Atlantic Canada Studies (ACST)

This course provides an introduction to the Atlantic Provinces. It will examine specific content areas from multiple perspectives, including cultural industries, health and social services, environmental issues, economic development, and representations of the region. This course is intended as an introduction to Atlantic Canada Studies and to interdisciplinary inquiry.

This course gives the student an introduction to the structure and use of Scottish Gaelic in a Nova Scotia context. Topics covered include grammar and conversation basics, traditional and new Gaelic songs, and conversation aimed at specific social occasions and locations.

This course gives the student a continuation of the introduction to the structure and use of Scottish Gaelic in a Nova Scotia context. Topics covered include grammar and conversation basics, traditional and new Gaelic songs, and conversation aimed at specific occasions and locations.

Students are introduced to the Mi’kmaw language through a consideration of its relationship to the people and land of Mi’kmaki. Students will examine basic word structure, Mi’kmaw songs, and specific social conversations and greetings.

Students examine the place-based structure of the Mi’kmaw language.

Students assess the significance of Nova Scotia’s rural landscapes by developing an understanding of their complex representations and histories. By using materials and approaches from both history and literature, students also explore the value of interdisciplinary research for generating new thinking about how the past can inform the future.

Ideas, attitudes, and assumptions about Atlantic Canada have been influenced by social, cultural, political, religious, and ethnic traditions inherited from the past. The curriculum of this course covers a wide range of topics from gender, refinement, material culture, dress, food, and conspicuous consumption, to political choices and ethnic biases. Lectures, readings, class discussions, and mixed media demonstrate how historical events and previous ways of behaving and thinking continue to influence social and cultural customs and decision-making.

There are many ways of interpreting the Atlantic Canadian experience. Individual disciplines (such as history, sociology, anthropology, economics, and biology) take different approaches, utilize different data, and present their research in different ways. All research, however, must be read with a critical eye. This course will expose students to a variety of ways of analyzing Atlantic Canada, focusing largely on qualitative research approaches and the human experience in the region.

This course gives the student an opportunity to advance from the introductory level in a structured environment. Topics covered include a review of grammar and conversation basics. Time will be spent on composition of short stories, translation of written and recorded Gaelic, traditional and new Gaelic songs, and poetry and conversation aimed at specific social occasions and locations.

This course gives the student an opportunity to advance from the introductory level in a structured environment. Topics covered include a review of grammar and conversation basics. Time will be spent on composition of short stories, translation of written and recorded Gaelic, traditional and new Gaelic songs, and poetry and conversation aimed at specific social occasions and locations.

Commencing with the earliest Native-European contact in the Atlantic Provinces, students in this course will examine the interactions among the peoples who inhabited the region up until the mid-nineteenth century. Major events, such as wars, treaties, and Confederation will also be considered.

Beginning with the post-Confederation era, and then moving into the phases of industrialization and deindustrialization, students will study social, economic, and political developments in the region up to the end of the twentieth century and beyond. Major events such as the two World Wars will also be considered.

An examination of the literature and literary background of Atlantic Canada. Emphasis in the first semester is on the 19th and early 20th centuries; in the second semester it is on contemporary writing.

This course is an exploration of the development of health and social policy in Atlantic Canada. The evolution of the welfare state, hospitals, training for health care workers, and contemporary health issues are examined.

Students analytically examine the evolution of sports such as soccer, rugby, Australian and North American football from the nineteenth century onwards, commencing with the earliest forms of vernacular football. Australian and North American football from the nineteenth century onwards. Although the scope will be international, special attention will be paid to Atlantic Canada.

Students analytically examine the evolution of sports such as shinty, hurling, field hockey, ice hockey, and sledge hockey from the nineteenth century onwards, commencing with the earliest forms of vernacular stick sports. Although the scope will be international, special attention will be paid to Atlantic Canada.

Students engage critically with texts (films and television shows) that tell stories about Atlantic Canada. They explore the ways the region and its citizens have been viewed historically as well as the contemporary visions of Atlantic Canada that circulate at the local, national, and transnational levels.

Students respond creatively and critically to archival materials, exploring the kinds of making (poiesis) that arise when we engage with research materials not only as texts and images but as physical objects in the world. Topics include the archive as muse, material meaning, and digital humanities. There will be one class visit made to the Saint Mary’s University archives, and students are required to visit at least one other archive in the community.

A study of the relationship between the material basis and political economy of the Atlantic fisheries since 1945. Stress will be placed on the scientific facts underlying the fisheries, and in particular, the qualities and quantities in the marine ecosystem that support them. A detailed study will also be made on the methods of fisheries science which are the basis of fish stock assessments by government scientists. Roughly the last third of the course will examine the effects of the livelihood of fishermen, of government policies respecting the fisheries, and the regional, national and international political forces which are behind federal government fisheries regulations.

This course examines on-going societal issues facing Atlantic Canadians. In a seminar setting, student teams and weekly guest speakers from non-government organizations, engage students in lively presentations about the current challenges facing those living and working in this region. Topics include arts and culture, poverty and homelessness, women, youth, crime, addictions, and concerns faced by aboriginal, black, Muslim, and immigrant communities. The structure of this course provides students a unique learning environment. NOTE: To maintain the structure of ACST 3312, it should be limited to 30 students, and as a 3000-level course not recommend to first year students.

Issues related to gender in Atlantic Canada are examined, including the individual body, the family, the economy, and the state. The experiences of women, men, and those who do not identify with either category are considered. Topics may include the gendering of government policy, class and cross-cultural perspectives on gender, and the gendered nature of work through examples drawn from throughout Atlantic Canada.

This course provides a basic understanding of African Nova Scotian culture. It introduces students to the history and cultural heritage of African Nova Scotian communities, their experience of life today, and the various forms of artistic expression produced by the culture. It also offers insight into the problems and concerns of African Nova Scotian communities and their historical and cultural connections with the Black Diaspora.

This interdisciplinary course will offer a survey of the history and culture of people of Irish descent in the Atlantic Region. Topics will include Irish settlement in the Atlantic Region, religion and politics, sectarian conflict, social status, community organizations and contemporary Irish identity in the Atlantic Region.

Students will explore the geographical diversity of the province, with particular emphasis on interrelationships between physical and human patterns. A section on the physical environment is followed by a discussion of settlement, cultural patterns, and economic development. Current issues of resource development, industrial reorganization, environmental management, and land use planning are addressed.

Students will examine indigenous peoples’ experiences in the Atlantic region and their varied relations with imperial and Canadian institutions. While the focus is on the Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet), and Passamaquoddy peoples, students will also explore the experiences of the Innu, Inuit, Métis, and other indigenous peoples of the region.

Students examine the history of the Foreign Protestants (Lunenburg Germans) in Nova Scotia from the founding of Lunenburg in 1753 to World War II. Topics include settlement history, material and cultural traditions, the persistence of their ethnic identity into the 20th century, their importance to 19th century fishing and shipbuilding, and the designation of “Old Town” Lunenburg as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Students examine the Romantic Era in Nova Scotia using a methodology that is part historical, part documentary, and part conceptual. The historical focus is on Maritime explorers and scientists between 1768 and 1836. The documentary focus is on how their discoveries led to the “making” of Nova Scotia. The conceptual focus is the impact of science and exploration on Romantic Literature.

The term the “Black Atlantic” has been used to describe the interconnected nature of Black communities in the Atlantic world. This course examines the British dimension of that transatlantic experience. Among topics covered are: Britain’s involvement in African slavery, the migration of Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, and the nature of the Black community in the United Kingdom.

Students examine transnational literatures from African, Caribbean, European and North American contexts with a focus on the multidirectional networks and the distinctive poetics of water that constitute the historical and literary formation of the black Atlantic. Writers examined may include; Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Derek Walcott, Dionne Brand, Lawrence Hill, Bernardine Evaristo and Caryl Phillips.

This seminar is an examination of health and medicine in contemporary Atlantic Canada through an interdisciplinary perspective. Emphasis is placed on the organization of health services, health policy, the role of voluntary groups and agencies, and the experiences of health and illness in a regional context.

This course will provide an opportunity for students to integrate their knowledge of Atlantic Canada in an interdisciplinary fashion. Drawing upon the expertise of a number of guest speakers familiar with various aspects of Atlantic Provinces life, the course will deal with such topics as the Atlantic fishery, agriculture, industry and labour, business enterprise, regional protest and cultural ethnicity.

These courses will provide an opportunity for honours students to integrate their knowledge in an interdisciplinary fashion.

Public history includes the practices and presentation of history outside academia involving a wide range of practitioners - from historians, museum curators, and film makers, to researchers, journalists, and archivists. This course will examine the evolution of public history as a discipline and a practice through both a classroom and a workplace component - including mentored volunteer work in a public history setting.

In this seminar course students will examine contemporary issues facing First Nations and Inuit communities in Atlantic Canada. Students will be introduced to the challenges facing Indigenous Peoples in an age of increasing globalization, radical environmental change, and complex economic development, as they struggle to reassume self-government.

From the late eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, Scotland had one of the highest emigration rates in Europe. This seminar course will examine a wide range of literature that discusses Scottish migration to various overseas destinations in order to place the Scottish presence in Nova Scotia in historical context.

This interdisciplinary seminar course is an examination of the changing ways nature has been viewed and transformed in Atlantic Canada before and after European settlement, surveying environmental history up to the mid-20th century. Topics range from historic aboriginal resource use to colonial perceptions of nature and the early conservation movement.

Ecology provides the background for considering the many social, economic, political, and philosophical dimensions of environmental and resource use in Atlantic Canada today. In this interdisciplinary seminar course, students examine contemporary regional ecological concerns through the study of concepts such as environmentalism, sustainability, environmental governance, and ecological literacy.

Reading landscapes is an interdisciplinary investigation of the relationship between natural history, ecology, and human activity in a regional context. In this seminar course students examine the ecology and environment of Atlantic Canada by exploring a range of landscapes that include forests, marshlands, beaches, rivers, fields, and urban streets.