Professional Degree courses in Dentistry, Education, Law, Medicine and Theology (MTS, MDiv)
6000-6999
Courses offered by Continuing Studies
9000-9999
Graduate Studies courses
* These courses are equivalent to pre-university introductory courses and may be counted for credit in the student's record, unless these courses were taken in a preliminary year. They may not be counted toward essay or breadth requirements, or used to meet modular admission requirements unless it is explicitly stated in the Senate-approved outline of the module.
Suffixes
no suffix
1.0 course not designated as an essay course
A
0.5 course offered in first term
B
0.5 course offered in second term
A/B
0.5 course offered in first and/or second term
E
1.0 essay course
F
0.5 essay course offered in first term
G
0.5 essay course offered in second term
F/G
0.5 essay course offered in first and/or second term
H
1.0 accelerated course (8 weeks)
J
1.0 accelerated course (6 weeks)
K
0.75 course
L
0.5 graduate course offered in summer term (May - August)
Q/R/S/T
0.25 course offered within a regular session
U
0.25 course offered in other than a regular session
W/X
1.0 accelerated course (full course offered in one term)
Y
0.5 course offered in other than a regular session
Z
0.5 essay course offered in other than a regular session
Glossary
Prerequisite
A course that must be successfully completed prior to registration for credit in the desired course.
Corequisite
A course that must be taken concurrently with (or prior to registration in) the desired course.
Antirequisite
Courses that overlap sufficiently in course content that both cannot be taken for credit.
Essay Courses
Many courses at Western have a significant writing component. To recognize student achievement, a number of such courses have been designated as essay courses and will be identified on the student's record (E essay full course; F/G/Z essay half-course).
Principal Courses
A first year course that is listed by a department offering a module as a requirement for admission to the module. For admission to an Honours Specialization module or Double Major modules in an Honours Bachelor degree, at least 3.0 courses will be considered principal courses.
Explore the roots of today’s global world through a selection of writers, artists, and works that have shaped, challenged, and connected civilizations, past and present. Study cross-cultural patterns and exchanges while on a journey of discovery that will take you from Europe to Asia, from Africa to the Americas.
Explore ideas that have revolutionized our cultures. Discover their origins and applications in our public and private lives. Working alongside your peers, refine your critical understanding of words such concepts as platonic love, unconscious, censorship, paradox, utopia, gender, social networks, alienation, literature and myth through textual and visual material.
Extra Information: 3 seminar hours. Class sizes will be limited to ensure an active learning environment.
In this seminar, discover the roots of today's global world by studying a selection of writers, artists, and works that have shaped, challenged, and connected civilizations throughout history. Engage in discussions and teamwork to explore cross-cultural exchanges, while traveling from Europe to Asia, from Africa to the Americas.
How has the “the future” been imagined ever since antiquity and in ever more contemporary and global visions? Conceiving of time and visions for tomorrow, past and present thinkers, artists, and scientists contemplate the unknown: utopias and dystopias, being human in an age of the machine, AI, the Anthropocene and beyond.
Journey across cultures in search of various attempts to imagine ideal societies and perfect places. Exploring the political, social and cultural basis of the utopian impulse from antiquity to the 21st century, we will consider how utopia morphs into its polar opposite: the nightmare of dystopia.
The course focuses on the grotesque imagination in literature and the arts from antiquity up to the twenty-first century. The grotesque - whose limits are humor and horror, as well as the fantastic and the realistic - will be illustrated with works by Apuleius, Rabelais, da Vinci, Baudelaire, Tanizaki, Kafka, Borges, etc.
This comparative survey of works from different countries will consider novels, as well as films, for children of different ages in an international cultural context, dealing with such questions as adult-child relationships, growing up, the role of the imagination, gender identity and adventure.
Explore the ancient art of storytelling, focusing on three classics of world literature: the Asian Pancatantra,Thousand and One Nights and the European Decameron. Study how literary devices, themes, and styles travel across time and space boundaries bringing different cultures into contact.
As a rebel genre on the border between word and image, the graphic novel has recently increased its international popularity through digital media. Tracing its history from illuminated manuscripts to webcomics, this course will study the clash between visual and verbal cultures in works by Botticelli, Buzzelli, Hergé, Hernández, Tegame.
Comic authors have long been intrigued by the "marriage market" or the "war racket," and other satiric signs of how money makes the world go round. This course will unfold the ironies of commercial life as represented in a series of comic masterpieces from antiquity to modernity.
Compare the aesthetics of totalitarian culture in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Studying the literature, visual arts, music, film, architecture, and critical writings through which these movements expressed their ideals, we will explore the complexities of fascist culture in relation to movements such as modernism, historicism, and nationalism.
How do science and art relate to each other? Compare works from different countries and cultural contexts to consider what innovation means in science and in art. For instance, how does art represent, support and critique scientific activity and the associated ethical, as well as socio-political questions?
Explore controversial issues concerning human rights by discussing a range of world literature, art and cinema. We will address the complexity of the concepts of what is human and the notions of rights and justice. Examine the ideological bases that serve to justify such crimes as genocide, slavery and torture.
If "Love is a Battlefield," as pop music declares, who are the victors and what are the spoils? Older than Troy, the Erotomachia ("Sex War") is an enduring meme by which gender troubles are confronted and sexual hierarchies overturned. Its history will be traced through literature, painting, opera, drama, film.
From Pushkin to Dostoevsky, this course considers authors who lived in the imperial capital St. Petersburg - a city straddling Western and Russian ways: Italian architecture and dirty alleys, French manners and autocracy, Enlightenment and conservatism. All works in English translation.
This 3-week course in Barcelona explores cultural differences between Mediterranean and North American life through artistic expressions, history, food, and values. You will engage with the local culture, discover new places, and be exposed to new perspectives; ultimately, this experience will likely re-shape your identity in the global context.
Antirequisite(s): Spanish 2105F/G/Z.
Prerequisite(s): Registration in second year or above and permission of Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
Extra Information: The course takes place in Barcelona during Intersession. See Department for information on application procedure.
Examine Mexico City through its history of continuous transformations from Aztec empire to the megalopolis it is today. Identify traces of the various pasts in the city's contemporary urban landscape and daily life, through art, film and literature. Comparisons to other Latin American cities will be drawn.
Discover Rome and its unique contribution to Western arts and culture. Understand its prominent role in the global political and religious environments. Identify and map traces of the past in the city's contemporary urban landscape and daily life.
Discover Florence, Naples, Venice, Milan and more. Join illustrious travelers like Goethe, Dickens and Stendhal to explore fundamentals of Italian culture from the Middle-Ages to modernity with reference to architecture,literature, politics, film, and visual arts.
Study Italian Cinema and its popular genres. Explore topics such as the Italian economic boom, the evolution of the Italian family, sexuality and gender relations. Spaghetti Western, crime movies, Italian-style horror and comedy will be among the genres considered.
Under the British Raj, Bombay was imagined as a gateway city connecting the industrial West to the mystical East. This course examines its tumultuous transformation into modern Mumbai: a paradoxical mega-city where
orientalist fantasies of a "pure" Hindu past are both vigorously sustained and vehemently countered in literature and film.
Explore Viennese life, literature, and culture during the Habsburg Empire and a century later as part of the European Union. Immerse yourself in the world of Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gustav Klimt, and their modern counterparts from Thomas Bernhard to Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
Examine snapshots of the constant transformations of Berlin from imperial to cosmopolitan capital at the center of Europe in both images and texts. We will draw on visual media such as maps, paintings, photographs, and city movies and on different textual genres such as poems, novellas, short prose, essays, and excerpts from novels.
Antirequisite(s):German 2256F/G and the former German 3356F/G.
Extra Information: 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour.
Discover German folk tales collected by the brothers Grimm and literary fairy tales, such as those by Tieck, Fouqué, Hoffmann and Hauff, and investigate the relationship of these classic German fairy tales to modern children's literature and film.
Antirequisite(s): German 2251F/G.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Taught in English.
This course will explore authors of Jewish origin who wrote in German. The question of Jewishness as a direct or indirect influence on this literature will be considered in the broader context of European politics, ideas and historical events.
Antirequisite(s): German 2141A/B.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours.
Taught in English.
Discover the fascinating world of medieval food culture and explore the role nutrition played in the theory of health and wellness. Study the presumed medicinal properties of the foodstuffs available in pre-Columbian Europe, their preparation and consumption, and try your hands on period recipes from the different regions.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours, counts towards Medieval Studies module.
The view of erotic love as a central, life-changing event is a product of high-medieval "courtly love", which championed adulterous love. We read some of the most important works, including the troubadours and the original tale of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guenevere, as well as a few obscene "anti-courtly" works.
Extra Information: 3 lecture hours, counts towards Medieval Studies module.
Concepts of Culture and Popular Culture are introduced. Topics covered are relevant to studies in (Comparative) World Cultures, Cross-cultural Studies, and Intercultural Communication. Provides an overview of popular culture in Latin America and the Caribbean, focusing on the contemporary period and the Spanish-speaking world.
Extra Information: 3 hours (2-hour lecture in English + 1-hour tutorial in English for students in Comparative Literature / 1-hour tutorial in Spanish for students in Spanish).
Students curate a space for the conjuring of print and digital publications of poetry, prose, podcasts, short films, as well as a space for community engagement. We study artifacts from around the globe; introduce, develop and make use of key concepts; and participate in hands-on cultural production workshops.
Extra Information: 3 hours (2-hour lecture in English + 1-hour tutorial in English for students in Comparative Literature / 1-hour tutorial in Spanish for students in Spanish).
What happens when written texts and cultural products cross chronological, cultural, linguistic, or geographic boundaries? Consider the consequences of translation between genres, media and periods. Hone your writing, research and critical thinking skills through studying how texts move between different cultural contexts.
Special credit for Comparative Literature and Culture studies at authorized universities or institutions in approved programs. Not taught on campus.
Please consult Department for current offering.
Special credit for Comparative Literature and Culture studies at authorized universities or institutions in approved programs. Not taught on campus.
Please consult Department for current offering.
Develop intercultural competence by examining individual experiences of learning and maintaining language and of integrating cultural heritage. Connect in-class learning about language acquisition, identity, memory and related issues with service-learning projects in London or the surrounding region.
Looking at a body of audiovisual texts from the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Oceania, this course aims to expose students to a wide range of questions and debates about culture, identity and representation, while also relating these matters to ideas about transnational media and global (art) cinemas.
Explore a broad range of theories from Plato to contemporary trends, in a global perspective. Discover how the vocabulary and concepts of literary interpretation travel across time and cultures, and learn how to use them to think with/through a variety of literary texts worldwide.
Study the renaissance of the 12th century which revitalized intellectual life in Europe, and the first great works of chivalry and romantic love in their cultural context. Gain knowledge of medieval castle architecture, fashion, food, travel, medicine, sexuality, courtly love, and the hunt in text and image.
The Renaissance has had enormous repercussions for Western and world culture. What began as a program of educational reform ended as a reflection on the nature of humanity and the production of some of the world's finest artistic creations. This course investigates Renaissance art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and music.
Devastating political crises and religious conflicts characterize the Baroque, as do startling scientific discoveries, new philosophical concepts, and geographical expansion in the New World. Consider the dynamics of this period of crisis as revealed in its literature, art and philosophy. Among the figures studied are Calderón, Velázquez, Descartes and Galileo.
The course explores modernist, avant-garde and postmodernist literatures, arts and theories, and discusses topics such as high-brow culture, political aesthetics, kitsch, and pop, from Rilke, Woolf and García Lorca to Nabokov, Pynchon and Pelevin; Chaplin to Tarantino; Braque to de Kooning; and Tzara and Breton to Kristeva and Jameson.
This course explores the notion of women’s cinema in relation to the work of women directors, with an emphasis on contemporary voices. While offering a critical overview of feminist scholarship within film studies, a wide range of case studies are discussed in light of questions about gender and representation.
What do graphic novels, digital story telling, opera, ekphrasis, and movie adaptations have in common? All are examples of intermediality, in that they reference, transpose, employ several modes, or are present in different
media simultaneously. The course exemplifies the theory and practice of intermediality with two or more media.
This course examines the encounters, impositions, and appropriations of different cultures through the study of performance. Under consideration are the topics of colonialism, imperialism, globalization and performance, performances that intentionally combine hybrid or diverse cultural elements, and performances of everyday life, community-based performance, and world-scale international dramas.
The course explores the evolving role of audiences when partaking in a variety of performing arts. Case studies of current and past practices of spectatorship will span from live on-line avant-garde experimentations to classical stage theatre, and will highlight the substantial role of spectatorship in shaping artistic and social trends.
This course examines European literary and cultural representations of the Orient. Studying documentary accounts written by travelers, imaginative texts, visual representations, and critical studies of the orientalist tradition, we explore the assumptions that underlie western discourses on people, lands, and cultures beyond its eastern borders.
An interdisciplinary study of surrealism in European literature and art, and of magic realism in Latin American fiction. Special emphasis will be placed on their relationship with contemporary psychological and anthropological thought. Readings will include Freud, Jung, Breton and García Márquez. Examples of
surrealism in art will be shown.
Mad love, witchcraft and chivalry are some of the topics found in the Italian epic tradition, including in Orlando Innamorato, Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme liberata. The course will examine the epic tradition in the context of Renaissance culture and in relation to other art forms.
Explore the Italian theatrical tradition through a selection of texts that may range from Commedia dellí Arte to modern and contemporary performances. Engage with a number of theatrical techniques and consider the style, characters and themes of Italian performance art.
When you travel, how do you view the world? How does travel change you? Trace evolving perspectives on why, when, where and how travellers have experienced European locations and other destinations.
Classicists and Romantics create competing and complementary artistic visions to make sense of rapid changes in society around 1800. Examine everyday culture, consider conceptions of subjectivity and aesthetic ideals, discuss concepts of genre and reflect on the movements' affinities to media like sculpture and music.
Examine a long "green" tradition reflected in arts, literature and public debate. Consider diverse attitudes to the natural environment from the Enlightenment, Romantic period, industrialization, urbanization to present day concerns and controversies.
Engage critically with thinkers such as Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Riefenstahl by discussing philosophical and political essays, manifestos, and other documents from the Enlightenment to the present. This course explores how ideas in the German-speaking world have contributed to the values and principles of modern societies.
The course studies medieval writings in tandem with films based on them, while also examining other cinematic attempts to recreate a 'real' Middle Ages. Included are the Story of the Grail, Death of King Arthur, Tristan, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales; and films by Dreyer, Cocteau, Pasolini, Rohmer, and Bresson.
An introduction to visual arts through artistic literature. Descriptions of important works of art, monuments and cities, biographies of artists, texts written by and/or for the artists will be considered. Examples from diaries, reflections, manuals, and criticism may be included. Examples will come from pre-Columbian civilizations up to contemporary expressions.
This course focuses on the performing arts of the Hispanic World and how they incorporate cross-cultural influences and traditions, relate t other art forms such as the literary and visual arts, intersect with the world of mass media and entertainment, and address issues of identity, gender, social (in)justice, and/or resistance.
The Academic Internship is an unpaid, credit internship with minimum of 60 hours. The internship will require students to make connections with academic study while undertaking supervised duties in organizations, businesses or community groups with interests related to Comparative Literature and Culture.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the Department and Intercultural Communications 2200F/G. Registration in the third or fourth year of a module in Comparative Literature and Culture, with a minimum cumulative modular average of 75%. Approval of, and acceptance into, an internship placement.
Pre-or Corequisite(s): Students must have completed or are completing the required courses and at least 50% of the module.
Extra Information: Pass, or Fail. Students accepted for an internship will arrange individual programs with supervising faculty. The student is required to a) maintain a suitable level of performance in the position as verified by the employer through evaluations and b) submit a midterm as well as a final report, demonstrating how the experience gained through the internship relates to his/her coursework and program of study.
This seminar offers the opportunity for focused, advanced study. Topics may include canonical creative figures and their masterpieces, intersections of the visual, cinematographic, performing, musical and literary arts, and interdisciplinary, intermedial and period specific questions.
The thesis will be written in the fourth year and will be directed by a member of the Modern Languages and Literatures faculty. It will be based on an agreement between the student and faculty member on the topic, approach, and scope of the study.
Prerequisite(s): 80% minimum average in the CLC module courses taken the preceding year and permission of the Department.
In this advanced seminar, students develop their own research project with a specific historical or geographical perspective centred on a designated general theme. Students work in conjunction with peers and professors and choose their own medium of presentation ranging from the traditional to the experimental.