Courses focused on Public Art & History

See the list below for courses that focus on public art and public history in Canada…

(F= Fall-term 2022; S=Winter-term 2023)

NEW104H1-F – Creating Community: Art, Identity and Belonging (TBD)

How is art implicated in the process of community building? How does art foster a sense of community identity and belonging? This course explores how communities, in Toronto and beyond, engage a variety of art forms including graffiti, spoken-word, hip-hop, digital art, traditional dance and music to connect people and express community identity. Students will have the opportunity to visit community arts projects. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

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FAH194H1-F – Public Art: Local and Global (M. Cheetham)

We are surrounded by public art, whether in the form of official commemorative monuments or ephemeral (some say illegal) street art. We will examine the history and current practice of this important art form in Toronto and by comparison, globally. The focus will be on discussing the nature, roles, and issues pertaining to contemporary public art that we can see in situ in downtown Toronto. Restricted to first-year students.

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DHU236H1-S   Virtual Worlds: Introduction to Spatial Digital Humanities (TBD) 

A Digital Humanities perspective on the virtual worlds in which we are increasingly immersed, from scholarly digital archives to video games. We study the theory and methods of geospatial humanities research and explore the technical and cultural implications of computer vision, augmented reality, the Internet of Things, and 3D printing.

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ENG215H1- F/S – The Canadian Short Story (S. Caskey)

An introduction to the Canadian short story, this course emphasizes its rich variety of settings, subjects, and styles.

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DHU235H1-F – Introduction to Digital Humanities (TBD)

Digital Humanities (DH) studies human culture — art, literature, history, geography, religion — using computational tools and methodologies, and at the same time studies digital technologies and communities through humanist lenses, as complex cultural objects shaped by wider social and political concerns and the ways we construct knowledge and meaning.

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JSU325H1-S – Queerly Canadian (S. Rayter)

This course focuses on Canadian literary and artistic productions that challenge prevailing notions of nationality and sexuality, exploring not only how artists struggle with that ongoing Canadian thematic of being and belonging, but also celebrate pleasure and desire as a way of imagining and articulating an alternative national politics.

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ENG356Y1-Y – African Canadian Literature (G. Clarke)

Black Canadian Literature (poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction) from its origin in the African Slave Trade in the eighteenth century to its current flowering as the expression of immigrants, exiles, refugees, ex-slave-descended, and colonial-settler-established communities. Pertinent theoretical works, films, and recorded music are also considered.

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CIN370H1-F – Canadian Cinemas (TBD)

History and diversity of Canadian and Québécois cinemas. Analyses of film and critical frameworks examine how co-productions, multiculturalism, and post-national arguments are re-shaping the production and reception contexts of national cinema. Annual emphasis will be placed on one of the following topics: the emergence of the feature film, Québécois cinema, documentary, or experimental cinema.

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FAH446H1 S – Arctic Anthropocene? Image Cultures of Arctic Voyaging (TBD)

‘Arctic Anthropocene’ examines the extensive visual culture of voyages in the Arctic in the long 19th century. We will probe both Western and Inuit perspectives on the search for the Northwest Passage, whaling, and scientific understandings of the exotic meteorological, human, and animal phenomena of this region through its complex image culture. To underscore ecological understandings of the Arctic in the 19th century and today, we will frame our investigation of the visual culture of this place and time with an interrogation of the notion of the ‘Anthropocene.’

HIS496H1-S – Art, Culture and Politics in Quebec (S. Mills)

This course will explore the interplay between art, culture, and politics in Quebec throughout the 20th century. Topics will include jazz, the Automatiste movement, and the art, literature, and social movements of the Quiet Revolution and its aftermath.

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This project is supported by the Learning & Education Advancement Fund at the University of Toronto