Introduction to systematics, identification and classification of plants and animals comprising the main taxonomic groups of forest organisms:  trees, fungi, bryophytes, lichens, ferns, conifers and other Gymnosperms, Angiosperms, insects, other arthropods, amphibia, reptiles, birds and mammals.  Community ecology, diversity and function in relation to forest management planning are addressed through field trips, lectures & a team-based consultant report.  The course is composed of a 8-day field camp at the beginning of term, followed by lectures and field trips covering topics in biodiversity of forested landscapes and ecosystems.

An examination of the natural processes that determine the structure and function of forest ecosystems at the tree, stand and landscape scale, and approaches to integrating ecological theory in forest management practice.  Topics include silvics and functional ecology of tree species, forest succession, soils and biogeochemical cycles, stand dynamics, growth and yield modelling, silvicultural systems and forest conservation ecology.  The emphasis will be on northern temperate forests with select examples from other regions.  Field and laboratory exercises will provide practical experience in forest biometrics and inventory, silvicultural experimental design, stand management prescriptions and the use of forest landscape databases and models.

The focus of the course is to build theoretical foundations of economic issues related to forest ecosystems and to develop an understanding of their applications to real life situations of forest conservation. The different economic concepts related to forest ecosystems are taught in a three-step process – theory, practice, and application. First, some basic concepts of economics, such as consumer choice, firm behavior, and competitive markets are introduced. The second part of the course is organized in five units – one unit each on welfare theory, rent theory, cost-benefit analysis, forest rotation, and international trade of forest products.

The use of analytical methods and mathematical modelling in the planning for sustainable management of forests and integration of the ecological, economic and social issues related to forest management. Introduction of various decision-making techniques such as linear programming, computer simulation and geographic information systems.

The natural functioning of forest systems with emphasis on the disruption caused by stress factors in tree and forest development. Classification and identification of important stresses including pollution, forest insects, diseases and competing vegetation. The role of environmental factors that influence forest health will be considered at the level of the cell, tree and stand. Students will apply the principles and techniques of managing disturbed forests to both urban and general forest situations. An integrated approach to sustaining forest health will be taken through exposure to strategies of decision-making in appropriate laboratory and project assignments.

Forest Conservation Management and Planning: The course focuses on developing skills in integrating forest management related knowledge from natural and social sciences , and offers opportunities, through discussion of case studies, to learn applications of knowledge from natural and social sciences to the solution of real-life multi-dimensional forest management problems. Concepts related to integration science and case study analysis are introduced and many case studies, related to forest conservation, forests for industrial production, forestry NGOs, international forestry, trade of forest products, wildlife management, public participation, and Aboriginal forestry are discussed.

A guided research practical internship to take place in the summer following the first winter session to provide students with experience in applying concepts, principles and methods acquired in formal courses to the solution of practical forest management problems. Students, individually or in groups, will carry out detailed analyses of practical problems in forest conservation at a field location in Canada or abroad. The internship will include interaction with forest managers and individuals or groups involved in forest-related issues. The results of the internship will be used in the subsequent fall semester to prepare practical policy recommendations which will be incorporated in a research paper, consulting report or management plan.

This course will involve analyzing information and preparing formal reports based on the summer internship, in consultation with individual faculty supervisors. Students will deliver brief seminar presentations on their work, and there will be an oral defense of the final paper.

This course provides students with an understanding of the distribution and ecology of the worlds major forested ecosystems and a broad grasp of major conservation biology issues in each. A summary of global physical geography and ecosystem classification in the opening weeks is followed by lectures, presentations, and discussions on key conservation biology issues organized into three modules: tropical forests, subtropical forests, and temperate forests. Topics include the evolution of concepts of forest conservation, sustainable forestry and ecosystem conservation; and the effectiveness of regulatory approaches and management practices in different societies, regions, and nations.

The course focuses on social and political dimensions of human-forest interactions and theoretical approaches to study these interactions. It explores the social practices, institutions and regimes of power and knowledge in shaping human-forest relations. Taking a political ecology approach, the course examines how power, knowledge, culture and nature intersect and shape each other; and explore issues of equity and justice in different forest governance contexts. The course explores forest governance challenges in different parts of the world, including in Canada. The course will be run as a seminar, with student-led activities, research and presentations.

An intensive two-week field course based at international field stations will take place at the beginning of the summer term following the first academic session of the program. The application of theoretical principles acquired in academic core courses to practical projects in community forestry and forest conservation. The course will involve students in group research and assessment, and will include cooperation with local training and research institutes, conservation projects and non-government organizations. A number of international course locations will be used.

This couse comprises two modules:

The GIS module aims to help students develop foundational knowledge and understanding of GIS concepts, spatial data, and analysis. Students will learn to use GIS tools, manipulate spatial layers, and conduct spatial analysis. The hands-on and problem-solving GIS module will enable students to understand vector and raster spatial data types and practice using them. They will also learn how to create new spatial data from the existing spatial layers and utilize georeferenced imagery. Also, by using real-world examples and data, they will conduct simple and more advanced spatial analyses relevant to forest and landscape conservation, natural resources and forest management, and restoration.

The statistics module

The course prepares students for professional practice as urban foresters. Emphasis is placed on leadership and the management of human, financial, physical and informational resources to sustain, enhance and grow trees, forests, and greenspaces in the places we live, from rural communities to urban centres. Students will develop practical approaches to addressing interdisciplinary issues facing the urban forest and learn to apply relevant science and best management practices. Topics covered include risk management, arboricultural practices, project management, governance, public administration, public relations/education, communications, policy development and planning. The importance of professionalism and ethics will be covered. The needs and demands of public and private sector clients and employers, career pathways, and professional development will be examined.
The course will be delivered through lectures, readings, discussion, case studies, simulation exercises using a problem-based approach drawing on real world scenarios that will allow students to develop and apply core concepts and skills. This course explores concepts and skills applicable for all students, including those in related-fields of study. Diverse perspectives, approaches and experiences are welcome.

Wood has been an important building material throughout the ages and in today's world has taken on the added importance of being a renewable and sustainable material that assists with greenhouse gas mitigation strategies. This course will provide students with an understanding of wood’s unique physical properties, the variability of these properties within different species and how these properties can inform its proper use in various applications. The Canadian forestry industry sets the context for this course acknowledging that forests transcend political borders and reach around the world. Students will research an innovative use for wood that replaces carbon intensive material.

Directed studies (master’s level) course dealing with selected aspects of natural resource management by arrangement between student and individual staff member.

Students may take more than one directed studies course for credit toward their degree requirements, but each course must be under the supervision of a unique graduate faculty member.

A directed studies course can only be taken if a student wishes to explore a topic that is not currently offered as a graduate course at the School of Graduate Studies.

This seminar will focus on the relationships cultivated by French and francophone literatures with various forms of art (e.g., painting, photography, cinema, dance). The topics explored in this seminar are not limited to one particular artistic and literary work and may include different cultural contexts (e.g., France, Africa, Québec, Acadia) and historical periods (from the Middle Ages to the present), as well as different methodological approaches (including "intermedial" approaches such as image-text theories). Course may be taken more than once for credit as long as it is a separate section code/subtitle. Course topics for the upcoming year will be posted on the departmental website.

This seminar will allow for examination of topics related to French and Francophone literatures. Topics in any given year will vary but may include a range of themes and issues emerging from French prose (fiction and non-fiction), poetry, drama, and other genres and forms. The topics explored in this seminar are not limited to one particular literary work and may include different cultural contexts (e.g., France, Africa, Québec, Acadia) and historical periods (from the Middles Age to the present), as well as different methodological approaches. Course may be taken more than once for credit as long as it is a separate section code/subtitle. Course topics for the upcoming year will be posted on the departmental website.

This seminar will allow for examination of topics related to theoretical French linguistics. Topics in any given year will vary but may include a range of theoretical issues in phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Course may be taken more than once for credit as long as it is a separate section code/subtitle. Course topics for the upcoming year will be posted on the departmental website.

This seminar will allow for examination of topics related to the use of corpus, experimental, and computational methodologies in French linguistics. Topics in any given year will vary but may include a range of theoretical and empirical issues relevant to phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, language processing, and language acquisition and learning. Course may be taken more than once for credit as long as it is a separate section code/subtitle. Course topics for the upcoming year will be posted on the departmental website.

This course seeks to complement the essential theoretical foundation provided by Linguistics Seminars II and III. It offers an initiation into the core concepts relevant to two of the five primary areas of study in linguistics: phonetics and phonology.

We will begin by exploring the basic principles of phonetics (articulation, acoustic analysis). Following which, we will introduce a general theoretical framework for phonology. We will then apply the principles and methodologies of these theories to crucial issues in the study of French (e.g. e caduc, liaison, and more).

The seminar will mainly comprise a series of lectures on fundamental concepts in phonology and phonetics. Additionally, it will feature discussions on specific analyses or theories. Lastly, it will include in-depth discussions of the sound system in French, enabling practical application of the theoretical concepts presented.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This course seeks to complement the essential theoretical foundation offered by Linguistics Seminars I and III. It offers an initiation into the core concepts pertinent to one of the primary areas of study in linguistics: syntax.

We will begin by introducing a general theoretical framework, followed by an exploration of how the principles and constraints of the theory explain phenomena related to the structure and interpretation of sentences. The course will also feature in-depth discussions of constructions specific to French or particularly interesting concepts in syntactic theory, enabling practical application of the theoretical concepts presented.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This course is intended to function as a workshop for discussing a variety of phonological challenges encountered in the analysis of French-based creole languages (CBLF). The rationale for choosing this language family lies in its origin in the contact between French and certain languages spoken by African slaves. CBLFs exhibit the traces of this hybridity, displaying grammatical properties that are simultaneously characteristic of French and certain African languages (Lefebvre 1998).

The goal for linguists is to discern the linguistic properties of CBLFs that are characteristic of French from those linked to substrate languages (African languages). We will investigate the phonological descriptions of Guadeloupean, Haitian, Réunionnais, and St. Lucian creoles within the scope of a linguistic theory that seeks an explanatory analysis of observed data. In particular, we will tackle the following questions: 1) syllabic distribution of consonant and vowel sequences, 2) nasality and the principles regulating its propagation, 3) distribution of allomorphs of the determiner /la/, 4) reduction of consonant sequences in word-final position, 5) phonetic variations of the consonant R, its phonemic status, and its phonological representation.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This course seeks to investigate the fundamental questions arising from the linguistic representation of predicate-argument relations in French. After a preliminary exploration of the characteristics of French sentence structure, we will address the specific challenge of identifying the minimal mechanisms necessary to account for the projection of selected and non-selected verbal arguments. The establishment of a typology of French verbs based on argument selection will serve as the foundation for our discussions. The following verb types will be analyzed: transitive, unergative, ditransitive, and unaccusative. Non-selected arguments play a central role in recent developments in theoretical linguistics. We will focus primarily on applied dative arguments in French, which will guide our exploration of the case and pronominal systems of French.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This course focuses on the phenomenon of bilingual acquisition in children. Topics to be discussed include: simultaneous or sequential learning of the two languages, interference between the two grammars of a bilingual child, the input to which bilingual children are exposed, as well as proficiency levels and attrition of one of the languages. Recent theoretical frameworks will be explored, with an emphasis on the acquisition of French in a bilingual context. We will consider the methodologies used in bilingual acquisition research, such as language questionnaires, evaluations of linguistic competence, and data collection (experimental or observation of spontaneous speech). This course includes a practical component: students will analyze data from existing databases or experiments that they will develop and conduct themselves.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This course seeks to complement the foundational training offered in Linguistics Seminars I and II. It introduces the key concepts and methodologies specific to experimental linguistics. We will begin by investigating the principles of the scientific method (formulation of a research problem; identification of methods and data collection techniques; data collection, analysis, and interpretation). We will then delve into the specifics of applying this method to problems in linguistics, drawing on examples from a range of subdisciplines. The seminar will mainly comprise a series of lectures, each followed by a tutorial-like workshop. The lectures will focus on the principles of methodology demonstrated through empirical studies, while the workshops will have a more hands-on approach (e.g., analysis of corpus data, development of experimental methodologies, statistical analysis).

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This research seminar examines the internal structure of nominal clauses in French and English using theoretical tools developed within the framework of the Chomskyan Minimalist Program.

Five syntactic phenomena will be considered: 1) Determiner omission: Lions are dangerous vs *Lions sont dangereux. 2) Realization of the number feature and agreement: the new books vs *le nouveau livres. 3) Omission of the nominal head: le rouge vs *the red. 4) Adjectival linearization: the old Canadian flag vs *le vieux canadien drapeau. 5) Pronominal-headed relatives: that is the one (I saw) vs *c'est celui *(que j'ai vu).

To account for these phenomena, two competing approaches will be evaluated: Bouchard's (2002) representational approach, Cinque's (2002) derivational approach, and subsequent related works.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This course draws upon knowledge acquired in Linguistics Seminars I, II, and III. It will focus on the study of partial questions (featuring an interrogative expression such as "who," "what," "where," "when," etc.) and their answers. French is characterized by having a wide array of structures to convey what appears to be the same request for information (e.g., "Qu'est-ce que tu lis ?", "Que lis-tu ?", "Tu lis quoi ?", "C'est quoi que tu lis ?"). Following a review of the primary empirical studies, we will investigate the diverse hypotheses that have been proposed to account for this phenomenon. Do these structures correspond to distinct grammars of French (e.g., standard vs. dialectal)? Are they genuinely equivalent on the semantic and discursive levels? Is French truly distinct from other languages (such as German or English) that do not display the same wealth of structures? We will explore how constraints on the proper syntactic and prosodic formation of answers to questions can help in understanding the coexistence of a multitude of interrogative constructions in French. This will allow us to introduce concepts in Optimality Theory and Prosodic Phonology.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

Although French is typically a language in which the subject comes before the verb, we also find constructions where the subject is in a postverbal position (through simple inversion with the verb, but also through more complex structures, such as existential and cleft constructions). In this seminar, we will investigate the syntactic structure of these sentences in different varieties of French. We will also explore the factors, particularly prosodic and discursive, that prompt the appearance of a subject in a position other than its canonical position. The features of French will be contrasted with those of other languages related to French (Romance and Germanic languages) as well as more distant languages (Bantu languages). Some concepts of Optimality Theory and Prosodic Phonology will also be introduced.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.

This course aims to introduce the basics of the medieval French language through examination of a selection of original text extracts. We will study the morphology and syntax of Old French, with a glimpse into the appearance of Old French in manuscripts. The selected texts will allow students to acquaint themselves with various dialects and offer a panorama of the main literary genres of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries; however, the emphasis will be on reading, and interpretative aspects will not be explored in depth.

This course is also available at the undergraduate level. The common components of the course will focus more on the synchronic dimension than on the diachronic; graduate students will additionally learn some fundamentals of historical phonetics and other aspects of French development since Latin.

The course will be taught in French. Students from departments outside the Department of French who are interested in taking this course but believe they have not achieved the required level in modern French should contact the instructor. Efforts will be made to accommodate these students with the aid of online resources.

Research objectives — The principles of scholarship and research. The dissemination of original research and scientific popularization. Expanding the frontiers of knowledge. Positioning oneself within an academic conversation. Defining a research problem of demonstrable value on which one seeks to solve or shed new light.

The thesis — Types of theses and choice of subject. From subject to research problem, from research problem to questions, from questions to answers through the description and analysis of the corpus. The sequence of steps: from courses and exams, preparing the research field; from the Field Examination to the thesis; from the thesis to publication, a book or articles derived from the thesis, subsequent projects.

The tools of research — The plan, as the main working tool. The table of contents as a working hypothesis and continuous reference point. The bibliography as an instrument to be used for research, as an instrument provided with the dissemination of results. Writing adapted to media through which research is disseminated: thesis, article, conference presentation.

Professional skills — Time management: establishing a list of priorities, planning activities, breaking the cycle of procrastination. Teaching: course preparation, classroom delivery, grading, tips of the trade. Developing an academic persona: remaining professional in all circumstances, the CV. Establishing a network of colleagues and experts.