Creative Expression and Society Courses

CRE201H1F
Introduction to Creativity and Society
Professor Adam Sol

Can a one or two-paragraph course description give an engaging and informative explanation of what a course on creativity is? How would you do that? What is Creativity, anyway? Is it an attribute that we all have and can cultivate? Or is it a gift granted to a chosen few, like perfect pitch? Can it be taught, nurtured, stifled, studied? Is there a relationship between creativity and mental illness? How can creativity – whatever it is – contribute to artistic, political, economic, and social worlds? These are the types of questions this course will investigate, though whether we come up with any definitive answers will depend on whether we can catch a tiger in red weather.  

Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE209H1S
How Stories Work
Professor Mona Tokarek LaFosse

Stories are everywhere. Stories define us as individuals and connect (or disconnect) us with various identities and groups to which we belong (or not). In this course, we explore the form and substance of stories, their tenacity and adaptability, their power to work on us, between us, and for us. In order to examine stories, we will follow several overlapping trajectories, including an Indigenous elder’s insights about the “power of story” (Harold R. Johnson, 2022), and an ancient story about betrayal (namely the story of Judas Iscariot), and as we consider how stories work.

Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations

CRE210H1S
Holography for 3D Visualization
Professor Emanuel Istrate

An introduction to the theory and practice of holography. We will make holograms and use them as an introduction to concepts of optical physics, human perception, 3D visualization and the creation of art. As this is an interdisciplinary course combining concepts of both science and art, students will work in interdisciplinary teams. In their teams, students will complete two holography projects, which include the proposal and development of a concept, the execution of the hologram, and the presentation of their result to the rest of the class. Holograms will be produced from real-world objects, and also from 3D computer-graphics models. This will give students the opportunity to explore 3D modelling software. No specific background or preparation in the sciences or arts is required for this course. There will be a mandatory Materials Fee to cover non-reusable materials. The fee will be included on students' ACORN invoice.

Exclusion: JOP210H1, IVP210H
Breadth Requirements: The Physical and Mathematical Universes (5)

CRE235H1F
Innovation in Society
Professor Sunil Johal

This course investigates innovation as it relates to emerging social, scientific, and environmental trends. Students will acquire key frameworks for understanding the evolution of innovation, the place of creativity, and the social impacts of disruption. Through case studies of innovation (such as the sharing economy and cryptocurrencies) and considering related issues (such as ethics and inclusion) students will develop approaches to understanding the societal impacts of creative disruption.

Exclusion: VIC235H1, MUN101H1, MUN102H1
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)

CRE247H1F
Creativity in the Sciences
Professor Emanuel Istrate

This seminar course explores various aspects of creativity in the sciences. We will discuss how to define the term “creativity” and will use the definition to compare creativity in the sciences to creativity in the arts, business and engineering. Using as examples major developments in the history of science, we will consider factors that enable creativity in scientists. We will also contrast the kinds of creative work scientists do in different areas of science, and at various stages of a project. To better understand creativity, we will use results from psychological and neuroscience studies of creativity. We will discuss various ways in which the creativity of a scientist can be evaluated, and will use this as a starting point to evaluate the importance of scientific discoveries more generally, in both fundamental and applied science areas. We will consider the timing of scientific discoveries, looking at “ideas whose time has come,” to discuss whether creative discoveries happen at random, or if they occur at predictable times. Students will perform research on the major developments in an area of science, analyzing the types of creative work that were done, along with factors that enabled the developments. They will be encouraged to “represent” that area of science in class discussions during the term.

Prerequisite: Any 1.0 credit combination of courses carrying a breadth requirement (BR) category of 4 or 5.
Breadth Requirements: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

CRE269H1F
Creative Practice: Speculative Fiction
Professor Maria Cichosz

With its capacity to imagine speculative futures, alternative pasts, and new worlds, speculative fiction has gained widespread popularity in recent years as a genre uniquely suited for responding to the complex realities of our time: climate change, social justice, political extremism, and the cultural effects of technology. In this practice-based course, students will have the opportunity to study and produce creative works of speculative fiction in a workshop-style seminar. We will explore works of literature, film and television, music, animation, and the arts while providing extensive grounding in contemporary artistic contexts of publication and production. Genres studied and produced may include cyberpunk, eco-fiction, contemporary fairytale and fable, horror, historical fiction, performance art, and dystopia and utopia, among others.

Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations

CRE272H1S
Song, Lyrics, and Songwriting
Professor: Sessional

Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE273H1S
The Body: An Exercise
Professor Joanna Papayiannis
M 12-2

CRE275H1S
Creative Writing: Short Fiction
Professor Maria Cichosz

This course is for aspiring fiction writers who wish to deepen their craft. Each seminar will feature a lecture on technical issues such as plot and characterization, as well as an analysis of a short story by a published writer. Students will engage in weekly reading and writing exercises and produce their own stories through continuous drafting and revision in a workshop-style seminar with regular editorial feedback from the instructor and their peers.

CRE276H1F/S
Writing for the Stage and Screen
Professor: Sessional

In this course, students will create their own one act play, while looking at the form and learning to establish tension and conflict in the deceptively simple, but never easy, empty space of a bare stage. A one act play is among the most primal forms of theatre. A story is told, briefly and directly, through transformative encounters between a few characters, or between a single character onstage and the collective character of the audience. Theatre is an immediate and ephemeral event: brave, exuberant, messy, embarrassing and exhilarating. It is arguably the oldest art: a group of people sits down together in a space, and another person tells them something. In a mixture of lectures, seminar-style discussions and practical workshops, we will explore the building blocks of theatre: the line of action from start to finish, and all the outrageous or provocative or experimentally fruitful detours along the way. We will go through the steps of making a play, from early inspiration, proposal and outline, rough draft, and a reading of the full draft. At the same time, we will read, view and discuss superb examples of dramatic work, both plays and film excerpts, looking at how to create breathing characters rather than animated points of view, how to introduce complication, the pitfalls and challenges of dialogue, how to maintain ambiguity, and when to throw out the rulebook and let the weird and uncanny take over.

Exclusion: VIC276H1, CIN349H1
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations

CRE279H1F/S
Creative Non-Fiction
Professor Lisa Khoo

CRE279H1S
Creative Non-Fiction
Professor Lisa Khoo
R 11-1

CRE280H1F
Creative Writing: Poetry
Professor: Sessional

A workshop course (with a literature component) in writing poetry. Designed for those with a serious ambition to be writers as evinced in work they are already doing. The literature component emphasizes multicultural dimensions of contemporary writing in English. 

Exclusion: VIC280H1
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE281H1S
Popular Music, Technology, and the Human
Professor Gregory Lee Newsome
W 1-3

In this course we explore the intersection of popular music and technology. We consider how we curate personal experiences via mobile device, how we create with technology to reflect our identities, and how we interpret concepts such as authenticity and liveness. Concurrent with this exploration we develop a practice in music production using a digital audio workstation (DAW), surveying MIDI, sound & digital audio, sequencing, synthesis, recording & sampling, signal processing, and mixing & mastering. Previous experience as a musician is not necessary.

CRE282H1S
Emerging Genres: Weird Fiction and the New Weird
Professor Molly Bronstein

Weird fiction is a close relative of horror, but it aims to inspire awe as much as fear. As Michael Moorcock has put it, weird fiction also “leaves you with more questions than answers.” In the hands of Lovecraft and others, the weird has historically reveled in language’s inadequacy as it struggles to evoke impossibly ancient monsters and lost manuscripts full of nightmarish secrets. Over time, weird fiction has sprouted new obsessions with even more elusive unknowns, from Borges’s infinite libraries to China Miéville’s surreal and crosshatched cities—but the obsession with language (and its limits) remains, making the current masters of the genre excellent models for developing writers to study. In this course, we’ll get acquainted with a variety of key authors and make our own interventions in this ever-shifting and unsettling tradition.

Prerequisite: Completion of 4.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE283H1S
Writing about Music
Professor: Sessional

The maxim “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” suggests that music is meant to be listened to, not written about. At the same time, the history of music writing reveals how reading and writing about music can transform the experience of listening to it. What constitutes good music writing? What sort of impact can writing about music have on the defining and understanding of musical trends, sub-cultures, artistic movements, and technologies? This course provides students with the opportunity to explore the history of writing about music in the Anglosphere, and to engage in its practice in various forms, including fiction, journalism, and reviews. 

Prerequisite: 4.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Society and its Institutions (3)

CRE335H1S
Creativity and Collaboration in Social Enterprise
Professor Sunil Johal

CRE349H1F L0101
Special Topics in Creativity: Creative Writing: Literary Adaption
Professor: Sessional

Major novels do not always make for great movies or television.  By most accounts, however, our age has been golden for literary novels being brought successfully, and with often surprising boldness, to the screen.  In this course we examine two recent novels, looking at them as works of art and expressions of societal preoccupations, and then probe the decisions made, as well as the issues raised, in adapting literary material.  Students will have the opportunity to investigate additional adaptations, including exploring, in the form of drafting a partial treatment or crafting sample scenes, how they transform a favorite work of fiction for the screen.  

Prerequisite: 9.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE349H1F L0201
Special Topics in Creativity: Creative Destruction
Professor Nick Mount

“There is a great negative work of destruction to be accomplished,” said Tristan Tzara in the Dadaist Manifesto of July 1918. “Destroy the Museums,” said the Russian poet Vladimir Kirillov. “This is not a book,” wrote Henry Miller in a novel in 1934. “This is a gob of spit in the face of Art.” “With me,” Pablo Picasso told a critic the next year, “a picture is a sum of destructions. I make a picture, and proceed to destroy it.” For all their claims to newness, the avant-garde did not invent our affection for broken things or our equal affection for breaking them: modern artists simply made visible the reciprocal relation between destruction and creation that has been at the core of the human imagination for as long as we have been using it. This course will explore that relationship in some of that history. We will look briefly at the destruction of art, but our concern and interest is mostly with art as destruction and with the aesthetics of destruction: with artists and writers who destroy to create, and with our apparent pleasure in looking at destruction. 

Prerequisite: 9.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE353H1S
Creativity and Altered Consciousness
Professor Maria Cichosz

Is creativity part of the “normal” spectrum of human consciousness? Does art, like drugs, open us up to new ways of perceiving reality? Where does the archetype of the intoxicated artistic genius come from? Why is microdosing seen as a creativity hack? This course will explore such questions by providing students with the opportunity to study the relationship between creativity and altered states of consciousness through historical, cultural, and psychological perspectives. Focusing on the connection between artistic production and abnormal or extraordinary forms of perception, we will study creativity as both a biological human capacity and a historically and culturally contingent category. Examining how thinkers, artists, and scientists have understood altered consciousness in various historical contexts from prehistoric cave art to the psychedelic Sixties and contemporary hip hop music, we will ask why people seek out altered states and what role intoxicants play in the human experience of creativity. Potential topics may include artistic activity in dialogue with intoxication and addiction, religion and spirituality, meditation and wellness, dreams and liminal states, mental and physical illness, the aesthetics of intoxication, technologically mediated consciousness, and cultural representations of intoxication.

Prerequisite:  4.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

VIC359H1F 
Special Topics Seminar: Photographic Darkroom Techniques
Professor Emanuel Istrate

This course is all about film photography, with a focus on creative techniques in the photographic printing process. We will work hands-on with an enlarger in a photographic darkroom to make prints from negative film, and we will learn both the basics of producing prints, as well as analog means to modify/adjust/play with/abuse images that were essential in the days before computer image processing. The course will cover some of the science and technology of lenses and the chemistry of film, as well as some of the history of the use of photography to convey visual information. In teams, students will research creative darkroom techniques and will demonstrate them to the rest of the class, and will also work on a project incorporating such techniques. For the demonstrations and projects, students will bring already-exposed and developed negative film, which they will use to make the prints. We will use mainly black-and-white photography for simplicity, but the techniques we cover can also be applied to colour photography. This course provides an understanding of and hands-on practice in the craft of darkroom photography, which along with the students’ creative contributions, can be used to represent both real and imagined scenes.

Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE367H1S *New Course*
AI and Creativity
Professor Avery Slater

Can machines be creative? How might Artificial Intelligence impact artists or challenge our long-held views of creativity? This course provides an opportunity for in-depth study of the ways AI is interacting with endeavours across the arts. Students will learn of the current strengths and limitations of AI image generators, writing tools, and music production applications, as well as analyse the potential and emerging impacts of the technology on the arts organizations, communities, and audiences. Students will be expected to develop their own creative projects using Ctechnology and to explore how its tendencies and abilities might impact their own creative practice.

Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE370H1S
Music and the Imagination 
Professor Tom Reynolds

This course explores how music creatively reflects and inspires our sense of self, place and community through readings, close listening, case studies, and creative responses. We consider various sites of musical imagination, and the genres that intersect with them. Course discussion addresses how music participates in the social life of creativity, imagination and fantasy, and what these roles mean for music's significance in society and culture. No prior experience in music composition required.

Prerequisite: Completion of 4.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE372H1S
Reviewing, Reception and Reading Communities
Professor Adam Sol

CRE373H1F
Archives and the Art of Memory
Professor Anna Shternshis

What is an Archive? What kind of history and culture does it preserve? Or does it bury things forever? Who gets to be an archivist and who gets to tell the story? How can an archive preserve the stories of marginalized people? Can voices from the archive be brought back to life? In the context of a series of readings, presentations and projects the course focuses on case studies of government-housed and sponsored archives, family archives, archives of cultural institutions, grassroot archival initiatives, and of course digital archives. Each student will have an opportunity to produce an artistic project based on archival research, a piece to be archived.

Prerequisite: Completion of 4.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE374H1S
Professor Adam Sol

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 credits
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations

CRE470H1F 
Soundscapes 
Professor Farzaneh Hemmasi

This course surveys the growth of the field of Acoustic Ecology and the aesthetic, political, and ethical questions it engages. Students learn about creative and musical practices associated with this new attention to sound, and they gain experience with the practice of field recording and sonic-environmental sampling. The course culminates with a final Soundscape composition or creative mapping project. No previous experience in sound recording or composition required.

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 credits
Distribution Requirements: Humanities
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

CRE449H1S
Special Topics in Creativity: The Alternative Realities of Multimedia Literature
Professor Gary Barwin 2026-2027 Shaftsbury Creative Writer-in-Residence

To many, the contemporary moment feels increasingly unreal and uncanny. This practice-based course will investigate how writers and artists have always created alternatives to mainstream reality as a way of understanding their world and providing different models. Imagining the writing workshop as a makerspace, we will consider a range of multimedia tools, techniques and creative strategies, spanning the textual, visual, audio, virtual and video and investigate approaches to interactivity, installation, and live performance. Students will study and create work that engages non-realist approaches to creative writing and making — from pataphysics, Surrealism, Dadaism, magic realism, fairytale and fable, alternate histories and science fiction to a range of experimental and conceptual writing practices. and discuss how to make work that exists beyond the printed page and that addresses what it is to be living in these times. 

Application Deadline: August 21, 2026

CRE479Y1Y
Creative Writing: The Novel
Professor Camilla Gibb

This is a workshop course for students with serious ambition and demonstrated ability as fiction writers. It presupposes excellent language skills, familiarity with concepts of writerly craft, and an avid and active reading life.

The course offers a rare opportunity to dedicate yourself to writing a substantial amount, if not an entire draft, of a novel. Students will be expected to produce a steady weekly output of 2500 words. As this class runs over two terms, this can result in an astonishing 60,000 words. 

Each week, individual selections will be workshopped in class. The success of the course depends upon a high level of exchange and interaction among peers. Over the weeks, the class becomes a working and supportive community of writers. My role is largely to facilitate this, and to work, additionally, one-on-one with students revising work after receiving peer feedback.

Assessment will be based on production and revision of text, quality of feedback to peers, attendance and engagement. Toward the end of the course, we’ll devote some time to addressing next steps in the life of a novel and an emerging writer.

Admission is by application. Applications must include:
1. a brief bio, including previous classes in creative writing and/or workshopping experience, a list of publications (if any), and details about any involvement in related writing activities or communities 
2. a brief synopsis of the novel you are proposing to work on this year
3. a ten-page excerpt of this novel (if already underway), or a ten-page sample of other work (a chapter or a short story).

Application Deadline: August 21, 2026

Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations

CRE480H1S
Poetry: A Master Class
Professor George Elliott Clarke

A workshop course in writing poetry. Designed for those with a serious ambition to be writers as evinced in work they are already doing. Does not offer instruction for beginning writers. Presupposes perfect and sophisticated written language skills. Admission by application.

Application Deadline: December 4, 2026