New Year, New/Old Scares

By Afrah Fatima

A new academic year begins, but the same old fears haunt us. At least, they haunt me, which is only surprising due to the fact I’m an (un)seasoned fourth year. If all goes well, then this chapter of university will soon come to an end. But how does one carry on? They say life continues, but what about the fears? What about them? The scares that haunt me seem here to stay — they only loom and grow.

In my previous blogs I’ve hinted at these scares, these threats of capitalism and AI, but it’s high time I give them a stage free from intermediaries. Though I talked about capitalism in my first blog last year,  just because I explored it back then doesn’t mean the dialogue on this topic is closed forever. After all, we are students of Literature, we don’t stop at one reading or critique of a work, we discuss, debate, write, and write some more to understand things deeply. As well, I think it is fun to write about issues that bother me and others; it sheds light upon them the more one talks/writes about them. 

This September began just like any previous one: you think uni has just started, and then suddenly it is already the third week of school. That’s the case as I am writing this!

But this year something else also happened that sort of pulled my mind again towards the whole AI and the future of the humanities debacle—an email from Dr. Jane Toswell citing the course “shortages” this year. As I’m in my fourth year and rather lucky, I got a super early enrollment date, and got into almost all the courses I wanted to take. There were ups and downs with course selections (as always) but I have no major qualms about what I ended up with. However, some were not so fortunate. I heard from a couple of friends that they couldn’t get into the courses they wanted because they were full, but these students moved forward and adapted to those challenges (university itself demands this adaptability, so I am not surprised.) It got me thinking, however, about why the course availability disruption happened, and if there were other underlying factors that ended up causing this.

I reached out to Dr. Michael Fox—the Department Chair—for comment, and he very kindly cleared up the doubts that I had. Hopefully this is also helpful to others out there, who like me are prone to doubt everything :)

Me: Are the same amount of courses being offered this year as last year? Are most of them at capacity?

Dr. Fox: We are offering the same number of 4000-level courses as last year. Six of eight 4000-level seminars are full (as opposed to two of eight last year). We are offering one fewer half course at the 3000 level this year, and 3000-level courses are mostly around capacity, but all fourth-year students would have had been able to choose any remaining 3000-level courses they needed. This year's third-year students, should they still need 3000-level courses, will get first shot at them next year. We offered 14 3000-level half courses and two full-year courses at the 3000 level, and we rotated a lot of new 3000-level courses in (I believe eight half courses that weren't offered in FW25).

This is wonderful. The fact that many of the courses are around capacity means there is a demand for the humanities; suddenly, the world appears less bleak. I cross-checked the course offerings for this year and last and in the end the total amount of credits being offered were indeed the same. There is more cross-listing at the 2100 and 3000 levels with GSWS, Theatre Studies, Film, and SASAH compared to the previous year.

Level	2025/26 credits offered	2026/27 credits offered
1000	6.0 (4 full, 4 half year)	6.0 (4 full, 4 half)
2000-2099	6.5 (2 full, 9 half)	7.0 (3 full, 8 half)
2100-2999	6.0 (4 full, 4 half, 0.5 cross-listed* with other departments)	6.5 (3 full, 7 half, 3.0 cross-listed with other departments)
3000	9.5 (2 full, 15 half, (2.0 cross-listed with other departments)	9.0 (2 full, 14 half, 2.5 cross-listed with other departments)
4000	6 (+1.0 for the thesis option), (1 full, 10 half  from which 3.0 are cross-listed with other departments and 1.5 courses are offered at Western associates, i.e. Kings and Huron)	5.5 (+1.0 for the thesis option), (1 full, 11 half year from which 0.5 are cross-listed with other departments and 1.5 are offered at Western associates, i.e. Kings and Huron)
Total	35	35

*Cross-listed courses are courses intersecting in a bunch of different disciplines: Film, Theatre, SASAH, GSWS, etc., so one can either count the credit towards their English module or towards the module the course is cross-listed with. 

Me: Are there any other issues that limited course availability? 

Dr. Fox: There was a cap error for English 4871G that meant we had to unenrol some people, but that's primarily a course for students in the HSP-CWELL or Major in Creative Writing (as opposed to an HSP-ELL or Major in English course). No student, so far as I know, has not been able to find the courses required for graduation or progression. We will always find space in those circumstances.

So if there is anyone out there, especially in their last year, who wants to take a course next semester that is full yet required, reach out to the department. They are bound to help you or figure out an alternative path. 

Me: That does clear up some of the doubts I had. I think what I mainly wanted to find out was whether there has been a rise in students in the A&H department, if the rise (at least compared to last year) in cross-listed courses is due to funding cuts to the humanities (I remember there was some talk going on last year or so that the number of courses offered is going to be reduced and so are the class sizes? But I may be wrong about that...)

Dr. Fox: We had a bit of a surge of students in 2023, it appears, meaning that there's probably a larger fourth-year cohort this year than in the few past years. I don't have enrolments in seminars at the affiliates handy to know the complete picture, but we do have 20 more overall enrolments at the 4000-level in our courses on main than last year. That's a fair bit.

Me: Will this mean class sizes may increase?

Dr. Fox: Class sizes don't tend to go down, but we live in hope. Class sizes can't really go up from here unless some other things change as well. I think instructors are stretched fairly thin on the teaching workload. 

This exchange cleared up all of the doubts I had regarding the availability of courses. Now, moving onto one of the main issues that isn’t going to go away any time soon: The AI-ification of every. single. thing. AI has been around for only a couple of years now but it has grown to a scary, dystopian extent. (Recently it was announced that a false AI report almost resulted in military “retaliation” that would’ve no doubt caused the next major global conflict.) So, obviously, I felt the need to discuss AI and what threats it harbours for the Humanities.  

Me: I think another main point is the challenges AI brings to the humanities. I know many professors are moving to in-class essays, tests, quizzes, and final exams as opposed to having a couple of essays determine the grade. One of my professors was also saying that we might move on to oral tests in the future because of this rise in genAI. Do you have any insights about how AI might affect or is affecting students and the faculty alike? 

Dr. Fox: I wouldn't know what to say about the AI question. We are moving some courses that didn't have them to in-person exams, and I think some professors are also going back to requiring students to pass the exam to pass the course (which used to be a regulation for all courses). Instructors are still working out their own approaches, which I know isn't ideal for students, who could use a consistent approach across all their classes. My sense is that EWS students - those in our modules, at least - are here because they want to be here and therefore want to do the work themselves. It's been a bewildering few years since late 2022, though.

I agree 100% with Dr. Fox about Humanities students, at least in the majority, preferring to do the work in an authentic and human manner. That’s one of the beauties of studying Literature; you have to think and focus on the soul of the work, which AI doesn’t always unearth. 

There are these art installations at Weldon, Pax Americana, that imagine what life would look like if Canada became the “51st state”. The one that stood out to me was the “Bachelor of Reading” program at Western, which was started when, fictionally, literacy rates started declining. While this is an imagined scenario, which I hope never comes true, it has a possibility of actually happening like any dystopian scenario. 

I absolutely had to ask Dr. Fox what he thought about this. I pointed out how right now at post-secondary it might not be that evident, because I’d like to think that Gen Zs had a childhood where they weren’t exposed to algorithms right out of the crib. However, I most probably am biased about this, because after all, I belong to that group. But watching the events happening now, particularly how Gen Alpha is growing up in an entirely algorithmic world, including my own younger siblings, I wonder a lot about what the future is going to look like. (I am pretty pessimistic for a girl once so full of hope.)

Me: Given the decline in literacy rates, especially in North America, among youth and children, do you think this could come to pass in the next 15-20 years?

Dr. Fox: Not to point the finger at you specifically, but yours is (in general terms!) the generation that, for the first time in recorded history, seems to be less cognitively capable than the previous generation (“Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one”). I really wonder what Generation Alpha looks like as it arrives at post-secondary in 2029 or so. And the world is burning, and humanity seems to be becoming more divided than ever. It's hard not to despair.

This whole conversation, I acknowledge, is all over the place (totally my fault!) and I get the frustration of the uncertainty the future has thrust upon us. People tend to say it’s not new— how they too were lost in their 20s—but I think these new generations have a lot, lot, lot more variables thrown at them. The world is bent on destroying humanity. Humanity is bent on destroying the world. At least the part of “humanity” (they do not deserve to be called so) that has the most say in what happens. 

But I’d like to believe that we all shall soldier through, and help carve a path that leads away from this dystopia. Maybe one day even a utopia could become a possibility. Maybe.

This is why we need a sphere where education, no matter the discipline, is welcomed and thought of as equal. It is evident why we need STEM, but we absolutely need the Humanities as well. I think a lot of value in the humanities comes from learning and developing the ability to constantly analyze what we are being told, how, why, when, and by whom. It’s something people seem to be taking for granted. Something we need a lot more of right now. Something AI could never do… 

P.S. Hearty congratulations to Dr. Toswell for her new role as undergraduate chair!!

P.S.S. I really appreciate Dr. Fox for having this conversation with me. It was helpful, for me at least, and I hope you found it helpful too.

P.S.S.S. Grateful to be back at The Coterie!