Birds eye view of Oxford

England: Oxford (August)

Each course is worth one full-year credit and is contingent on adequate enrolment. Students are not permitted to register for more than one course.

Classes will take place Monday to Thursday from approximately 9:00 am to 12:00 pm.  Field trips will occur during scheduled class time AND outside of class time. A detailed schedule will be available at the time of admission.  

Courses

CIN378Y0 Aspects of a National Cinema: Black Britain

CIN378Y0 Aspects of a National Cinema: Black Britain 

This course explores Black British cinemas while examining categories of race and nation specific to post-Imperial Britain and its Black diasporic subjects’ world-making. Institutional practices and networks that have shaped the development and aesthetics of Black British film culture from the 1960s to the present, will be highlighted, when, in the words of Stuart Hall, filmmakers sought to “find a new language” to challenge post-war norms and culture that led to seismic shifts towards imagining postcolonial Britain. Studying Black British media on UK soil offers the opportunity to be immersed in the cultural ethos of Black Britain. We will experience locales and re-visit histories that, in part, inform deeper understanding of the unique film and moving-image practices under study. Topics will include London as a post-imperial migrant city, “political Blackness,” Black Power and black music’s transnational remit, Black film collectives and aesthetics, among other topics. Media objects will range from documentary, Art cinema, television, to moving image installations.

Prerequisites: CIN 105Y OR humanities-based academic preparation or relevant social science: English, History, Visual Studies, Art History, Anthropology, Women and Gender Studies, Sexual Diversity Studies, Political Science or Sociology. Students currently enrolled in CIN 105Y, or an Introductory Film course are eligible to apply. Due to the course’s compressed nature, and the requirement to write assignments within a short time frame, students in applied programs seeking to fulfill a humanities requirement will most likely find the course challenging.
Breadth Requirement = Creative and Cultural Representations (category 1)
Draft Course Outline

Field Trips

In our field trips we will literally trace Black presence in Britain, beginning with an overnight trip to Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum. This trip will also include exploring the Liverpool Art Biennale and a Beatles walking tour. Our two trips to London will consist of a Black History bus tour, visits to the Museum of London Docklands and various venues that feature works by Black artists or register the existence of Black Britons, ranging from Tate Britain, Sir John Soane’s Museum to Autograph, among additional exhibitions that consider contemporary issues of Blackness and the image in Britain. We will begin the course by exploring African artefacts culled during Britain’s Imperial era housed at Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. The cost of these trips is CAD $710, paid to U of T for all fees, hotel accommodation in Liverpool and return bus transportation.

Instructor

Questions of “difference” have inspired Professor Kass Banning’s teaching and research for decades at the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto.  She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on race, global screen cultures, black diasporic visual culture, film theory, oceanic imaginaries, moving images in the gallery, and interventions in British, Canadian, Irish, and African cinemas. She has published extensively on minor cinemas of Britain and Canada, with a current focus on experimental documentary media and artists’ moving image installation. Publishing on and organizing symposia on renowned Black British filmmakers also indicate Professor Banning’s long-standing engagement with Black British visual culture. Most recently, she co-authored “A Grand Panorama: Isaac Julien, Frederick Douglass and Lessons of the Hour,” in Isaac Julien. Lessons of the Hour. Frederick Douglass, eds. Isaac Julien and Cora Gilroy-Ware, with Vladimir Seput. London: Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester & Delmonico Books, 2022, winner of the 2023 Krazna-Kraus Book Award.

CRI389Y0 Topics in Criminology: Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities in Criminal Law: Historical Origins and New Directions in England and Canada

CRI389Y0 Topics in Criminology: Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities in Criminal Law: Historical Origins and New Directions in England and Canada

This course traces shifts in the rights, freedoms and responsibilities of legal subjects, as they have been defined in criminal law in England and Canada, beginning with the gradual emergence of the common law in England during the Medieval period, right up to the present day, including the history of approaches to political violence in England. Close attention will be paid to recent developments that challenge traditional doctrines. The English legal system has recently adopted a number of innovations and proposals that have not been tried in Canada, including new doctrines regarding police administration, antisocial behaviour, community policing, speech supporting terrorism and jury trials. In all these cases, there is significant modification of established legal doctrines regarding the relationship between the state and its subjects. The new Conservative government has modified some of these policies, partly in light of fiscal challenges. Canada has been at the forefront of other developments that modify that relationship, most notably regarding dangerousness assessment with a view to preventive detention, and the punishment of women offenders, where feminist theories have been influential. Students will have the opportunity to evaluate these developments in light of the history of legal rights, freedoms and responsibilities in the common law tradition. They will present their views of the nature, causes and validity of the developments in the written assignments. The course will be of special interest to students of Criminology, Political Science and History.

Prerequisites: none
Breadth Requirement=Society and Its Institutions (category 3)
Exclusion: WDW389Y
CRI389Y0 Course Outline - 2024

Field Trips

Excursions will include two trips to London. For one, students will visit the Foundling Museum, the British Museum, and the Tower of London, and will be taken on a guided “Jack the Ripper” walk. For the other London trip, students will visit sites of political violence in the city. Students will also meet with Oxford community policing services. The cost of these trips is CAD $560, paid to U of T for all fees and return bus transportation.

Instructor

William Watson received his B.Sc. from the University of Leicester, and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. His academic interests include the practice of forensic psychiatry, psychopathy, the provision of services to sub-populations of mentally disordered offenders who are identified, or self-identified, as having special needs, and the place of critical social science in public policy making. His publications include The Mentally Disordered Offender in an Era of Community Care: New Directions in Provision (co-edited with A. Grounds), and articles in Sociology, The International Journal of Comparative Sociology, History of Psychiatry, The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, and Social and Legal Studies. Dr. Watson has served as a consultant for the Ontario Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of the Solicitor General, Canada.

ENG296Y0 Topics in English Literature: Margaret Cavendish: Renaissance Book History and Editing Women Writers

ENG296Y0 Topics in English Literature: Margaret Cavendish: Renaissance Book History and Editing Women Writers

This course is about the fascinating, extravagant, and prolific Renaissance woman Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623–1673); we will read gender-bending short stories, poetry about atomic philosophy and allegories of the mind, first-hand accounts what it was like to live in seventeenth-century England, audaciously experimental drama, and one of the first science fiction novels ever written (in 1666).

Field Trips: In our field trips will literally follow in Cavendish’s footsteps over the different phases of her life, starting with her time serving in Queen Henrietta Maria’s court in Oxford, moving to Antwerp (Belgium) where she lived in exile for much of her adult life, and moving back to London and then her own Bolsover Castle in England. Visiting museums, rare book libraries, and historical buildings, we will learn about early modern book history, the English Civil War, the history of science, and early modern country houses. The course will also offer students a thorough training in early modern book history and editorial theory and practice: students will visit rare book libraries, learn about the early modern printing press and the history of book binding, and learn editorial theory and practice, producing their own edited version of a Cavendish text for their final project for the course. The cost of these trips is CAD $990, paid to U of T for all fees, hotel accommodation in Antwerp and return bus and train transportation.

Prerequisites: 1.0 ENG credit or any 4.0 credits
Breadth Requirement = Creative and Cultural Representations (category 1)
ENG296Y0 Draft Syllabus - updated March 2024

Instructor

Liza Blake is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto, and one of the world’s leading scholars on Margaret Cavendish. She is General Editor of the Complete Works of Margaret Cavendish (20 volumes, under contract with Punctum Books), and Co-Director of the site Digital Cavendish. She also maintains an online edition of Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies, produced in collaboration with 13 undergraduate students from the University of Toronto. Her research specializations are in early modern book history, editorial theory and practice, early modern women writers, and the intersections of early modern literature, science, and philosophy, as well as queer theory (especially asexuality and aromanticism studies). She regularly incorporates experiential learning opportunities, especially around editing, into her women writer courses.

PSY306Y0 Special Topics in Psychology Abroad: Disability: Culture and Inclusion

PSY306Y0 Special Topics in Psychology Abroad: Disability: Culture and Inclusion

An interdisciplinary seminar on the life-long development of individuals with exceptionalities. Topics include controversial social and educational issues (e.g., inclusion vs. segregation), legal, family, and economic issues, disability across the lifespan, communication disorders, hearing and visual impairment, autism, and acquired brain injury. Special emphasis will be placed on the social and historical factors that play a determining role as to whether impairment leads to the psychological experience of disability.

Prerequisite: Enrollment in any Psychology or Social Science Major or Specialist and completion of 8.0 Full Course Equivalents
Exclusions (unofficial): UTM: PSY345H5, 442Y5 (please discuss with instructor)
Breadth Requirement = Thought, Belief, and Behaviour (category 2)
Course Syllabus - 2024

Field Trips

We will learn about institutionalization of children by visiting the Foundling Museum, and adults at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind. We will learn about the development of medicine and its impact on reducing the disability experience by visiting the London Science Museum and the Museum of Military Medicine. We will learn about disability images and stigma through the history of eyeglasses at the British Optical Association Museum. We will also visit the Freud Museum, learn about Eugenics at University College London’s Galton Collection and will go on an accessibility walking tour of the University of Oxford. Finally, we will hear presentations from UK experts on Deaf culture and special education. The cost of these trips is  CAD $560 paid to U of T for all fees and return bus transportation.

Instructor

Dr. Stuart Kamenetsky is a veteran Professor with the Woodworth College Summer Abroad Program. He taught this course four times in Oxford, England; twice in Siena, Italy; and once online (during the pandemic) with ten international speakers. A Full Professor in the teaching stream, Dr. Kamenetsky served for many years as the Director of the Psychology Undergraduate Program as well as the Chair of the Academic Appeals Subcommittee of Academic Affairs at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He is cross-appointed with UTM’s Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy. He stepped down from most administrative duties to pursue teaching and research opportunities. He teaches several courses on disability as well as on childhood social development. He carries out research on the perception of disability images, student mental health, and disability accommodation in post-secondary education and related areas. As an advocate for people with disabilities he delivers public talks on social inclusion. He has spent many years supporting people with disabilities in a variety of social service agencies as well as the child welfare system. He is well connected with school boards, provincial residential schools and agencies where his students gain practical experiences in the field. Recently he has encouraged individuals to accept and share their own lived disability experiences – whether severe or mild – starting with himself: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/202201/my-gifted-shaky-hands

ECO250Y0 Big Data Tools and Applied Machine Learning for Economists (CANCELLED)

ECO250Y0 Big Data Tools and Applied Machine Learning for Economists 

The first half of this course explores unstructured data sources such as text files, webpages, social media posts, satellite imagery, and how economists harness these types of data. It offers a practical introduction to creating datasets from these types of sources (for example, via web scrapping), linking data sources, and managing and visualizing these data (for example, via geospatial visualization).

The second half of the course gives an overview of different concepts, techniques, and algorithms in machine learning and their applications in economics. We begin with topics such as classification, linear and non-linear regressions and end with more recent topics such as boosting, support vector machines, and Neural networks as time allows. This course will give students the basic knowledge behind these machine learning methods and the ability to utilize them in an economic setting. Students will be led and mentored to develop and solve an economic problem with machine learning methods introduced during the course.

Objectives:

- Learn to code in Python at intermediate or advanced levels
​​​​​​- Learn to search effectively and debug their code
- Learn coding skills most useful to economists such as GIS mapping, web scraping, and machine learning.
- Understand the process of doing applied Economic research
- Apply their coding knowledge to a real-world dataset
- Formulate a research question
- Understand and explain different machine learning algorithms and regression methods
- Apply machine learning tools to real economic data
- Create meaningful results and visual illustrations
- Compare and contrast different algorithms

Prerequisite: ( ECO101H1(63%),  ECO102H1(63%))/  ECO105Y1(80%)/  ECO100Y5(67%)/ ( ECO101H5(63%),  ECO102H5(63%))/ ( MGEA02H3 (67%),  MGEA06H3 (67%)); MAT133Y1(63%)/ ( MAT135H1(60%),  MAT136H1(60%))/  MAT137Y1(55%)/  MAT157Y1(55%);  CSC108H1/  CSC110Y1/  CSC148H1

Exclusion: ECO225H1, CSC311H1ESC190H1,  JSC270H1,  STA314H1 

Breadth Requirement = Society and Its Institutions (category 3)

2024 Course Outline 

Field Trips

Excursions will a visit to the University of Cambridge and to hear a lecture from guest faculty. Excursions will also include two trips to London, where students will be visit Salesforce London and Google UK for tours and workshops. The cost of these trips is CAD $560, paid to U of T for all fees and return bus transportation.

Instructors

Professor Nazanin Khazra is an applied microeconomist who has brought the field of Machine Learning and Economics together in her teaching and research. She has offered popular Tech-Econ and research courses at U of T and other universities. Professor Khazra has also created the Tech-Econference at U of T which happens again this Spring for the third year. The students who have taken this course before have been very successful on the job market and have been admitted into top graduate schools.

Professor Abdollah Farhoodi is an applied economist working on industrial organization, digital economics, and the spatial distribution of economic activities. He uses big-data tools, structural estimation, and machine learning for prediction and causal inference in his research. Professor Farhoodi has taught courses on Machine Learning, big data tools, and urban economics.

  • Reviews from students:
    •  “just interviewed for a full-time ### role starting summer 2023 at ###, and EVERYTHING I had learned from you in this course, including presenting my project, was extremely useful!”
    • “the skills that I learnt that I leant in this course helped me get into the ### program. I know that my knowledge of Jupyter Notebook and Geopandas helped me stand out in the application process. This experience will also prove invaluable when getting jobs in the future and when applying to graduate programs, which I plan to do this year. Thanks again for helping me learn these skills”