Innis College

Innis College Programs | Innis College Courses

Faculty List

Associate Professors, Teaching Stream
C. Messenger, MA
D.J. Roberts, PhD
A.L. Williams, PhD

Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream
D. Adleman, PhD
S. English, MA
A. Mehta, PhD

Introduction

Innis College is home to a close-knit and diverse community of about 2,200 students. Our small size shapes a friendly, inclusive, and active environment where students are central to college life — including through full parity in our unique governance structure, which provides students with an equal voice when it comes to important decisions concerning the College. Innis students experience the breadth of a world-class research university through the lens of a warm and supportive academic community.

Innis houses the interdisciplinary Writing and Rhetoric Program (WRR), which builds strong critical thinking, research, and communication skills across fields. The College also hosts the Cinema Studies Institute, whose courses (CIN) are listed separately in the Calendar. Our distinctive Innis One Program offers experiential learning and co-curricular events in small first-year courses that are inspired by the values of WRR and our special relationship with CIN. These programs are open to all students enrolled in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Innis One: Storytelling and Society

Innis One: Storytelling and Society is a first-year foundations program for students eager to develop their writing across diverse forms and genres. Rooted in the College’s Writing and Rhetoric program and enriched by its connection to the Cinema Studies Institute, Innis One invites students to venture beyond the academy walls as writers in the world, actively engaging in an imaginative, inquiry-based, and creative learning experience. They will discover the power of narrative through engagement with personal essays, cultural criticism, and other forms of writing that engage with social change.

In small seminars, students will experiment with style, voice, and perspective, bringing their own experiences, passions, and history into conversation with the world around them. Seminars featuring guest lecturers, films, and special field trips offer a unique experiential learning opportunity that will also help students to develop writing-focused research and analytical skills.

All first-year students in the Faculty of Arts & Science (St. George campus) are eligible for admission. Further information is available at website.

Urban Studies

As of January 1, 2025, Urban Studies is no longer administered by Innis College. Please see the Geography and Planning section of the Calendar for more information on Urban Studies courses and programs.

Writing and Rhetoric

Innis College’s Minor Program in Writing and Rhetoric offers courses on academic, creative, and professional writing and on journalism, digital humanities, editing, and rhetoric.

Writing and rhetoric go hand in hand. In an increasingly digital world, where the variety and sheer number of texts are rapidly proliferating, the ability to produce persuasive and eloquent writing, as well as analyze and interpret texts, couldn’t be more foundational. Guiding our program is the premise that students must be equipped to engage both theoretically and practically with the multimedia world of discourse.

The term writing in the program refers to the changing conventions and genres of academic writing (such as the essay and the report), creative writing (short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction), and professional communication (including electronic communication and research-informed formal reports). The program’s courses teach students how to read challenging writing and various forms of visual communication critically, to conduct research, to disseminate knowledge, and to engage with a variety of audiences. Students also learn to create, examine, revise, and edit their own work and to analyze and provide feedback on the writing of others. Several courses incorporate site visits and explore the importance of place in written communication. Each program course is oriented toward the learning central to specific writing genres.

Rhetoric, one of the oldest disciplines in the humanities, is fundamentally concerned with how persuasion circulates in society. The study of rhetoric includes analyzing scholarly texts, digital media environments (digital rhetoric), material culture (visual rhetoric), marketing campaigns (advertising rhetoric), medical and scientific settings (rhetoric of science and technology), and both politics and activism (rhetoric of social change—including feminist rhetoric, rhetoric of race, and environmental rhetoric).