Courses

Courses at the Centre are taught by both Core and Non-core faculty at Western, as well emeritus faculty and visiting lecturers.

NEW 2024-25 COURSES

Fall 2024

Course # Title Instructor Day & Time Category
9148 Earth Aesthetics in the Information Age Russell Duvernoy Monday [C]
9211 Machiavelli and Us Julian J. Haladyn Monday [C]
9230 Cybernetics, Complexity, Chaos and Critical Theory Nick Witheford Tuesday [B]
9125 Playing at the Absolute: On Games, Thought, Politics, and Time M. Curtis Allen Thursday [A]

Winter 2025

Course # Title Instructor Day & Time Category
9346 Agamben’s Philosophical Archeology: An Historiographical Research Method Ed Matthews

 Monday

[C]
9501 Theories, Practices, and Politics of Sound and Silence Christof Migone

 Tuesday

[A]
9628 What Is Philosophy? Philosophy and Theory from the Late Eighteenth- to Twentieth Century Tilottama Rajan

 Wednesday

[A]
9326 Ways of Seeing, Ways of Listening Sharon Sliwinski

 Wednesday

[A]
9639 Deleuze and Psychoanalysis John Vanderheide  Thursday [C]
9130 Capital & Ressentiment: Intersections of Marx and Nietzsche Matt Stahl  Friday [B]

* please contact the program for course location, days and times

Master's students are required to fulfill a “breadth requirement” by taking at least one half course from each of groups A & B:

Group A: aesthetics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, language theory
Group B: social, cultural and political theory
Group C: topical focus covering theorist(s) from the above areas, as well as 19th-century, modern, and contemporary theory

More information on Course Requirements can be found here.
Course Enrolment Forms can be found here

Historical course offerings:

2023-24

9151 - The Frankfurt School: The “Origins” of Critical Theory - Jeremy Arnott [C]

9154 - The Philosophy of Hannah Arendt: Rethinking the Social and the Political - Antonio Calcagno [B]

9202 - Bergson – Cine-Perception - Janelle Blankenship [A]

9224 - Cosmovisions from the South: Decolonial epistemologies and the praxis of decolonization - Lucas Savino [B]

9324 - Aliens in Theory - Joshua Schuster [A]

9524 - Feminist and Gender Perspectives on/in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts - Erica Lawson [C]

9653 - Queer Temporalities - Chris Roulston [B]

9540 - Species-Beings: Young Marx in the Post-Anthropocene - Nick Witheford [B]

9656 - Social Theory in the Age of Austerity - Matt Stahl [B]

 

2022-23

9149 - Ecological Conversion: From Critique to Creation - Russell Duvernoy [C]

9155 - The Waning of Philosophies of Difference and the Rise of the New Universalism - Antonio Calcagno [A]

9207 - Life: The Impact of the Life Sciences on Philosophy and Other Philosophical Domains, from Kant to Esposito - Tilottama Rajan [A]

9223 - Climate Change - Michael Gardiner [B]

9325 - Finitude and Plentitude - Joshua Schuster [C]

9421 - The Benjamin Constellation - John Vanderheide [A]

9440 - “A Vermilioned Nothingness”: Late Lacan, Sexuation, Sinthome, and the Prosdiorism - Allan Pero [C]

9538B Critical Phenomenology - Helen Fielding [C]

9659 - Theorizing Care in an Uneven World - Kate Lawless [B]

 

2021-22

9150A Disability, Ability and the Idea of Self - Jeremy Colangelo [B]

9202A Cine-Perception - Janelle Blankenship [A]

9206B Instrumentality - Jonathan De Souza [C]

9222A Anti-Psychoanalyses: A (Short and Incomplete) History of Confluences and Conflicts - Cristina Ionica [A]

9229B Biopolitics and the Unconscious - Matthew Rowlinson [B]

9244B Postcolonial Theory at the Limits of the Animal - Jason Sandhar [B]

9326B Ways of Seeing, Ways of Listening - Sharon Sliwinski [A]

9538B Critical Phenomenology - Helen Fielding [C]

9637A Questioning Aesthetics - Julian Haladyn [A] 

9656A Social Theory in the Age of Austerity - Matt Stahl [B]

 

2020-21

9154A The Philosophy of Hannah Arendt: Rethinking the Social and the Political - Antonio Calcagno [B]

9203B Land, Language, Locatives - Regna Darnell [B]

9223B Climate Change - Michael Gardiner [B]

9246A Schoenberg/Wittgenstein - Kevin Mooney [C]

9329B Teasing the dainty rods of vision: Imaginary/Imagination/Semblance - Allan Pero [A]

9422Y Translating Theory - Jan Plug [C]

9460B The Arts and Politics of the Situationist International (1957-1972) - Ed Matthews [A]

9614Y Idealism and the Margins of Philosophy: (Inter)Disciplinarity in Kant, Hegel, Schelling - Tilottama Rajan [A]

9655A Theorizing Environmental Subjectivity - David Janzen [C] 

 

2019-20

9153B The Avant-gardes as Anti-Culture: A History of “Radicalism” and “Excess” - Cristina Ionica [A]

9201B Cyberwar Theory - Nick Dyer Witheford [B]

9204A Immaterial - Mary Helen McMurran [B]

9327A Techniques of the Body in Greece, Rome, and the Modern Era - Charles Stocking [B]

9423A The Performance of Race - Nigel Joseph [C]

9449B Postwork Imaginaries - Michael Gardiner [B]

9501A Writing Aloud: Theories of Sound and Silence - Christof Migone [A]

9538B Critical Phenomenology - Helen Fielding [C]

9579B Why (and how) are things similar?: Analogy, Example, Metaphor, Taxonomy - Laurence de Looze [A]

9640B Existential Risk - Joshua Schuster [A]

9656A Social Theory in the Age of Austerity - Matt Stahl [B]

 

2018-19

9152A From Dada to Dank Memes: Revolt, Revulsion, and Discontent - Andrew Wenaus [C]

9210B Hantology, or Reading Byung-Chul Han - Julian Jason Haladyn [B]

9228B Keywords for the 21st Century - Regna Darnell [B]

9245A Zones of Entanglement: Philosophy, the Life Sciences and Medicine 1785-2012 - Tilottama Rajan [A]

9328A Reconciliation and its Discontents: Theory, Art, Critique - Pauline Wakeham [A]

9347B French Enlightenment Thought and the Rise of Materialism - Ed Matthews [A]

9436A The Subject of the Object - Peter Schwenger [C]

9449B Post-work Imaginaries - Michael Gardiner [B]

9500A Mimesis in Modernity - John Vanderheide [A]

9559B Under Elding Towers, Among Dimming Stars: The Spaces and Politics of Modernity - Allan Pero [A]