May 05, 2024  
2021-2022 Academic Calendar 
    
2021-2022 Academic Calendar [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Course Descriptions


 

History

  
  • HIS - 111 Canadian History: Pre-Confederation

    3 Credit(s)
    This course provides a general chronological overview of Canadian history in the pre-Confederation era. It introduces some of the major political, social and economic events that shaped early Canadian development.

    Prerequisite(s):
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  • HIS - 112 Canadian History: 1867-Present

    3 Credit(s)
    This introductory course provides an overview of Canadian history since 1867, concentrating on the main lines of political, social and economic development. It analyses important issues such as the Riel Rebellion, the shift from a rural to an urban society, the effects of the two World Wars, the Great Depression, the relations between English and French Canadians, and provincial demands for autonomy.

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  • HIS - 120 World History to 1000

    3 Credit(s)
    This course surveys world civilizations from ancient times to the beginning of the Medieval era. It will include study of such areas of history as ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Japan and India; classical Greece and Rome; Africa and pre-contact America; and Islam, Byzantium, Western Christendom. The focus will be upon identifying broad themes, issues and patterns in world history, and upon accounting for political, social, cultural, intellectual, religious and economic change.

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  • HIS - 122 The Contemporary World

    3 Credit(s)
    HIS 122 seeks to place contemporary international affairs within a broad historical and analytical perspective. The course highlights a number of events, trends and themes that have shaped the history of both individual nations and the international system since the end of World War II. Topics to be studied will include the history of the Cold War; decolonization and the struggle of developing nations to gain political and economic stability; the ‘rise’ of Asia: the Arab-Israeli Conflict; the Islamic resurgence; the collapse of Soviet-style communism and the nature of conflict in the post-Cold War world; the development of the global economy since Bretton Woods; and the relationship between the history of international institutions and world issues since 1945.

    Prerequisite(s):
    For information about transferability: BCTransferGuide.ca





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  • HIS - 135 World Mythology

    3 Credit(s)
    The secret of life, explains the sacred tavern-keeper Siduri in an ancient Sumerian epic, is that there is no secret. “When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping”, he tells the king Gilgamesh. “Fill your belly with good things, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.” This course will in some ways defy the strictures of Utnapishtim in returning to the questions that rest at the centre of world mythology. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the nature of the cosmos? What is the relationship between the individual, the family, the community and the transcendent? How are life and death intertwined? We will discuss such questions in a philosophical context but the thrust of the course will be to use an historical and comparative framework that analyzes particular mythic traditions. Rather than attempt to encompass all of world mythology within a one-term course, we will focus upon the myths of Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Northern Europe, Mesoamerica and the Pacific Northwest as case studies.

    Prerequisite(s):
    For information about transferability: BCTransferGuide.ca





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  • HIS - 205 Travels in Time

    3 Credit(s)
    9 hrs. seminar
    Those who would dare are invited to step into the North Island College time machine. Walk the streets of ancient Pompeii. Contemplate the accomplishments of Incan Civilization from the heights of Machu Picchu. Listen for the sound of the Minotaur below as you stand in the palace at Knossos. This course combines intensive study of one historical theme or civilization with a two-to-three-week international tour. Typically, Travels in Time will only be offered in the Spring semester and will feature a short series of preparatory lectures and seminars followed by the trip. The class will conclude with a couple of meetings upon the group’s return. The academic demands in HIS 205 will be significant but are meant to accentuate rather than to detract from the travel experience.

    Prerequisite(s):
    For information about transferability: BCTransferGuide.ca





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  • HIS - 215 History of Modern Europe I

    3 Credit(s)
    This course surveys the world of early modern Europe from the flowering of the Renaissance in Italy and northern Europe, through the age of the religious wars in the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment, and developments in eastern Europe and Russia, culminating in the great watershed of the French Revolution. In addition to covering military and political developments, the course also describes the changes wrought in the social and economic lives of the people of the emerging nation states of Europe.

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  • HIS - 216 History of Modern Europe II

    3 Credit(s)
    After a brief exploration of earlier 18th Century events, this course begins with the causes, course and consequences of the French Revolution. This survey course will then examine the major events of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Particular emphasis will be placed on industrialization, the growth of the nation state and imperialism. Social change will also be examined.

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  • HIS - 220 War, Memory, Myth and History

    3 Credit(s)
    Since wars begin in the minds of men, reads the UNESCO charter, “it is in the minds of men that we have to erect the ramparts of peace.” This course explores how humans have struggled to understand, memorialize, and learn from war. Although the course uses a comparative thematic approach, there is a heavy emphasis upon twentieth-century wars, since this will both provide focus and allow us to probe the politicized relationship between lived memory and history. “War,” notes the journalist Chris Hedges, “is a force that gives us meaning.” This course will use monuments, memorials, museums, myths, paintings, photographs, weapons, flags, cartoons, family stories, novels, and movies as sources for thinking about the ways in which war is remembered and defined.

    Prerequisite(s):
    For information about transferability: BCTransferGuide.ca





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  • HIS - 225 History of British Columbia

    3 Credit(s)
    Major historical events are discussed, and their significance analyzed, in this survey course on British Columbia’s history. The roles played by economics, geography, politics and social factors in shaping the province’s development will also be examined.

    Prerequisite(s):
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  • HIS - 232 United States History Since 1877

    3 Credit(s)
    This course addresses the political, economic and social development of the American republic from the end of Reconstruction to the present day. Major themes will include urbanization, industrialization, western settlement, Progressivism, World War One, the Great Depression, World War Two, the Cold War and rise to Super Power Status, and civil rights.

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  • HIS - 245 Empire Matters: A Comparative History of Empire

    3 Credit(s)
    What comes to mind when you think of empire? Perhaps it conjures the treachery of the Galactic Empire in Star Wars? Maybe it evokes current critiques of the American Empire or the rise and reach of multinational corporate empires like Walmart, ExxonMobil, Apple, or Microsoft (to name a few)? Or possibly you think about the reach, wealth, and legacies of the Roman or British Empires?

    Whatever the thought: empire and the history of empire matter. Though we live in the age of the nation-state, empire has been the standard under which most humans have lived, dreamed, organized, and, sometimes, rebelled. Further, the consequences of empire reverberate to this day in the nation-state (a reaction to empire), globalization (a re-imagining of empire), colonialism (a tool of empire), and anti-colonialism (a response to empire).

    This course will broadly examine the history of the world’s “great” empires. In doing so, it will compare and contrast such empires to consider and define the idea and character of empire. It will explore notions of how empires came to be, justified their existence, succeeded, and (often) failed. It will also consider the role of the colonized within empire exploring how empires related to such peoples but also how the colonized themselves experienced, participated in, and resisted empire.

    Prerequisite(s):


    For information about transferability: BCTransferGuide.ca





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  • HIS - 246 Domination and Resistance: A History of Imperialism and Colonialism

    3 Credit(s)
    One does not need to look hard in our contemporary world to see the legacies of imperialism and colonialism that are being exposed, debated, and contested. Recent examples abound from Black Lives Matters to protests by the Wetʼsuwetʼen or Native Americans at Standing Rock to calls for changes to the names of sports franchises. In Canada, we continue to grapple with the legacies of colonialism against Indigenous peoples which have created reserve systems, the Indian Act, and a host of assimilatory practices. More broadly there exists a “Third World” throughout former colonial contexts in the Americas, Africa and Asia. The reverberations of imperialism and colonialism are constant and ever more apparent.

    This course will explore the nature of imperialism and colonialism largely in the context of the world’s European empires (and their successor nation-states) from the 16th century onward. It will seek to define the nature and characteristics of imperialism and colonialism by exploring the breadth and scope through which they were and are employed in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Significant attention will be paid to the history of settler colonialism as it relates to the British Empire and the nation-states which followed in its wake - Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Importantly, this course will also explore the ways in which imperialism and colonialism have been resisted by the colonized. It will also consider the current post-colonial age and the ways in which de-colonization and neo-colonialism are at work in the 20th century and beyond.

    Prerequisite(s):


    For information about transferability: BCTransferGuide.ca





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  • HIS - 260 Historical Reactions to Criminal and Deviant Behaviour

    3 Credit(s)
    Once upon a time, a shipwrecked sailor washed up upon distant shores. He wondered about where he was. Then he saw a scaffold and gallows. “Thank god, “he exhaled, “I am in a civilized country.” What is the relationship between civilization, crime and punishment? Why have dead bodies been the symbol of law at some times and places but not at others? Why did criminal trials begin? How can we account for the replacement of torture and the “bloody scaffold” with the rise of the penitentiary? This course will ask such questions as it provides an historical perspective on changing definitions of deviancy, societal reactions to violent or criminal activity, and public policies to counteract prohibited behaviour. The time span and geographical range will be vast; we will range from the Mesopotamia of 3,000 BCE to 21st-century North America. To provide focus, the curriculum will be organized around four intensive case studies: Crime and Punishment in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean; Early Modern and Industrial Britain; American Justice from Colonial Times to Court T.V.; and Reactions to Crime and Deviance in 19th and 20th Century Canada and British Columbia.

    Prerequisite(s):
    For information about transferability: BCTransferGuide.ca





    For more information visit our timetable