Fall 2024 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. 

Fall session courses begin on September 3, 2024 and end on December 2, 2024.

Course Descriptions 

GGR1105H - MA Core Course  

This course will feature a discussion of a number of issues pertaining to what life is like as an academic and some of the related skills and experiences that go along with it (e.g., the tenure process, journal peer review processes, tips on how to publish journal articles, research collaboration, conference presentations, teaching, the academic job market, relationship between academia and the wider world, public intellectualism, theoretical versus applied work, etc.). In addition, it will include engagement with non-academic career trajectories, including how skills and experiences from graduate school can contribute to (or hinder?) success in policy deliberations, activism, government and non-profit work, etc. It will also encompass an overview of non-profit work, major debates in the field, and of theory and explanation in geography. The course incorporates a workshop on proposal writing or research statement element for MA students. 

GGR1110H - PhD Core Course: Geographic Thought and Practice 

How do geographers go about addressing the challenges and problems of the world? How does the wider context (social, institutional, environmental….geographical!) shape the kinds of issues geographers examine, how these issues are framed, and how they are addressed? How do broad intellectual currents influence the work that is done in geography (and vice versa), and how do we understand the relationships between the broad intellectual currents and the “world out there”? Consistent with current emphasis in critical geography, all geographers, whether explicit or not, are using both theory and so politics in their work, along with some implicit or explicit problem statement in framing what they look at and what are they trying to explain. Even the choice of phenomena to examine is a political choice. Thinking carefully about these issues helps to understand the relationship between scholarship (geographical or otherwise) and the “real world”, while at the same time facilitating reflexive and careful consideration of research topics and approaches. This is, in our view, preferable to relying uncritically on policy or academic discourses and their prevailing theories, debates, questions, and approaches. 

GGR1200H - Physical Geography Core Course 

This is a mandatory core course for all first year physical geography (MSc and PhD) graduate students. The main objective is to introduce students to successful approaches in graduate school and for conducting scientific research. Specifically, topics will include: fellowship application, literature review, experimental design, presentation skills, proposal preparation, and disseminating scientific research. It also will provide an overview of physical geography as a discipline and include guest presentations by members of each of the four newly established physical geography research clusters. The course will foster intellectual interactions and build support within student cohorts and include mandatory attendance at departmental and university seminar series. Doctoral students who completed their Master’s in Physical Geography in this department and who took this course as a Master’s student are exempted from taking this course as part of their doctoral course work. Following discussion between student, supervisor, and the Associate Chair, Graduate, exemption from this course may also be granted to certain PhD students who have taken an equivalent course as part of their MSc program. 

GGR1407H - Efficient Use of Energy

The course examines the options available for dramatically reducing our use of primary energy with no reduction in meaningful energy services, through more efficient use of energy at the scale of energy-using devices and of entire energy systems. Topics covered include energy use in buildings, transportation, industry, and agriculture. Each topic will cover (i) the underlying physical principles that determine the potential of and the limits to energy efficiency improvements, (ii) the difference in potential savings when focusing on individual energy using devices rather than entire energy-using systems, (iii) examples of efficiency improvements that have been achieved in practice in various countries around the world, and (iv) the cost and financing of energy efficiency improvements. As well, the role of the so-called rebound effect in eroding the energy-saving benefit of efficiency improvements will be discussed.

GGR1912H - Advanced Remote Sensing

This is an advanced remote sensing course emphasizing the quantitative approaches for the analysis of satellite remote sensing data. Examples of topics that may be covered include preprocessing of remote sensing data, biophysical parameter extraction, linear feature extraction, conventional and object-oriented image classification, mapping uncertainty assessment, spatial statistical methods, change detection, and spatial-temporal modelling. For each of these topics, focus will be on the algorithms and technical details on how these image processing capabilities are implemented. After taking this class students will be able to actually implement the advanced remote sensing techniques to their own research, rather than just understanding the fundamentals.

JPG1503H - Space, Time, Revolution

This seminar explores historical, geographical, and political aspects of revolution. This semester, we will approach key issues of space, time and revolution by engaging some influential reflections on history, studies of production of space and conceptions dialectics, ideology and subjectivity, in order to make sense of their relevance to radical politics positioned within—and against—historical geographies of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. This theoretical work will be complemented by surveys of exemplary revolutionary experiences, such as the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside internationalist anti-colonial struggles. While addressing strategic questions posed by them, this course interrogates subjective and objective conditions of revolutionary politics—past, present and future.

JPG1507H - Housing Markets and Housing Policy Analysis 

The objective of this course is to provide an opportunity for in-depth analyses of housing, as both product and process, and to apply these analyses to concrete housing situations and current policy and planning problems. Two principal themes are emphasized: 1) assessments of changes in the structural and spatial dimensions of housing demand and supply, and alternative modes of housing provision; and 2) evaluations of housing policies and programs and their relationships to social and economic policies and urban planning. The latter will be undertaken primarily through the discussion of case studies of specific problems and policy issues, the former through a review of basic concepts on housing in the first few weeks of class. 

JPG1512H - Place, Politics and the Urban

The course examines the relationship between urban geography, planning and politics. In particular, it seeks to interrogate the theoretical importance of place, space and urban form in the production of political and social values, practices, strategies, and discourses, and in turn, analyze the implications of the place-politics nexus for understanding shifts in the direction and form of urban policy, governance, identity and citizenship. The course begins with a broad examination of the theoretical bases for linking place and politics, particularly as this relates to the construction of urban and non-urban places, with literature drawn from a number of sources, including geography, urban studies, political science, and planning theory. The course then examines a number of specific cases, including but limited to: the politics of automobility, gentrification as a political practice, the politics of community and neighbourhood aesthetics, the politics of homelessness and anti-panhandling legislation, the politics of suburbanization, the privatization of public space, the right to the city… topics that inform and challenge our understanding of the relationship between place and political praxis, and the political construction of the city. 

JPG1616H - The Cultural Economy 

This course examines the so-called “cultural turn” in economic geography, often referred to as “the new economic geography”. We will begin by considering various ways of theorizing the relationship between culture and economy. After reflecting upon the historical antecedents of contemporary understandings of this relationship, we will explore selected themes in the cultural economy literature such as cultural industries, consumption, economic discourse, work cultures, governmentality and commodity chains/actor networks. 

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.

JPG1909H - Advanced Space-time Data Analysis and Visualization

This course is designed for graduate students in a workshop format with a focus on both theories and applications of space-time data analysis and visualization. Topics may include space-time data collection, processing, analysis, and visualization, as well as theories and applications of up-to-date GIS analysis methods and the newly developed data mining techniques. Gaining practical experience using real-world datasets, students will learn the necessary knowledge and various tools for space-time data analysis and visualization. The course encompasses theoretical instruction and practical training in GIS programming and software with the use of multiple space-time datasets that may include GPS trajectory data, Geotagged social media data, and others.

PLA2000H - Advanced Planning Theory

In this course we collaboratively map the territory of planning theory, exploring and describing those areas of the theoretical landscape that resonate with your research and practice. We draw on interdisciplinary literature and philosophies, grounded in case studies. The role of the planning academic and our responsibility to urban issues are discussed. Themes of transformation, policy and power, representation and culture, displacement and inequity, public space and urban form, mobility and movement are woven throughout.

PLA2001H - Planning Colloquium

This is a CR/NCR seminar series in which faculty members, students and invited speakers will present and discuss the findings of their current research.