Notice
You can download a printable version of the course description listed below
If LLIR cannot deliver a course as specified we offer you an alternative that is as similar as possible to the original course.
LLIR Winter 2023 at Glendon
January 13th to March 17th, 2023
(AM) Religion: Up Close and Personal with Michael Coren
This is a course where we will meet representatives of most of the world’s main religions, almost all of which are now represented in modern, diverse Canada. The first week will be an introduction into what religion is – and isn’t – and a chance for attendees to ask Michael Coren questions. After that, each week will be devoted to a specific faith, with a cleric or official from that faith being interviewed by Michael Coren, followed by a Q&A session. In other words, religion made human. The course will conclude with a discussion and round-up.
This Course is full at this time and no longer available.
(AM) Pride and Prejudice. Social Conflict in the Modern World with Brian Singer
With the rise of right-wing populism across much of the western world, we have witnessed increasing social divisiveness, associated with immigration, longer standing divisions relative to racial, religious and sexual minorities, not to mention culture wars and the tensions associated with increasing economic disparities. With this in mind, these set of lectures will seek to explore this contemporary divisiveness, what serves to temper it, and what serves to exacerbate it. This provides an opportunity to think about what tempers and what sharpens conflicts around these differences. These series of lectures proposes to examine the topic by moving in two directions. One direction will be comparative: why are some countries better or worse at dealing with their internal differences, with a particular emphasis on Canada and the United States, but with a glance towards other, not necessarily western countries. The other direction will be more oriented towards contemporary developments that help explain the present exacerbation of these differences. Both directions will require an examination of different sets concepts with which to orient our analysis, but such an examination will be leavened by examples.
(PM) Plays from a Small Island: The Irish Entertain the World with Philippa Sheppard
We will explore a representative sampling of the best Irish drama, from 1773-1998. These ten plays include the dramatization of Irish myths, colonialism, religious conflict, diaspora, assimilation and protest. In every case, they consider the fashioning of identity, both personal and national. They run the gamut of styles, from late Restoration anti-sentimentalism, through Aestheticism, Revivalism, and Absurdism, to Post-Modernism. For a nation with a small population, the Irish have made a remarkably powerful impact on Western drama. We will consider, through illustrated lecture, Q & A, and the viewing of brief clips from filmed productions, the ways in which this disproportionate influence has come about, is deserved, and has endured through three centuries.
LLIR Winter 2023 Online
Members who register for online courses can view both courses.
Canadian Politics from the Inside Out… Or why our politicians keep making such bizarre decisions with Adam Chapnick
Has a decision made by the Canadian government ever left you scratching your head? Have you ever wondered why Ottawa pays so much attention to some issues and so little to others? Do you know what multiculturalism really means? Or what our military is supposed to be doing when there hasn’t been a physical war on Canadian soil since the War of 1812? This course will help you understand how politics works, and doesn’t work, in the liberal democracy that is Canada. It begins with a lecture about major events in Canadian political history, and uses those events as a launch pad to explore a variety of contentious themes beginning inside the country, and ending in the wider world.
Learning from the City of Light: a thousand years of culture, food, and revolution in Paris with Lisa Pasold.
Parisians have been inventing the city for a very long time. From the muddy beginnings of Paris to today’s cosmopolitan centre, the City of Light has helped define Western ideas about city life. We’ll look at urban planning from Philip Augustus’ 12-century wall to Mitterand’s Grands Projets. We’ll discuss the famous Belly of Paris and the invention of restaurant dining and the café as we know it. We’ll talk about literary Paris, with celebrities like cigar-smoking George Sand and ex-pat Gertrude Stein, and how artists have recreated the city and its citizens. We’ll look at the invention of photography and the 7th art, ie Cinema. And of course, we’ll look at the fights–both actual and philosophical–that have torn up the city’s streets. We’ll wrap up with a look at Paris today and what the city has to offer the future.