from experts to a passive audience has been replaced by a model that includes a two-way interaction between the academic community and non-specialist audiences. This contemporary and democratic view of knowledge popularization allows for a reflective and dialogic communication between science and society and promotes empowerment, inclusion, and participation through the public engagement with science, working as a strategic alternative for social, educational, cultural, and economic development. The readings in the course, along with the individual and collaborative writing assignments and activities, will allow students to engage in scholarly conversations and explore multiple research genres and methods, types of data, and writing practices.
Instructor: Katie Fitzpatrick
Sections: M 63 (in person), M66 (in person)
Available Times: T/R 11:00AM-2:00PM ( in person), T/R 3:00-6:00PM (in person)
The recent Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) decision has drawn attention to the battle for abortion access in the United States. But, for many activists around the world, that battle is only one part of a larger effort to secure autonomy for families and pregnant people. As feminists of colour have long argued, reproductive justice includes the right to end a pregnancy, but also the right to “have children…and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities” (sistersong.net, n.d.). Unfortunately, these rights are often distributed unequally on the basis of race, class, sexuality, and ability (Davis, 1981; Luna and Luker, 2013; Silliman, 2004).
This course will explore fights for reproductive justice through international research in disciplines like history, sociology, and public health. Sample topics may include: the geopolitics of commercial surrogacy, the economics of parental leave, access to reproductive technology for queer and trans people, and structural racism in maternal healthcare and child welfare systems. While learning about these issues, students will also learn how to conduct scholarly research and write in a variety of scholarly genres. At the end of the course, students will work with secondary and primary sources to produce a research paper on a topic of their own choosing related to reproductive (in)justice anywhere in the world.
Instructor: Mary Ann Saunders
Sections: M45 (in person), M49 (online)
Available Times: M/W 2:00-5:00PM (in person), M/W 7:00-10:00PM (online)
Online attendance is mandatory in WRDS 150/M45.
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?
2026S Term 2
Below are course descriptions for each topic, as well as instructor and scheduling information.
Instructor: Tara Lee
Sections: J80 (online)
Available Times: T/R 8:00-11:00AM - online
Online attendance is mandatory in this course.
During this recent COVID-19 pandemic, troubling data has emerged in relation to racial inequalities when it comes to the effects of the virus. What role does race play in your life? How do you see it circulating in universities, workplaces, social media, the political realm, and social environments? Although “race” is considered to be a social construct, as an identity marker, it continues to have significant material consequences in terms of access to resources, perceptions of legitimacy, marketing strategies, and even socializing patterns. This course looks at research by scholars in a variety of disciplines who examine complex issues related to race (e.g. how race figures in conservation projects), often also taking into account other intersectional identity categories (e.g. gender, class, sexuality). As you read and discuss relevant scholarly articles, you will also become acquainted with the conventions of scholarly discourse, disciplinarity, as well as the production of new research knowledge within a field. Ultimately, the goal is for you to increase your critical engagement with the world around you, in addition to cultivating your skills and confidence as an academic writer and researcher.
Instructor: Mi-Young Kim
Sections: J89 (online)
Available Times: T/R 7:00-10:00PM - online
Online attendance is mandatory in this course.
The world is full of friction (conflicts); some argue it is the constructive force that prompts ideas and innovation while others warn that it is a destructive force producing fear and conflict. Media, particularly social media which has been an indispensable part of people’s lives, reflects or generates friction in our society and is often criticized for being a brewing ground for misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.
This section of WRDS150B will introduce a selection of unabridged, peer-reviewed scholarly articles and discussions on “friction” with the subtopics such as inclusive societies, gun control, vaccination, neoliberalism, GMO food, climate change, and ChatGPT/AI/robots. We will observe how scholars from various disciplines such as environmental sciences, natural sciences, media studies, business, and political science construct knowledge on these topics: e.g., what questions they ask and how they phrase their inquiry as well as why they choose to use a certain methodology for their inquiry and how it may affect the way their inquiry is answered. Along with exploring various research genres and methods, types of data, and writing practices, we will investigate how different types of knowledge are produced and friction aggravated by media can generate.
We will also become familiar with the conventions of academic writing and the basic premise of research through the individual and collaborative writing assignments and activities, as well as participate in scholarly conversations through our own research on the topic of friction and the role of media.