Winter 2023 course offerings

Below, you will find a list of all HSS graduate course offerings for fall semester 2022. Browse by department:

 

Anthropology graduate courses: 

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Language and Culture (ANTH 6210)

Language and Culture examines the constitutive role of language in the formation of social categories and institutions. Through critical analysis of communication, students will investigate how personhood, identity, community, difference, space and time, meaning and organization of social life are made and unmade. It is preferable but not necessary that students have some familiarity with the foundational texts in linguistic anthropology (Peirce, Saussure, Boas, Sapir, Whorf, Bakhtin, Jacobson, Silverstein, Gal, Irvine etc.)

Anthropological Theory (ANTH 6412)

Course description forthcoming.

Graduate Seminar (ANTH 6890)

Everyone can name books and articles they loved and others they wish they’d never had to read. What makes the difference? Why are some pieces of writing riveting and others excruciating? How does written form relate to substantive content? This term in ANTH 6890, we will focus on a variety of approaches to writing anthropology, a discipline described as the most humanistic of the social sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. Among other genres, we will explore auto-ethnography and anthropological memoir, journalistic anthropology, and anthropological essays. We will approach anthropological writing as a craft that can be learned and improved, tacking between attentive reading of anthropological texts and small experiments in writing anthropological prose.

Archaeology graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Interpretative Methods in Archaeology (ARCH 6001)

Course description forthcoming

Environmental Archaeology (ARCH 6682)

Course description forthcoming

 

Classics graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Seminar in Greek Literature and Culture (CLAS 6002)

Description forthcoming.

Latin Literature: Lyric, satire, elegy, epigram (CLAS 6220)

Course description forthcoming.

Greek Literature: Lyric, aimbic, elegy and epigram (CLAS 6320)

Course description forthcoming.

 

Economics graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course information such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Econ 6012: Cost-Benefit Analysis
The aim of this course is to enhance students’ analytical and intellectual skills through the study of Cost Benefit Analysis, improving their knowledge about issues related to Economic Policy and Welfare Economics. Students will gain the skills needed to interpret published cost-benefit analysis studies and to provide advice on and conduct and present basic cost-benefit analysis, as well as to critically assess economic policy. The course will also help students understand the principles that inspire Welfare Economics, in particular the normative roots of the notion of economic efficiency, as well as the principles behind the theory of market failure.

Econ 6022: Environmental Economics
This is the graduate course that explores the theory and practice of environmental economics. Graphical analysis, microeconomic and macroeconomic models will be used to study the wide range of environmental problems and issues. The course will introduce frameworks for measuring environmental costs and benefits and explore the efficiency of alternative pollution control policies. Applications will include air and water pollution and global environmental problems such as climate change.

Econ 6024: Topics in Resource Economics
This course applies theoretical and empirical economic tools to a number of natural resource and environmental issues. The broad concepts discussed include externalities, public goods, property rights, market failure, and social cost-benefit analysis. These concepts are applied to a number of areas including renewable and non-renewable resources, air pollution, water, and land. Special emphasis is devoted to analyzing the optimal role for public policy. The major objectives are (1) to learn basic economic principles governing the allocation of various categories of scarce natural/environmental resources among competing uses; and (2) to gain experience with basic analytical tools useful for applying these principles to real world allocation problems.

Econ 6050: Econometrics Beyond Ordinary Least Squares

Description forthcoming

Econ 6051: Advance Microeconometrics

Advanced Microeconometrics focuses on the econometric analysis of cross-sectional and panel data, with special attention to maximum likelihood estimation techniques aimed at handling limited and categorical dependent variables. Some of the econometrics techniques covered will include fixed and random effects analysis of panel data, latent class modelling, binary, ordered, and multinomial probit and logit, count data, censored and truncated dependent variables, and bivariate and multivariate models for categorical data. Stata will be used throughout the course.

 

English graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Indigenous Voices: Reading for All My Relations/Wahkohtowin (ENGL 7450)

Michelle Porter; Wednesdays 10:00 to 1:00

Reading for All My Relations/Wahkohtowin invites student to journey into the stories of a range of Métis literature. Students will learn to read the stories of the Métis Nation of Western Canada with attention to relationality—the author’s, the story’s and their own—and in doing so will develop the tools to learn how to approach and read the stories of other Indigenous Nations after the class is over. Students will read fiction, nonfiction and poetry by storytellers including Katherena Vermette, Jesse Thistle, Maria Campbell and others.

Genre Studies: Ecopoetics (ENGL 7357)

Joel Deshaye; Tuesdays, 10:00 to 1:00

This course is a small but representative survey of contemporary Canadian poetry, which we will read largely through rhizomes (à la Deleuze and Guattari) of ecopoetics, media ecology, and acoustic ecology. It begins with two canonical but contemporary figures, Jan Zwicky and Don McKay, before moving on to mid-career writers from various places and backgrounds: Oana Avasilichioaei, Kaie Kellough, Marvin Francis, and Karen Solie.

Creative Writings: Supernatural Novellas (ENGL 7210)

Lisa Moore; Thursdays, 7:00 to 10:00pm

Details forthcoming.

Period Studies: Medieval Drama (ENGL 7604)

John Geck; Mondays

In this class, we will read the York Cycle, watch modern revival performances, and discuss the thematic, historical, and dramaturgical aspects of this massive and unique example of civic theatre. Throughout Medieval Europe, the feast of Corpus Christi, was devoted to the symbolic unifying meaning of the Eucharist, expressed by carrying the Host in solemn procession through the city. In the northern English city of York, from about 1377 to 1569, almost fifty individual short plays were introduced to this celebration, offering a way to enact, visualize, and participate in a grand chronologically and cosmologically unifying event, depicting the whole of time from Creation to Last Judgement.

 

Folklore graduate courses: Fall 2024

For additional course information such as time, room number, and instructor, please email folklore@mun.ca, or visit the Folklore main office (ED 4046). 

Survey of Folklore Genres and Processes (FOLK 6010)

 

Field and Research Methods (FOLK 6020)

 

 Folklore Theories (FOLK 6030)

 

Health Systems (FOLK 6310)

 

Food and Culture (FOLK 6430)

 

Folklore and Gender (FOLK 6730)

 

 

French graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Literary Methodology and Theory I (FREN 6008)

For a course escription, contact Dr. P.O. Bouchard

Francophone Culture: Theory and Practice (FREN 6810)

For a course escription, contact Dr. A.Thareau or Dr. P. Basabose

Reading in French (FREN 6900)

For a course escription, contact Dr. D.R. Gamble

 

Gender Studies graduate courses: Fall 2024

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, check Memorial Self-Service. 

Feminist Theory (GNDR 6000)

Course description forthcoming.

Feminist Epistemologies and Methodologies (GNDR 6100)

Course description forthcoming.

Geography graduate courses: 

Fall 2024

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

 

 

History graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Note:
Our 4th year seminars in the Department of History are open to graduate students taking the course for graduate credit (a 6xxx designation). Individual instructors may require additional reading, assignments, and/or engagement from graduate students in the seminar. Instructor’s permission is required to register in these seminars as a graduate student and is subject to capacity.

History of Environmental Ideas in Canada & USA (HIST 4125)

This course will survey major philosophical, scientific, and popular ideas of nature in North America during the 19th and 20th centuries. As well as key environmental thought from romanticism to social ecology, the seminar will also contextualize important voices from social groups and racialized peoples often marginalized in environmental debates. 

North American Frontier (HIST 4212)

The idea of “frontier” regions has figured prominently in the ways people have understood themselves and the territories they inhabit in settler societies. This seminar examines how concepts of “frontier” have figured in North American history, and equally in the writing of that history.

Slavery & Resistance in the Atlantic World (HIST 4219)

In this seminar we will explore how freedom and slavery in early modern New Orleans were held in uneasy balance by a complex array of social, legal, and cultural accommodations. In thinking about the historical evolution of race relations, we will discuss food, music, Mardi Gras, and other cultural expressions of the Crescent City’s creole history.

French Revolution (HIST 4320)

This seminar examines the causes and proximate and long-term consequences of the events of 1789 and the revolutionary period in France. The seminar considers both how the French people initiated and responded to major events in France, as well as the participation in and consequences of the Revolution on French colonies and the rest of Europe.

Oral History (HIST 4480)

Oral history is both a method of inquiry used by historians, and others, and a subfield of history which has a strong commitment to those marginalized voices whose histories are rarely in state archives. This course will introduce students to oral history methodology, theory, and ethics.

Honours Reading Seminar (HIST 4821)

This seminar is designed to help students learn to critically read and discuss major academic works. Students will read ten books over the semester, one book discussed each week, culminating in an oral examination with two faculty members.

Masters Seminar (HIST 6200)

This is a seminar on Historiography, the study of the writing of history, intended to direct our students in writing the historiographical analysis section of their Thesis or Major Research Paper.

Advanced Studies in Labour History and Working Class (HIST 6075)

This course explores the history of working people and the development of organized labour since the 19th century. Focused especially on Canadian case studies, the course provides insight into empirical and theoretical aspects of working-class history. Students will have an opportunity to examine and evaluate a variety of approaches to the study of this subject.

 

Linguistics graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Principles Lang Acquisition (LING 6150)

Course description forthcoming.

Advanced Phonology (LING 6203)

This course addresses current issues in phonological theory. Topics include segmental and prosodic representations, as well as advanced issues in Optimality Theory and other constraint-based approaches to phonology. Students will further develop their ability to analyze phonological data in light of current theories. Students will also do independent research on some aspect of phonological theory.

Sociolinguistics (LING 6210)

This class provides a thorough grounding in variationist sociolinguistic principles and methodology underlying current approaches to language variation and change. Students will develop an empirical foundation for examining major issues related to language variation and change. The course will build on key concepts introduced in LING 2210 & 3210, engage students to think critically and creatively about how language data is acquired and analyzed by implementing a variety of analysis procedures, including multivariate statistics, and introduce ways that language variation has been examined in formal linguistic theories.

Field Methods (LING 6500)

Techniques of data collection and analyses of an unknown language in a simulated field situation. Includes methods of elicitation, data filing, and hypothesis formation and testing.

Philosophy Graduate Courses: Winter 2025

Seminar in Special Topics (PHIL 6048)  

Slot 19 with Arthur Sullivan

The focus of this seminar course will be on the concept of a natural kind; as such, it will primarily overlap the sub-fields of metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Secondarily, there are lots of corners within philosophy that such a course might end up exploring.

 The core idea is that, of all the categories we employ in our thought and talk, a privileged minority of them correspond to fundamental objective groupings. To use a metaphor that originates in Plato’s Phaedrus, there are special categories that ‘carve nature at the joints’. Traditionally, paradigm examples of these ‘natural kinds’ include biological species and chemical elements. Putative examples of natural kinds abound throughout, and are arguably constitutive of, the natural sciences (e.g., quark, aluminum, mammal, hurricane, galaxy). There is a classic strain within ‘realist’ philosophy of science which holds that the natural kinds are (all and only) those that figure in laws of nature, and/or (all and only) those that support substantive, significant inductions. On the other hand, there are considerable arguments to the effect that the very idea of a natural kind is a pernicious myth.

In contrast, a kind is non-natural if it corresponds to a grouping that essentially involves the interests, activities, etc., of the agents doing the categorizing. Terms employed in this region include ‘artificial kinds’, ‘social kinds’, ‘human kinds’. (Beware terminological variance – some use these as rough synonyms, others definitely not.) Such things as ‘marriage’ and ‘money’ are commonly cited as examples of non-natural kinds. While such categories can obviously be crucially important to us, they are things humans create rather than discover; or: things that we impose on, rather than observe in, the targeted phenomena.

There are longstanding debates as to whether there are, or could be, natural kinds in the social sciences (e.g., Could there be economic laws about ‘recessions’? Or sociological, political, or historical laws about ‘revolutions’?) These debates are even more heated and more difficult in the philosophy of psychology (e.g., is ‘schizophrenia’, or ‘depression’, a natural kind?) Relatedly, questions about the nature of race or gender could be posed in these terms. (We may or might not get into these, currently extremely volatile, questions.)  

 

 Seminar in Special Topics (PHIL 6061)  

Dante’s Divine Comedy

Slot 11 with Seamus O'Neill 

In this course we will undertake a close reading, analysis, and discussion of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri including the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso in English translation. Though we will not cover the entire poem in class, by reading and meditating upon one canto per day, students will have read the entire work by Easter. In the classes, however, we will focus more closely on particular cantos and sections of the text. In addition to learning about Dante’s own philosophical positions, we will examine the important influences on Dante’s Commedia including the philosophical and theological positions and doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, Boethius and Augustine, and Bonaventure and Aquinas. Portions of these texts will be supplied when needed throughout the course. We will explore philosophically the various religious themes in the work: the existence and nature of evil, the relation between the soul and body, divine mediation, nature, morality, the human’s final end, and God.

 

Seminar in Special Topics (PHIL 6067) 
Slot 18 with Melanie Coughlin

*Synchronous Online

*On-Campus Space (optional): EN 1003

Nishitani’s Critique of Anthropocentrism in Religion and Nothingness

Nishitani Keiji, a 20th century Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School, argues that religion is one way that human beings have had of caring about matters beyond the concerns of our own species. Nevertheless, religion also sometimes intensifies the anthropocentric point of view. In his magnum opus, Religion and Nothingness, Nishitani takes a critical interest in modern atheistic revolutions as an opportunity to address anthropocentric tendencies in religion. At the same time, he seeks to recuperate some of religion's ways of caring about the world beyond the narrow interests of an ideal human being defined by modern European interests. In this seminar, we will read Nishitani's Religion and Nothingness together and pay attention to the way he uses references to Buddhist and Christian concepts to support his critical engagement with modern and contemporary European philosophers like Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and others. No previous knowledge of Buddhism or Christianity is required but would be an aid.

While Nishitani’s own philosophy is the main topic, he often thinks through historical concepts, and participants can choose which of Nishitani's engagements with European philosophers and/or religious traditions they would like to bring into focus in the seminar and in their individual work.

As we sort through the tangle of these historical concepts, we will also discuss possible contemporary applications of critiquing anthropocentrism. Such critique is broadly relevant today in social philosophy, since anthropocentrism not only places human interests at the centre of our priorities, but more fundamentally shapes the privileges associated with characteristics regarded as essentially "human."

 

 

Political Science graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Empirical Methods in Political Science (POSC 6010)

 

Co-operative Internship (POSC 6030)

 

Research Design & Professional Development (POSC 602A)

 

Research Design & Profesional Development (POSC 602B)

 

Approaches to Political Theory (POSC 6100)

 

Contentious Politics (6400)

  

Public Policy Process (POSC 6790)

 

 

Sociology graduate courses: Winter 2023

For additional course infomation such as slot, room number, and instructor, see our upcoming courses database. 

Advanced Qualitative Methods (SOCI 6041)

Provides advanced instruction in the variety of methodological approaches that characterize qualitative social research. Focuses on developing students’ understanding of the various stages of conducting qualitative research, including developing a research design, sampling, data collection and data analysis, and how to apply these principles to their own areas of interest.

Instructor: Dr. Mark Stoddart, mstoddart@mun.ca

Gender and Society (SOCI 6320)

This course is a graduate level seminar in the sociology of gender. Focus is on the social construction of gender along multiple dimensions of social life - structure, culture, interaction - and the relationship between gender and other forms of inequality, such as race, class, sexuality, age, and disability.

Instructor: Dr. Allyson Stokes, b15aejs@mun.ca

Sociology of Work  (SOCI 6360)

This course will introduce students to the sociology of work at an advanced level. The sociology of work helps us understand how individual experiences, relationships, and occupational outcomes are all related to how we define, organize, and divide labor in society. In particular, this course focuses on three major areas of theoretical and empirical inquiry: (1) transformations in work over time, (2) characteristics of work in various sectors (e.g., manufacturing, service), and (3) the relationship between work and social inequalities.

Instructor: Dr. Allyson Stokes, b15aejs@mun.ca

Current Topics in Social Behaviour (SOCI 6620)

This course examines theories of social control, emphasizing their importance in structuring sociological and criminological thought. Content reflects upon societies’ continuously changing values and norms that result from dynamic social, cultural, economic, and political processes and contexts to inform our understanding of social control. In this course, students also explore how, when, and why some forms of control are particularly pronounced within and exerted upon certain groups, which contributes to complex challenges, conflicts, and harms in society.

Instructor: Dr. Adrienne Peters, apeters@mun.ca