Collaborative Specializations

Students interested in gaining an additional multidisciplinary experience (and receiving a certificate of completion) as they pursue their home degree program in English are encouraged to consider the following collaborative specializations, in which English is a participating unit.

MA/MACRW students may apply to one (no more than one) collaborative specialization.

PhD students may apply to up to two collaborative specializations (although in most cases, the department encourages students to apply to no more than one).

Book History and Print Culture (MA, PhD)

This interdisciplinary program, housed at Massey College, offers a thorough knowledge of the multiple aspects of the creation, transmission and reception of the written word.

Visit the Book History & Print Culture website for further information or email bookhistory@masseycollege.ca.

Diaspora and Transnational Studies (MA, PhD)

The Collaborative Program in Diaspora and Transnational Studies is designed to bring together both social sciences and humanities perspectives at the graduate level, to augment our already existing tri-campus undergraduate program, and to contribute to increased research collaboration among participants in the program.  The Collaborative Program will be distinctive by being interdisciplinary as well as comparative. Whilst raising questions about diasporic communities in Canada, this will not be the primary focus of the Collaborative Program. Rather, the Canadian example will be a means towards understanding the nature of diaspora and transnationalism elsewhere in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Global South. 

Visit the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies website for further information or email cdts@utoronto.ca.

Editing Medieval Texts (MA, PhD)

Effective August 31, 2020, admissions have been administratively suspended. This collaborative specialization will close on August 31, 2026.

Environmental Studies (MA, PhD)

The School of the Environment's Collaborative Specialization in Environmental Studies (CSES) provides graduate students with the opportunity to expand the focus of their research and study to reflect an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about the environment.

Visit the School of the Environment website for further information or email dir.assistant.env@utoronto.ca.

Jewish Studies (MA, PhD)

The Collaborative Program in Jewish Studies offers both broad and intensive exposure to the constituent fields within Jewish Studies. Because of Jewish civilization’s vast chronological and geographical range, as well as its constant interaction and cross-fertilization with other cultures, graduate work within Jewish Studies demands intensive exposure to a wide variety of languages, textual traditions, and scholarly disciplines.

Visit the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies website for more information or email jewish.studies@utoronto.ca.

Sexual Diversity Studies (MA, PhD)

The Mark S. Bonham Centre hosts a collaborative graduate program in Sexual Diversity Studies at the MA and PhD levels for faculty and students interested in questions about how we understand sexual diversity and sexual practices.

Among these questions are how we frame and categorize sexual differences, why we fear some and celebrate others, how medical, religious, and political authorities respond to them. What is the nature of sexual identity and orientation? How and why is sexuality labeled as lesbian, heterosexual, perverse, normal, gay, or queer? How do cultures at different times and places divide the sexual from the non-sexual?

Visit the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies website for more information or email sexual.diversity@utoronto.ca.

South Asian Studies (MA, PhD)

The interdisciplinary Collaborative Program in South Asian Studies is designed for MA and PhD students who wish to acquire a nuanced understanding of this region as a secondary area of specialization while pursuing graduate studies in another discipline. The focus is necessarily broad in that it provides students with an understanding of ancient and modern history, social change, economic development, contemporary politics, religious traditions, literary culture, and a spectrum of related topics.

Visit the Centre for South Asian Studies website for more information or email ai.asianstudies@utoronto.ca.

Women & Gender Studies (MA, PhD)

The Graduate Collaborative Program in Women’s Studies (GCWS) provides a formal educational context for the purpose of interdisciplinary research in women’s and gender studies and advanced feminist scholarship. The program, offered at the master’s and doctoral levels, provides a central coordinating structure to facilitate and disseminate women’s studies research through graduate student research symposia, lectures, circulation and discussion of work in progress, conferences, and publications.

Visit the Women & Gender Studies Institute website for more information or email wgsi.programs@utoronto.ca.

Women's Health (MA, PhD)

The Collaborative Program in Women’s Health is a new collaborative graduate program at the University of Toronto that is the first of its kind in Canada.  Given the breadth of its disciplinary representation it is also likely the first of its kind internationally.

The purpose of the program is to provide graduate students across the University the opportunity to interact and be mentored by more senior researchers engaged in women's health research.

Regardless of the department or faculty to which they belong, all students will be given scholarly opportunities to interrogate their projects in the context of women's health.

Visit the Collaborative Specialization in Women’s Health website for more information or email CSWH.admin@wchospital.ca.