A topics course is one that is not regularly offered at the University of Lethbridge. Departments may use topics courses to try out a new course that they are considering regularizing, or for faculty to offer courses related to their research. Series courses are a group of courses within a certain genre and the offering changes every semester. You may take multiple topics and series courses for credit as long as each offering is distinct (i.e. having significantly different titles).
If you have any questions about topics courses, please contact the Fine Arts Advising Office (W660).
2022-2023 | Topics/Series Courses
ART
Introduction to Ceramic Art
ART 2850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
This course will explore approaches to working with ceramic materials in a fine arts context. Basic construction methods and surface design techniques will be taught alongside discussions of contemporary theoretical approaches to working with ceramics. Special attention will be given to assisting students with strategies for incorporating ceramics into their individual art practices.
Drawing: Exploring Traditional Techniques and Methods
ART 2850 B
3.0 Credit Hours
This course explores traditional techniques and methods in drawing, with an emphasis on observational study and representation. Utilizing the elements of design, subjects include still life study encompassing geometric and organic forms, environmental and interior space, landscape, and the human figure. This course is suitable for students of all levels, from those who want an introduction to basic materials and techniques, to those who would benefit from a chance to further develop their drawing skills in a relaxed, supportive environment.
DRAMA
Shakespeare for the Intimidated
DRAM 3850 Y (Calgary Campus)
3.0 Credit Hours
A performance-based approach to the study of Shakespeare. We will engage in a variety of activities and presentations to make the text relevant and bring it to life. We will view and analyze stage and film productions of the plays as well as study their historical context.
Prerequisites: Completion of 15 University courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours) or admission to the Post Diploma program.
NEW MEDIA
Developing Media for Children
NMED 4850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
Through brainstorming activities, prototyping, and field-testing with representatives of the target audience, students will work in multi-disciplinary teams to design and develop educational apps for mobile devices to be used in a K-12 classroom.
Prerequisites: New Media 3380 and New Media 3520 OR Computer Science 3770
ART
Textile Art Studio (Embodied Textiles)
ART 3015 B
3.0 Credit Hours
Textile Art Studio (Embodied Textiles) will provide experience in a wide range of fibre material practices through hands-on workshops. Students will engage in a series of thematic projects in textile art with a focus on the embodied, performative and communicative aspects of textiles.
Prerequisite(s): Four of: [Art 2005 or Art 2006], Art 2010, Art 2015, Art 2023, Art 2027, Art 2033, [Art 2060 or Art 2061], or Art 2350/Indigenous Studies 2350 AND 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Senior Studio I & II
ART 4048 & 4049
6.0 Credit Hours
The following instructors will be available as supervising faculty members for the above mentioned classes in Fall 2022:
- Jackson 2Bears
Students who register for these courses will interview with each of the supervising faculty members to determine which faculty member will be their instructor of record. Students must ensure they are registered in the correct section of the course with their assigned instructor by the end of the add/drop period.
Experimental Cinema and Artist's Videos
ARHI 3151
3.0 Credit Hours
This course surveys the history of artist-produced experimental cinema and video art. Students will be exposed to examples of film as art from its origins in the Dada, Surrealist, Expressionist, and Constructivist movements of the 1920s through to later developments of the 1960s and 70s. Artist videos will be considered from their beginnings in the late 1960s through to the present day.
Prerequisite(s): Art History 1002 or Third-year standing (a minimum of 60.0 credit hours)
Critical Issues in Contemporary Indigenous Art
ARHI 3152 A
3.0 Credit Hours
This course examines current critical issues in contemporary Indigenous art and visual culture from across the settler-colonial areas of North American, as well as Australia and New Zealand. We will explore how Indigenous arts are understood in the communities in which they are made, how indigenous artworks have been understood in Western art historical discourse and museum exhibitions, as well as the relationship between “historic” and “contemporary” indigenous arts. This course will investigate the recent role of indigenous art in the questioning of identity and self-representation, decolonization, sovereignty, self-determination, and anti-colonial resistance. The course will rely heavily on course readings and class participation, structured like a seminar it is organized both thematically and geographically in order to address the specific concerns of the land, visual culture, survivance, and Indigeneity
Prerequisite(s): One of Art History 1001, Art History 1002, or Third-year standing (a minimum of 60.0 credit hours)
DRAMA
Scenic Painting
DRAM 3821 B
3.0 Credit Hours
An introduction to the techniques, materials and methods used in theatrical scene painting.
Prerequisites: Drama 1000 and Drama 2810, OR Art 2023
Recommended background: Drama 2825
Technical Theatre for Teachers
DRAM 3850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
Creating a strong foundation for technical theatre in school settings, course focuses on technical theatre in education both in the classroom and also on the school stage. Course reviews and practically works with common theatre systems, technologies, and equipment used by the instructor who needs to know and do it all including scenery, costumes, lighting, and sound. Learn to build a flat, sew a seam, connect a microphone, hang a stage light, and more from the perspective of a drama educator or any "non-technician" while exploring techniques to guide students working behind the scenes.
Prerequisites: Drama 2810
MUSIC
Guitar Ensemble
MUSE 1850 N
1.5 Credit Hours
Guitar is a versatile instrument capable of rhythm, harmony, and melody. Combining multiple guitar players into a group, all playing together, is quite an awesome experience. Guitar students very rarely get the ensemble experience that band, and orchestra instruments do.
Guitar ensembles are intended to give students the opportunity to enhance skills they develop in weekly lessons. Ensembles allow them to further improve sight-reading, listening skills, perform unique repertoire and more, in addition to the social advantages of camaraderie with others.
Open but not limited to Music major guitar students, students coming from other courses, faculties, or adults who wish to be challenged by a more advanced guitar ensemble repertoire are welcome.
Prerequisite: Audition
Technical Ear Training
MUSI 2850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
The aim of this course is to thoroughly understand the relationship between technical parameters and the perceived qualities of sound. Audio engineers must develop the skill to diagnose problematic sonic artifacts in recordings. They also need to identify potential causes and find solutions to overcome them. Therefore, students will learn to translate between control parameters, for example frequency in Hertz, or sound level in decibels, and their perceptions of timbre and loudness in audio signals. The goals are to develop a heightened awareness of subtle features and attributes of sound, as well as a greater ability to make judgements about changes in sound quality that are based on small changes in signal processing. Topics of this course include tonal balance and equalization, reverberation, dynamic range control, distortion and noise, and sound analysis.
History of Rock and Roll to 1970
MUSI 3200 A
3.0 Credit Hours
This course is designed to give the student a historical overview of the development of rock ‘n roll from its roots up until the end of the 60’s. This will be presented in a chronological manner, beginning with a brief overview of rock ‘n roll’s ancestors and influences. It will go on to study the musical and cultural melting pot of the 1950’s, followed by the effects of the British Invasion of the 60’s. A discussion of developments occurring in North America following the British Invasion will be the culminating point of this class.
Prerequisite: 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours) - as per calendar
Equivalent: Music 3200 – History of Rock and Roll: 1948-1970
NOTE: Not counted in the 16-course Arts & Science major or the core courses in the B.Mus. degree.
NOTE: Students with credit in Music 2850 (History of Rock ‘n Roll), 2850 (3850) (Popular Music in the 20th Century) or 3010 cannot receive credit for the same offering in the Music 3200 series.
NOTE: Credit is not allowed for MUSI 3200 - History of Rock & Roll to 1970 and MUSI 3200 History of Rock and Roll: 1948-1970 or MUSI 3200 – History of Rock and Roll
Indigenous Music as Political Thought
MUSI 3850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
This course will draw on critical Indigenous theory to examine ways in which contemporary Indigenous musics intersect with the political sphere. Themes addressed will include music as a commentary on relations of power; music as an agent of change; music as a space for protest and resistance; and music as an articulation of resurgence.
Aesthetic Noise: Noise in Audio Art Making
MUSI 4850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
Disruptive, disturbing, dangerous, and unwanted are all adjectives that are commonly attributed to the word noise. Though generally interpreted as negative, the artist can reveal additional possibilities of noise by using it as an artistic material. When used aesthetically, it is possible for noise to communicate the ineffable. However, to gain an understanding of noise in this context, it will need to be filtered through multiple philosophies. In this course, we will explore the works of various artists who use noise as an anesthetic material and then filter the works through classical and continental philosophies to better understand noise’s potential. In doing so, we find that in the hands of an artist, noise can become a call for justice, symbolize trauma and be a mechanism for its discharge. It can also be a means of emotional and spiritual expansion. Noise presents nearly limitless possibilities when used aesthetically. In addition to exploring works and philosophies of noise, the student will create a work of noise drawing inspiration from the materials covered in class.
Prerequisite: Completion of 25 university-level courses (75.0 credit hours) with a major offered by the Faculty of Fine Arts.
Recommended Background: Experience with a digital audio workstation would be an asset.
NEW MEDIA
Emerging Video Technology
NMED 3850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
A studio intensive in moving image creation. Students are encouraged to pursue new innovations in video creation including immersive installation, 360° video, projection mapping and video applications for augmented and virtual reality.
Prerequisites: New Media 2030 or Third-year standing (a minimum of 60.0 credit hours) and a skills based assessment.
ART
Artist Books
ART 3015 A
3.0 Credit Hours
Performance Art
ART 3015 B
3.0 Credit Hours
This course will provide an introduction to performance art. Blending analysis of works by foundational and contemporary performance artists with hands-on embodied performance practice development, this course aims to give an overview of the history and practice of this complex form of meaning-making and question-asking. We will look at a range of works, focusing on contributions by artists who consider questions of gender, race and sexuality, power, place and institution through their performance work. The course will revisit canonical works by founding members of Indigenous and feminist movements from the 60s onward, as well as contemporary contributions from various queer, Black and Latinx cultural movements found globally. In performance workshops students will focus on core skills of performing using the body, gravity and time. Through a tacit process of experimentation, giving/receiving feedback, and project revision, students can expect to create works that examine intersections of performance with video, audio, object and site-specific influences.
Prerequisite: Four of: [Art 2005 or Art 2006], Art 2010, Art 2015, Art 2023, Art 2027, Art 2033, [Art 2060 or Art 2061], or Art 2350/Indigenous Studies 2350 AND 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours)
Senior Studio I & II
ART 4048 & 4049
6.0 Credit Hours
The following instructors will be available as supervising faculty members for the above mentioned classes in Spring 2023:
-
Annie Martin
Students who register for these courses will interview with each of the supervising faculty members to determine which faculty member will be their instructor of record. Students must ensure they are registered in the correct section of the course with their assigned instructor by the end of the add/drop period.
Gender, Sexuality, and Visual Culture
ARHI 4150 A
3.0 Credit Hours
This course aims to enable students to think critically about historical and contemporary visual representations of gender. In class students will read and examine a range of feminist, critical race, post-colonial, and queer theories to study the ways that gender, sexuality, race, and class have been taken up in visual representation. Students will explore ideas about representation, spectatorship, and the production of meaning in relation to issues of social difference. Students will examine and analyze gendered and sexualized images through the media, popular culture, and historical and contemporary art from an intersectional perspective to ask: How does visual culture shape historical and contemporary articulations of gender and sexuality? How do the power relations in specific socio-political contexts inform these representations?
Prerequisite: One of ARHI 1001 or ARHI 1001, and third-year standing (60.0 credit hours)
DRAMA
Narrative Development and Pre-Production
CINE 3850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
An exploration of script writing and the creative, technical, and logistical aspects of project development and pre-production for narrative short films and episodic web series.
Prerequisite: New Media 3420
Production and Stage Management
DRAM 3821 B
3.0 Credit Hours
Waking Death Through Art
DRAM 3850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
Can the Covid-19 pandemic become a turning point for our cultural approach to death, dying, and grief? What perspectives can the artistic imagination offer the inevitability that awaits us all? This course combines research and creative practice as a mode of inquiry into the vast subject of death. Open to all Drama Department and Faculty of Fine Arts students.
Prerequisite: 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours) in a Faculty of Fine Arts program
Practical Production Design
DRAM 3850 B
3.0 Credit Hours
An exploration of production design through participation in a faculty-supervised theatre production. Students with background in lighting, costume, and scenic design gain an understanding of concepts and principles through applied practical experience fulfilling assigned design responsibilities.
Prerequisite: Drama 2825 and 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours).
MUSIC
Rethinking Schubert: Recent Ideas, Discoveries, and Controversies Concerning the Life and Music of Franz Schubert
MUSI 3000 A
3.0 Credit Hours
For over a hundred years after his death and continuing well into the twentieth century the appreciation of Schubert’s music was coloured by prejudices and misunderstandings stemming from a lack of accurate information about his life and a negative comparison of his style with that of Beethoven. Beginning in the 1980’s a reappraisal of Schubert’s life and music has gathered momentum with new archival discoveries and a broad re-evaluation of his style and its meaning. This course will deal in depth with this new movement which now sees Schubert’s music as a particularly effective expression of yearning and alienation so prevalent in early Romantic aesthetics. We will first look at new biographical discoveries and controversies concerning Schubert’s life and then look at new attitudes towards and approaches to Schubert’s music—what it expresses and how it does so. There is a substantial analytical component to the course based upon William Caplin’s Theory of Formal Functions, which will be applied to Schubert’s music, both instrumental and vocal.
Prerequisite: Music 4660
History of Rock and Roll Since 1970
MUSI 3200 A
3.0 Credit Hours
This course is meant to be a follow‑up course to the History of Rock and Roll to 1970. It will cover the fragmentation of rock 'n' roll styles through the seventies and eighties and nineties, beginning with the trends of the late sixties, through the mass marketing of the early seventies, moving to the technological boom that characterized much of eighties rock and roll, and ending with rock alternatives and Alternative rock and roll from the nineties.
Equivalent: Music 3200 – History of Rock and Roll: 1968-1990
Prerequisite: 15 university-level courses (a minimum of 45.0 credit hours) - as per calendar
NOTE: Not counted in the 16-course Arts & Science major or the core courses in the B.Mus. degree
NOTE: Students with credit in Music 2850 (History of Rock ‘n Roll), 2850 (3850) (Popular Music in the 20th Century) or 3010 cannot receive credit for the same offering in the Music 3200 series.
NOTE: Credit is not allowed for MUSI 3200 – History of Rock and Roll, and either of MUSI 3200 - History of Rock and Roll: 1948-1970 or MUSI 3200 – History of Rock and Roll: 1968-1990.
World Instruments for Audio Engineers
MUSI 3850 N
3.0 Credit Hours
This course will introduce international musicians from countries like Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Philippines, India, Israel, Spain, and Peru. These guest speakers will present an instrument and music style that is native to their country. Students will learn about how these instruments are used to celebrate and preserve ceremonies, oral history, and other life events. Additionally, students will learn techniques to record instruments that are not commonly found in a recording studio. These instruments may include cuatro, cajon, qanun, djembe, surdo, repique, berimbau, and loud.
Prerequisite: Music 2550
Electronic and Popular Music Production
MUSI 4850 N
3.0 Credit Hours
Prerequisite:
NEW MEDIA
Typography
NMED 3850 A
3.0 Credit Hours
Games in Human History
NMED 3850 B
3.0 Credit Hours
This course provides a historical survey of games and the evolution of games across time and through various cultures, beginning with ancient board games (3500 BC) and ending with modern board, video, card, and war games. The course will cover the various functions which games have served (entertainment, gambling, status, competition) as well as the long-standing human interest in play, chance, rules, and competition. Emphasis will be placed on the evolution of games throughout history, the application of key technologies which have been used to create games (wood working, metallurgy, glass/stone work, paper and printing, electronics and computing), and the social structures and fandom which coalesce around games. An overarching goal will be to illustrate the similarities between ancient and modern forms of games, including the reasons and motivations which have throughout history drove humans to create and experiment with games.
Prerequisites: Third-year standing (a minimum of 60.0 credit hours)