Some first year seminar courses have college membership as an enrolment control. During the priority period from July 27 to August 5, college sections of Innis, New, St. Michael's, Trinity, University, Victoria, and Woodsworth give students associated with that college priority. On August 7, starting at 6:00 a.m. first year students from any college may enrol pending availability of space.

Exploring Canada's Social Issues: Causes and Effects

Social issues – sometimes called “social problems” – are varied and always changing. Topics to be discussed in this course include poverty, drug abuse, crime and violence, race relations, gender inequality, homophobia, workplace issues, unemployment, family conflict, aging and ageism, homelessness, war and terrorism, and social problems of the future. With an emphasis on reading, writing, and group discussion, the course will examine the ways social issues and their contexts have changed historically and continue to change. Because social issues and their outcomes are so varied, we will take a multi-paradigm approach. In particular, we will view problems (like poverty or addiction) in terms of their measurable outcomes for health and wellbeing; and in terms of the claims made (by mass media, political parties, and social movements) about the importance of each problem. We will see that each approach has preferred ways of applying knowledge and each offers its own solutions.

Instructor: L. Tepperman, Department of Sociology and University College

Section L0032 -- Victoria College Course

Observing Everyday Life

This seminar investigates the academic study of popular culture from a social science perspective, with an emphasis on North America. What is the role of popular culture in maintaining and reproducing the kind of society we live in? What messages are intended by the producers of mass media and what messages are received by their consumers? What does advertising do to us? What is the function of youth subcultures today? Examples may include the news media, television, film, popular musical forms, and aspects of daily life such as dieting and sports. Students are encouraged to critique each other’s presentations and assignments. Helping students to acquire university level research, essay writing, and discussion skills is an important goal of the course.

Instructor: Professor I. Kalmar, Victoria College

SSC 199Y1Y, Section L0101

The Process of Archaeological Discovery

Archaeological discoveries have profoundly changed our view of humanity and history. This course will examine how archaeologists discover the past and what happens when these discoveries are communicated to the public. The class will focus on a series of case studies. Students will first work through the scientific literature to understand the nature of the discovery and the methods used by the archaeologists to identify the importance of the discovery. With this background we will consider what happens to this information when it is spread to the public through the media. We will also examine how conflict can emerge over who should control the archaeological remains. The case studies will come from a wide range of geographic contexts and will include both prehistoric and historic archaeology.

Instructor: Professor M. Chazan, Department of Anthropology

Section L0182

Contemporary Economic Systems

This seminar looks at some very diverse economies in a comparative framework. These include market, non-market and hybrid economic systems, both historical and contemporary. In the first term students will examine “primitive” and underdeveloped economics. These will be contrasted with the classical market economy and the contemporary Canadian economy. In the second term the course will treat the economies of the ancient world and medieval Europe along with some contemporary economies such as Sweden. The “transition” economies of Russia and China will also be examined.

Instructor: Professors A. Rotstein (fall term) and TBA (spring term), Department of Economics

Debating and Understanding Current Environmental Issues

The course examines current environmental issues for which there is no easy answer or consensus position. For instance, to help solve climate change should we generate more electricity from nuclear power- plants, which have no greenhouse gas emissions? Or instead, should we phase out nuclear plants because of possible accidents, costs and radioactive wastes? The seminar examines the scientific and political aspects of such issues and debates the pros and cons of each.

Instructor: Karen Ing and K. Kumar, Centre for Environment

SSC 199Y1Y, Section L0352

Public, Private, and the Liberal State

The distinction between public and private is central to liberalism and, hence, to the liberal state. But two things have happened recently that complicate our capacity to figure out what public and private mean. The first is that there has been a significant blurring of the boundary between public and private – what between the emergence of institutions like charter schools in education, the rise of “public markets” in the provision of “public goods,” and the growing “privatization” of something as quintessentially public as war. The second development is the Babel effect. We continue to construct political programs around the public/private distinction. But what happens if different people mean fundamentally different things by these terms? How do we sift through the various meanings of public and private to give some coherence to our political language? Or are we doomed to talk past each other? The seminar will focus on the U.S., Canada and, where possible, Europe. We will address a broad range of perspectives, among political theory, constitutional law, and public policy. A package of customized readings will be produced for students in the seminar.

Instructor: Professor R. Vipond, Department of Political Science

SSC 199Y1Y, Section L0353 (NEW)

Imperialism and Nationalism

This course examines the concepts of imperialism (understood as the domination of one nation or people over another) and nationalism. Questions examined include: how are divided societies (e.g. by race, class, religion, or language) sufficiently unified to dominate others or resist domination? How is imperialism distinct from nation-building, continental expansion, or cosmopolitanism? What is the role of nation-states in a globalized (imperialistic) economy?

Professor E. Andrews, Department of Political Science

SSC 199Y1Y, Section L0391

How We Use Time in Everyday Life

This seminar examines how people use time in their everyday lives: the content, the patterns, and the varieties in their choices. This analysis focuses on the circumstances under which variations in the use of time occur and the role of context – such as social environment or physical location – in governing people’s choices. The data collected can serve as a model for understanding and explaining a number of issues in the social sciences. The seminar will include both an examination of seminal writings about people’s use of time and hands-on practice in the strategies and techniques of analyzing data. Through this seminar students will acquire – from a sociological perspective – an appreciation not only of the concept of time but also of how they use time in their daily lives and how time-use helps them better understand many situations. A number of skills will be addressed in this seminar. These include reading, writing, expressing points of view, posing research questions, how to use numeric data to address these questions, use of data files and computers to organize, analyze, and show results clearly, and how the social sciences, alone and in combination, can address our everyday lives in ways that are not intuitively apparent.

Instructor: Professor W. Michelson, Department of Sociology

SSC 199Y1Y, Section L5392

Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad: Sociology of the Monotheistic Religions

Max Weber has been described as the greatest social scientist of the 20th century. That he is fully deserving of that accolade for both his substantive and methodological contributions there can be no doubt. In one of his most famous works, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he was the first writer to document the impact of ascetic Protestantism on the early development of capitalism. He was also among the first to analyze the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western religions and to assess their consequences for the social, cultural and economic development of Asian and European societies. According to Weber, the world-historical importance of Judaism lies primarily in the fact that it was the mother of Christianity and Islam. His essays on world religions were published under the following titles: The Sociology of Religion, The Religion of China, The Religion of India, and Ancient Judaism. In this seminar, we shall study the social origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Seminar participants will learn to distinguish between legendary narrative and historically plausible material as we treat Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad as historical personalities. Students will gain a first-hand acquaintance with primary sources by reading selections from Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament); the Gospels, Paul's Letters and The Book of Acts of The New Testament; the Koran; and the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Hisham. In addition, students will read selections from the writings of Muslim and Western scholars, including the writings of Irving M. Zeitlin on the subject.

Instructor: Professor I. M. Zeitlin, Department of Sociology

SSC 199Y1Y, Section L0393

Ideas and Evidence in the Social Sciences

Daily social life often seems to be a maze of unconnected events. Is there any order to these events? This seminar will focus on how ideas and evidence are used to examine the underlying social processes and patterns that shape and influence the social world. Seminar members will participate in “research teams” that will design and undertake a research project in such fields as ethnicity, gender, social class, network involvement, and organizational affiliations.

Instructor: Professors D. Magill and W. Michelson, Department of Sociology

SSC 199Y1Y, Section L0394

Trinity College Course

Great Ideas in Social and Political Thought

There is a tradition in social and political thought that has come to be called “classical” because the ideas constituting that tradition have stood the test of time. Among those ideas, some have acquired a timeless status and may be regarded as valid, trans-historical insights. Other ideas in the tradition have not necessarily proved themselves to be valid, but they too have stood the test of time, proving fruitful as perspectives and conceptual tools with which to approach significant questions, problems, and issues. With this in mind, we will read and discuss selected excerpts from the works of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Neitzsche.

Instructor: Professor I. M. Zeitlin, Department of Sociology and Trinity College