Winter 2025 Graduate Geography Timetable

The below timetable is subject to change.  

Courses marked with an asterisk (*) are offered through affiliated departments. Please contact the host department for enrolment instructions.  

Geography & Planning students have priority enrolment for geography, courses are available online via ACORN starting on August 1, 2024. Course enrolment for students from other departments is available online via ACORN on August 23, 2024.

The department does not require any forms from students outside the department – if space is available students are welcome to enroll using ACORN. If space is not available, students can add themselves to a waitlist (if there is no waitlist in ACORN it means the course is not open to students outside Geography & Planning).   

Students can access course materials on Quercus.  

Building locations for STG can be found on the STG campus map. 

Winter session courses begin on January 6, 2025 and end on April 4, 2025.

Course Descriptions 

GGR1218H - Open Course Methods in Physical Geography 

Quantitative research in physical geography and the earth sciences has increasingly relied on custom, open-source coding solutions in programming languages such as R and MATLAB in order to efficiently mine large datasets and analyze and visualize spatiotemporal phenomena. This course provides hands-on, workshop-based training in two of the most widely used programming languages in the geosciences, R and MATLAB. The workshops will focus on applications of data mining, exploration and management; working with self-describing, multi-dimensional data formats (e.g., NetCDF); publication-quality figures and data visualization; statistical analysis; linear regression modelling; time-series and signal processing; and mapping. Students will complete four assignments to hone their coding and problem-solving skills, and a final project that applies these skills to their research. This course is specifically aimed at students with little to no coding experience. Students interested in taking this course are strongly encouraged to contact the professor before the start of the semester to discuss your motivations in taking the course and research interests so that lessons can be customized to the broad interests of the class as much as possible. 

GGR1315H - The Cryosphere: Canada’s Frozen Environment

Snow and ice dominate the Canadian landscape. There is virtually no area in Canada which escapes the influence of snow and ice. We skate on frozen ponds, ski down snow laden mountains, drive through snow blizzards and watch how ice jams in rivers cause rivers to swell and floods to occur. The duration and the thickness of snow and ice increase rapidly northwards, and glaciers are found in mountainous areas and in large parts of the Arctic region. Given that snow and ice impact heavily on the Canadian way of life, this course seeks to understand the dynamics of snow and ice in a hydrological context.  This course will examine snow properties, snowcover distribution, glacier hydrology, melt runoff, and ice in its many forms (lake ice, river ice, sea ice, and ground ice). This course will also examine some of the recent observed changes occurring in the cryosphere regions of Canada. This course includes a 2-day field trip (participation can be discussed on an individual basis).

GGR1404H - Global Warming

A comprehensive and critical treatment of the greenhouse gas/global warming issue and its relationship to other atmospheric environmental problems. Topics covered are: Energy and emission scenarios, the carbon cycle, the climate response; impacts on agriculture, forests, water supply, sea level and ecosystems; technical solutions, government policy options, citizen activism, and individual actions. By the end of course you should be able explain in simple terms the basic features of the climate and carbon cycle response to human emissions of greenhouse gases and the reasons for these features, be aware of the varying degrees of certainty or uncertainty associated with the major projected  changes and the associated risks and understand what would need to be done to limit the damage and how it could be done in broad terms. Most importantly, you should be able to see the flaws in the common pseudo-scientific global warming denial arguments,  and hopefully you’ll also want to get involved in solving this very difficult problem!

JPG1130H - Qualitative Data Analytics: Coding, Interpreting, and Writing Qualitative Research

This course will train students to analyze qualitative data and write up findings from their research. It is designed for students who have already taken a qualitative methods course that provides training on data collection, such as interviewing, ethnographic observation, conducting focus groups, or discourse analysis. Our course will focus exclusively on the data analysis and writing phase and will help students to work with and interpret their data. 

JPG1400H - Advanced Quantitative Methods

Spatial Analysis consists of set of techniques used for statistical modeling and problem solving in Geography. As such, it plays an integral role in the detection of spatial processes and the identification of their causal factors. It is therefore a key component in one’s preparation for applied or theoretical quantitative work in GIScience, Geography, and other cognate disciplines. Space, of course, is treated explicitly in spatial analytical techniques, and the goal of many methods is to quantify the substantive impact of location and proximity on human and environmental processes in space.

JPG1429H - Political Ecology of Food and Agriculture 

Agrifood systems, connecting production and consumption, markets and various types of agrarian labour, are undergoing profound social and ecological change. Among these developments are large-scale land grabs, the financialization of food and farming, challenges to settler agriculture and the resurgence of indigenous food systems, the emergence of robust ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ alternatives to industrial and colonial agriculture. In trying to make sense of these changes, and the various social movements that have emerged in their wake, this course deploys the related paradigms of agrarian political economy and political ecology to analyze the forces and social relations that define land-based and food-focused transformations, both historically and in the contemporary moment. The course examines the often forgotten roots of contemporary debates in political ecology and food, that is, the enduring agrarian question. The agrarian question examines the extent to which capital has transformed agricultural production and the degrees to which producers have been able to resist dispossession and the industrialization and capitalization of agriculture. The course starts with foundational perspectives on the agrarian question from the early 20th century before discussing the renaissance of these debates in the 1970s and 1980s and the emergence during this time of political ecology as a critical approach to the study of food and land-based practices. Updating these earlier debates the course tackles a number of defining contemporary developments, as noted above, that are reshaping the meaning and character of land and food. 

JPG1502H - Global Urbanism and Cities of the Global South

In this course we will critically examine “global urbanism” while paying explicit attention to how cities of global South have been studied, understood and depicted in global urban research. In the past two decades, influential policymakers have promulgated the “global cities” paradigm, which frames 21st century urbanism in global terms. According to the “global cities” paradigm “global” cities of the North, such as New York, London and Tokyo are at the pinnacle of globalization. In contrast, cities of the global South are consistently portrayed as “mega” cities that are disorderly, polluted, chaotic, ungovernable, and marked by infrastructure collapse. In short, cities of the global South are mega cities with mega problems. In this course we will begin by examining policy-oriented as well as academic literature in order to understand how the global cities paradigm was given coherence and propagated across the world.

JPG1812Y - Planning for Change: Community Development in Practice

Planning for Change is a full-year service-learning course that facilitates practical experience in community-engaged planning. Service-learning is a reciprocal work placement between students and community partners. Students are placed with a public or non-profit sector organization for one day per week, on average, from early October to late March to work in community development and planning. Placement organizations practice a range of planning-related work, including housing, transportation, social planning, and environmental initiatives. We meet as a class in a seminar format to support the students’ work, reflect on theory and practice, and to learn from one another’s experiences.  This is a challenging course that applies theory to practice (praxis). This works well when students are matched with placements by skills and interests and are open to learning and contributing. It is also important that community partners be able to offer enough guidance and structure to support the work while allowing the student(s) to develop their skills and experience. Our community partners value your work, and we maintain ongoing relationships with them. This placement can fulfill MSc Pl students’ internship requirement.

JPG1813H - Social Planning and Policy 

The world is seeing a clear resurgence of the urgency of directly and explicitly addressing the needs of equity deserving groups in a way that builds on but goes beyond the remit of identity politics. We now have a much richer understanding of the socially structurally and institutionally embedded nature of identity politics -- rather than simply the false assignation of identity as constituted through biology, movements like Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, CRIP and MAD movements, etc., have brought a deeper understanding of how policy planning and practice perpetuate structures of inequality. Key to a justice approach to social policy and planning is understanding how policy shapes a landscape of inclusion and exclusion and how ordinary people come to be “read”, rightly or wrongly, as particular subjects based on the prescriptive aspects of policy.    

We are now at a moment when diverse social movements are beginning to take upon themselves the reimagining or promotion of much more ambitious alternative modes of governance, which would replace rather than simply amend existing structures. This can be found in widespread calls for the redesign of institutional landscapes, from defunding of the police to expansive programs of truth and reconciliation. This course in social policy and planning calls upon us to rethink participation, consultation, experiential knowledge and our engagement as planners with existing power structures – this is not the moment to abandon social planning, but the time to reinvent it. 

JPG1814H - Cities and Immigrants

Globalization processes and changes in immigration laws in recent decades have led to an upsurge in cross-border movement of people and ushered in sequential waves of immigration from various regions of the world to Canada and the U.S. Cities and their adjoining metropolitan areas are the biggest beneficiaries of these changing dynamics where immigrants are important contributors to economic growth and social reinvigoration. This course will examine the dynamics and changing patterns of immigrant integration in cities and urban locations. Topics of focus will include theories of immigrant integration, socio-spatial patterns of immigrant settlements in cities, labour market participation, socio-cultural identity formation and transnational engagements. The course will rely on contemporary examples and case studies to provide a deeper understanding of how immigrants are shaping dynamics within cities.

JPG1817H - Geographies of Drug Use: History, Power and Space

How did colonial regimes use psychoactive substances to intensify labor? In what ways do drug laws deepen racial inequalities across the world? What are the roots of the opioid crisis? How have activists forced cities to embrace ‘harm reduction’ approaches that challenge punitive responses to drugs? This course is an interdisciplinary endeavor to consider these and related questions. Bringing geography into tension with history, anthropology, sociology, and planning, the course’s emphasis is on social context of drug use rather than an individual’s addiction/dependence. Examples are taken from Canada, the US, South Africa, Iran, and other settings.

JPG1825H - Black Geographies of the Atlantic 

Beyond a physical region, the Atlantic can be understood as a site through which techniques for the exploitation of land, people and the environment emerged, with enduring implications for world trajectories. This course traces a genealogy of contested spacetimes spanning the colonial state, the plantation, and urban neighborhoods and streets. We learn about representations of Blackness as they are made and remade through time such as: the “dangerous Blacks” of the Haitian revolution; the British West Indian ex-slave “unwilling" to work; a sanitized version of the Black small farmer; the anti-colonialist land invader; and the “illegal squatter” who is no longer recognized as a descendant of Black refusal. Among the traditions we explore are rebellion, revolution, and quotidian acts of place-making through farming, fishing, street vending, beauty services, taxi operation, masquerade, and dwelling. Through these representations and practices we explore the epistemologies of this ongoing encounter and also work to uncover the gendering of complex racial formations. 

The course is formed through the lens of Black Geographies, an interdisciplinary approach that acknowledges (1) the spatial and cultural productions of Black people as significant and coherent critiques of dominance and injustice; (2) the visions of alternate futures for the world within these critiques; and (3) the centrality of Black geographies to the way the world works—not at the margins, but as co-producers of space.