2025-26 Courses

2025-26 Cultural Studies Courses 

FALL/WINTER 2025-26

GCST-7103-050 Methods & Practices (Fall/Winter), required, 3 credits
P. Ives | Wednesdays 1800 - 2100

This course aims to equip students with an understanding of how an indefinite plethora of intersecting research skills and methodologies are relevant to and inform the critical, academic, and political project of cultural studies. It also includes discussions of some of the contemporary ethical, political, and material challenges (and potentialities) affecting the work of scholars, artists, and intellectuals in 21st Century academe, as well as other public institutions of knowledge production and dissemination simultaneously invested and troubled by critical cultural theorists, scholars, and curators. During the Fall term, students will obtain certifications in CORE (TCPS 2) and Oral History Research and will develop a seminar presentation on a research methodology of particular interest to them. Over Fall and Winter terms, students will participate in a key aspect of being an active and engaged graduate students of cultural studies by attending a range of local events related to cultural studies/curatorial practices.

GCST-7831-001 Practicum in Curatorial Studies, required for Curatorial Practice Stream, 6 credits
Instructor TBA | Wednesday 1430 - 1715

This course combines the theory and practice of curatorial work, public history and experiential learning for students interested in achieving a university credit by working with a local museum or art gallery. The Practicum provides opportunities to explore a range of placements with host institutions in order to learn about being a curator. Students are expected to work 6-8 hours a week in the host institution. Program partners will provide training for the interns who have chosen to work with them. Partnerships opportunities include, but are not limited to, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Plug In Contemporary Art Institute, Buhler Gallery, and other local galleries and museums.

FALL 2025

GCST-7104-001 Concepts in Cultural Studies, required for Texts and Cultures Stream
A. Popowich | Mondays 0930 - 1220

This course is an introduction to the theories and concepts of Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field, and we will look at what makes it distinct from political science, literary studies, media studies, and other associated disciplines. One aspect of Cultural Studies that makes it unique is the specific conditions of its creation. Interpretation of cultural artefacts and practices has a long history, but Cultural Studies as a discipline arose first in the particular social, political, and economic climate of post-war Britain, and takes this context as part of its object of study. For Cultural Studies, the material and political environment of cultural artefacts and texts are crucial elements in understanding them. In particular, the politics of struggle and of difference, of countercultural or subaltern cultures are vitally important. As a result, it is important to understand what is happening outside the discipline during its initial period in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, its rise to prominence in the US in the 1980s and 1990s, and the ways it continues to be useful today. In this course we will read some of the important texts of cultural studies, relate them to particular elements and changes in late-capitalist politics and economics, and interrogate the ways the theories and concepts they present can be deployed to understand contemporary cultural production. Some of the concepts and theories we will look at are: hegemony, ideology, globalization, neoliberalism, identity politics, the culture industry, social construction, materialism, representation, Marxism, feminism, post-colonialism and decolonization, postmodern thought, and Queer theory. We will also look at some of the longer-standing issues that Cultural Studies shares with other questions, such as identity politics and the politics of difference, the idea of “culture war”, and questions surrounding the politics of “high” vs. “popular” culture.

GCST-7112-001 Topics in Cultural Theory: Culture, Power, Property
B. Cornellier | Tuesdays 1430 - 1715

This seminar invites students to reflect on past and current controversies about cultural ownership, cultural appropriation, and representational ethics in (post)imperial, settler colonial, and post-colonial contexts. The course starts with a theoretical examination and a critique of the regime of property of European capitalism and colonialism. Students will then explore different ways this regime of property is implemented (and contested) in the realm of culture, with a focus on BIPOC subjects pushing back against forces of extraction and appropriation. In doing so, this course seeks to anchor the scholarly and political project of cultural studies to the urgency of current materialist and decolonial critiques of racial capitalism, resource extraction, and dispossession. Topics include: the origins and limits of copyright and intellectual property legislations; imperialism, museology, and repatriation; curatorial practices and cultural capital; Orientalism and the performing arts; “found footage” films and ethnographic refusal; “Indian play” and Native sports mascots; “New Age” settler colonialism and gentrification.

GCST-7820-001 Topics in Visual Cultures: The Rise of Feminist Art in Winnipeg in the 1980s
S. Keshavjee | Thursdays 1430 - 1715

This course examines the rise of feminist art in Winnipeg. Inspired by liberationist movements after 1968, women artists focused on new subjects and new media, reflecting cultural shifts.  The 1970s and 1980s was a rich period of experimentation in Winnipeg, with the development of the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc, the artist run centre Plug In, and the mentorship program lead by MAWA. In this class we research individual Winnipeg artists who identify as feminist. There is little secondary material available on Winnipeg artists and students have to find primary sources, and archival material. As a group, we will carry out one oral history interview with the support of the UW Oral History centre, and Gallery 1C03.

GCST-7901-001 Topics in Gender & Sexuality: Roman Masculinity  
M. Racette-Campbell | Wednesdays 0930 - 1220

This course focuses on the scholarly investigation of masculinity in the areas of the ancient world under Roman influence. It considers a range of issues, which may include how constructions of masculinity differ and change throughout space and time, cultural-specific methods for developing and maintaining masculinity, the experience of gender non-conforming males, interactions between masculinity and femininity, and masculinity in relation to warfare, politics, marriage, parenthood, and the family, religion, and literature. Sources studied include literary texts (e.g. epic poetry, love poetry, histories, biographies, speeches), non-literary texts (e.g. graffiti, personal letters, inscriptions, tombstones, technical manuals), art (sculpture, mosaic, fresco), and archaeological artifacts.

WINTER 2026

GCST-7811-001 Topics in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Cultures: Mad Scientists, Machines, and Monsters: Science, Technology, and the Gothic
K. Ready | Wednesdays 0930 - 1220

This section of Author, Genre, or Form/Topics in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Cultures will explore Gothic literature within the context of the history of science, technology, and culture. Scholars have associated the emergence of the Gothic as a genre with a reaction to Enlightenment rationalism and empiricism, both of which contributed to an unprecedented growth in the development of science and technology during the period. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century the relationship between science, technology, and the Gothic had already become complicated. In the last two centuries this relationship has continued to evolve, as innovations in science and technology provide ongoing sources of inspiration for Gothic writers and film makers, providing a vehicle for the expression of cultural anxieties about science, as well as utopian dreams about its transformative possibilities, and challenging assumptions about the fixedness of disciplinary boundaries. In their treatment of science and technology, Gothic writers and film makers challenge, in various and sometimes unsettling ways, the boundaries between nature and culture, the human and the non-human, and the conscious and the unconscious.

GCST-7820-002 Topics in Visual Cultures: The Idea of the Museum
S. Borys | Thursdays 1430 - 1715

Museums and galleries do more than collect and exhibit objects; they participate in the packaging and presentation of the materials and ideas of culture, engaging with a diverse public and multiple stakeholders. Students examine the collecting, exhibiting and presentation practices of European and North American museums and galleries over the last two centuries with the goal of understanding their evolving role. The class explores how museums developed and are changing in response to the ideas of collecting and connoisseurship, the disciplines of art history and museology, and how these institutions reflect or relate to different ideologies, such as nationalism and colonialism.

GCST-7820-003 Topics in Visual Cultures: Art, Cultural Appropriation and Copyright
C. Mattes | Mondays 1430 - 1715

This seminar course examines notions of cultural appropriation and copyright in European, Australian, and North American art and art histories. Looking to decolonial theories and Indigenous studies to analyze key art and art exhibitions, the course is divided into three main sections. It begins with lectures on the foundations of 19th century Primitivism and Orientalism and representations of colonized peoples in 20th century Western visual culture. The next section is dedicated to the impact of cultural appropriation and related discourse in art and art histories, beginning in the early 20th century. The final section of the course provides opportunities to learn from guest speakers who have first -hand experience with artistic copyright infringement and cultural appropriation. Art-infused round table discussions dedicated to devising potential strategies and remedies to these colonial harms will take place several times during the course.

GCST-7901-002 Topics in Gender, Sexualities & Culture: Feminism and Public Memory
A. Failler - Tuesdays 1430 - 1715

This course explores the contested terrain of public memory through an intersectional feminist lens. Particular attention is paid to how conceptions of sex, gender, race, and nation are inter-implicated through practices of remembrance. Current debates surrounding monuments, memorials, and museums will facilitate our inquiry, including calls by decolonial, feminist, Two-Spirit and LGBTTQ+, and anti-racist activists to reimagine the memorial landscape and memorial culture. A set of key questions underpins this course: What is public memory? How is it formed? Where does it go/circulate? Who does it represent and serve? Public memory is approached here both critically and hopefully as a social process with the potential to contribute to more equitable and just forms of relating. In this sense, public memory is more than a record of history; it involves distributions of knowledge, power, and affect that shape how the past is made meaningful in and for the present.

SPRING 2026

GCST-7105/3: Cultural Studies and Curatorial Practices Capstone Seminar, required