Winter 2026 Courses

Instructor: Emma Alexander

This course examines selected topics in the history of colonial India from the eighteenth century to the Partition of the subcontinent using lectures and discussions. Topics for this course include the East India Company, 1857 Revolt, moderate and revolutionary nationalists, the Amritsar massacre, caste liberation, and the causes and results of the Partition of the sub-continent in 1947. Reading suggestions will be made in class, if students would like to read in advance or explore a topic further. 

Topics:
Colonialism under the East India Company 1600-1858 
The Revolt of 1857 and its aftermath
Amritsar Massacre of 1919 and mass nationalism 
Revolutionary and Hindu nationalism 
Caste and Freedom: what does it mean to be Dalit in India? 
Partition of Indian Subcontinent  

Biography of Instructor

Dr. Emma Alexander completed her first degree in law at the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London, her MA at the University of Victoria (BC) in Asian Studies and History and her PhD at the University of Cambridge in South Asian History.  During her doctoral research she was attached to SNDT University in Mumbai.  In 2004 she took up her current post at the University of Winnipeg, where she is an Associate professor in the History Department.  Her research focuses on labour and children in colonial India and on indentured migration from India and the communities of twice migration.  As of July 2023, she became Chair of the History Department at the University of Winnipeg. 

Winter Term 1

Course number: D55 33010 PTW01

Instructor: Dr. Anne-Laurence Caudano

This course examines the geographical horizon of medieval Europeans and their knowledge of the world—grounded in encounters or imagined—through the eyes of merchants, pilgrims and missionaries between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. In this period, Europe’s horizon was considerably broadened and contacts were intensified with the Islamicate during the crusades and with Asian populations as a result of the Mongol expansion. The development of trade networks, the encounters and descriptions of new peoples, and the conceptualization of the world until the eve of Columbus’s expedition are discussed through travel accounts. These narratives include, for instance, William of Rubruck’s and Marco Polo’s descriptions of the Silk Road and its inhabitants, Ibn Battuta’s extensive journeys throughout Africa and Asia, John Mandeville’s fictitious travels, and Margery Kempe’s experiences as a pilgrim.

The sessions cover the following six themes:

• The Medieval Horizon of Travel: Maps, Marvels and Monsters
• Medieval Pilgrims and Pilgrimages across Europe and the Middle East
• Medieval Missionaries’ Experiences of Asia after the Mongol invasions
• Medieval Merchants along the Silk Road before the Black Death
• Travel to and from Africa in the Late Middle Ages
• Soldiers, Diplomats and Merchants on Late Medieval Roads and Seas

Biography of Instructor

Anne-Laurence Caudano is a Professor in the History Department of the University of Winnipeg, where she teaches medieval history, including survey courses on medieval and Byzantine history, as well as courses on medieval sciences, medieval travel, and the environment in the Middle Ages. Her research focuses on representations of the cosmos and the earth in Byzantine culture, with specific emphasis on cosmography and astronomy. Her work also pays attention to the interplay of texts, diagrams, and maps in Byzantine manuscripts, and their attempts to describe and make sense of the world.

Winter Term 1

Course number: D55 33020 PTW01

Instructor: Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar

This course is a discussion of the historical and latest scientific understanding of how our universe might have started and the consequences of this beginning. We will talk about the accepted theories and novel ideas about various questions about the universe:

• Was there a beginning of the universe?  What might the future look like? 
• Does the space exist as fundamental feature of the universe or is it its emergent property
• What about time?
• How did the matter and various structures of the universe come to existence? 
• How did life on the Earth begin?
• Is there a likelihood of life elsewhere?
• What would aliens look like? Would they be tall or short or not like us at all?
• Are there extra dimensions all around us - dimensions that we just cannot see at the moment?
• What would lower, or higher dimensional life look like? Can we make a 2D world where only very flat creatures exist?
• These dimensional ideas naturally lead to the concept of parallel worlds. Do we have counterparts in other parallel universes?
• What are the multiverse ideas which exist today? 
• We will also explore the role of human intuition and imagination through art and fiction and the connections to what scientific method reveals.

Biography of Instructor

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.

Winter Term 2

Course number: D55 33030 PTW01

Instructor: Dr. Jane Barter

Course Description: 

This course explores the five major contemporary critiques of religion, all of which have their roots in the writings of 19th and 20th-century critics of religion. Students will learn about the original historical contexts of the interpretations of religion advanced by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The main concern of the course is to examine how these five powerful critiques shape the ways contemporary North Americans understand religion.

• Major Modern Critiques of Religion: Study of the foundational critiques developed by Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Durkheim, and Weber, focusing on their theories of the origins, functions, and limitations of religion.
• Historical Contexts: Exploration of the 19th- and early 20th-century social, political, and intellectual environments that shaped these critiques of religion.
• Religion, Power, and Society: Analysis of how religion operates within social structures, including questions of authority, class dynamics, morality, and collective identity.
• Psychological and Existential Approaches: Examination of psychological interpretations of religion (e.g., Freud) and existential critiques of morality and belief (e.g., Nietzsche).
• Secularization and Modernity: Consideration of how modernity reshaped religious authority, ritual, and community, with attention to sociological perspectives (Durkheim, Weber).
• The “New Atheists”: Critical engagement with contemporary atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, assessing how their arguments extend or oversimplify classic critiques.
• Contemporary Implications: Reflection on how these critiques—and their modern echoes—shape current North American debates around secularism, skepticism, religious freedom, and the place of religion in public life.

Biography of Instructor

Dr. Jane Barter’s (she/her) research interests include political theology, contemporary, Christian thought, theopolitics, religion, and memory. Barter’s research bridges the fields of Christian theology, political theology, decolonial, and feminist thought. Her work engages Christian thought and history with contemporary ethical and political questions, with particular attention to the context of colonialism.

She has published three monographs, including her a recent book on witnessing to political atrocity, Theopolitics and the Era of the Witness (Routledge. 2025). She recently co-edited (with Doris Kieser, St. Joseph’s College, University of Alberta) a special volume of the Journal of Moral Theology on the papal visit and apology to survivors of Residential Schools in Canada. She is also general editor of the forthcoming (2026) multi-volume T & T Clark Encyclopedia of Christian Theology (Bloomsbury Press).

Winter Term 2

Course Number: D55 33040 PTW01