Interdisciplinary Studies—Honours/Major/Minor
Interdisciplinary Major
An Interdisciplinary Major is a course of study which consists of 36 credit hours of course work beyond the 1000 level cutting across disciplinary lines but related by a clear theme or unifying principle. Students who plan to graduate with an interdisciplinary Major degree must meet with the Coordinator of Interdisciplinary Majors and Honours to identify learning goals and then compose a preliminary course of study with which to approach a potential Programme Director. With their Programme Directors, students will refine their course of study—their programme—in a written proposal. The proposal must indicate:
- the professor who has agreed to serve as Programme Director,
- two additional professors who have agreed to serve with the Programme Director on an advisory committee, and
- the proposed programme, identified by course numbers and titles.
Final approval of each proposed programme will rest with the Interdisciplinary Studies Committee. Normally, approval of the programme will be sought by the end of the student's second year. Exceptionally, proposals may be entertained as late as the end of the third year. The Coordinator with the Programme Director will monitor the student’s interdisciplinary course of study at regular intervals during the third and fourth years. Accordingly, the Coordinator will present a written report on the student's progress to the Dean of Faculty and the Registrar at the end of the student's third year and at the end of the first and second semesters of the last year.
The decision to award an Interdisciplinary Major degree will be made by recommendation of the student's advisory committee.
Interdisciplinary Honours
Interdisciplinary Honours is a programme consisting of a 57 credit hour course of study, as follows:
- 48 credit hours of course work beyond the 1000 level cutting across disciplinary lines but related by a clear theme or unifying principle, and of which 6 credit hours must be in theory or methods;
- completion of a 3 credit hour Honours thesis seminar or workshop; and
- successful completion of a 6 credit hour interdisciplinary Honours thesis.
Students who plan to graduate with an Interdisciplinary Honours degree must meet with the Coordinator of Interdisciplinary Majors and Honours to identify learning goals and then compose a preliminary course of study with which to approach a potential Programme Director. With their Programme Directors, students will refine their course of study—their programme—in a written proposal.
The proposal must indicate:
- the professor who has agreed to serve as Programme Director,
- two additional professors who have agreed to serve with the Programme Director on an advisory and thesis evaluation committee, and
- the proposed programme identified by course numbers and titles.
Final approval of each proposed programme will rest with the Interdisciplinary Studies Committee. Normally, approval of the programme will be sought by the end of the student’s third year. Exceptionally, proposals may be entertained as late as the beginning of the Spring Registration prior to the beginning of the student's final year of study. Applications will not be considered after the beginning of the student's final year of study. The thesis will be consistent with the approved aims of the student's programme, and it will be supervised by the Programme Director. The thesis will require the approval of the student’s thesis evaluation committee made up of the Programme Director and at least two additional professors chosen by the student and the Programme Director. A minimum grade of B must be attained for the thesis to count as an Honours credit.
The Coordinator with the Programme Director and the student's advisory and thesis evaluation committee will monitor a student’s interdisciplinary Honours course of study at regular intervals during the third and fourth years. Accordingly, the Coordinator will report in writing present a written report on the student’s progress to the Interdisciplinary Studies Committee at the end of the student’s third year and at the end of the first and second semesters of the last year.
The decision to award an Interdisciplinary Honours degree will be made by recommendation of the student's advisory and thesis evaluation committee.
Interdisciplinary Minor
An interdisciplinary Minor is a pre-approved course of study which consists of 18 credit hours of course work beyond the 1000 level cutting across disciplinary lines but related by a clear theme or unifying principle. Approved combinations of courses follow:
Cultural Studies
The study of culture is something that takes place in every discipline in the liberal arts, and the minor in Cultural Studies is the perfect complement to your disciplinary studies. What distinguishes Cultural Studies from the disciplines out of which it arises is its attempt to thematize, in a certain way, all of those experiences, impetuses, beliefs, and identities that shape who we are and how we think. Using theoretical and critical techniques that are decidedly cross-disciplinary, Cultural Studies offers insight into a world populated with everything from high literature to tourism, video games to auteur cinema, fashion magazines to ultimate fighting.
In Cultural Studies, you will be confronted with the world as they know it, only to discover that it is not as familiar as they believe. But it will also historicize your encounter with the world, helping to address questions that routinely arise before us. Have you ever wondered how shopping replaced going for a walk as a means of relaxation? How might advertising shape our ability to make day-to-day decisions about how we choose to live? Are the things we believe in natural, or are our beliefs shaped for us by others? Students can expect to encounter competing answers to these questions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from professors across the campus.
The Interdisciplinary Minor in Cultural Studies requires students to take a relatively broad distribution of 18ch in courses beyond the first year level. The first year course, CUST 1006. Introduction to Popular Culture, is required, and it is recommended, though not necessary, that this be the first course you take for the CS Minor. CUST 2213. Cultural Theory, is also required to satisfy requirements for the Minor. Course descriptions for these two courses, and for CUST 2113. The Sound and Technology of Culture, follow the course listings below.
This leaves 15ch in electives available to you to satisfy the CS Minor requirements. Students must take a minimum of 3ch, and a maximum of 6ch, from each of at least three of the following course categories below. Course descriptions can be found by searching the calendar under the relevant department.
While CUST 1006 will be taught on a yearly basis, students should be advised that not every course will be taught every year. However, they will be taught on a regular basis. If you have questions about Cultural Studies courses, or the Interdisciplinary Minor in Cultural Studies in general, you can direct them to Dr. Dennis Desroches (desroches@stu.ca) or Dr. Dawn Morgan (dmorgan@stu.ca).
Course Categories
1. Visual Cultures
ENGL 2723. Fiction, Drama, and Film 1
ENGL 2733. Fiction, Drama, and Film 2
ENGL 3213. Art Cinema
ENGL 3483. Irish Film
FNAR 2613. Music in TV and Film
HIST 3783. Film and History
HIST 3953. Portrayals of Jihad and Crusade. History, Memory, Film
2. Technocultures
CUST 2113. The Sound and Technology of Culture
STS 1003. Science, Technology, and Society I
STS 2903. The Politics of Science
STS 3203. Science, Technology, and Nature
STS 2503. The History of Disease
3. Leisure Industries
ANTH 3673. World Music
ANTH 3683. The Anthropology of Sport
HIST 3763. Modern Sport in World History
HIST 3863. Modern Tourism in World History
HIST 3963. Modernity and the Rise of Consumerism in Canada
4. Genders and Sexualities
ANTH 2533. Anthropology of Gender
ENGL 3813. Theories of Gender and Sexuality
STS 3503. Feminist Critiques of Science
5. Texts and Worlds
HIST 2103. Material World. History Through Things
ENGL 3623. Literature of Politics
ENGL 2513. Science Fiction 1
ENGL 2563. Science Fiction 2
ENGL 3643. Fantasy
FREN 3603. Civilisation francophone. Europe française
FREN 3613. Civilisation francophone. Amérique française
FREN 3623 Civilisation francophone 3. Maghreb
FREN 3633. Civilisation francophone. Afrique subsaharienne et Caraïbes
SPAN 4043. 20th Century Spanish Culture and Texts
SPAN 4843. 20th Century Spanish American Culture and Texts
SPAN 4123. Introduction to U.S. Latino Literature and Culture
CUST 1006. Introduction to Popular Culture
This course aims to provide to students the critical and conceptual tools to begin to question culture, to look upon the world and to make sense of its enormous power to shape how we think, and who we are. We will, then, conceive of the world’s “texts” in the broadest sense possible, compelling us to direct our critical attentions to everything from video games and fashion magazines, to popular film, advertising, television, and the internet. And along the way, we will encounter thinkers whose work has been vital in helping us to understand how culture works, with a special focus as the course unfolds on the thought of the Frankfurt and Birmingham schools. By approaching culture both practically (i.e., through an analysis of everyday material culture, from coffee to cars) and theoretically (i.e., through the encounter with important thinkers who have shaped and defined how it is we understand the social, economic, and political realities of culture itself ), this course will give students an experience of their cultural milieu that trips up everyday understandings of what we believe culture to be, and will challenge them to the see a very different everyday world.
CUST 2213. Cultural Theory
This course introduces students to a number of the key theoretical texts that have shaped the emergence of Cultural Theory. Cultural Theory focuses on questions concerned to interrogate what culture means, how culture works, and how culture changes as malleable relations of power organize, and reorganize, themselves. It asks students to step back and think critically about the lessons learned, the gains made, and indeed, the losses accrued, when the frameworks we create for understanding the world reify as organizing principles, beliefs, behaviours, and identities.
CUST 2113. The Sound and Technology of Culture
A study of the uses and development of sound technologies, from the phonograph, invented in 1877, to early twentieth-century radio and sound-on-film, magnetic audio tape and surveillance, synthesizers, cell phones, and online audio communications of today. Artists and writers were among the first to work out the implications of the technological isolation of sound and to explore sound as a material for new forms of composition. The course traces the development of sound works chronologically through the twentieth-century as mutually-shaping of users and conductors of technology and culture.
Environmental Studies
18 credit hours, drawing on at least two different disciplines, from the following list:
ECON 3323 Environmental Economics
ENGL 2773 The Journalism of John McPhee - Reporting the Environment
PSYC 2443 Environmental Psychology
RELG 3523 Environmental Ethics
STS 2103 Science, Technology, and the Society II
STS 2803 Controversies in the Earth and Environmental Sciences
Ethics
18 credit hours including courses from at least two disciplines, drawn from the following list:
HMRT 3053 Human Rights and the Church
HMRT 3033 Philosophy of Human Rights
PHIL 2213 Introduction to Moral Philosophy
PHIL 2233 Contemporary Moral Philosophy
PHIIL 2243 Current Issue in Ethics
RELG 2513 Foundation of Christian Ethics
RELG 3573 Religion and Social Ethics
RELG 3593 Moral Development
RELG 3513 Bioethics
RELG 3583 Media Ethics
Film Studies
18 credit hours, drawing on at least two different disciplines, from the following list:
ENGL 2723 Fiction, Drama, and Film: A Study of Narrative I
ENGL 2733 Fiction, Drama, and Film: A Study of Narrative II
ENGL 3213 Art Cinema
ENGL 3223 Auteur Cinema
ENGL 3483 Irish Film I
IRSH 3693/ENGL 3473 Irish Film II
GERO 3093 Images of Aging in Film
HIST 3783 Film and History
Irish Studies
18 credit hours including courses from at least two disciplines, drawn from the following list:
ENGL 2463 Irish Literature
ENGL 3426 Modern Irish Literature
ENGL 3583 Irish Film
HIST 2153 Early Irish History
HIST 2163 Modern Irish History
IRSH 2003 Art of the Golden Age: the Book of Kells
IRSH 2006 Introduction to Irish Studies
IRSH 2123 Introduction to the Irish Language
Latin American Studies
18 credit hours, drawing on at least two different disciplines, from the following list:
ECON 3333 Perspectives on Underdevelopment
HIST 2613 Latin America: Colonial Period
HIST 2623 Latin America: Modern Period
HIST 3613 Gender and Power in Latin American History
HIST 4606 20th Century Latin America
SPAN 4213 Mexico Online! I
SPAN 4223 Mexico Online! II
SPAN 4813 Spanish-American Literature: Colonial to Modern
SPAN 4823 Spanish-American Literature: Modernism to Present
Medieval Studies
18 credit hours, drawing on at least two different disciplines from the following list:
ENGL 2643 Medieval Drama
ENGL 3306 Middle English Literature
ENGL 3396 Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature
HIST 3213 The Early Church
HIST 3223 The Medieval Church
HIST 3543 Religion and the Church in Early Russia
HIST 4206 Medieval Institutions
PHIL 2133 Medieval Christian Philosophy I
PHIL 2143 Medieval Christian Philosophy II
PHIL 3523 St. Thomas: Knowledge, Being and Human Being
PHIL 3533 St. Thomas: Law, Morality and Society
Peace Studies
Minor in Peace Studies: PEAC 2006 and 12 credit-hours electives, including at least 6
credits from Social Science electives and 3 from Humanities electives. For Major or
Honours in Peace Studies, see general rules for Interdisciplinary Studies.
PEAC-2006. Introduction to Peace Studies (Required Course)
This core course examines leading theorists on peace, drawing from humanities and social science disciplines. It explores conditions needed for peace to occur and be sustained, and strategies for building peace movements and nonviolent social change in global and local contexts. It examines multiple experiences of conflict and systemic oppression, and efforts to changes these realities, including issues of environmental degradation, poverty, family violence, the sex trades, sweatshops, and militarism.
PEAC-3013. Peace Activism: Theory and Practice
This course is designed to help students better understand the relationships between theories and concepts of peace building and practical involvement with community outreach, social service agencies and non-profit organizations working towards alternatives to violence and reconciliation, local and global. Students will study an organization of their choice that is involved with peace activism. They will work collaboratively with local activists to design and host an outreach peace-activist project for the STU Peace Programme. Prerequisite PEAC-2006 or permission of instructor.
PEAC-4013. Senior Seminar in Peace Studies
This senior seminar is a capstone course for both the minor and the Interdisciplinary Studies major in Peace Studies. This class draws together theory and practice. It explores such topics as the historical development of selected peace activist organizations, organizational discourses and strategies used to promote social change, and the political, economic, and structural barriers to greater effectiveness in promotion of policies and activism towards a peace culture.
Social Science Electives
PEAC 2013/POLS 2303 Comparative Politics of the Developing World
PEAC 2023/NATI 2603 Roles of Native Women
PEAC 3013/NATI 3603 Native People and the Colonial Experience
PEAC 3023/ENVS 3023 Environmental Praxis
PEAC 3033/SOCI 3513 Sociology of Education
PEAC 3043/SOCI 3153 Political Sociology of War
PEAC 3053/HMRT 3063 Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
PEAC 3063/HMRT 3123 International Human Rights
PEAC 4013/CRIM 4123 Peacemaking Criminology and Restorative Justice
Humanities Electives
PEAC 2033/RELG 2173 Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding
PEAC 3103/RELG3643 Christianity and Contemporary Society
PEAC 2043/ENGL 2583 Women Writers I
PEAC 2053/ENGL 2593 Women Writers II
PEAC 3073/ ENGL 3623 The Literature of Politics
PEAC 3083/ENGL 3433 World Literature in English: West Indies and Africa
PEAC 3093/ENGL 3443 World Literature in English: India
PEAC 3113/IRSH/ENGL 3483 Irish Film I
PEAC 3123/IRSH/ENGL 3473 Irish Film II
PEAC 3133/IRSH/ENGL 3426 Modern Irish Literature
US Studies
18 credit hours, drawing on at least two different disciplines, from the following list:
ENGL 3416 American Literature
HIST 3743 The United States Since 1945
POLS 3303 US Government and Politics
POLS 3313 US Foreign Policy