The UTSC Academic Affairs Committee (AAC) held its third meeting of the academic year on January 13, during which members approved numerous new course offerings from the humanities, social sciences, and science disciplines. All new courses will be introduced at UTSC during the 2021–2022 academic year. 

Humanities

The Department of Historical and Cultural Studies will introduce the highest number of new courses from all the humanities disciplines at UTSC, with eight new course offerings, including five new history- and geography-focused classes. 

A new B-level course, GASB65 —West Asia and the Modern World, will explore the Middle East’s social, cultural, and intellectual history as an outcome of exchange with non-European regions like Asia. 

The two new C-level classes, GASC73 — Making the Global South and GASC12 — Culture and Society in Contemporary South Asia, will explore the history of the Global South and focus on issues in the ethnographic study of contemporary South Asia, taking into consideration factors including gender, religion, and so forth, respectively. 

GASD55 — Transnational Asian Thought is a D-level course that will study secularism, modernity, and pan-Asianism in modern Asia through an intensive look at primary and secondary sources in translation. Lastly, the D-level seminar, HISD03 — Selected Topics in Historical Research will discuss advanced subject matter and research methods in history in relation to a selected topic. 

UTSC will also offer three new English courses next year. A pre-1900 class, ENGB29 — Shakespeare and Film, will study Shakespearean film adaptations and discuss the role of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and colonialism displayed in these media. ENGC31 — Medieval Travel Writing will explore both fictional and non-fictional travelogues. Finally, ENGD31 — Medieval Afterlives will explore the afterlife through a literary lens, studying medieval depictions of heaven, hell, and the afterlife. 

Language studies will offer two new C-level courses next year: ECTC62 — Translation in Media, which will examine linguistic aspects of translation in both new and traditional media, and LINC98 — Supervised Research in Linguistics, a theoretical and empirical research opportunity that will build upon students’ proficiency and experience in any field of linguistics. 

Lastly, UTSC will offer two new philosophy courses. PHLB58 — Reasoning Under Uncertainty will look at how decisions are made in the presence of uncertainty through topics such as induction, the nature of probability, and the process of scientific confirmation and refutation. The D-level seminar PHLD89 — The Socrates Project for Applied Ethics is a full-year course that provides experiential learning in philosophy along with a teaching assignment to lead tutorials and mark assignments in a B-level philosophy class.

 

Social science and science

Multiple disciplines at UTSC will offer new social science courses, including three new critical development studies courses. COPB33 — Passport to Placement III will be an international development studies co-op B-level class that will use students’ skill sets and interests to prepare them for their work-term placements. Another B-level course, IDSB07 — Confronting Development’s Racist Past and Present, will teach students about the role race and racism plays in global development of thought and practice 

IDSC21 — Power and Community-Based Research in Development is a D-level course that will introduce students to the history and ethics of community-based research in development, while ANTC12 — Culture and Society in Contemporary South Asia is a C-level anthropology course that will explore issues in the ethnographic study of South Asia.

A new C-level Human geography course, GGRC15 — Spatial Databases and Applications, will focus on relational database management systems, specifically in relation to spatial data, and relationships and operations. 

A D-level political science course, PPGD68 — Capstone: The Policy Process in Theory and Practice, will study how evidence and political consideration are used in the policy process through stages such as agenda-setting, formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation. 

The only new science offering will be a C-level psychology course, PSYC38 — Adult Psychopathology. This class will provide an “advanced understanding of the etiology, psychopathology, and treatment of common mental disorders in adults.”