Individual & Society

In this stream, students will consider the relationship between the individual and society. This will build the groundwork for many of the most popular majors at UBC including Psychology, Economics, Commerce, Sociology, and English.

This stream offers a foundation for understanding, researching, and writing about the relationships between people and the worlds they inhabit. Our approach considers economic and business policies, social and psychological phenomena, technological innovation, pop culture, and social justice.

This stream is ideal for first-year students interested in majoring in Psychology, Economics* or Sociology. It also suits students entering into an interdisciplinary major, or who are unsure of their major but want to develop a broad and flexible range of scholarly abilities in preparation for the rest of their academic career.

Individual & Society students develop skills for critical thinking, academic writing, and research across disciplines as they prepare to be the influencers and leaders of the future.

*Please note that students interested in majoring in Economics should take ECON 101 as an elective outside of CAP in Term 1 or consider CAP’s PPE stream (which offers ECON 101 in Term 1). This stream only offers ECON 102 (Term 2).

 

Courses: Term One

In the first term, students will enrol in Arts Studies, Sociology, and Psychology. In your Arts Studies class, you will be introduced to the features of academic writing at the university level, as well as how literature and culture may shape or challenge ideas of the “individual” and “society”.  Biological psychology seeks to explain individual actions by delving into the inner workings of a person’s mind. In Sociology, students will learn how societies work together towards a more just, fair and sustainable society for all individuals.

This course runs two semesters and is worth 6 credits. It focuses on scholarly writing and reading, including both literature and introduction to academic scholarship. This course provides an interdisciplinary foundation for academic writing and related research communicative practices within an interactive learning environment. Students will choose one out of five different sections (I01/I02/I03/I04/I05), based on their scheduling needs and academic interests, and stay in the same section for both terms.

-ASTU 100 I01: MWF 11-12 - What Can Literature Do? Close Encounters with Contemporary Counternarratives

Scientists use data—gathered through experimentation, for example, or measurement—to discover and interpret the world around them. What do literary scholars use? What kind of “data” is a graphic narrative, a novel, or a poem? And what can the study of literature tell us about how we interpret the world we live in? In particular, what might we learn from literature that we can’t learn by other means?

The texts on this course represent contemporary lives lived in different corners of the world—a Pakistani university student in New York, an Indigenous hockey player in Ontario. These are personal stories about public events, and they are the stories that have generally been less discovered, measured, or recorded. They reveal the sometimes invisible, even erased, narratives and lives that lurk behind the headlines or history books. They invite us to ask, who gets to speak and who may be silenced? How does an individual story represent, or mis-represent a collective experience? What are the possibilities or the limits of empathy? What kind of knowledge does literature give us access to—and what should we do with that knowledge? What is the scholar’s role in interpreting, and intervening in, the world around them?

And, because this is a course that covers both literature and academic writing, we will not only develop our practices as readers—but also develop our practices as writers. Students will learn the conventions of knowledge-making and writing in Arts disciplines. This means you will join in the scholarly conversations you read and contribute new knowledge to them. To do this, you will produce a writing in the form of journal entries, literature reviews, proposals, research essays, and infographics.

-ASTU 100 I02: MWF 12-1 - City Selves: Identity, Community, and Conflict in Vancouver

Our course will consider the relationship between place and identity through analysis of literary works and academic articles that explore the city of Vancouver. Dubbed the “city of glass” by novelist Douglas Coupland and “a city of more” by political scientist/poet Philip Resnick, Vancouver has a relatively brief colonial history on the ancestral lands that are also the contemporary home of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Over the past several decades, Vancouver has been transformed socially, politically, and culturally. But what impact has this had on the people of Vancouver? How is identity—individual as well as collective—shaped by residing in spectacular natural surroundings but in a society with sharp socio-economic divides, sometimes sharing a city block?

We will read fiction and poetry by diverse Vancouver-based writers who reflect on the relationship between place, self, and community. And we will analyze academic articles which seek to understand Vancouver’s social, political, economic, and cultural developments and their impact on the identities of the people who live here. In your own writing you will be responding, analyzing, and critiquing, as you work on the academic writing skills needed to bring literary, scholarly, and community voices into dialogue. We will be emphasizing the idea of ethical research, writing, and peer review practices as you embark on your own extended research project, and we will be honing a range of academic communication skills that you will use throughout your university career.

-ASTU 100 I03: MWF 2-3

-ASTU 100 Sections I04 & I05 - Culture on Sale

I04: TTh 9:30-11 & I05: TTh 11-12:30

Our course will ask us to think critically, and incessantly, about our own everyday social and cultural interactions—in particular, our inescapable roles as economic subjects. In our time together, we will seek out shopping practices and work-life balances that are foreign, familiar, or draw us into economic relations we have yet to consider. At times, our task will be to ‘make strange’ the familiar by responsibly imagining those behaviors that have become nearly involuntary at this stage of late capitalism: credit card swipes, crumpling up receipts, and adding products and services to an army of electronic “shopping carts” online. Our objective will be to gain a sense of empowerment in understanding our economic lives, becoming cultural critics as well as skilled readers and writers.

Our investigation will draw from across fictional and nonfictional books, poems, music, film, television and visual artworks, and yes, even selfies. This range of media will help us approach shopping as a social process through which we can study the connections between people, places and things that drive consumption or suggest opportunities to challenge or resist it. We will undertake a series of writing projects that allow us to examine language and meaning across literary texts and several other art media. Beginning with a look inwards at our own social media use, we will proceed to study the relationship between authorship and branding, study Marx’s commodity critique, and undertake a comparative exploration of consumer society in several different national and international publication contexts.

Will be offered in 2024W.

Day and time TBD.

Course description TBD.

MWF 10-11

This course will introduce students to some of the major research areas within the field of psychology: the scientific study of the mind, the brain, and behaviour. The course begins with an overview of psychology and its research methods. Next, the course covers the biological basis of behaviour as well as cognitive psychology (the brain and the mind respectively). Specific topics include neuroanatomy, thinking and reasoning, consciousness, memory, learning, language, sensation and perception.

 

Courses: Term Two

In their second term, students will continue their studies in Arts Studies and Psychology, and take their Economics course. Bringing our focus from the individual to the society, macroeconomics will highlight the ways that we study economic behaviour on a larger societal scale. The study of social and personality psychology will also help us to explain how society might shape an individual’s personality and behaviour.

This course runs two semesters and is worth 6 credits. It focuses on scholarly writing and reading, including both literature and introduction to academic scholarship. This course provides an interdisciplinary foundation for academic writing and related research communicative practices within an interactive learning environment. Students will choose one out of five different sections (I01/I02/I03/I04/I05), based on their scheduling needs and academic interests, and stay in the same section for both terms.

-ASTU 100 I01: MWF 11-12 - What Can Literature Do? Close Encounters with Contemporary Counternarratives

Scientists use data—gathered through experimentation, for example, or measurement—to discover and interpret the world around them. What do literary scholars use? What kind of “data” is a graphic narrative, a novel, or a poem? And what can the study of literature tell us about how we interpret the world we live in? In particular, what might we learn from literature that we can’t learn by other means?

The texts on this course represent contemporary lives lived in different corners of the world—a Pakistani university student in New York, an Indigenous hockey player in Ontario. These are personal stories about public events, and they are the stories that have generally been less discovered, measured, or recorded. They reveal the sometimes invisible, even erased, narratives and lives that lurk behind the headlines or history books. They invite us to ask, who gets to speak and who may be silenced? How does an individual story represent, or mis-represent a collective experience? What are the possibilities or the limits of empathy? What kind of knowledge does literature give us access to—and what should we do with that knowledge? What is the scholar’s role in interpreting, and intervening in, the world around them?

And, because this is a course that covers both literature and academic writing, we will not only develop our practices as readers—but also develop our practices as writers. Students will learn the conventions of knowledge-making and writing in Arts disciplines. This means you will join in the scholarly conversations you read and contribute new knowledge to them. To do this, you will produce a writing in the form of journal entries, literature reviews, proposals, research essays, and infographics.

-ASTU 100 I02: MWF 12-1 - City Selves: Identity, Community, and Conflict in Vancouver

Our course will consider the relationship between place and identity through analysis of literary works and academic articles that explore the city of Vancouver. Dubbed the “city of glass” by novelist Douglas Coupland and “a city of more” by political scientist/poet Philip Resnick, Vancouver has a relatively brief colonial history on the ancestral lands that are also the contemporary home of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Over the past several decades, Vancouver has been transformed socially, politically, and culturally. But what impact has this had on the people of Vancouver? How is identity—individual as well as collective—shaped by residing in spectacular natural surroundings but in a society with sharp socio-economic divides, sometimes sharing a city block?

We will read fiction and poetry by diverse Vancouver-based writers who reflect on the relationship between place, self, and community. And we will analyze academic articles which seek to understand Vancouver’s social, political, economic, and cultural developments and their impact on the identities of the people who live here. In your own writing you will be responding, analyzing, and critiquing, as you work on the academic writing skills needed to bring literary, scholarly, and community voices into dialogue. We will be emphasizing the idea of ethical research, writing, and peer review practices as you embark on your own extended research project, and we will be honing a range of academic communication skills that you will use throughout your university career.

-ASTU 100 I03: MWF 2-3

-ASTU 100 Sections I04 & I05 - Culture on Sale

I04: TTh 9:30-11 & I05: TTh 11-12:30

Our course will ask us to think critically, and incessantly, about our own everyday social and cultural interactions—in particular, our inescapable roles as economic subjects. In our time together, we will seek out shopping practices and work-life balances that are foreign, familiar, or draw us into economic relations we have yet to consider. At times, our task will be to ‘make strange’ the familiar by responsibly imagining those behaviors that have become nearly involuntary at this stage of late capitalism: credit card swipes, crumpling up receipts, and adding products and services to an army of electronic “shopping carts” online. Our objective will be to gain a sense of empowerment in understanding our economic lives, becoming cultural critics as well as skilled readers and writers.

Our investigation will draw from across fictional and nonfictional books, poems, music, film, television and visual artworks, and yes, even selfies. This range of media will help us approach shopping as a social process through which we can study the connections between people, places and things that drive consumption or suggest opportunities to challenge or resist it. We will undertake a series of writing projects that allow us to examine language and meaning across literary texts and several other art media. Beginning with a look inwards at our own social media use, we will proceed to study the relationship between authorship and branding, study Marx’s commodity critique, and undertake a comparative exploration of consumer society in several different national and international publication contexts.

 

MWF 9-10

Students examine economic behaviour at aggregate/national level. We begin with measuring different macroeconomic, labour market, and monetary market variables like GDP, employment-unemployment and inflation, and measuring economic growth, shedding light on growth theories.

MWF 10-11

This course brings students deeper into certain research areas within the field of psychology: the scientific study of the mind, the brain, and behaviour. This course further addresses applied areas in psychology and will introduce such topics as intelligence, personality, human development, health psychology, social psychology, and the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.

 

Sample Projects

Cities of the Future
Thinking about and imagining urban futures has become the focus of artistic expression, academic research projects, conferences, city planning agendas, and corporate think tanks. The goal of this assignment is to demonstrate understanding of academic writing and qualitative research as activities with the potential to create change in the world around us. The assignment asks students to respond to this prompt: “The year is 2223. You live in a Vancouver that few citizens of 2023 would recognize. You have invented a new form of time travel that allows you to send not people, but messages, back through time. In 2000 words, describe your Vancouver to the Vancouver citizens living in 2023, and explain to them how their society can achieve or avoid this future.”

Short Group Presentations: Selling Our School
This assignment, a short group presentation, approaches concepts from authors and critics in the course from a localized point of view, examining how the shared space of our university is branded, bought, and sold. This narrow focus creates opportunities for students to draw from first- hand knowledge as inhabitants of this institution: site-specific presentations and field trips around campus are encouraged!. Students select one topic, site, or commodity in tandem with one research question or “thesis.” This research question specifically addresses a cultural issue under discussion as it relates to individual social experience on campus, focusing explicitly on commodification and the course theme of “culture on sale.”

On-line experiments
On-line experiments, conducted on three selected evenings during the term, give students the opportunity to participate in real-time, online markets with their classmates and the professor. These experiments help students understand how real markets operate, how they organize the economic activity of disparate consumers and businesses, and how the market collects and processes information. Students are assigned a variety of roles to play in each experiment and their success as market participants becomes a (small) part of their overall course grade.

Article Report
A psychological research article is assigned for students to read and summarize during Term 1. Each student writes a short article report summarizing and critiquing the article. Students are welcome to work in groups when discussing the article report, but the paper is written independently.

Group Project
During Term 2, students (working in teams of 2 or 3) conduct their own psychological experiment on an assigned topic. Students are responsible for designing and conducting the experiment and submitting a report.

 

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