Creative Expression and Society Courses

CRE209H1S
How Stories Work
Professor Adam Sol
M 2-4

Stories give shape and substance to the things we believe in. They can also justify and uphold unfair hierarchies and power structures. How do creative thinkers confront this dual legacy, building on but also critiquing our “collective received wisdom”?

This course will examine a set of texts from the arts, sciences, religion, and other story-telling traditions, ancient and modern. We’ll investigate some narrative tropes that travel across disciplines and cultures, and we’ll think specifically about how some contemporary artists and thinkers open up lines of resistance and complication to the Master Narratives we have inherited. 

Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE235H1F
Innovation in Society
Professor Sunil Johal
R 6-8

This course investigates the history and contemporaneity of innovation as a response to social, scientific, and environmental challenges. Students will acquire key frameworks for understanding the workings of innovation, the place of creativity, and the social impacts of new and disrupted organizations. Through historicizing key moments of innovation (from the Gutenberg printing press to today’s healthcare discoveries) and considering related issues (including intellectual property and sustainability) students will develop approaches to understanding the past, present, and future of creative disruption.

Exclusion: MUN101H1, MUN102H1
Distribution Requirement Status: Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

CRE247H1F
Creativity in the Sciences
Professor Hakob Barseghyan
W 10-12

This seminar course explores various aspects of creativity in the sciences. We will discuss how to define the term “creativity” and will use the definition to compare creativity in the sciences to creativity in the arts, business and engineering. Using as examples major developments in the history of science, we will consider factors that enable creativity in scientists. We will also contrast the kinds of creative work scientists do in different areas of science, and at various stages of a project. To better understand creativity, we will use results from psychological and neuroscience studies of creativity. We will discuss various ways in which the creativity of a scientist can be evaluated, and will use this as a starting point to evaluate the importance of scientific discoveries more generally, in both fundamental and applied science areas. We will consider the timing of scientific discoveries, looking at “ideas whose time has come,” to discuss whether creative discoveries happen at random, or if they occur at predictable times. Students will perform research on the major developments in an area of science, analyzing the types of creative work that were done, along with factors that enabled the developments. They will be encouraged to “represent” that area of science in class discussions during the term.

Prerequisite: Any 1.0 credit combination of courses carrying a breadth requirement (BR) category of 4 or 5.
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

CRE271H1F
Reading the Wild
Professor Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
F 2-4

In the context of our deepening environmental crisis, VIC271 Reading the Wild will focus on oral and written literature. We will practice being in nature, writing about, and observing nature. How are we in relationship with the broader relationship that is nature? Should we consider ourselves part of, or apart from, nature? Is nature anti-social? Is nature there to provide us with solace or resources? Can we read and write our way toward a deeper and more ardent consideration of ourselves in nature? Expect to encounter work from, among others, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Diana Beresford Kroeger, Michael Pollan, Sheldon Mandrake and Alexis Nikole.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE271H1S
Reading the Wild
Professor Andrea Most
T 10-12

What stories does Western culture tell about “the wild”?  What stories does “the wild” tell about itself? How might magical, spirit-filled, and /or sacred stories open pathways for humans to engage in conversation with the wild earth? This experiential course focuses on the kinds of stories traditionally told aloud in the winter darkness around a fire: ancient myths, dramatic romances, folk and fairy tales, ghost stories, tales that often contain unmistakable warnings about the dangers of suppressing the spirits of the earth. Each week we will tell a well-known story, think together about the place of the wild in the tale, and then re-tell it from a new perspective.  In the first half of the course, special guests will help us to engage with wild storytelling through various senses and genres – oral, culinary, dramatic, visual.  In the second half, students will work in groups to inhabit the wild themselves, creating embodied, multi-sensory versions of these well-known tales.

Please note: This course may require a modest ancillary fee to cover the cost of possible experiential learning opportunities.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE275H1F
Creative Writing: Short Fiction
Professor Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
R 10-12

This course is for aspiring fiction writers who wish to deepen their craft. Each seminar will feature a lecture on technical issues such as plot and characterization, as well as an analysis of a published short story. Students will write and revise two of their own stories, with editorial input from the instructor and from your class writing peers. You will be expected to engage in art practises not normally associated with writing craft. Be prepared to get creative and to be challenged.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE275H1S
Creative Writing: Short Fiction
Professor Maria Cichosz
T 10-12

This course is for aspiring fiction writers who wish to deepen their craft. Each seminar will feature a lecture on technical issues such as plot and characterization, as well as an analysis of a short story by a classic writer. Students will write their own stories, with editorial input from the instructor.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE276H1S
Writing for the Stage and Screen
Professor Lisa Foad
W 6-8

CRE279H1F
Creative Non-Fiction
Professor Maria Cichosz
M 6-8

This course examines the forms, style, aims, and ethics of non-fictional forms such as documentary writing, journalism, and life-writing. It combines the study of examples from contemporary media with exercises in writing non-fictional prose. Students will engage in weekly reading and writing exercises and produce their own non-fiction pieces through continuous drafting and revision in a workshop-style seminar with regular editorial feedback from the instructor and their peers.

Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE279H1S
Creative Non-Fiction
Professor Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
F 12-2

This course examines the forms, style, aims, and ethics of non-fictional forms such as documentary writing, journalism, and life-writing. It combines the study of examples from contemporary media with exercises in writing non-fictional prose. This course requires weekly reading and writing, as well as sometimes very intensive class discussions. Weekly writing assignments, discussion, and one longform creative nonfiction form the spine of the grading in this course.

Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE280H1F
Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor Al Moritz
R 6-8

This course will allow poets to build poetry writing skills through reading, discussion and, primarily, practice. On each class day, we’ll workshop our own poetry: participating poets will discuss each other's work. From time to time we’ll also discuss model poems, and issues in poetry writing, from the assigned books and from handouts. 

Exclusion: VIC350Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course 
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE280H1S
Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor George Elliot Clarke
T 1-3

This course will allow poets to build poetry writing skills through reading, discussion and, primarily, practice. On each class day, we’ll workshop our own poetry: participating poets will discuss each other's work. From time to time we’ll also discuss model poems, and issues in poetry writing, from the assigned books and from handouts. 

Exclusion: VIC350Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course 
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE281H1S
Popular Music, Technology, and the Human
Professor Gregory Lee Newsome
W 1-3

This course explores ways in which popular music, sound and sound technologies have influenced our understanding of the recent human condition. Drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives, we consider the musical uses of technology as both a material culture and a set of distinctly innovative practices that can create powerful transformations of consciousness, meaning and value.

CRE282H1F
Emerging Genres in Creative Writing
Professor Maria Cichosz
M 12-2

A workshop-based seminar on creative writing in an emerging field. Specific genres may include flash fiction, autofiction, interactive fiction, slam poetry, the graphic novel, or the podcast. Focus in any given year to be determined by the instructor and advertised on the Victoria College academic programs website.

In Fall 2022, we will explore speculative fiction, a genre that has gained widespread literary and mainstream popularity in recent years. Eschewing the obsessive technical focus of “hard” science fiction and the strict realism of literary fiction, speculative fiction is an in-between genre that has proven to be a uniquely effective vehicle for responding to the complex realities of our time: climate change, social justice, and the cultural effects of technology. Students will read and watch some of the most powerful works of contemporary speculative fiction from authors including Margaret Atwood, Charlie Brooker, and Bong Joon-ho while conceptualizing and writing their own speculative short stories in a workshop-style seminar with regular editorial feedback from the instructor and their peers.

Prerequisite: Completion of 4.0 credits
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE335H1S
Creativity and Collaboration in Social Enterprise
Professor Sunil Johal
R 6-8

In this course we discuss how positive change can be produced in society by creative enterprises, and we develop critical perspectives through which the actions of enterprises can be analyzed. We employ the term “enterprise” in the widest possible sense to include all organizations that have an effect on society. This includes traditional companies, non-profit and charitable organization, and many others: neighbourhood associations, social activists, foreign aid organizations, etc. We look at large, established organizations, such as multi-national companies, and also at small start-ups that students may consider launching themselves.

We start our discussions by looking at various ethical theories and we then apply these theories to the world of enterprises, by considering questions such as: What makes the actions of a company acceptable? How high should we set the bar for labeling an enterprise as ethical? When we evaluate company actions, how can we compare economic benefits, social disruption, questions of exclusion and diversity, sustainability in several senses, and the processes of change themselves? How do we balance short vs long term effects? What should be the fundamental duties of every company? Where are the limits of social responsibility in entrepreneurial creativity? 

Students will work in teams to apply these discussions by proposing an enterprise that aims to produce a positive change. They will optimize this proposal through their own research, along with feedback from the rest of the class.

Distribution Requirement Status: Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

CRE371H1F
Documenting Reality
Professor Jordan Bear
T 1-3

CRE372H1F
Reviewing, Reception, and Reading Communities
Professor Heather Murray
T 10-12

While readers and audiences often are considered to be cultural "consumers," this course will consider reception as an active, creative, and often collaborative activity, by examining formal and informal practices of reviewing and response that may include fan/fanfic cultures, book clubs, community and nation-wide reading programs, and award competitions. Such contexts of reception will be considered along with their social, economic, and ethical implications.

Prerequisite: Completion of 6.0 FCEs
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE374H1S
Cultural Encounters
Professor Adam Sol
M 2-4

This course focuses on specific scenes of cultural cross-pollination and on how these encounters are reflected in the arts. Areas of investigation might include the Harlem Renaissance, French Surrealism in the Caribbean, Bollywood / Hollywood, Indigenous Hip-Hop, or contemporary Toronto as a convergence of creative energy. How have artists from marginalized communities taken up and adapted modes of expression for their own creative purposes? How can new forms of artistic representation contest and undermine systemic social and political inequalities? This course focuses on liberating aesthetic innovations that respond to historically embedded cultural encounters.

For the Fall 2022 iteration of the course, we are going to focus on the dynamic, fraught, and productive encounters between Jews and Blacks in the early decades of the 20th century (mostly in New York City). These two groups were part of a massive influx of migrants who would carry their trauma and their creativity to New York. In turn, artists and entrepreneurs from both communities would combine forces to develop art forms as foundational to American culture as film, vaudeville, and jazz.

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 credits
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE470H1F
Soundscapes
Prof. Sherry Lee
T 10-12

This course surveys the growth of the field of Acoustic Ecology and the aesthetic, political, and ethical questions it engages. Students learn about creative and musical practices associated with this new attention to sound, and they gain experience with the practice of field recording and sonic-environmental sampling. The course culminates with a final Soundscape composition or creative mapping project. No previous experience in sound recording or composition required.

MCS223H1S
Signs, Meanings, and Culture
Professor Ivan Kalmar
T 2-4

This course will introduce the principles of semiotic thought, applying them to the study of language, social organization, myth, and material culture. Examples may be drawn from everyday life as well as from classical and popular art and music, and from screen culture.

Exclusion: VIC223Y1
Distribution Requirements: Social Science
Breadth Requirements: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

VIC259H1S
Special Topics Seminar
Professor Sylvia Nickerson
F 10-12

Math and Creativity

This course explores the history of mathematics while building skill in narrative story-telling and image creation to reimagine the origin of mathematical ideas in accessible and compelling ways. We explode history and ideas, unpacking concepts in history and mathematics to weave compelling narratives using fresh perspectives and representations. Course topics include the concept of infinity, quantification of uncertainty, space and geometry, pattern and self-similarity, lives of mathematicians and historical controversies in mathematics. Students are encouraged to build unique narratives that incorporate or expand upon course topics. Examples of graphic storytelling will be presented for identification of effective narrative techniques and visual styles. Aspects of mathematics and its history are analyzed to enable the retelling, reframing, and re-visioning of the past from the perspective of the present. Students acquire skill in the use of media creation tools while exploring how narratives, images, and mathematical ideas describe and structure our world. 

CRE479H1S
Fiction: A Master Class
Professor Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
R 2-4

Application Link: https://courseapps.vicu.utoronto.ca/secure/StudentHome
Application Deadline: August 1, 2022
Prerequisite: Application required.
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE480H1S
Poetry: A Master Class
Professor Al Moritz
T 6-8

A workshop course in writing poetry. Designed for those with a serious ambition to be writers as evinced in work they are already doing. Does not offer instruction for beginning writers. Pre-supposes perfect and sophisticated written language skills.

Admission is by application.

Beyond this date, further applications will be considered based on availability until the start of the course.

Application Link: https://courseapps.vicu.utoronto.ca/secure/StudentHome
Application Deadline: August 1, 2022
Prerequisite: Application required.
Distribution Requirement Status: This is a Humanities course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

VIC459H1S
Special Topics Seminar: Creative Citizenship, The Here and How
Professor Liz Howard
M 10-12

This course invites you to engage in a multi-generic reading and writing practice guided by texts of considerable social awareness. In the context of literary citizenship, you will explore elements of creative writing broadly understood as story construction, character development, voice and perspective, figurative language, imagery, theme, structure, drafting, and revision. You will examine the social contexts involved in the creation of compelling and original work for an audience. Course work will also consist of informal learning activities, the drafting and revising of short pieces toward a 15-page chapbook, constructive peer feedback and discussion, and an experiential component involving any of the following: community organizations, literary magazines, readings series, or literary festivals.

Applications Link: https://courseapps.vicu.utoronto.ca/secure/StudentHome
Application Deadline: August 15, 2022
Prerequisite: Completion of 15.0 credits
Distribution Requirements: Humanities, Science, Social Science
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)