First-Year Foundations@Innis
FYF@Innis Seminars
For 2026-27 there are 12 FYF@Innis seminars, each at a credit weight of 0.5 FCEs. All are taught by leading professors who are dedicated to engaging and supporting first-year Innis students.
Browse through this year’s course listings, below, to discover what’s being offered. See what you’re interested in, and then visit the individual seminar pages for more information.
Fall 2026 Seminars
Professor: Chris Johnson
Course Code: HIS190H1F
This first-year seminar explores radical traditions of education beyond and in resistance to formal schooling. Transnational in scope — and journeying from the late nineteenth century to the present day — we will study the pedagogical innovations and grassroots struggles of anarchic youth, guerrilla intellectuals, and feminist revolutionaries who used education broadly, and historical inquiry in particular, as tools for empowerment and collective liberation.
Professor: Rachel Silvey
Course Code: GGR198H1F
This course examines the political geographies of transnational migration, asking how spaces of migration and mobility are political — and how migration politics are tied to inequalities wrought through intersecting histories of race, class, and gender. We extend our understandings of migrants, borders, and mobility, and explore the processes through which mobility is produced, delimited, and structured. We also consider the transnational politics of migration, the militarization of border zones, and the political spaces of migrant displacement, dispossession, and dislocation.
Professor: Naomi Seidman
Course Code: RLG191H1F
This seminar will construct a history of night in its religious dimensions, ranging far and wide among eras and societies. We will ask quite like: Is religion a phenomenon linked with the daytime and its illumination, or can we point to religious practices and beliefs intertwined with nighttime and darkness? Our moonlight journey will follow a number of keywords: Creation, Darkness, Secrets, Sleep, Dreams, Sex, Visions, Prayer, Stars, and Gatherings.
Professor: Eva-Lynn Jagoe
Course Code: SPA196H1F
This course examines economic and social inequalities in the contemporary Americas. We look at the ways in which class divisions are represented in academic studies, literature, film, and television. From Mexican maquiladoras to Indigenous reservations, we consider the global poor and how recent changes in the character of work (automation, outsourcing, free trade zones) have had an impact on class divisions, especially for younger members of society. Can a renewed understanding of class and work help us to negotiate power, privilege, and inequality in this century?
Professor: Elizabeth Legge
Course Code: FAH198H1F
Art works and art exhibitions cause scandals called "moral panics" for many reasons. Some of the public may have aesthetic objections: they may think a given work is ugly or too big or just too "abstract" to be meaningful. Other works strike some people as obscene, or racist or sacrilegious. Today, what do we make of these scandals once we know the historical contexts in which they arose? The larger question is: does art matter?
Professor: Nadine Chan
Course Code: CIN196H1F
Films create story worlds, imaginary environments in which characters live and act, and where events, large and small, transpire. Some story worlds are elaborate, fanciful constructs while others seem to capture the look and feel of the ‘real’ world. Understanding the rules of time and space in story worlds helps us understand cinema as a unique art form.
Professor: Andrea Williams
Course Code: INI196H1F
From environmental disasters and ecological collapse to climate change denial and celebrations of nature and wilderness, we will explore the diverse ways humans imagine and write about the natural world and the consequences of such writing. We will study a variety of nonfiction texts, images, and videos about ecology, the environment, nature, wilderness, and sustainability as we consider what these terms mean.
Winter 2027 Seminars
Professor: Patricia Mockler
Course Code: POL192H1S
POL192H1 introduces students to citizen political participation in democracies, with a focus on Canadian case studies. We examine theories of political participation and a range of methods by which citizens engage in political life including social movements, political party membership, deliberative mini-publics and more. We will also examine debates about the appropriate role for citizens in governance and considers barriers to equity in political participation in Canada.
Professor: Hang-Sun Kim
Course Code: GER195H1S
Cities have been described as places of desire and places of fear. They pulse with life, bringing together people from different class, gender, and ethnic backgrounds, simultaneously giving rise to a sense of freedom and oppression, a sense of belonging and alienation. This course will explore the city as a physical reality that shapes our lives, but is also a projection of our deepest imaginings. Through readings of philosophical and sociological texts by influential theorists of the city, we will consider various ancient and modern conceptions of urban space and subjectivity. Alongside these theoretical readings, we will also examine literary and filmic representations of the city as a space of desire, memory and power.
Professor: Andrea Cortinois
Course Code: CSB196H1S
With the completion of the human genome sequence, we now have access to more information than ever before about our genetic make-up. This course addresses topics such as what are genes, how are they identified and how does knowledge about genes impact society. Students will learn basic concepts in genetics. Using this conceptual foundation, the significance of genomic research for understanding human biology, and the social consequences that may result from it, will be discussed. Evaluation is based on class discussions, homework, oral presentations and written assignments.
Professor: Amenda Chow
Course Code: MAT195H1S
MAT195 explores the appearance of mathematics in our everyday world. This will be achieved by learning mathematical concepts, conducting experiments, using mathematical software — including Phyphox, GeoGebra, and Excel — and playing with physical models.
Professor: Alberto Zambenedetti
Course Code: CIN198H1S
Given that thinking is an act of inquiry and that film is both a subject and object of such reflection, this course focuses on both how one does the fundamental work of Cinema Studies as a discipline, but also engages in the broader questions that films at their most capacious pose for us: questions of listening, seeing, responding to, thinking with, and being shaped by cinema as an audiovisual medium.
Have a question?
Need more info about FYF@Innis seminars? Not sure which courses are right for you? We can help. Contact our program coordinator, Rima Oassey.