Micro-Certificate in Canadian Studies

This (15 credits) Micro-Certificate aims to have students, both domestic and international, engage with the various ideas, myths, and presentations of Canada and in so doing explore the “great” questions of today and in the past: national development and progress, identity politics, race and racism, colonization and decolonization, gender, military involvement, social justice, climate change, etc. In exploring these ideas and issues, students will have a better understanding of the challenges Canada has faced and is facing. They will also be able to adapt to changing circumstances, as well as challenge existing circumstances in ways that address the pressing social and political issues of the day.

List of Courses

CDN 100 Introduction to Canadian Studies
DRA 201 Contemporary Canadian Drama
DRA 311 Production Dramaturgy I
DRA 312 Production Dramaturgy II
DRA 313 Production Dramaturgy III
ENG 252 English-Canadian Literature to the First World War
ENG 253 English-Canadian Literature from the First World War to the Present
ENG 275 The Contemporary Canadian Novel
ENG 359 Approaches to Canadian Culture
FRA 166 Textes en contexte : Initiation de la littérature Québécoise
FRA 181 Histoire socioculturelle du Québec I
FRA 182 Histoire socioculturelle du Québec II
FRA 187 Introduction au theatre québécois
FRA 208 Histoire du français au Québec
FRA 255 Littérature et cinema au Québec
FRA 258 La télévision: miroir de la société québécoise
FRA 252 De la contreculture a la contestation ouverte : les années 1960 et 1970
HIS 109 New World The Americas to 1850
HIS 207 Canada 1867-1945
HIS 211 Canada Since 1945
HIS 221 Pre-Confederation Canada
HIS 227 The Stuff of History: An Introduction to Material Culture
HIS 239 History and the Archives
HIS 240 History and Heritage
HIS 241 Canada and the World in the 20th Century
HIS 263 Pre-Industrial Québec, 1608-1840
HIS 265 Québec: Political Change and Industrialization 1840-1930
HIS 267 History of Sport in Canada
HIS 269 First Nations/Settler Relations in Canada
HIS 288 Women in 19th and 20th Century Canada
HIS 391 Archival or Institutional Internship (relevant to the study of Canada)
HIS 392 Research Internship (relevant to the study of Canada)
HIS 399 Senior Research Paper in History (relevant to the study of Canada)
HIS 300 The Law of the Land: Indigenous Treaties with Canada
HIS 302 British North America
HIS 396 Public History
POL 112 Introduction to Canadian Politics
POL 118 Constitutional Law and Canadian Government
POL 216 Canadian Provincial and Territorial Politics
POL 214 Public Administration
POL 312 Canadian Federalism
POL 317 Canadian Welfare State
POL 315 Indigenous-Settler Intergovernmental
POL 318 Canadian Elections, Parties and Voters
POL 410 Selected Topics in Canadian Politics and Public Policy
SPO 390 Sport and Social Issues

Double Counting: The maximum number of courses that can be double counted towards a History Major or History Honours degree is 4 courses. For a History Minor, the maximum number of courses is 2.

Faculty

Dr. Linda Morra

Full Professor & Chair of the Canadian Studies program

Dr. Linda Morra is Full Professor and Chair of Canadian Studies at Bishop’s University. She was the Jack and Nancy Farley Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University and the Klara Marie Faßbinder Guest Professor for Women and Gender Studies at Trier University in 2022. Prior to that, she served as the Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin for the 2016-2017 year. During her term in Dublin, she conceived of and staged ‘Untold Stories of the Past 150 Years’ (April 2017), from which she co-edited with Dr. Sarah Henzi the award-winning volume, On the Other Side(s) of 150 (CSN Prize, 2021). In January 2016, with the support of a Sproul Fellowship from the Institute of Canadian Studies, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

Bishop’s University conferred upon her the Research & Creative Award in 2024-2025 for her research contributions and for her podcast, Getting Lit With Linda, which won the Women in Podcasting Award for Education in 2024 and a Canadian Podcasting Award in the Outstanding Education Series in 2022. The podcast is available and streams on all major platforms, including Spotify and iTunes.

Dr. Morra has won several teaching awards, including the Departmental teaching Award (2008-2009) and Best Professor of the Humanities (2007-2008 and 2009-2010), and has been nominated for several others, including the William and Nancy Turner Teaching Award (2010-2011). She was also awarded the Faculty Evaluation Committee Merit Award for Research/Teaching in 2010 and then again in 2013.

She specializes in women’s archives, theories of affect and archives, and gender and sexuality in writing in Canada. As recent examples, she examined Jane Rule’s archive in her edited book, Moving Archives (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2020), which won the Gabrielle Roy Prize in English (2020). Her most recent book is The Routledge Introduction to Gender and Sexuality in Literature in Canada (2023), which spans over 200 years of literature. Her other monograph, Unarrested Archives: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Women’s Authorship (University of Toronto Press in December 2014), was a finalist for the Gabrielle Roy Prize in English in 2015. During her research for the latter book, she discovered Jane Rule’s hand-written autobiography, Taking My Life, in the University of British Columbia archives. She subsequently transcribed, edited, and prepared the autobiography for publication (Talon 2011) and also wrote the afterword. Taking My Life was shortlisted for the Lambda Award (2012), received a nomination for the Stonewall Book Award (2011), and garnered many positive reviews. One such review appeared in The Globe and Mail. She is drawing upon this research to write the biography of Jane Rule, her current research in progress.

She has collaborated with several scholars to produce many other volumes of criticism, including Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace: Explorations in Canadian Women’s Archives (with Dr. Schagerl, WLUP 2012); Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures (with Cree-Metis scholar, Dr. Deanna Reder, WLUP 2016); and Margaret Laurence and Jack McClelland: Letters (with Dr. Laura Davis, U of Alberta P, 2018).

She served as the President of the Quebec Writers’ Federation (2014-2016), for which she developed their Youth Prize, and sat on the advisory board for Guernica Press, Canadian Literature, and Studies in Canadian Literature. She ran the Morris House Reading Series at Bishop’s University until 2025 and the Student Writing Week/End in the Eastern Townships (SWEET).

Visit her website.

Other Faculty Members of the Canadian Studies program:

Dr. Gordon Barker, Full Professor – History and Global Studies
Dr. Taylor Graham, Assistant Professor – Drama Department
Dr. Rebecca Harries, Full Professor – Drama Department
Dr. Jacob Robbins-Kanter, Associate Professor – Politics and International Studies
Dr. Sarah Theberge, Associate Professor – Études françaises et québécoises

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