Elective Courses – 2026-27 Academic Year

Instructor: Helena Zeweri
Teaching schedule:

• 2026 Winter Term 2
• Credits: 3
• Delivery Mode and Format: TBD, Seminar
• Day and Time: TBD

This seminar explores the connections between empire, displaced peoples, and political consciousness. Rather than view empire as a territorially fixed project, we will treat it as a transnational formation whose impact endures in the everyday lives, relationships, and identities of displaced peoples. Through ethnography, media, and visual art, we will explore how migrants encounter empire—how they get pulled into its grip, how they participate in it, resist it, and refuse it. Content will cover a range of contexts, including the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean region, Oceania, North America, and South West Asia.

Instructor: Jemima Baada
Teaching schedule:

• 2026 Winter Term 1
• Credits: 3
• Delivery Mode and Format: In-Person Seminar
• Day and Time: TBD

The ongoing climate crisis affects every facet of planetary life, and human and non-human animal population im/mobilities are major responses to climate change. Climate change, migration and health are interdependent processes embedded within globalisation (i.e., the increased connectivity and movement of people, ideas, goods, services, etc.). This implies that climate change, migration and health issues are not confined to specific populations or geographical regions. This course examines planetary, global and public health as shaped by climate change and migration, and how planetary and global health in turn shape climate change and migration issues. Students will be introduced to the historical overview of these three issues. The course will also delve into the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings (e.g., power dynamics, politics, economics, knowledge production) of climate change, migration and health. Different case studies will be used to understand how these processes play out in everyday lives.

Instructor: Markus Hallensleben
Teaching schedule:

• 2026 Winter Term 1
• Credits: 3
• Delivery Mode and Format: TBD
• Day and Time: TBD

This course focuses on literary and visual narratives of belonging and migration from a transdisciplinary cultural studies perspective. How do people relate to place? Does the question “Where are you from?” assume a linear narrative and a sedentarist perspective of exclusion? How do we narratively create and perform belonging, cultural spaces, phenomenological borders, national and ethnic identities? We will critically discuss concepts and theories of (post)coloniality, Black ecology, diaspora, integration, multiculturality, postmigration, Radical diversity, super-diversity, transnationality and relational epistemologies. Within the educational framework of decolonizing and Indigenizing European and Migration Studies we will further practically apply Indigenous Storywork (Archibald) as scholarly method of building “non-colonial” relations (Garneau) in a land-, people- and story-centred way. Our goal is to question Eurocentric notions of belonging, culture, identity, author- and ownership, literature, story and text from a critical diversity literacy perspective.

Instructor: Anne Murphy
Teaching schedule:

• 2026 Winter Term 2
• Credits: 3
• Delivery Mode and Format: In-person seminar
• Day and Time: TBD

An exploration of the history of partition in the modern world in the context of war, imperialism, and decolonization, with a focus on key exemplary cases and analogical discourses. Students in this class will: read and understand a range of scholarly works that examine the global history of territorial partition; research and develop evidence-based oral and written historical arguments based on primary and secondary sources, utilizing (in written work) direct quotation where possible and always citing specific page numbers in sources so that all citations are verifiable; engage in nuanced comparative analysis, with attention to the details of phenomena being compared; and engage in respectful and focused discussion of historical sources and argumentation.

Instructor: Benjamin Bryce
Teaching schedule:

• 2026 Winter Term 2
• Credits: 3
• Delivery Mode and Format: In-person seminar
• Day and Time: TBD

This seminar explores several themes in the history of migration in and to the Americas. As a seminar, it focuses on methods, archival research, and historiographic debates. Our readings, discussions, and projects aim to teach students about the people who migrate and the responses of government officials, workers, politicians, and other migrant groups to new arrivals. The readings cover diplomacy, government policies, gender, the construction of racial categories, and nationalism. The readings aim to introduce students to a variety of methodological approaches used in social history as well as to offer examples of transnational and global history.

Instructor: Antje Ellermann
Teaching schedule:

• 2026 Winter Term 1
• Credits: 3
• Delivery Mode and Format: In-Person Seminar
• Day and Time: TBD

Human mobility has become one of the most contested issues in contemporary politics. This seminar surveys key scholarly debates in the study of migration and citizenship in political science and cognate disciplines, including both positivist and critical approaches. We comparatively examine in historical and cross-national perspective the ways in which states and societies (particularly in the Global North) have responded to, and have become transformed by, immigration. The course covers a wide range of topics: theories of international migration, disciplinary approaches to migration studies, immigration and settler colonialism, the ethics of borders, state control of borders and mobility, refugee protection and mobility justice, public opinion on immigration, voting behaviour and populist radical right parties, the making of immigration policy, national identity and citizenship, and immigrant inclusion and belonging.

Instructor: Irene Bloemraad
Teaching schedule:

• 2026 Winter Term 1
• Credits: 3
• Delivery Mode and Format: In-Person Seminar
• Day and Time: TBD

This graduate seminar focuses on the policies that structure migration and migrants’ lives. We consider two sets of policies. The first concerns the rules, procedures, and barriers to entry into a state’s territory, spanning a host of legal statuses, including permanent admission, temporary visas and asylum. The politics of entry always entails policies of exclusion. Why do many advanced capitalist countries favour the free movement of goods, services, and capital, but balk at the free movement of people? Who is excluded, and why? What determines entry policy? A second set of policies encompasses programs and laws related to integration. Integration involves membership, and thus, we consider the laws and procedures to access citizenship. Citizenship generally ensures the fullest set of rights, the greatest security of residence, and the clearest path to political voice. Beyond citizenship, integration policies can also include initiatives like refugee settlement programs or policies of multiculturalism. Comparatively, across both entry and integration policies, scholars debate whether countries are converging toward a common policy stance, and what drives convergence, or whether instead we find variation. How do ideas, institutions and interests drive entry and integration policy? This class is open to students outside of political science and will draw on a range of interdisciplinary scholarship.