SKHS Courses: EDII in the curriculum – Queen's School of Kinesiology and Health Studies

HLTH 101 Social Determinants of Health

This course will provide you with a broad understanding of the major social determinants of health in Canada and globally today, including income, the economy, and work; poverty; racism and social exclusion; colonialism and Indigeneity; access to food and shelter; child development and education; climate change and the environment; and war and migration.

HLTH 205 Introduction to Health Promotion

The goals of this course are to give you a broad introduction to health promotion, and a general understanding of what health promoters do. Students learn how race, culture, gender, Indigeneity, and other socially constructed categories influence how we understand health, as well as how the investigation of health reveals insights into the differentiation of society.

HLTH 235 Food Systems

In this course, we will examine the dominant industrialized food system and its impacts on the human and non-human
animals who are part of it, as well as the environment. We will also consider alternatives to the dominant food system including Indigenous food systems.

HLTH 305 Health Policy

This course will provide you with a general overview of policy and policy change, with a focus on Canadian health care policy. We will study the history and current structure of Canada’s health care system, and analyze current debates about how Canadians access health care. Indigenous and non-Canadian health policy is one of the four modules covered in the course.

HLTH 323 Introduction to Epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of the occurrence and distribution of health-related events, states, and processes in a human population, including the study of the determinants influencing such processes and the application of this knowledge to public health policy formation and clinical practice. This course will provide students with the basics of epidemiological study designs and methods while engaging seriously with the intertwined societal (e.g., gender, race, class), political (e.g., health policy, neoliberalism), and ecological (e.g., climate change) determinants of population health and health inequities.

HLTH 332 Foundations for Understanding Disability: A Health Perspective

This course provides students with a foundation for understanding disability, with an emphasis on how disability is a socially constructed concept. Students explore the intersection of disability and Indigeneity, and how meanings and demographics of disability differ among communities in Canada.

HLTH 333 Contemporary Issues in Human Sexuality

This course has been designed to help us place contemporary sexual issues in a broad historical and cultural context. Our primary goal is to analyze both sexuality and health on social and political levels, to see them not simply as personal or physical/biological concerns. Topics include the social construction of sexuality, sexual health, and racism, colonialism and violence.

HLTH 334 Health, Illness and Society

In this course you will critically analyse the social and political dimensions of health and illness drawing on approaches that emphasize power and context. Through reading, writing, and discussion about issues like colonial biopolitics, surveillance and criminalization, we will explore what it means to approach health and illness as products of systemic forces and sites of political struggle.

HLTH 350 Topics in Global Health

This course examines global health from a variety of perspectives, including anthropological, epidemiological, geographical, and sociological, to help understand the cultural and historical patterns shaping global health inequalities including colonial medicine and its legacy.

HLTH 360/ BLCK 360: Globalization and Black Health

Globalization provides a key context for the study of social determinants of health (SDH): the conditions in which people live and work, and their access to opportunities for healthy lives and wellbeing. This new world order is marked by new actors, new rules of governance, new forms of communication, and the global movement of populations. This course will examine economic, social, technological and importantly, the political dimensions of globalization and how these impact the health and wellbeing of Black populations, identifying opportunities and risks.

HLTH 404 Global Studies of Social Inclusion, Community Participation and Mental Health

Students will examine current disability discourse within global contexts as it relates to mental health and social exclusion.

HLTH 410 Environment and Health

This seminar course provides advanced review of major theoretical and epistemological approaches to the study of environment and health.

HLTH 430 Critical Weight Studies

In this course, we will consider alternatives to the dominant biomedical discourse that problematically understands large body size strictly through a “health risk factor” lens. This course will introduce you to different theoretical approaches to studying body size in order to understand how the way in which we understand body weight reinforces or resists other systems of privilege and oppression, including gender, race, class, and sexuality.

HLTH 434 Social Movements in Health

This course explores the proliferation of health social movements, bringing together the interdisciplinary study of health and illness with social movement theory the courses analyses the strategies, goals and outcomes of political organizing around various conditions.

HLTH 435 Seminar on HIV/AIDS Prevention

This seminar course involves critical assessment of HIV prevention interventions situated at varying levels of analysis and action. Consistent with the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS, the courses focuses on interventions for marginalized populations.

HLTH 437 Seminar on Harm Reduction

This course covers the philosophy, history, implementation, and efficacy of interventions that aim to reduce adverse consequences of legal and illegal drug use, without a focus on drug use abstinence. The course also covers the application of harm reduction to other public health domains such as gambling and sex work.

HLTH 445 Critical Health Promotion

This course provides advanced study of the major theoretical and methodological approaches in critical health promotion including decolonizing and anti-racist approaches to health promotion. You will develop a strong theoretical foundation for the interrogation of priority health inequities facing Canada and the world today.

HLTH 460: Anti-Black Racism and Health

This course focuses on anti-Blackness experienced by global Black communities and the resistance of white supremacy and the associated health inequities. The fundamental goal of this course is to examine the realities of anti-Black racism from the transatlantic slave trade and colonization to historical and contemporary policies and practices that have negatively impacted the health of African descendants and their communities within Canada and in transnational contexts.

HLTH 493 (Special topic): Indigenous Resilience and Vitality Across Turtle Island and Beyond

This seminar course will introduce students to Indigenous resilience and vitality by examining the socio-political history and current context of colonization on Turtle Island. Students will explore topics that focus on the emerging field of Indigenous Health Promotion including Indigenous conceptualizations of health, determinants of health, approaches to health care, medicine and cultural safety for health workers and practitioners. Students will engage with research, in both conventional and non-conventional forms, that is conducted by Indigenous peoples and that centers Indigenous voices. Readings for this course will exclusively highlight key research done by Indigenous scholars and grey literature published by Indigenous-led organizations. This seminar will encourage transformative thinking by going beyond dominant Western bio-medical discourse through reflection, discussion and land-based experiential learning.

HLTH 495 (Special topic): Critical Poverty Studies

Using a critical and interdisciplinary lens, this seminar examines how poverty intersects with various systems of oppression, the relationship between economic and health inequities, and state and community-based responses to income insecurity.

KNPE 167 Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Sport and Physical Activity

In this class, you will develop a better understanding of the place of sport in contemporary society and how it works as an institution, a symbol, and a source of pleasure or pain in everyday life. The course will focus on the ways that different social factors (race, gender, class, etc.) shape people’s experiences of sport and the way that sport can both challenge and contribute to social inequality.

KNPE 366 Race, Sport and Physical Activity

This course offers a critical exploration into (1) how the social construction of race affects sport, health, and physical activity cultures, and (2) how sport may influence our understanding of race more broadly in society. We will discuss how racism can be experienced, reproduced, and/or challenged in these sporting spaces. The end goal is to understand how sport and health practitioners can incorporate anti-racism work into their everyday operations.

KNPE 367 Fitness, the Body and Culture

This course explores historical and contemporary ways of making sense of fitness, exercise, and bodies to see how these are connected to broader social and political themes such as inequality related to race, class, ability, sexuality, age and gender. You will investigate fitness and exercise as not just physical but also complex cultural, historical, and political phenomena.

KNPE 473 Sport and Culture

In this course our aim is simple: to learn more about the times in which we are living. Our shared interest in sport and outdoor recreation provides the entry point, a way of making the global local, of considering the effects of broad social forces on a smaller scale. Our emphasis will be on developing habits of mind and learning skills that facilitate personal and collective reflection on important issues (e.g., settler colonialism/ decolonization), with a view to imagining better futures and contributing to social change where it is needed.

KNPE 475 Sport and the Environment

This course is designed to deepen student understandings around sport, the built environment, and climate degradation. This seminar course prioritizes intersectional justice as a way to learn and think about human interactions with each other and with “nature”.

KHS 869 Bodies and Social Theory

This course explores key theoretical approaches to the meaning, mood, and matter of bodies in the contemporary world. Through a range of topics, students will attend to both the vitality of bodies and their subjection within enduring structures of power. Readings will emphasize anti-capitalist, critical race, postcolonial, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and trans perspectives.

KHS 873 Critical Methodologies: Politics of Knowledge

This seminar explores the politics of knowledge in research that aims for social change. Taking a historical approach, it draws on feminism, Indigenous Studies, post-colonialism, and other critical perspectives to develop a frame for post-positivist, qualitative research.

KHS 877 Intersectionality and Knowledge Translation

This course explores the development and application of intersectionality as a theoretical lens and methodological approach and focuses on the practice of and politics around knowledge translation.