This course provides a broad overview of the fascinating field of Forensic Psychology. Students will gain an understanding of the application of psychology within the criminal justice system. Topics to be discussed include police selection, interrogations, criminal profiling, lie detection, eyewitness identification, jury decision-making, and psychopathic, sexual, and violent offenders.

This course examines contemporary issues and key concepts of equity/inequity and social justice in a global context. It provides students with the opportunity to critically consider and evaluate social responsibility and participation in local, national and international communities. The course unpacks and seeks a deeper understanding of the following topics/issues: social analysis, media literacy, cultural values, social exclusion, power and privilege, gender, class and social action.

This course introduces students to the seminal ideas of major western thinkers of the modern period. This course provides an historical and integrated inter-disciplinary perspective on the development of those ideas that have shaped the thought of our own time.
The twenty-first century begins with the promise of new ideas, new technologies as well as the challenges associated with these apparent changes. This course is designed to facilitate the development of students' capacity to think both critically and historically about their own time, the past and social movements. It will introduce students to the ideas that have shaped our age and our ways of thinking thereby placing their own thinking within a larger context and increasing the clarity of that thought.
In addition to the professor responsible for and the primary lecturer of the course, students will be active participants through class discussions, presentations, and debates.

The average person in Canada spends about 230 minutes per day watching TV and 200 minutes per day on the Internet. That's about 325 eight-hour days, a full-time job! We spend another 70 minutes per day with other media, including newspapers, magazines, and traditional radio. That's more than 3,000 hours per year of media use, more time than we spend on anything else, including working or sleeping. This consumption of information sustains our economy, and most of the economic activity in North America now involves producing, processing or distributing information including the output of the mass media, Internet, telecommunications and computer industries. The goal of this course is to prepare students to thrive in today's increasingly integrated communications and information environment.

As we move through the world and interact with those around us, we all play the role of "psychologist", trying to understand why we and others do what we do, feel what we feel, and think what we think. This course is designed to introduce you to the scientific study of human behaviour and mental processes. By understanding how psychological research is conducted, by examining the evidence that has been accumulated in the field, and by using critical thinking and analysis, it is hoped that the assumptions and intuition you have gained through your own experience with the world will be re-examined and re-evaluated in a new and interesting light. A variety of areas within this broad and fascinating field will be examined. These may include learning, memory, social psychology, developmental psychology, stress and health, personality, and abnormal psychology.

As an introduction to queer studies, this course will explore the history of sexuality, in particular shifting concepts of male-male desire, as well as related issues pertaining to queer sexuality and identity through the medium of literature, theory, and film.

What is the nature of love? In his novel La Nouvelle Héloïse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's female protagonist, Julie, states: So many people speak of love, and so few know how to love.... The experience of romantic love raises several philosophical concerns. Is love an emotion or a feeling? Why do we say? I fell in love? Is love irrational or can one deliberately choose to love? Is there a difference between love and its trashy cousin lust? As one commentator explains, Love thrives on candlelight and conversation. Lust is equally happy in a doorway or a taxi. Is love at first sight? logically possible? Is love necessarily exclusive (i.e. can you be in love with two persons at the same time)? Is true or genuine love possible, or is love perhaps an illusion, a chimera? In this course, we will probe and interrogate your most intimate intuitions and notions of love as they are defined historically and characterized contemporarily.

Although philosophers have considered the nature of the mind for millennia, a new interdisciplinary approach developed in the 20th century: cognitive science. After millennia of study, the problems remained the same: Is the mind different from the brain? What is consciousness? How can I tell if other people have minds? Is it possible to create an artificial intelligence? Are humans truly rational? Cognitive science includes approaches from computer science, linguistics, anthropology, philosophy and psychology in an attempt to answer these ancient questions. Students will be introduced to central themes in cognitive science by reading key articles and excerpts from books from important cognitive scientists across the various disciplines.

This course examines some of the most influential ethical theories, emphasizing practical application in real world situations. Starting with timeless issues affecting persons throughout history, the main focus will be on current ethical problems unimaginable to the founders of western ethical thought along with future scenarios at the boundaries of our own imaginations. Students will explore how to make ethical choices in our complex, technologically mediated, and rapidly changing world.

Real time information systems have resulted in a high degree of economic interdependence among nations. Canada has an opportunity to push forward the production possibilities frontier and obtain a higher level of equilibrium with help of the international trade.
This course is designed to provide a theoretical and analytical framework for understanding the complexities of international trade. It will provide insight into the effects of ever changing economic and political order on international trade, with particular reference to the Canadian economy. Implications of the current Canadian international trade policy and our multilateral agreements will be also analyzed. In addition, students will develop an understanding of the fundamental principles of exchange rate determination. Students will explore issues such as: Is free trade beneficial for a country? Why do some countries adopt protectionist's policies? What are the effects, short-run and long-run, of major trade agreements on the Canadian economy? Why does the exchange rate fluctuate constantly?

This course offers a comprehensive analysis of theory and research related to group dynamics. Student explore social processes in groups and their impact on individual behaviour and are introduced to the following group elements: norms, roles, coherence and dissonance, group think, validation, types of groups and membership, referencing, group symptoms, leadership styles. The student will practice leading and participating in groups where observation and recording skills will be stressed.

In this course, we examine the ethics of globalization: What is justice in our globally interconnected world? Do obligations of justice extend beyond national borders? If they do, how can justify, and then act upon, our duties to distant others? A key theme throughout the course is the issue of global poverty: we begin with an historical assessment of how the world came to be so economically unequal, and then turn to the ethical consequences of such inequality. On what philosophical grounds can we condemn the world as it is? The course then concludes with the question of reform: What, exactly, would a more just world look like? And how can we bring that world into being, practically speaking?

This course focuses on the examination of contemporary patterns of globalization in all its forms. The 20th century has experienced great social upheaval and transformation. We fought two world wars, saw the rise and fall of the Soviet communist regime, and witnessed the formal dismantling of European empires. We experienced dramatic technological change and the ascendancy of corporate capitalism as the primary global economic model. We have also witnessed unprecedented economic disparities and ecological hazards from air, water and soil pollution to global climate change. The 21st century promises to see these trends accelerate and intensify.

It is universally recognized in art, literature, history and individual experience that human beings are social beings. Who we are, how we think, how we feel, and how we behave are all subject to the influence of the situation in which we find ourselves. Social psychology is the science that attempts to examine, describe, and explain the impact of social situations on individuals and on groups. This course will examine topics within the field such as how we see ourselves and others in a social context, how attitudes are formed and changed, and the power of social situations to influence our behaviour. Building on the knowledge the learner has of psychological research methodology, this course aims to improve the student's understanding of how psychologists study social influence and interaction. Both group and individual processes will be examined in depth to encourage critical analysis of a variety of theoretical viewpoints, and to develop the learner's ability to investigate and report on current perspectives in social psychology.

This course is designed to provide theoretical and analytical framework for understanding the structure and conduct of labour markets with particular reference to Canadian economy. It draws on contemporary methods to model and analyze key aspects of labour supply and labour demand. It also reviews labour legislation, labour market data and important trends that affect organizational, individual and government decision-making. These aspects are combined to explore the determination of wages, alternative pay schemes and the implication of major policies such as minimum wage legislation, non-wage benefits, alternative income maintenance schemes and unionization on the labour market. The acquired tools are applied to discuss current topics such as human capital investment, immigration, discrimination and unemployment.

Why is it easier to believe falsehoods when they're voiced by celebrities and powerful authority figures? How can we avoid falling for unsupported and often dangerous medical advice? Why is it so hard to acknowledge weaknesses in our own social and political perspectives while effortlessly finding faults in the views of others?
As humans, much of our thinking is fast, intuitive, and relatively effortless-we take mental shortcuts by necessity, and this often results in predictable mistakes. Cognitive errors shape who we vote for, what we fear, and our responses to emergency situations. To better cope with and thrive in our increasingly complex social environment-a world of virtually unlimited information and connectivity-we need to understand the limitations of our miraculous yet fallible minds. By developing greater awareness of pervasive heuristics and biases, this course aims to lay the foundation for identifying, avoiding, and responding to some of the errors to which we regularly fall prey.

Are psychopaths born or made? This course provides students both with an analysis of the development of criminals and in particular that of psychopaths and serial killers. The biological, developmental, learning and situational factors that contribute to criminal antisocial behaviour will be explored in detail. Since there is sound research on psychopaths, a particular focus will be placed on psychopaths. The diagnosis of psychopathic personality, connections between psychopathic and normal personalities, neuroscience findings and research on emotion and thought processes in psychopaths will be examined. Case studies will be examined to bring the research to life.