The Department of English offers a comprehensive undergraduate program that exposes students to English literatures from a large range of communities, historical periods, and geographical regions. All three English Plans (Major, Joint Honours, Minor) attempt to balance the study of canonical writers, literary forms, and traditions with the study of previously marginalized or unknown writing.
The Art History program offers degrees at the undergraduate and graduate level. Art History courses offer students a unique opportunity to develop the essential skill of visual literacy -- learning to look carefully and think critically about the visual images and material objects that surround us. Encompassing global art traditions from prehistory to the present, courses introduce students to a range of interdisciplinary methods, topics, and media. We explore how visual and material culture shapes human society across time and around the world.
Geoscientists are the interpreters of our natural world. They bring methods such as geophysics, geochemistry, geobiology, and field geology together to understand the modern and ancient Earth. Clues concealed in rocks and fossils, minerals and fluids, mountains and sediments, glaciers and volcanoes are marshaled to understand and explain the Earth system at all scales.
The study of employment relations has a long tradition at Queen’s, with several programs at both the graduate and undergraduate levels providing a broad foundation in the field, including labour-management relations, labour and employment law, conflict management and negotiations, economics, human resources management, organizational behaviour, and labour policy.
The Department of Political Studies at Queen’s offers a full curriculum in all areas of political sciences, designed to take you on different and exciting intellectual journeys. You might explore the foundations of early democratic thought, examine integration in the European Union, study how states make the transition to democracy, analyze sources of conflict and cooperation in the international system, investigate trends in voting behaviour, or explore the impact of welfare reforms on single mothers.
The School of Urban & Regional Planning (SURP) in the Queen’s Department of Geography and Planning emphasizes excellence in teaching, with high faculty-student engagement and courses that capitalize on the considerable planning experience of our energetic faculty. This is a professional education program that also has a significant research component. It is officially recognized by the Canadian Institute of Planners as a key stage toward earning the Registered Professional Planners designation.
Sociologists investigate how societies work. We critically examine the social world at every level, from personal relationships to the functioning of institutions and nations, right up to global interconnections. Our department is particularly well known for its strengths in criminology and the law; media, information, and surveillance; power, inequalities, and social justice.
Religion plays a major role in shaping and influencing various cultures and historical and political movements around the world. Understanding religious traditions and their impact on diverse modern issues is vital preparation for building a career in the global marketplace. At Queen’s, our approach to the study of religion is multicultural, diverse, and interdisciplinary.
Psychology is the study of mental processes and behaviour. Psychologists study relationships between brain function, behaviour, and environment. As a discipline, psychology explores a wide range of topics, including cognition, neuroscience, social influence, mental health, development, relationships, sensation, and perception, as well as the influence of factors such as gender and culture on these areas. Home to 35 labs, psychology students have the opportunity to work alongside faculty researchers to gain valuable research training.
Politics is about power – who has it and how it is exercised by nation-states, individuals, groups, classes, or political parties, and how different interests are reconciled in and between communities. Political Studies is also concerned with the institutions created to govern communities, as well as with political practices such as voting habits or protests, and how rules, behaviours, and cultures are created in societies. Since power in society is often dependent upon material resources, political scientists also study the distribution of wealth, both within and between nations.