Undergraduate
100 Level Courses (2021-2022)
Course Nomenclature
- H1-F = "First Term"; the first term of the Fall/Winter Session (September - December)
- H1-S = "Second Term"; the second term of the Fall/Winter Session (January - April)
- Y1-Y = full session (September - April)
- Students should note that courses designated as "...Y1F" or "...Y1S" in the Timetable are particulary demanding.
100-level HIS courses are designed for students entering university. They take a broad sweep of material, and introduce students to the methods and techniques of university study. Each week, students will attend two lectures given by the course professor, and participate in one tutorial led by a teaching assistant. First year courses are not considered to be in an "area" for program requirements. All 100-series HIS courses are mutually exclusive, with the exception of AP, IB, CAPE, or GCE transfer credits. Students may enrol in only one 100-series History course. Students enrolled in more than one of these courses (or who have completed one of these courses or a previous HIS 100-series course with a mark of 50% or greater) will be removed at any time. First-Year students can also enrol in 200-series HIS courses. ALL students enrolled in a History Specialist, Major, or Minor program must take ONE 100-level HIS course.
First-Year Foundation Seminars
First-Year Foundation Seminars are open only to newly-admitted, Faculty of Arts & Science students (3.5 credits or less). They are 1.0 credit or 0.5 credit courses that focus on discussion of issues, questions and controversies surrounding a particular discipline (or several disciplines) in a small-group setting that encourages the development of critical thinking, writing skills, oral presentation and research methods. FYF seminars are as rigorous and demanding as any other first-year course and require in addition the acquisition of those skills expected of successful undergraduate students. With a maximum enrolment of 30 students each, they are an ideal way to have an enjoyable and challenging small-class experience in your first year. Details can be found at the First-Year Opportunities website.
First-Year Foundation Seminars:
- Count as 1.0 or 0.5 of the 20 credits required for an Hon. B.A., Hon B.Sc. or B. Com.
- First-Year Foundation Seminars are not required to get into any Program of Study. However, they may count towards your Program. Please check with your college registrar for further details.
- Can be counted towards the breadth requirement.
Ranging widely chronologically and geographically, this course explores the phenomenon of violence in history. It examines the role and meanings of violence in particular societies (such as ancient Greece, samurai Japan, and modern South Africa), the ideological, political, and social rationales for violence in the conflicts between religions, ethnicities, and "races" (as in slavery, holy wars, colonization, and genocide), and the long-term effects of such violence.
Exclusion: HIS100Y1, HIS102Y1, HIS103Y1, HIS106Y1, HIS107Y1, HIS108Y1, HIS109Y1, HIS110Y1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3), Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)
Instructor: M. Meyerson/A. Guerson
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday 11-12
Tutorials: TBA
Temporal Requirement: ½ credit
Interactions among peoples, empires, and cultures, with particular attention to the non-European world. Can we speak of “international relations” before the modern concept of nation-states was established? What forms did globalization take in the pre-modern era? Covering a broad chronological sweep, we will look at exchanges of goods and technologies; dissemination of ideas and religions; voyages of migration and exploration; and episodes of conquest and colonization.
Exclusion: HIS100Y1, HIS101Y1, HIS103Y1, HIS106Y1, HIS107Y1, HIS108Y1, HIS109Y1, HIS110Y1, HISA04H3/HISA05H3
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3), Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)
Instructor: M. Inan
Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday 11-12
Tutorials: TBA
Temporal Requirement: ½ credit
This course seeks to promote an understanding of the historical development of organized international relations in Europe from the 16th to the 20th century. It will highlight, in particular, the varying roles of war in the international system: as the source and guardian of international order; as an agent of change within the system (to accommodate shifts in the Balance of Power); and as a threat to the survival of international society (from aggression or Armageddon). Appropriate attention will be paid to the contributions made by individuals, ideas and institutions to the evolution of international order, through such ordeals by fire as the Thirty Years Wars, the Wars of Louis XIV, the Napoleonic Wars, the Wars of National Unification of the Nineteenth Century and the First and Second World Wars of the Twentieth Century.
Exclusion: HIS100Y1, HIS101Y1, HIS102Y1, HIS106Y1, HIS107Y1, HIS108Y1, HIS109Y1, HIS110Y1
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: T. Sayle
Lecture: Asynchronous
Tutorials: TBA
Temporal Requirement: ½ credit
This course offers an introduction to history as a discipline - to the history of the discipline itself, to the questions, categories, and methodologies that constitute it, and how they have evolved in varied times and places, and to the methodologies students need to acquire to engage in historical inquiry and writing. The course will be part methodological workshop, part epistemological reflection.
Exclusion: HIS100Y1, HIS101Y1, HIS102Y1, HIS103Y1, HIS106Y1, HIS107Y1, HIS109Y1, HIS110Y1
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: P. Cohen
Lecture: Wednesday 9-11
Tutorials: TBA
We have all just lived through a major historical disruption caused by CoViD-19. In this course, you will be invited to use your experience of the pandemic as a tool for understanding other times, other places, and the study of history itself. We will study plagues and diseases from the ancient world to the Twentieth Century, and introduce methods from social, cultural, and economic history, as well as concepts from the histories of science and medicine.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: M. Price
Lecture: Tuesday 9-11
The last Indian Residential School in Canada closed in 1996. For more than a century and half before that, the Canadian state supported church-run residential schools which took Indigenous children away from their families, cultures, languages, and traditions. Over 150,000 children passed through the doors of these different schools that operated across the country. The recent discovery of the unmarked graves of 215 children as young as three years old at the Kamloops Indian Residential School makes the devastating impact of these schools clear. Using the formal report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a central text, this course will explore the history and the ongoing legacy of residential schools in Canada. Students will learn fundamentals of archival research as they locate and analyze reports and correspondence by settler educators, missionaries, policy makers and politicians who supported and enabled the residential school system, in the broader context of settler colonialism. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: H. Bohaker
Lecture: Tuesday 10-12
“This course will look broadly at the question of power and resistance in the Americas –– Canada, the United States, and Latin America –– through the prism of comic books and graphic novels. Each week we will read a comic book, graphic novel, or graphic history that concern actual examples of political dominance and resistance, drawing on a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship to help us contextualize these works. We will also examine depictions of dystopian and utopian futures that may help to illuminate the operation of power and resistance in our own moment. In addition to discussing comics as a particular medium, one with a unique history and relationship to popular culture, we will also consider the potential of comics to serve as repositories for historical knowledge (i.e. archives), conduits for communicating information, and tools of power or resistance. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.”
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: M. Mishler
Lecture: Wednesday 1-3
This course introduces students to the historiographical and theoretical debates in women's and gender history from a global perspective, with emphasis on the local histories of women in the non-western world. Students will study the themes in women's history as articulated by first and second wave feminists. The second part of the class deconstructs the basic assumptions of Western feminism through the perspective of post-colonial feminist writings and empirical studies. The readings are structured so that you consider how examples from Asia disrupt narratives of universality in Western feminist epistemologies. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)
Instructor: S. Sweeney
Lecture: Tuesday 10-12