Fall 2026 Courses

Instructor: Neil Besner

What’s the importance of thinking about Carol Shields’s writing in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2026?

In her several books of stories, her eleven novels, her plays, poems, and essays – she was many-minded and prolific – Shields often turns to Winnipeg (where she settled with her family in 1980) and its people for her settings and inspiration. It was during her twenty years in Winnipeg that she produced a large part of her life’s work; her roots in Winnipeg were further nourished by her time as Chancellor of The University of Winnipeg beginning in 1996 and by her teaching for many years at The University of Manitoba. As we’ll see, she drew inspiration from Winnipeg in many ways – its seasons and its streets, its characters and its communities.

In the ever-widening world of Shields’s writing – American born, she also set her work in the UK and in France, for example -- her readership in the English-speaking world grew well beyond Canada and the U.S. But a many-faceted Winnipeg remains one of her major sources. Twenty-three years after her death in July 2003 and twenty-four years after her last novel, Unless, it’s an apt time to have a careful look at this widely celebrated and award-winning writer who lived and worked among us here so intimately.

Course Details for Registered Students- Revised August 11th.

Instructor biography:

Neil Besner taught Canadian literature and other subjects (such as the short story and fiction in translation) at the University of Winnipeg from 1987 until his retirement in 2017. He writes mainly on Canadian authors, on the short story, and on the poet Elizabeth Bishop, with books on Mavis Gallant (1988), Alice Munro (1990), an edited collection on Carol Shields (1995), and numerous articles, book chapters, and reviews, as well as co-edited books on the short story in English (1991) and on poetry in English (1997). His prize-winning translation from Portuguese into English of a Brazilian biography of Elizabeth Bishop (2002) was the major source for the 2013 Brazilian feature film, Reaching for the Moon. From 2004 to 2020 he was the general editor of the Laurier Poetry Series (LPS), a contemporary Canadian poetry series with Wilfrid Laurier University Press, with over thirty volumes published to date. His most recent books are the memoir Fishing With Tardelli (2022) and the co-edited Montreal Standard Time: Mavis Gallant’s Early Journalism (2024). His translation from Portuguese into English of a study of Elizabeth Bishop’s work in Brazil is forthcoming (Louisiana State University Press, 2026). He served in several senior administrative roles at UWinnipeg; his last post was as Provost and Vice-President, Academic (2012-17).

Fall Term 1

Course Number: D55 34010 PTF01

Class Schedule

Instructor: The Honourable Patricia Bovey

Interweaving the richness of Manitoba and Western Canadian visual expression and key societal topics, this illustrated six-part lecture series will examine aspects of Western Canadian art history’s important innovations that inspired new directions for Canadian art.

Our discussions will include:

• Indigenous Visual Roots – beading, birchbark biting & international stars
• Distinctive Visual Expressions & the first oil paintings done outdoors
• Experimentation & Innovative Materials Creating New Visual Languages
• Landscape as Culture – Place & Idea
• Urbanization Changing Visual Expression – Back Lanes & High Rises
• Abstraction & the Spiritual in Art – It started here!
• Portrait Inscapes – Personal Psychologies Portrayed
• Societal Issues Visually Expressed – Residential Schools to Health

Instructor biography:

HON. PATRICIA BOVEY, LL.D, DCL, D.LITT, FRSA, FCMA, FDFS

Patricia Bovey is an art historian, curator, emerita museum director and former member of the Senate of Canada (2016-2023) representing Manitoba. She served as director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and founded St. Boniface Hospital’s Buhler Gallery in Winnipeg. Her books include Pat Martin Bates: Balancing on a Thread (2013), Don Proch: Masking and Mapping (2019), and Western Voices in Canadian Art (2023), and she has lectured and taught extensively on art history, curating, museum studies, and cultural policy. She has served on many arts and university boards, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Canada Council of the Arts, and chaired the boards of the University of Manitoba and Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Currently she serves on the boards of the Confederation Centre for the Arts, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the Roberta Bondar Foundation, the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, and chairs the University of Manitoba’s Alumni Association Board of Directors. Recipient of many awards she is a Fellow of the UK Royal Society for the Arts, Fellow of the Canadian Museums Association and Fellow of Distinguished Financial Specialists. She has received honorary Doctors’ Degrees from the University of Manitoba, St. John’s College, the University of Winnipeg and York University.

Fall Term 1

Course Number: D55 34020 PTF01

Class Schedule

Instructor: Ernest Keenes

Canadian foreign economic policy is hardly at the top of anyone's list of hot topics in Canadian history. In fact, however, foreign economic policy has been at the centre of turning points in the history of the country. With President Trump's tariff policy and more wide-ranging changes to American foreign policy, Canadians are directed back to the lessons contained in our economic history. In our course I will review important turning points in Canadian foreign economic policy and the linkage with the wider development of the Canadian political economy, from the 19th to the 21st century. While the novelty of the Trump challenge commands our attention, we find a certain continuity in Canada's strategic economic dilemma.

• Introduction
• The Corns Laws, Reciprocity, and Confederation
• The Depression and Beggar-thy-Neighbour to Bretton Woods and Embedded Liberalism
• The Nixon Shokku and the Third Option
• Neo-liberal Continentalism and the Canada-US FTA and Nafta/CUSMA

Instructor biography:

Dr. Ernie Keenes is a retired journalist, academic and vigneron.  He worked in radio and television news covering Winnipeg city hall and the Manitoba legislature, and as an editor and writer at the Canadian Press and Broadcast News.  He worked as a researcher and writer in the government relations industry After earning a B.A. Honours degree in Political Studies at the University of Manitoba, he received his Master's and Ph.D. degrees in International Relations at Carleton University, specializing in Canadian Foreign Economic Policy and International Political Economy.  He has published on International Relations theory and Canadian foreign economic policy management. He has taught a wide variety of courses in Politics at universities across Canada. 

More recently he worked in wine retail, was on the roster of the British Columbia VQA tasting panel, and shared in an acre of vines and a small winery in B.C.'s Okanagan valley.  He has worked as Deputy Editor of Harper's Wine and Spirit Gazette in London, U.K., and written a variety of articles on the wine industry as a freelance journalist.

Fall Term 1

Course Number: D55 34030 PTF01 

Class Schedule

Instructor: Olexandr Shevchenko

A casual look at the map of Europe today will inevitably attract us to the middle of the continent dominated by Germany. It is hard to believe, but what we take for granted is a reasonably new historical entity: the unified Germany did not exist before 1871. This class will explore the forces of nationalism, monarchism, militarism and Nazism that dominated Germany from its inception to the collapse of the imperial project.

• From the idea to political action: Congress of Vienna, Europe and German nationalist aspirations
• Forged with blood and iron: from revolutionary idealism of 1848 to Prussian meticulousness
• Finding itself: German Empire between its creation and outbreak of WWI
• ... and it was all so close... German bid for global power in WWI and a bitter hangover of the Weimar Republic
• From promise of freedom to Nazi takeover. Analysis of the forces and actions that destroyed the German democratic experiment.
• From bloodless Anschluss to the suicide in the bunker: Hitler's bid for global domination and its failure. Two Germanies and shaping of the European understanding after WWII.

Instructor biography:

Olexandr is a lifelong student and teacher of history. Born in the USSR, he witnessed collapse of the communist Empire first hand. He studied history in Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, the US and Canada and taught in several Universities and community programs. His areas of interest are history of the twentieth century, Ukrainian history, history of Russia, history of Europe and military history. Since 2006 he lives and works in Winnipeg as a freelance historian and interpreter.

Fall Term 2

Course Number: D55 34040 PTF01

Class Schedule

Instructor: Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar

Art and Science went hand in hand throughout history often driven by each other. In this course I will give an overview of science concepts which inspired artists and also art work and imagination with which artists inspired various branches of science (physics and cosmology), made them popular and also made them the topics of deeper research.

The course will cover the era from the late 19th century when mathematicians inspired the works of artists like Picasso and Dali with their work on higher dimensions, to current musical and visual (including film) art.   

One example is Carl Sagan's science fiction book Contact.  In this story, Sagan made use of a hypothetical, and among physicists of the time, dismissed idea, a fictional wormhole; a bridge through hyperspace which would shorten interstellar travel.  With the appearance of this work, as a book and a film, physicists started investigating wormholes as potential reality.  Another example of this beautiful symbiosis is the technical work of visual artists working on the film Interstellar with director Christopher Nolan.  Instead of using CGI techniques, the team created a software to produce scientifically accurate, research-grade imagery based on Einstein's relativity equations.  That method was later published in scientific journals, and now is used by physicists to model various scenarios involving black holes. The resulting image of a rapidly spinning black hole and its accretion disk provided a visual precursor to real-world images captured later by the Event Horizon Telescope. Numerous films used the concepts of multiverse and we will cover a variety of multiverse ideas and their treatment in art. 

Instructor biography:

Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar, former astrophysicist from the National Observatory in Belgrade, Serbia, joined The University of Winnipeg's Physics Department in 2000. In Canada, she obtained a degree in science education and has made important contributions teaching science courses to non-science and life sciences students, and creating community awareness by initiating science outreach programs. Together with two colleagues, she created a course "Concepts in Science" which became the preferred science course choice for education and arts students at the University of Winnipeg, with enrolment increasing tenfold. Vesna's passion for science education has led to numerous presentations at conferences and symposia for university instructors and science teachers. She teaches a broad range of courses including Astronomy, Cosmology, Concepts in Science, Physics for Life Sciences and Physics of Music.

Fall Term 2

Course Number: D55 34050 PTF01

Class Schedule

Instructor: Dr. Julio Lucchesi Moraes

The digital technologies that shape our daily lives—computers, mobile phones, satellites, and the internet—have a fascinating history that begins in the scientific breakthroughs of the Second World War era. This course traces the evolution of information and communication technologies from the invention of the transistor to the emergence of personal computing, the internet, and today’s highly connected world.  Along the way, we will explore how these innovations transformed work, communication, culture, and everyday life, while engaging in discussion and reflection on how technological change continues to shape our societies. 

Instructor biography:

Julio Lucchesi Moraes holds a BSc in Economics and a PhD in Economic History from the University of São Paulo (Brazil).  He has taught at Brandon University, the Université de Saint-Boniface, and the University of Winnipeg.  His work sits at the intersection of economics, culture, and media, with a particular interest in how technological change shapes social life, communication, and contemporary forms of economic organization.

Fall Term 2

Course Number: D55 34060 PTF01

Class Schedule