SMC ONE and FIRST YEAR SEMINAR COURSES
Exciting interdisciplinary courses especially for Arts and Sciences students entering their first year!
We offer small courses (‘seminar’ courses) that help you explore different interests and nurture your curiosity.
Taught by leading professors, they create a close-knit, exciting environment that help you get to know and work with other students, St Mike’s professors, and with a variety of fantastic resources.
SMC ONE: The Gilson Seminar in Faith and Ideas
This two-part course takes place over the year to explore questions related to Christianity and the arts, science, philosophy, and politics. The second part of the course includes an eleven-day international learning experience in in May 2025, featuring daily lectures and site-specific talks and tours in Rome and Assisi.
SMC ONE: The McLuhan Seminar in Creativity and Technology
This seminar is inspired by the thinking and influence of Marshall McLuhan, who taught at St. Mike’s from 1946 until his death in 1980. Students explore how the humanities relate to other fields of thought in addressing the effects of technological innovation: through exciting interactive classes, they explore the close relationship between creativity and technology.
Intelligence, Artificial and Human
What is human intelligence? How close are we to replicating it? Is Silicon Valley the seat of a new techno-religion? What insight (or inspiration) can we get from works of science fiction about the future of human-AI interaction? Through reading discussion, written assignment, and workshops, this seminar presents students with the opportunity to integrate their computer science interests with philosophy, history, and literature.
The Sistine Chapel: History, Image, Usage
The Sistine Chapel in Rome is a historical artifact, an artistic monument, and a house of worship—at once recognizable and mystifying. This seminar explores art and patronage, rhetoric and ritual, controversial restoration, and the Sistine Chapel in popular culture—with an emphasis on the close analysis of the major frescoes.
NEW! BMS110Y: The Printed Book
Learn about the revived art of letterpress printing and study its social and political importance throughout history. Throughout this full-year seminar, you will also have the opportunity to produce your own printed materials using 19th and 20th century printing presses in the Kelly Library!
God and Money in the Middle Ages
Study the ethical, political, and spiritual questions arising from the existence of wealth and poverty in medieval European culture. With readings from Dante, Chaucer, Thomas Aquinas and others, this seminar examines how the interaction of spiritual ideals and material realities shaped cultural developments from late antiquity to the Protestant Reformation.
Through lectures, discussions, and in-class play sessions, learn about the growing academic field of game studies! Students will build a critical vocabulary and toolbox of techniques for understanding the unique formal, aesthetic, narrative, and thematic properties of games in a variety of platforms and genres.
OTHER FIRST-YEAR COURSES
The following lecture-based courses have been designed as first-year introductory courses and are open to students in all years of study at UofT:
NEW! CHC131: Playing with Fire: Alchemy, Astrology, and Magic
This course offers an historical introduction to alchemy, astrology, and magic, with a focus on the development, defence, condemnation, and progressive marginalization of these controversial pursuits in and around the Christian world(s). Students will learn about such topics as the search for the philosopher’s stone, the casting of horoscopes, the design of wondrous machines… and the risks associated with meddling with spirits! Lectures will examine these learned traditions on their own terms, while inviting discussions about their enduring popularity, their connections with the rise of modern science and their reception in popular culture.
NEW! CLT110: Celtic Mythology and Saga
This course introduces students to the adventures of the Celtic gods and goddesses as depicted in the literature of medieval Ireland and Wales. The course assumes no prior familiarity with Celtic literature and history, and all texts will be read in English translation.
BMS100: Introduction to Book and Media Studies
Introduces the academic study of media in all its forms, including books and print media as well as modern electronic and digital media. Provides an overview of key theories of media, culture, and society and relates them to contemporary issues, enabling students to apply different critical approaches to their everyday experiences with media.