Courses

Topics may vary. Courses offered to date include: Canada and War in the Twentieth Century.

Examines the Atlantic world during an era of immense global change. Since the navigations of the fifteenth century, the Atlantic has been a corridor for fundamental exchanges of peoples, crops, technology and ideas. Topics include early maritime explorations, the destruction and reconfiguration of indigenous societies, the labour migrations of Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans, slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the establishment of an Atlantic economy, and the maturation of Euro-American colonial societies and their struggles for autonomy and national independence.

Designed to explore history as a discipline and a form of knowledge. It examines the process and the structure of how human societies have interpreted, ordered and used historical inquiry. Major theoretical/philosophical traditions and their historians are analyzed. Special attention is paid to modern rational history with its focus on the notion of progress and the challenges brought about by the claims of postmodern interpretation-based history with its emphasis on language, race, ethnicity, gender, and environment. Furthermore, it explores history's impact on other disciplines including philosophy, literary criticism, biology, physics, and religious studies. Combines weekly readings with selected guest lectures that explore the ways in which history is understood in History and in other disciplines.

Examines the historical development of the family beginning with the ancient world up to 1600. A central inquiry is the formation of families and households, as well the impact of religion on gender and family roles. Also explores the use of power and coercion in the organization of family, and an inquiry into contemporary gender theory, but concentrates on the lives and ideas of actual persons insofar as the historical record reveals them.

Topics may vary. Courses offered to date include: Decolonizing Gender in African History, First Nations-Canadians in B.C., History of Arian Theology, History of the Celtic Church, History of the Metis in Canada, Introduction to Patristics Study, Medieval Warfare, Arian Theology, Sacred Women in the Ancient World, War, Peace, and International Law, Gender and the Charter, Transatlantic British Empire, Christian Perspective on Israel.

Under the direction of the student's approved thesis advisor, a course of reading and study which leads to the development of both a significant bibliographical essay (or annotated bibliography) and a thesis proposal. The latter includes at least the following: major question(s) to be addressed; significance of the issue(s); methodologies to be used; theories to be addressed and primary sources to be examined.

Under the direction of a supervisor, students who do not do a thesis, research and write a major paper of approximately 10,000-15,000 words in length.