Courses for Electives and Membership in the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability: 2022-2023

This course begins with an introduction to the science of ecology and to the concept of sustainability as an ecological principle. The concept of sustainability is then broadened to include humans, as students are introduced to ethics, economics, and resource management from an eco-centric point of view. Students are encouraged to think critically about current environmental problems and to take action on an individual project.
NOTE: Students who have received credit for BIOL 205, 208, or for this topic under a BIOL 298 number may not take this course for credit.

NOTE: Students registered in a Biology program may not take this course for credit towards their Biology program but may take it towards the Minor in Sustainability Studies.

This course explores the main differences between the world’s major cultures, religious beliefs, and philosophies, and addresses the tensions between establishing universal values and maintaining cultural diversity in an age of accelerating globalization. There is also an emphasis on the conception of different levels of social complexity, principally the role of the individual, the interpersonal, and the group within a society. This course is intended to develop team research and presentation skills, and the ability to communicate and work effectively within a small group setting.

This course focuses on the natural environment and our interactions with it as presented through selected films. Students deconstruct the visual representation of a problem or complex set of problems around the natural environment presented both as “fact” and as “entertainment”. Students generate an understanding of how the individual and one's society can operate more effectively in a global context of increased inter-cultural interaction, in unison with the environment.

This course is an anthropological approach to variations in cultural experience as they relate to communication. Students explore modes of expression and communication, including literature and film, with a view to examining questions of interpretation, aesthetics, and ethical judgment. Personal expression and communication are also discussed. This course is intended to develop an awareness of the role of imagination and creativity in expression and interpretation, and sensitivity to the role of cultural and other differences in processes of communication.
NOTE: Students who have received credit for LOYC 410 may not take this course for credit.

In 2015, the 193 members states of the United Nations (UN) adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), providing a vision of a brighter future for people and the planet. They explicitly recognized the links between social, economic, and environmental sustainability, stressing the crucial need to address issues of poverty, inequality, health, education, and economic growth, while tackling the challenges of climate change and biodiversity conservation. Through this course, students will be introduced to all 17 SDGs from an interdisciplinary perspective and will examine progress towards these goals in Canada and across the globe. By the end of the course, students will be able to describe the different SDGs, understand their inter-relationships, and analyze our effectiveness at achieving these goals from different disciplinary perspectives.

This course treats the intersection of gender, sexuality, spirituality and religiosity from an intersectional and queer theoretical approach. It introduces students to histories and discourses around these inter-related areas and is organized thematically. It will also consider explicitly the construction and production of queer spiritualities and the queering of religion. Topics under consideration include, as follows: global sexualities; celibacy, asexuality and queerness; queerness in history; colonial and postcolonial understandings of sexuality and religion; queer pornography; tantric practice and other forms of esoteric spirituality.
NOTE: Students who have received credit for this topic under a RELI 398 number may not take this course for credit.

This course examines the wide variety of perspectives on sexuality in the Bible from a feminist and queer studies approach. It considers the ancient contexts in which these texts were composed, and how they have been received over time. The focus will principally be on Christian interpretations, with some attention paid to Jewish readings as well. The course also addresses how queer and feminist critiques of and engagements with the Bible can challenge heteronormative views of gender and sexuality today. Among the topics considered are racialization, gendered and sexual identities, same-sex relationships, erotics and sexual desire, celibacy, marriage, kinship, and human reproduction.

This online course is an introduction to the emerging field of global environmental politics. It surveys the present environmental crisis and the roles of states, international organizations, and civil society. Various case studies dealing with oceans, forests, fisheries, biodiversity, global warming, and others are used to illustrate the inherent complexity of transnational ecological issues in the era of globalization.

This course is offered every year online. This year, it is offered in the fall (2017). It may be offered in the summer of 2018 instead of in the fall of 2018.

The course recognizes that much of the city’s early Black history is unknown and that even today, the current knowledge of the Black experience in Montreal continues to be fraught with myth and misconception.  Thus, this course is largely designed to introduce students to the major themes, issues, and debates in Montreal’s Black history from its origins until today.  This interdisciplinary survey is organized chronologically and will determine how certain trends and critical milestones have shaped Black Montreal’s unique face and given rise to complex community building on and off the island. Our wider lens explores Blacks as their own agents, contributing to the greater society while simultaneously creating cultural resources and events that highlight the multifaceted ways Blacks made their own history while simultaneously shaping and contributing to the history of Montreal. Ultimately, students should gain an understanding of how Blacks lived, worked, socialized, and defined themselves in Montreal.

This course explores how religion may be seen to engender or exacerbate violence, as well as the ways that religion may critique, prevent or even offer alternatives to violence. Sacred writings, theologies, rituals and communal actions of particular communities are studied, as well as notions of the self, the group, others, outsiders and enemies. In particular, the life-work and writings of such key figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are studied in order to provide some religious perspectives on the relationship between non-violence and the resistance to injustice.

NOTE: Students who have received credit for this topic under RELI 355 or a RELI 398 number may not take this course for credit.

This seminar-format course will explore connections between the ethics of human interactions with non-human animals and non-sustainable economic activities. The Western cultural tradition has long treated humans and animals as separate categories, with different systems of ethics and values applied to each. How humans perceive their relationship with animals affects choices about diet, understandings of our place in the world, and increasingly, issues of habitat preservation, environmental degradation, and the ethics of scientific research.

NOTE: Students who have received credit for this topic under a RELI 398 number may not take this course for credit.

This course considers ethical issues arising in the context of personal and interpersonal relations, families and friendships, and health and medical care. These issues are discussed in relation to traditional and contemporary moral perspectives, both religious and non-religious. Topics covered may vary from year to year, but may include discussions of conscience and career, privacy, sexual relations, harassment, substance abuse, abortion, euthanasia, and gay and lesbian relations.

NOTE: Students who have received credit for RELI 310 or for this topic under a RELI 398 number may not take this course for credit.

This course will explore how popular culture can be understood from a variety of decolonial perspectives. We will explore the relationship between theory and practice, the material and epistemic, as it relates to decolonial action and critique, as well as concrete movements of decolonization like Land Back, Water Protectors, Saytyagraha, and BLM.  From this perspective of decolonial critique, we will then analyze a variety of examples in popular cultural that reify or resist contemporary colonial attitudes, and critically evaluate their effects. We might look at popular forms of media like Southpark, the film Fire, sports, holidays, the Ramayana, yoga, comic books, and more! Possible moments of analysis include: cultural appropriation, Orientalism, settler moves to innocence, neoliberalism, Marxism, recentering oral and visual traditions, the White Savior Industrial Complex, and capitalism.