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This course provides a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary introduction to visual culture from ancient civilizations to our contemporary global world. It presents key terms, concepts, and issues that are central to the study of images, visuality, practices of looking, as well as visual media, technology, and culture. It deconstructs the mechanism and impact of visual communication by illuminating how images exert power in specific geographic and cultural contexts, manufacture desire in viewers and consumers, and construct meaning and experience through time. Lectures target the acquisition of visual literacy and the understanding of visual culture around the world.

This course provides a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary introduction to material culture from ancient civilizations to our contemporary global world. It presents key terms, concepts, and issues that are central to the study of materiality, including maker and creation practices, modes of objectification and commodification, and material ways of knowing often set aside by textually-expressed knowledge. By decentring the text and focusing on the material world, this course will allow a better understanding of otherwise overlooked knowledge and experiences. This course offers a range of approaches to material culture drawing from anthropology, archeology, art history, archival and curatorial studies, the history of the book, ethno-history, Indigenous studies, marketing, museology, race studies, sound studies, and women's and gender studies.

Cartography implies not only the visualization of space, but also the creation of tools that can powerfully define and delineate space in political, social, and cultural ways, which give rise to borders and exclude or include people, things, and resources in life-changing ways. This course digests several thousand years of mapping in the western and non-western worlds to teach students how maps work and what types of knowledge they express. Students will be exposed to the uses and implications of mapping as an instrument that furthers the ambitions of kings, presidents, and even academics. Students will also be exposed to non-western ways of articulating space and reflect on how the digital realm is urgently requiring our society to assess the ways that maps control how we know the world around us.

This course adopts an approach grounded in cultural studies to introduce students to key theories, concepts, and issues in intercultural communication, which is defined as the transmission and reception of verbal and non-verbal messages across languages and cultures. It sheds light on how cultural differences and variables impact communication, reveals the common barriers to intercultural exchange, and reflects on identity and otherness, cultural filters and templates, and the relationship between culture, media, and language. Examples are drawn from textual, visual, and material cultures of the past, as well as contemporary mass media contexts. By playing the role of cultural mediators, students will learn how to deconstruct cultural templates and frames of reference, analyze past and present intercultural encounters and conflict, and interpret standards and values as embedded in various contexts of expression (pictures, advertisements, texts, films, etc.)

This course presents a critical approach to anime as a visual medium, an industry, and a global cultural product. It focuses in particular on its distinct modes of representation for developing characters and visual storytelling, designing sets, reflecting socio-cultural reality, and captivating the viewer's imagination. Topics are selected from the following: the history of anime; the subgenres of anime; issues of identity, gender, and sexuality; anime as a creative arts industry with commercial objectives; anime and adaptation (manga, toys, etc.); the transcultural fandom of anime; anime as a global cultural product and international phenomenon (fan conventions, cosplay, the Pokémon franchise, Otaku culture, etc.); and the marketing of anime in the West (Studio Ghibli, Netflix, etc.). The course involves a critical understanding of anime as form and product, but it does not include instruction in the creation of anime or manga.

This course examines the ways in which visual and material cultures shape and are shaped by travel and tourism. Topics will include the history of tourism and travel, the role of visual and material culture in creating and sustaining tourist destinations, the impact of tourism on local communities and their material culture, and the ways in which travelers themselves create and consume images and objects associated with travel and tourism. Examples will be drawn from a range of cultures and global tourist destinations. 

This course focuses on clothing which is one of the largest and most rapidly expanding sectors of the global economy measured in terms of employment, sales, and pollution. It examines the social systems, body practices, and power configurations that underlie historical and contemporary clothing practices both cross-culturally and locally, focusing on Canada's fashion industry and dress practices. Topics include non-western and non-capitalist clothing practices; gender (male, female, and LGBTQ+) identities in fashion; the ready-made clothing manufacturing and retail industries; environmental impacts of the clothing industry; and labour practices.

This course introduces the artistic, architectural, and archaeological monuments of the Roman world from the eighth century BC to the fifth century AD. It traces Roman art and architecture from its early origins under Etruscan influence through to the periods of the Roman Republic and Principate. It engages monuments and artifacts within their political, economic, religious, intellectual, and social context. This approach provides a framework for a more comprehensive understanding of art and artistic movements in their diachronic development.

This course explores the intersection of verbal texts and visual arts in Francophone literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine how, different yet inseparable, words and images have always interacted with each other in a variety of ways and forms such as verbal portraiture, literary references to pictorial works, engravings and photographs used as illustrations or book covers, and the use of words in paintings.