Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies

at York University - School of Continuing Studies Canada

York's School of Kinesiology & Health Science has been consistently ranked among the top three programs in Ontario and among the top 25 in the world according to the ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools and Departments.

Kinesiology & Health Science is the study of human movement and the relationship between physical activity and health. Most students enter the Kinesiology and Health Science Program because they have a keen interest in physical activity and health and plan to work in an applied health or education field.
York has one of the largest course offerings in Kinesiology in Canada, including more than 50 professionally focused practicum courses that let you apply your studies to everything from game strategy and injury assessment to event management.

The program provides both an arts and a science perspective to the study of human movement and students can apply to either the Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) program.
York's Kinesiology & Health Science program includes:

• Academic theory
• Laboratory
• Tutorial
• Physical activity practica experiences

The program is constantly evolving in response to societal changes and shifts in faculty and student interests. You will take a common core of required academic courses which encompass the major areas of emphasis in the discipline:

• Ergonomics
• Anatomy
• Physiology
• Teaching and coaching
• Sport administration
• Athletic therapy
• Aging
• Epidemiology
• Health promotion
• Gender and sport

Computer Security is a multi-faceted and challenging field. Ensuring the privacy of personal data, preventing unauthorized access to computer systems, ensuring back-up contingency plans in the event of data loss and protecting systems from malicious activity such as viruses and worms are just a few areas you can get involved in.

What You'll Learn 
In our Computer Security program you will build a solid background in computer science and math. You will study a variety of courses, including cryptography and operating systems. Computer security is the specialized part of computer science that studies threats to computer systems and networks. It is the science and practise of how to mitigate them. You will become an expert on all those topics. 

We offer both BA and BSc degrees, which share the same computer science and math requirements. In the BA program, you will complement your studies with courses from the Liberal Arts (e.g., humanities, social sciences). In BSc, the complimentary courses will be in the sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics).

After third year, you can put your knowledge to the test by taking part in our paid internship program. We have teamed up with a variety of major companies to ensure you gain valuable professional experience. 

Some Courses You'll Take  

• Object Oriented Programming 
• Mobile App Development 
• Design and Analysis of Algorithms 
• Computer Security Management 
• Applied Cryptography 
• Computer Security Management and Forensics

Our program encompasses subject areas that are exceptionally diverse while allowing you to design a custom made program suited to your interests.

This cross-disciplinary Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies program encompasses subject areas that are exceptionally diverse. In addition to Judaism as a religion, Jewish Studies explores the texts, histories, cultures, sociologies, languages and fine arts of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present.

• Study the aspects within the context of the many western and non-western civilizations in which Jewish people have lived.
• Examine Jewish interactions with non-Jewish people over the ages, evolving attitudes toward and images of Jewish people within a variety of non-Jewish cultures and the history of anti-Semitism, including the Holocaust.
• Explores the Jewish experience with a view to understanding the human situation in its diversity and complexity.

Crime, criminality, and criminal justice are central concerns in contemporary Canadian society. In politics, law, policy and popular culture, the problem of crime and what to do about it command increasing attention and interest. The Criminology program will provide you with an exceptional opportunity to pursue study in this evolving and expanding field. You will explore the ways in which concepts of crime, criminality and criminal justice have developed over time. You will also investigate how crime is understood legally, politically, economically and culturally.

The program’s interdisciplinary approach is reflected in complementary relationships with a number of other academic disciplines including anthropology, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, socio-legal studies, and sociology. Students are able to choose courses from these disciplines as well as from the core program courses, each of which draws from a range of disciplines and is devoted to making connections between different areas of study.

Note: Criminology is not a pre-law preparatory program.

The Criminology program will focus on the analysis of:

• Crime
• Criminality
• Processes of criminalization and social control
• Organized crime
• Systems of justice
• Criminal justice systems

York's Theatre programs immerse students in all aspects of theatre, fostering the ability to specialize or to assume a wide range of roles and apply various approaches to performance.  Through their creative and scholarly practice, students learn to constantly reassess the meaning of their work in the context of our ever-changing society, and to develop the critical thinking to understand and make a contribution to the world around them.

Program Structure
All Theatre students share a common first foundation year, in which they take courses across the various fields of theatre and performance. At the end of forst year students branch into one of four streams based on their interests and goals.*
Throughout the programs, students work together as actors and as members of creative and production teams in the department's many productions.

Streams
Acting Conservatory
With intensive studies in acting, movement and voice, the Acting Conservatory takes students deep into scene study, script analysis and character development. Upper year Conservatory members are cast in Theatre @ York's mainstage shows, featuring classic and contemporary masterpieces from Canada and around the world, chosen to address some of the big cultural and politacal debates facing society.

Performance Creation
This BFA degree stream places emphasis on studio coursework, such as Stagecraft, Devised Theatre, Scene Study and Directing. In keeping with the broader scope of Performance Creation work, this degree prepares students to move fluidly across artistic disciplines and to assume a range of roles in collaborative performance settings. This degree is ideal for students who want to produce sophisticated, meaningful performance work that engages with larger issues of social justice and sustainability.

Production and Design
Combining hands-on technical skills with creative aspects of theatre as storytelling, this program engages students in all elements of theatrical design and stage production. Courses in sound, lighting, scenery and costume design and construction are complimented by studies in technical direction and management.

Theatre Studies
This BA program focuses on studies in dramatic and performance theory, cristicism and history, and in theatre education. Students may choose to specialize in Playwriting and New Play Dramaturgy learning to write for the stage, or Devised Theatre focusing on collaborative creation of original works, incorporating all elements of playmaking, design and management to performance.

Urban Studies at York stresses the importance of fieldwork when studying the social and spatial fabric of cities.

The city is among the most fundamental human institutions. Across history, cities have been sites of basic innovation in economic, political and cultural life — centres of trade, seats of empire and the locale of scientific, social and artistic creativity. Cities retain these roles today and are the home of a growing majority of the world’s population who increasingly live in large metropolitan regions of several million people. Often, as in many Canadian cities, these urban regions are marked by complex social diversity, striking contrasts of wealth and poverty and a challenging array of planning and environmental dilemmas.

Urban Studies is the attempt to understand cities and city life — how they function, the current and future concerns of their residents. This encompasses the political institutions, economic and social relations, physical landscapes and cultural frameworks that constitute the city.

As a student in Urban Studies, you will focus on cities as distinctive entities and explore the meaning and function of cities in the larger society. You'll be taking courses from a broad range of fields including:

• History
• Environmental studies
• Geography
• Anthropology
• Political science
• Sociology
• Psychology.

You will also examine the processes that produce certain patterns of human settlement and chart the changing relationships among areas shaped by urbanization, such as metropolis and countryside, city and suburb, municipality and region.

Culture & Expression explores the catalytic relationship between the creative human imagination and the cultural settings that ignite it.
Literature, architecture, popular culture, the arts, media and technology provide areas of study for Culture & Expression courses. This program investigates how meaning, embedded in form, offers ways of understanding culture as a complex expression that animates human imagination and life. It encourages speculation on how this expression operates in social, political and cultural settings.

Through the lens of humanities studies, you examine historical and contemporary themes. Explore how themes are expressed, refracted, and reflected through a range of cultural forms such as cinema, music, literature and various forms of popular and material culture. Theoretical courses delve into the core of ideological "meaning" in culture, analyzing the social, economic and political contexts in which culture manifests itself.

Highlights of studying Culture & Expression at York:

• Explore exciting expressions of human creativity in popular culture, architecture, media and technology.
• Learn how a broad range of cultural and artistic forms convey social, political and philosophical concerns.
• Courses are drawn from areas including the humanities, communication studies, sociology, gender and women's studies, popular and material culture studies - providing you with personal choice and flexibility.
• Our professors are leading researchers in their fields: modernism, material culture, digital humanities, documentary film and critical studies in Black Canadian Culture.
• Courses are drawn from areas including the humanities, communication studies, sociology and women's studies - providing you with personal choice and flexibility.

Our professors are leading researchers in their fields. They include:

• Elicia Clements, author, Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language
• Leslie Sanders, author, Black Canadian Studies Certificate
• David Cecchetto, author, Ludic Dreaming: How to Listen Away from Contemporary Technoculture
• Gail Vanstone, recipient of the 2010 Dean’s Award in Teaching Excellence.

Study in one of the largest Geography programs in any university in Canada. Whether you're pursuing your Bachelor of Science and focusing on physical geography or gaining expertise about human geography through a Bachelor of Arts, York's program offers you the world at your doorstep.

Geography is the science of place and space. Geographers ask where things are located on the surface of the earth, why they are located where they are, how places differ from one another, and how people interact with the environment. There are two main branches of geography: human geography and physical geography.

Geographers also study the linkages between human activity and natural systems. Geographers were, in fact, among the first scientists to sound the alarm that human-induced changes to the environment were beginning to threaten the balance of life itself. They are active in the study of global warming, desertification, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, groundwater pollution, and flooding.

In the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, the Bachelor of Arts (BA) Geography program focuses on human geography - how people and their activities are distributed across the globe and how people create and sustain the places that make up the earth's surface. You'll learn how to use geographical theory and methodology to solve real-world problems that have a geographical dimension — urban and regional planning, transportation, tourism and international relations and more. Human geographers work in the fields of urban and regional planning, transportation, marketing, real estate, tourism, and international business.

• We are addressing some of the most pressing issues facing human kind today.
• We are committed to hands-on learning, using modern technologies and doing field work to get the facts on the ground, whether they are on the streets of Toronto or in the streams of the Arctic.
• You will be able to use our range of impressive facilities for computing and research. For example, the Geoinformatics Research Lab, the climate laboratory and a web development facility.
• You'll also have the opportunity to immerse yourself in our extensive map library.
• Why not check out the Undergraduate Geography Students Club and take advantage of Alumni Career events during the school year.

As 21st century medicine and health care becomes increasingly sophisticated, the demand grows for highly skilled people with a biomedical science background.

Biomedical scientists study biological processes and diseases with the ultimate goal of developing effective treatments and cures. Biomedical research requires careful experimentation by many scientists, including biologists and chemists. Discovery of new medicines and therapies requires careful scientific experimentation, development, and evaluation.

York's Biomedical Science program provides a comprehensive curriculum taught by the leading researchers in the field, including Samuel Benchimol, Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Health Research. The Biomedical Science program focuses emerging areas of biomedicine including physiology, microbiology, immunology, endocrinology, molecular genetics, and development.

This four-year Honours program also allows you the option to do a minor in another related discipline such as Chemistry, Psychology, or Kinesiology & Health Science.

The Biomedical Science stream is designed to help you:

• understand and explain the basic structures and fundamental processes of life at the molecular, cellular and population levels;
• effectively apply the scientific method for problem solving and experimental design;
• collect, organize, analyze, interpret and present quantitative and qualitative data;
• identify and describe current issues and challenges within the field of biomedical science;
• demonstrate and apply fundamental biological laboratory techniques and skills; and
• communicate effectively in written and oral forms.

The program will be particularly valuable if you're planning a career in biomedical research, and will also be a good choice if you're preparing for medical school.

German Studies encompasses subjects ranging from language, literature and film studies to intellectual and cultural history, urban studies, political science, museum studies, art history and women's studies.

German is a major language of business, diplomacy and tourism in the European Union and Eastern Europe. It is also the language of the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, and the largest portion of Switzerland, as well as Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, areas of Northern Italy, Eastern Belgium and Eastern France. Knowledge of German is vital for Canadians who want to compete in the emerging Eastern European market.

This program is divided into two streams:

• German Language, Literature and Culture — all courses but one are offered in German.
• German Culture and Society — you'll select courses that deal with the German-speaking world (e.g. history, political science, humanities). Language requirement applies.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE GERMAN STUDIES PROGRAM AT YORK:

• Students majoring in German are encouraged to study in Germany for one year. York has Canada's best array of exchange programs with partner institutions in German-speaking Europe in conjunction with the Ontario/Baden-Württemberg program.
• Take advantage of the Multimedia Language Centre (MLC) of York University, located in S117 Ross, is a resource centre dedicated to supporting students who are enrolled in programs of study of language, literature and linguistics.