The future of climate governance begins in this stream, where we introduce tomorrow’s environmental leaders to the ecological, social, political, and cultural knowledge needed to rise to the challenges of climate change.
Environmental crisis is one of the major interdisciplinary problems of our time. This means it takes great thinkers in all areas, from environmental studies to history, geography, political sciences, and the arts to address issues such as global warming, ecological injustice, climate migration, and fast fashion. In this stream, students will be introduced to the fascinating histories of how we arrived at this global tipping point, as well as to the newest research leading us toward more sustainable, equitable futures.
I chose the Coordinated Arts Program because it immersed me in a small yet diverse student group to collaborate and discuss a wide range of contemporary topics of global citizenship, while linking ideas between different discourses. My year in CAP consolidated my decision to major in international relations.
Courses: Term One
In their first term, students will enrol in CAP 100 (their writing course) as well as Environmental Studies, and Political Science. Students will learn how the environment and politics play a role in our globalized lives in relation to issues of power, government, consumption, inequality, race, and representation, among others–as well as gain a foundation for learning to read and write at the university level.
Analysis of and practice in academic research and writing in the social sciences and the humanities. Restricted to students in the Coordinated Arts Program. Credits count toward the Writing Component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement.
This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
For more information about the connections between CAP 100 and CAP 101A, please visit this page.
CAP_V 100-E01 (MWF 10-11am) - Instructor: Dr. Adrian Lou
Course description TBD.
CAP_V 100-E02 (MWF 10-11am) - Instructor: Dr. Anne Stewart
Climate change. Global warming. Sea level rise. These terms all make the future of life on this planet seem scary. But what about other ways of thinking and living in relation to the planet Earth? Indigenous cultures, communities of color with close relationships to land, and anti-capitalist thinkers have been writing about, imagining, and fighting for different forms of connection between humans and our physical environment for centuries. The more we learn about these ideas, the better prepared we are to live in, understand, and reimagine the world around us. Through twentieth century and contemporary readings of environmental rhetoric from a variety of cultural perspectives, we’ll work to replace feelings of climate anxiety with knowledge, research, and argumentation that describes other, hopeful, and potentially transformative ways of being in the world.
ENST_V 211-CAP (TTh 11am-12:30pm) - Instructor: Dr. Loch Brown
The demographic, economic, ecological, and technological factors that underlie current environmental challenges, considering their effects to date and their possible impact in the future. Credit will only be granted for one of GEOG 211 or ENST 211.
POLI_V 100-228 (MWF 1-2pm) - Instructor: Dr. Spencer McKay
Political issues and case studies, drawn from Canadian and international contexts, will be used to introduce students to central debates and concepts of politics and political analysis.
Courses: Term Two
In their second term, students will take CAP 101A along with Geography, and History. They will learn about our globalizing and modernizing world and about how the environment shapes history. They will consider how literature, culture, media and language play a part in both shaping and resisting the structures of our world.
In this stream, CAP_V 101-A_E02 also fulfills the Place and Power requirement.
Applications of research and writing skills in the context of literary, cultural, and media analysis. Topics integrate CAP stream themes and vary each year. Restricted to students in the Coordinated Arts Program.
This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
For more information about the connections between CAP 100 and CAP 101A, please visit this page.
CAP_V 101-A_E01 (MWF 10-11am) - Instructor: Dr. Adrian Lou
Course description TBD.
CAP_V 101-A_E02 (MWF 10-11am) - Instructor: Dr. Anne Stewart
Definitions of the relationship between land and power—ranging from the economic to the sacred—are the focus in this course, which introduces students to how power is and has been defined in relation to the development of “Beautiful British Columbia." As scholars of literature, culture, and media, students will encounter the challenging practices of reading land and reading about land—geographically, culturally, historically, and environmentally—and to writing about what we learn from land and from Indigenous land-based intelligence. We will also develop our capacities as researchers, begun in CAP 100, to contribute to contemporary conversations related to power imbalances and power structures shaping our colonial present.
HIST_V 113-227 (TTh 2-3pm) - Instructor: Dr. Benjamin Bryce
This course surveys the major transformations of modern global history. It begins with the industrial and imperial order of the late nineteenth century and traces how that world was challenged, dismantled, and remade across the long twentieth century. Students will learn about empire and decolonization, revolutions and counter-revolutions, the Cold War and its endings, and the long histories behind some of today’s most pressing conflicts: from Palestine to Ukraine to the climate crisis. Particular attention is given to commodities and global trade, mass political ideologies, the relationships between metropoles and colonies, and the uneven place of Latin America, Africa, and Asia in a world long narrated from Europe and North America. Students are also introduced to the discipline of history, including historiographic debate and primary source analysis.
GEOG_V 122-CAP (MWF 1-2pm) - Instructors: Dr. Peter Hudson, and Dr. Trevor Barnes
Geography 122: Geography, Modernity and Globalisation will introduce students to the major themes, issues, approaches, and methodologies of human geography through an intensive examination of capitalism – of capitalism’s history, and of the geographical character and expression of capitalism’s history and present form. Over the course of the semester, we will examine capitalism’s historical origins, its geographical expansion, its institutional transformations, and its contemporary character. We will also consider the crises that have marked capitalism’s history, shaped its spatial reorganization, and engendered the forms of resistance to and critiques of capitalism that have emerged from various and diverse social and political actors and movements.
The course is divided into eight major sections, each one concerned with the human geography of a different era and theme within capitalism. We begin by introducing students to the major themes of the course, discussing course expectations around reading and writing,, and exploring the idea of “polycrisis” as a way of understanding our contemporary moment. We then turn to three sections that map the geographical and historical origins of capitalism. The first of these sections (Part Two), revisits 1492, the European conquest of the Americas, and Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism. The second (Part Three) considers the history of the Europe trade in enslaved Africans and the role of mercantilism and the plantation system in the emergence of capitalism.The third (Part Four) considers the transition to industrial capitalism and the onset of colonialism and imperial expansion. Part Five is about capitalism now and the various geographical forms it has taken. After providing overviews of the recent trajectory of capitalism in both the Global North and South, we examine specific constituent elements within its larger form: the multinational corporation, the commodity, the transportation and communications network, the global city, and its latest incarnation as digital or surveillant capitalism. The short Part Six is about culture and capitalism. The first lecture is about how capitalism leaves its impression on the cultural geographical landscape. You will see this up close for yourself when you do the campus field trip later in the semester in your discussion group. In anticipation of the World Cup in Vancouver this summer, the second is a joint lecture on the cultural pursuit of global sport manifest as FIFA and football (soccer) and its indissolvable entanglement with capitalism. Part Seven examines “geopolitics,” that is the geographical factors shaping relations between international actors. The first part of this section examines the geopolitics of what has been termed the “American Century.” It will examine the global power and influence of the United States in the twentieth-century via an exploration of the US dollar, debt and finance, and the political economy of militarism and war. The second part is about the links between geopolitics and the economy using as case studies the Soviet Union and its subsequent break up, and the emergence of the now second largest economy in the world, China. The last section is about the interaction of capitalism and nature and the human and physical geographies that it has created. They are found at different scales but especially globally. In the process, humans have fundamentally changed the material form and physical composition of their planet (we have entered the new geological period of the Anthropocene).
Courses: Schedule
Preview how a week looks in the stream:
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Click on the image to enlarge.
Sample Projects
Archival Research in UBC's Rare Books and Special Collections
Students spend one week examining readers’ responses to Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, a semi-autobiographical novel about the treatment of Japanese-Canadians during and after World War II. Students analyze these readers’ responses in relation to an argument by a literary scholar, and present their research findings in the form of a short paper. This project aims to help students understand how academics conduct primary research to produce new knowledge.
Global stories of belonging
For this assignment, the CAP classes partner with the City of Vancouver (in a project supported by CityStudio Vancouver and UBC’s Centre for Community Engaged Learning), to explore what civic engagement looks like. Students explore spaces in their own cities, discussing in small groups what factors impacted their sense of belonging in that space. They research public stories about the space, and they have conversations with people in their communities. Ultimately, each student produces a story about a social issue related to the space they have researched. In 2021, we created a multimedia map students’ to share experiences of belonging around the globe.
