This version of the 成人VR视频 Department of English, Undergraduate Studies site is deprecated but has been preserved for archival reasons. The information on this site is not up to date and should not be consulted. Students, faculty, and staff should consult the new site using the link below.
All 500-level courses and a certain number of 200-, 300- and 400-level courses have limited enrolment and require instructors' permission. Students hoping to enroll in these courses should consult the course descriptions on the Department of English website for the procedures for applying for admission.听
ENGL 301 Earlier 18th Century Novel
Professor David C. Hensley
Fall Term 2014
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 14:35鈥15:25
Full course description
Description:听This course will canvas some of the 鈥渙rigins鈥 of the English novel and trace its development (particularly as anti-romance satire and realism) up to the mid-eighteenth century. Our readings and discussion will refer to the European context of the evolution of this narrative form in England. We will consider the novel as responding to a network of interrelated problems 鈥 of the self and its imaginative politics 鈥 at the representational crossroads of medieval epic, courtly romance, spiritual autobiography, picaresque satire, colonialist adventure, gallant intrigue, baroque casuistry, bourgeois conduct book, sentimental love story, moral treatise, psychological realism, and mock-heroic 鈥渃omic epic in prose.鈥 As the emerging literary 鈥渇orm of forms,鈥 the early modern novel vibrantly juxtaposes and interweaves all these different generic strands. Our work together will aim at a critical analysis of the textual ideologies articulated in this experimental process of historical combination.
Texts:听The required reading for this course will include most or all of the following books, which will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). (The list of texts below is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in September 2014.)
- Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose (Oxford)
- Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d鈥橝rthur (Oxford)
- The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Hackett)
- Michael Alpert, ed., Two Spanish Picaresque Novels (Penguin)
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (Norton)
- Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Cleves (Norton)
- Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (Norton)
- Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess (Broadview)
- Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (Norton)
- Samuel Richardson, Pamela (Oxford)
- Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela (Oxford)
Evaluation:听paper (50%), tests (40%), participation (10%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies.)
Format: Lectures
Average enrollment: 50 students
ENGL听303 Restoration and Eighteenth-century Literature 2
Instructor听Andrew Bricker
Fall Term 2014
Monday and Wednesday 16:05鈥17:25
Full course description
Description:听ENGL 303 will trace the development of literary culture from the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 to the close of the eighteenth century. Our readings will draw on a range of generic forms and will be organized around a series of eighteenth-century keywords and themes, including utile et dulce (instruct and delight), satire, epic and mock-epic, sentimentality and politeness, empiricism, slavery, the novel, the gothic, and the woman question. These keywords will serve as a rubric for our discussions, but they will also be categories that we鈥檒l challenge, as we probe them for their limitations and inconsistencies. Above all, we鈥檒l try to find links across these keywords and the texts we study. We will focus especially on questions of genre and generic development, and how those in the eighteenth-century made sense of their historical, emerging and experimental literary forms.听
Texts:听An anthology of eighteenth-century literature (TBD), Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey, ed. Tim Parnell and Ian Jack (Oxford, 2008: 9780199537181), and Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Oxford: 9780199537211 or 9780198704447).
Evaluation:听
- Attendance/Participation: 15%
- Two Response Papers (500 words): 30% (15% each)
- Section Moderation: 15%
- Peer Review: 5%
- Final Paper: 35%
Format:听Lecture and discussion
ENGL 304 Later Eighteenth-Century Novel
Professor Peter Sabor
Winter Term 2015
Monday and Wednesday 8:35鈥9:55
Full course description
Description:听听This course will study developments in the English novel from the late 1740s until the turn of the century. It will focus on six novels, grouped in three pairs. We shall begin with two first-person narratives: John Cleland鈥檚 erotic, or pornographic, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749), followed by Sarah Fielding鈥檚 distinctly non-erotic novel, The History of Ophelia (1760). We shall then turn to two novels of the 1790s which take opposing stands in the 鈥渨ar of ideas鈥 pitting Jacobin against anti-Jacobin novelists: William Godwin鈥檚 Caleb Williams (1796), and Elizabeth Hamilton鈥檚 Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800), which features a parody of Godwin himself. We shall conclude with Matthew Lewis鈥檚 The Monk (1796), the most sensational of the many Gothic novels of the 1790s, paired with Jane Austen鈥檚 witty parody of the Gothic, Northanger Abbey (1817). Attention will be paid to gender issues, as well as to genre, style, and thematic concerns.听
Texts:听
- John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Oxford)
- Sarah Fielding, Ophelia (Broadview)
- William Godwin, Caleb Williams (Broadview)
- Elizabeth Hamilton, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (Broadview)
- M.G. Lewis, The Monk (Broadview)
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (Broadview)
Evaluation:听25% mid-term test; 25% final test; 50% term paper (2,000-2,500 words)听
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 305 Renaissance English Literature 1
Elizabethan Romance:听 Prose Fiction, Narrative Poetry, and Drama
Professor Ken Borris
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 8:35鈥9:55
Full course description
Description:听One of the centrally fashionable literary genres of early modern Europe, romance was the most important precursor of the novel, though in many ways different.听 It was characterized by much narrative variety, multiple plots, open-ended structures, digression, coincidence, fantasy, wonder, and wish-fulfillment;听 in its uniquely serendipitous version of the world, few social conventions or expectations can be taken for granted.听 Its great exponents include Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.听 From around 1575 to 1610, the writing of romance became particularly vibrant in England.听 Focusing on the diverse expressions of this literary form at this time there, in prose fiction, narrative poetry, and drama, this course should especially interest those attracted to early modern studies, or to the history and development of the novel, or to the theory and history of literary forms.听 Proceeding chronologically, the course will address texts that epitomize romance鈥檚 scope in this period, including the qualitatively best and most influential exemplars, as well as those most popular in sales, such as Robert Greene鈥檚, which illustrate the genre鈥檚 cultural topicality.听 So as best to define romance and its interactions with other genres in particular texts that engineer complex generic mixtures, such as Sidney鈥檚 and Spenser鈥檚, attention will be given to the theory of literary genres.
Texts:听
- Robert Greene, Pandosto, Menaphon (both short)
- Sir Philip Sidney, The New Arcadia
- Edmund Spenser, Books I and VI of The Faerie Queene
- Thomas Lodge, A Margarite of America
- William Shakespeare, The Winter鈥檚 Tale, The Tempest
Evaluation:听term paper 50%, take-home exam 40%, class attendance and participation 10%
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 306听Theatre History
Medieval and Early Modern
Instructor Michael Raby
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05 pm - 11:25 pm
Full course description
Prerequisite:听None. Some texts will be read in modern English translation, but most will be read in (modernized) Middle English. Previous experience with Middle English is not required. Instruction in Middle English will be provided.听
Description:听This course traces the origins and development of the theatrical tradition in England by reading a selection of medieval and Tudor drama. It explores the tradition of the cycle or 鈥渕ystery鈥 plays, which stage Biblical episodes in productions that oscillate between pathos and slapstick. These plays were popular, but also controversial. We will examine medieval critiques of the cycle plays, which, besides providing insight into contemporary attitudes toward drama, furnish important evidence of how medieval drama was performed on stage. From there, we turn to the so-called morality plays, comparing Everyman with its riotous and scatological cousin Mankind. We round out our survey of early drama by reading two Tudor plays, including what is considered the first 鈥渟ecular鈥 play in English. With the aid of supplemental readings, our discussions will interrogate the distinction between the secular and the religious, as well as consider key questions about genre and form. As part of the course, we will view video clips of modern productions of the plays we are reading as a way to consider both the technical aspects of their staging and as a way to think about adaptation and the afterlives of medieval drama. The postmedieval inheritance of medieval drama will be our focus at the end of the course, when we read Sarah Ruhl鈥檚 2003 play Passion Play.
Texts:
- Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama. Eds. Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian (Broadview, 2012).
- Ruhl, Sarah. Passion Play. (Samuel French, 2011).
- Coursepack.听
Evaluation听(tentative):听
- Participation: 10%
- Mid-term exam: 20%
- Two short essays: 35%
- Take home final exam: 35%
Format:听Lecture and discussion
ENGL 307听Renaissance English Literature 2
Professor Maggie Kilgour
Winter Term 2015
Tuesdays and Thursdays听16:05 - 17:25
Full course description
Description:听A survey of 17th-century poetry and prose (excluding Milton). In England, the 17th century was a time of revolution: of social upheaval and Civil War, as well as radical changes in philosophy and science. The literature of this turbulent time also is marked by its vitality and its variety. In this course, we will read representative works by writers including Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Marvell, Lanyer, Cavendish, Philips, Bacon, Burton, Browne, discussing aesthetic developments in the context of the events of the period.
Texts:听
- The Broadview Anthology of 17th Century Verse & Prose (available at 成人VR视频 Bookstore)
- Other supplementary materials will be posted on WebCT.
Evaluation:听Midterm (20%), 12-page term paper (40%), final exam (30%); participation (10%).
Format:听Lecture and discussion
Average enrollment: 40
ENGL 309 English Renaissance Drama 2
Jacobean Theatre History
Professor Patrick Neilson
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 14:35鈥15:55
Full course description
Description:听This course will study early sixteenth-century English theatre through an examination of plays by Shakespeare鈥檚 contemporaries. Texts will range from the sublime comedies of Jonson to the dark, bloody, and melodramatic revenge tragedies for which the period is famous. Primary points of interest in our investigation will be Stuart anxieties about greed, consumption, sexual betrayal, retribution, atypical expressions of sexuality, the blurring of gender distinctions, and inter-class friction鈥攁ll shared with our own era. We will look at the material conditions of performance, staging techniques, theatrical practices, and the performance spaces themselves鈥攆rom the public theatres, to the private indoor spaces.听
Texts:听Bevington, Engle, Eisaman Maus and Rasmussen, eds. English Renaissance Drama
Evaluation:听participation (15%), class presentation (10%), midterm Paper (25%),听take home exam (50%)
Format: Lecture and discussion
ENGL 310 Restoration and 18th Century Drama
Restoration Comedy
Professor Patrick Neilson
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 13:35鈥14:25
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Description:听This lecture course will investigate the evolution of English theatrical comedy through a period of a little over one hundred years. While the principal mode of investigation will involve close readings of the plays, we will also pay close attention to the material conditions of performance, as theatres grew from makeshift spaces for a social elite to vast purpose-built venues able to accommodate thousands of spectators. Central to the course, therefore, is the notion that these plays were written to be performed on stage and before a live audience. The readings will include works by Congreve, Dryden, Etherege, and Sheridan, but also comedies by some less-well-known playwrights, such as Susanna Centlivre.听
Texts:听The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Drama (Full or Concise Edition)
Evaluation:听15% participation; 15% Secondary source pr茅cis and presentation; 30% short paper; 40% final exam
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 311 Poetics
All sections offered in the FALL TERM 2014
Section 001 - Professor听Brian Trehearne听
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12:35-13:25
Section 002 - Professor Dorothy Bray
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 8:35-9:25听
Section 003 - Professor Dorothy Bray
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 14:35鈥15:25
Section 004 -Professor Wes Folkerth
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05鈥14:25
Section 005 - Instructor Anna Sigg
Tuesday and Thursday 8:30-10:00
Full course description
Prerequisite or co-requisite:听ENGL 202 or ENGL 200. This course is open only to English majors in the literature stream.听 This course is to be taken in the Fall semester of U1 or in the first Fall semester after the student鈥檚 selection of the Literature Major program.
Description:听This course introduces students to the formal and stylistic elements of poetry and prose fiction, provides them with a shared vocabulary for recognizing and analyzing different literary forms, and develops their reading, writing, and critical discussion skills.
Texts:
- Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham.听 A Glossary of Literary Terms.听 10th edn.听 Thomson-Wadsworth, 2009.
- Bausch, Richard, and R.V. Cassill, eds.听 The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.听 Shorter 7th edn.听 New York: Norton, 2006.
- Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy, eds.听 The Norton Anthology of Poetry.听 Shorter 5th edn.听 New York: Norton, 2005.
- Messenger, William E., et al., eds.听 The Canadian Writer鈥檚 Handbook.听 5th edn.听 Toronto: Oxford, 2010.
Evaluation:听TBA, but usually: essay 1 (5 pp.), 10%; essay 2 (5 pp.), 15%; essay 3 (6-7 pp.), 15%; mid-term examination 10%; formal final examination 30%; short assignments, such as quizzes, writing exercises, and recitations 10%; class participation 10%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 312 Victorian and Edwardian Drama 1
Professor Denis Salter
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 8.35鈥9.55
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Expected Student Preparation:听Previous university-level courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies.
Description:听This course will engage in a study of a wide range of performance texts, examined not simply as dramatic literature but as works in their original manuscript form, and thence transformed by the nature of theatrical performance, and by the meanings generated for them by their popular and critical responses.听 The course will also attend to the material conditions of performance, the work of actors and actresses, actor-managers and actress-managers, designers, musicians, et al, and to the semiotic and sociopolitical significances of the venues and cities, London pre-eminently, in which the productions were first performed, along with a consideration of their theatrical afterlife and the ways in which they served to create a performance repertoire. Some of the playwrights do not often appear in anthologies, if only because their works do not readily lend themselves to the dead hand of canonization or being fitted for the Procrustean bed of generic classification. The playwrights to be studied will come from a selection of works by George Colman, the Younger, Col. Ralph Hamilton, James Smith, R. B. Peake, George Henry Lewes, Dion Boucicault, T. W. Robertson, B.C. Stephenson, Alfred Cellier, Joseph Addison, Netta Syrett, with a nod to a comical satire by J.M. Barrie and the inclusion of the 鈥榦riginal鈥 text of Paul Potter鈥檚 Trilby, based on the novel of that name by George du Maurier and two texts performed by Christy鈥檚 Minstrels / Christy Minstrels. The word 鈥淏ritish鈥 in the anthology of plays we shall be studying draws attention to the ways in which theatre formed--and was formed by--the constructions of nation(s) and empires, both real and imaginary. We shall also study Henry Irving鈥檚 / Leopold Lewis鈥檚 The Bells, a text available in LION (Literature Online).
Passages from the plays will be regularly read out loud to get a visceral and palpable sense of their affective properties and to develop, as the whole course will do, a detailed understanding of the vocabulary and syntax of nineteenth-century performance.
Texts:
- Davis, Tracy C., ed., The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance (Broadview Press, 2012)
- Indispensable for our studies are the primary source documents put together for this anthology at
Evaluation听(tentative):听Active ongoing participation in the intellectual and creative life of the seminar: 15%; one seminar presentation on a theoretical, critical, or historical text or on a case-study: 15%; a distilled critical argument arising from the seminar presentation advanced in a 8-page long essay: 20%; a 16-page scholarly essay on an individually-negotiated topic: 50%
Format:听Brief, mid-sized, and longer lectures; led-discussions; individual and collective presentations including interrogative Q & As; and mini-performances
ENGL 313 Canadian Drama and Theatre
Professor Patrick Neilson
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 11:35鈥12:55
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Description:听A survey of Canadian and Qu茅becois drama and theatrical institutions from colonial times to the establishment of independent professional theatre in the 20thC. The primary focus of the course will be on the importance of Montreal Anglophone Theatre in the development of Canadian theatre.听 Qu茅becois plays will be read in translation.
Texts:
- Wasserman, Jerry. Modern Canadian Plays vol. I, 5th edition., and a course pack. Both are available at the University Bookstore.听
Evaluation:听15% Class participation, 15% Oral Research Presentation, 20% Term Paper, 50% Research Project.
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 314听20th Century Drama
Naturalism, Realism, Nationalism
Instructor Amanda Clark
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 14:35鈥15:55
Full course description
Description:听This course examines thirteen key 20th Century plays with attention to formal, thematic, and historical concerns. In particular, we will consider the rise (and evolution) of naturalism as a dominant mode of writing and stagecraft in the period, and its relationship to the development of national theatre. We begin by situating our discussion in the theories of 脡mile Zola and August Strindberg, who are considered the founders of modern drama. Through Zola鈥檚 and Strindberg鈥檚 manifestoes we will contextualize performances of Synge鈥檚 Riders to the Sea and Strindberg鈥檚 Miss Julie, with special attention to the fundamental tenets of the genre: the effects of race (nation/heredity), milieu (environment), and moment (historical period).
Building on this understanding of Naturalism, we will analyze how the genre responded to the nation-building movements of the early 20th Century. Through Ibsen鈥檚 Hedda Gabler and Chekhov鈥檚 The Cherry Orchard, we will investigate how theatre creates, traffics, and contests images of the nation. Next, we move to drama that responds to national conflict. These plays represent departures from naturalism, and often seek to challenge their audiences鈥 theatrical and social assumptions. Pirandello鈥檚 Six Characters refracts the violence of WWI in content (a focus on the breakdown of grand narratives) and in form (a forerunner of absurdist theatre). Similarly, Brecht鈥檚 Mother Courage responds to WWII with staging techniques that forge a radically new affective relationship between audience and stage鈥攐ne of alienation. And, Williams鈥檚 A Streetcar Named Desire exposes the social changes at work in post-war America through an increasing use of symbolism to blur the boundaries of class and heritage. These themes are also present in Beckett鈥檚 Waiting for Godot and Hansberry鈥檚 A Raisin in the Sun. Despite their formal differences, these plays share a sense of exile and a concern with ethics and ethnicity that many critics attribute to the growing social unrest of the cold war period.
Finally, we turn to post-colonial theatres. Through Derek Walcott鈥檚 The Sea at Dauphin, Michel Tremblay鈥檚 Les Belles-Soeurs, Athol Fugard鈥檚 鈥淢aster Harold鈥 鈥nd the Boys, and Marie Jones鈥檚 Stones in his Pockets, we will investigate theatre鈥檚 ability to push beyond colonial, racial or national binaries to offer new avenues for cultural performance.
Texts:
- The Norton Anthology of Drama, Volume 2: The Nineteenth Century to the Present
- Course pack听
Evaluation:听
- Participation 10%
- Short Essay (4 pages) 15% (September 25th)
- In-Class Midterm 15% (October 16th)
- Final Paper (8 pages) 30% (November 27th)
- Final Exam 30%
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 315 Shakespeare
Professor Wes Folkerth
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 8:30-9:30
Full course description
Description:听In this course we will focus only on the first half of Shakespeare鈥檚 career, the Elizabethan portion, which coincided with the rise of the professional theatre as the centerpiece of an emerging entertainment industry. We will begin with a number of very early plays, including Henry VI, part 1, The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Love鈥檚 Labor鈥檚 Lost, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, before following Shakespeare out of the theatre and into print with the narrative poem 鈥淰enus and Adonis.鈥 We will then join him back at the theatre, where he will write Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream (world classics of history, tragedy, and comedy) all within the space of about a single year. The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, part one, and As You Like It round out the decade of the 1590s, and our course. The plan is to cover approximately one play per week. Are you Shakespearienced? After this course you will be. The pace will be fast and unrelenting, with a view to giving students in the English major and minor programs a fuller appreciation of the scope of Shakespeare鈥檚 accomplishment in the first half of his career.
Texts:听The Norton Shakespeare Volume I: Early Plays and Poems. 2nd edition. ISBN 978-0-393-93144-0. Available at The Word Bookstore on Milton Street.
Evaluation:听midterm essay (30%); final essay (30%); final exam (30%); conference participation (10%)
Format:听Lectures听and conference sections
ENGL 316 Milton
Professor Maggie Kilgour
Fall Term 2014
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 11:30 pm 鈥 12:30 pm
Full course description
Prerequisite:听: None, though some knowledge of Renaissance literature or culture is highly useful.
Description:听A study of the poetry and selected prose of one of England鈥檚 most important, influential, and still controversial writers. While to many people today Milton seems the epitome of literary and political orthodoxy, in his own time he was known as a radical thinker, and advocate of regicide and divorce. His writing is complex and challenging, asking close and active engagement from his readers. In this course we will take up his challenge to see especially how he speaks to current concerns. In the first few weeks, we look at Milton's early poetry and some of his political writings, tracing his development as a poet in relation to his social, political, and literary context. The centre of the course will focus on a close reading of Paradise Lost. In conclusion, we will look briefly at his last works, Paradise Regain鈥檇 and Samson Agonistes, and discuss Milton鈥檚 later reputation and his continuing role in the Western literary tradition.听
Texts:听(required texts are available at 成人VR视频 Bookstore)
- Stella Revard ed, John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
- Barbara Lewalski, ed. John Milton: Paradise Lost (Blackwell, 2007)
- Selections from the prose: on WebCT
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (recommended)
- King James Bible (recommended)
Evaluation:听25% mid-term; 40% term paper on Paradise Lost; 25% take-home exam; 10% class/conference participation
Format:听Lecture and discussion; conference (depending on enrollment)
Average Enrollment:听45 students
ENGL 317 Theory of English Studies 1
Philosophical Approaches
Professor David C. Hensley
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 8:35-9:55听
Full course description
Prerequisite: None.听Limited to students in English programs.
Description:听This course will survey the emergence of theories and methodologies in European philosophy and scholarship, especially in literary criticism, since the eighteenth century. As a basis for understanding and evaluating the role of 鈥減hilosophical approaches鈥 in literary and cultural studies, we will compare and contrast several kinds of historical thinking with the distinctive claims of philosophical formalism articulated influentially by Immanuel Kant. The Kantian legacy 鈥 not only its principles of moral and aesthetic autonomy and disinterestedness but also its emphasis on the conditions of knowledge and criteria of judgment 鈥 provides a powerful and continuing alternative to the nineteenth-century revival of dialectical thinking in Hegel, hermenutics, and Marx. Our readings in twentieth-century theory will consider the far-reaching impact of the ideological opposition between the Enlightenment and Romanticism as exemplified by Kant and Hegel. We will examine the history of this opposition as a pattern of methodological assumptions and institutional practices. In particular, we will review the claim that one literary genre 鈥 the novel 鈥 embodies or expresses the characteristic philosophical problems of modernity.
Texts:听The books for this course will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). The following texts will be among those required (please note that Pluhar's translation of Kant is the only acceptable edition!):
- Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, eds., Critical Theory Since Plato, third edition (Thomas Wadsworth)
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Hackett)
- Georg Luk谩cs, The Theory of the Novel (MIT)
- Gerald Graff, Professing Literature (University of Chicago)
Evaluation:听Papers (40%), tests (50%), participation (10%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies).
Format: Lectures
ENGL 319 Theory of English Studies 3听
Issues in Interpretation: Authorship, Performance, and Reception
Professor听Trevor Ponech
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 8:35鈥9:25
Full course description
Prerequisite: None.听Limited to U2 and U3 students in English programmes
Description:听This course will introduce students to a pair of concepts absolutely fundamental to the study of literature, cinema, theatre, and artistic culture in general.听 The two concepts are, of course, authorship and interpretation.听 We鈥檒l survey the on-going debates over what an author is, and what unique contribution, if any, this agent makes to the artwork鈥檚 meaning as well as other culturally relevant features and effects.听 Likewise, we will inquire into what one is doing when one interprets a work of art.听 In trying to answer this question, the first step shall be to say what an interpretation is, i.e., what differentiates interpretive from other kinds of statements about art.听 Subsequently, we鈥檒l revisit several long-standing puzzles about interpretation: Is a good interpretation necessarily one that tries to grasp the author鈥檚 intentions?听 Can an interpretation ever be true or false?听 When two interpretations of the same artwork conflict, is there ever any good reason to prefer one to the other?听 Does interpretation itself in some sense produce the work鈥檚 meaning?听 Is there any possible justification for blurring the distinction between the author鈥檚 achievements in making an artwork and the interpreter鈥檚 achievements in engaging with that work?听 Throughout our discussions, attention will be paid to the relation of authorship to interpretation within performing arts, such as theatrical and musical presentations, where performers鈥 interpretive activities might arguably be said to bring new works into existence
Texts:听A representative selection of recent essays within the fields of aesthetic philosophy, literary theory, and cinema studies.
Evaluation: TBA
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 320 Postcolonial Encounters听
Professor听Sandeep Banerjee
Fall Term 2014
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 16:35-17:25
Full course description
Description:听This course will introduce students to the field of postcolonial literary and cultural studies as well as postcolonial theory. It will engage with literatures produced from postcolonial societies of South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean and examine how authors from these regions articulate the (postcolonial) present. Crucially, we will try and understand what is meant by the term 鈥減ostcolonial鈥 in the contexts of literature, culture, and theory; how it relates to terms such as the 鈥渁nti-colonial鈥 and the 鈥渃olonial.鈥 Further, we will investigate the central concerns of postcolonial authors and theorists, and how the various legacies of European imperialism mould the postcolonial perspective. In this course, we will also pay attention to the development of the field of postcolonial studies in the Anglo-American academy in addition to developing a clear understanding of some of the influential concepts developed by postcolonial critics and theorists. Further, we will examine in detail the relationship between postcolonial theory and post-structuralism on one hand, and Marxism on the other. Finally, we will consider the status of postcolonial studies in today鈥檚 world and try to understand if, and how, it helps us to understand the processes of contemporary globalization. 听
Texts:听
- Mulk Raj Anand: Untouchable
- Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
- V. S. Naipaul: Miguel Street
- Buchi Emecheta: Second-Class Citizen
- Salman Rushdie: Haroun and the Sea of Stories
- Jamaica Kincaid: A Small Place
- Satyajit Ray (dir): Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne
Evaluation:听Attendance and participation (in conference section): 15%; short essay: 15%; midterm: 30%; final paper: 40%
Format:听Lectures and听weekly conferences
ENGL听322: Theories of the Text
鈥淗ow to Read a Page鈥 鈥 Close Reading 1920-1960
Professor Miranda Hickman
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 14:35-15:55
Full course description
Preparation: Students are expected to have taken at least one 200- or 300-level course in any option in the Department of English
Description:听Addressing literary criticism and theory of the first half of the twentieth century, this course spotlights 鈥淭he New Criticism,鈥 the mid-twentieth century American school of literary criticism that famously developed techniques of 鈥渃lose reading鈥 that are still widely used today, in both 鈥淓nglish鈥 and neighbouring fields.听 Some have regarded close reading as crucial to the formation of the discipline of English as we now know it; it has even sometimes been regarded as a defining practice of the field. The design of the course takes a cue from a wave of renewed interest in 鈥渃lose reading鈥 these days from contemporary commentators as diverse as Terry Eagleton, Camille Paglia, Jane Gallop, John Guillory, and N. Katherine Hayles, who all raise questions about how techniques of close reading (often considered rather 鈥渙ld-fashioned鈥) might be revised, reinvigorated, and adapted to today鈥檚 climate and needs. One of the primary questions guiding our work will thus be how 鈥渃lose reading鈥 has been theorized and practiced in the field of English over time, what it is aimed to achieve, and how we might draw upon its guiding assumptions and techniques today for work in literature, drama, and cultural studies. Thus we will often reckon with the question of what exactly it means to read texts 鈥渃losely鈥濃攈ow, for what, to what ends? Another major vector of our work is historical: we will trace the evolution of the field we now think of as 鈥淓nglish鈥 as a discipline 1920-1960鈥攅xploring debates, convictions, and projects that shaped the field of study we have inherited. Our third major focus is on the concept of 鈥渃riticism,鈥 the practice which the New Critics (as their name implies) and their forerunners sought to theorize, refine, and make pivotal to the work of English. It remains central to, even dominant among, the work of departments of English.'
In part spurred by the challenges posed by 鈥渄ifficulty鈥 modernist literature of the early twentieth century, the New Criticism theorized now famous concepts such as 鈥渢he intentional fallacy鈥 and 鈥渢he heresy of paraphrase,鈥 and in many respects shaped literary studies as we now know it.听 Toward demystifying the work of the New Critics, as well as shedding light on the history of the field of English, we will trace a genealogy of the New Criticism, considering the work of nineteenth-century British predecessors such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater; early twentieth-century precursors such as the Russian Formalists (Roman Jakobson, Viktor Shklovsky); and the British critics at the University of Cambridge who were the New Critics鈥 most direct predecessors (I.A. Richards, William Empson, Q.D. and F.R. Leavis). Also pivotal to our work will be essays by modernist poet T.S. Eliot, whose verse and prose inspired the work of both the New Critics and their immediate forerunners. As we go, we will consider the legacies of both the New Critics and early twentieth-century criticism more generally to more recent theoretical approaches in literary studies, drama and theatre, and cultural studies.
In decades after its ascendancy at the mid-twentieth century, the New Criticism often came to be regarded as an 鈥渁historical,鈥 formalist approach to literary study that unfortunately banished social, biographical, and historical concerns from its purview. Indeed sometimes New Critical 鈥渃lose reading鈥 was practiced in ways that yielded such narrow perspectives: even T.S. Eliot (whose work has often been read as foundational to the New Criticism) deplored the abuses of its methods that produced what he called a 鈥渓emon-squeezer鈥 approach to criticism. Recent work on the New Criticism, however, reveals it to have been informed by a much richer and more diverse body of aesthetic theory, philosophical work, and social objectives than latter-day caricatures have allowed. We will follow the evolving reputation of the New Criticism, in order to test how many of the criticisms levelled against it seem to 鈥渟tick鈥 when considered against the body of theory and critical commentary the New Critics developed.听
Texts:听Our reading list accents primary texts of听 early- to mid-twentieth century theorists/ critics, rather than latter-day accounts of their contributions鈥攕o that we can make up our own minds about how their work looks (and might or might not be useful to us) today. We consider essays by major New Critics such as John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, Ren茅 Wellek and Austin Warren; we also engage leading critics contemporary to the New Critics (often skeptical of their methods) such as Kenneth Burke, Lionel Trilling, Erich Auerbach and Northrop Frye; we consider British predecessors such as Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, I.A. Richards, William Empson, and F.R. Leavis. We will query how New Critical methods stood in dialogue with the work of Russian Formalists; with that of British critic Queenie Leavis, whose pioneering work in sociological literary criticism has been linked to the beginnings of cultural studies; and that of leftist critics of the Partisan Review circle such as Philip Rahv. We will also engage the literary essays and literary-critical manifestoes of such early twentieth-century writers such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Ezra Pound, whose work was often very much behind the theory and practice of much of this early- to mid-twentieth century criticism.听听
Evaluation:听2 critical essays (5-6 pp., 20%听 and 25%), bi-weekly brief responses (2 pp., 15%), final examination (30%), participation (10%)
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 326 Nineteenth-Century American Prose
Trials of American Innocence
Professor Peter Gibian
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 14:35鈥15:25 am
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Expected Student Preparation:听Previous university-level course work in American Literature, preferably before 1900, or permission of instructor
Description:听This course will survey, and also critically interrogate, a long line of foundational works in American literature and thought that develop the conception of an 鈥淎merican innocence鈥濃攁nd introduce a new literary character: the 鈥渋nnocent American.鈥 Where does this widely shared notion come from? What does this national self-image imply? What possibilities does it open up? What are its limitations and dangers? A challenging reading list鈥攊ncluding selected Emerson essays, Whitman poems, Harte and Twain short stories, Hawthorne鈥檚 鈥淩appaccini鈥檚 Daughter,鈥 Twain鈥檚 Huckleberry Finn, James鈥 鈥淒aisy Miller鈥 and The Bostonians (or 鈥淲hat Maisie Knew鈥), Harriet Beecher Stowe鈥檚 Uncle Tom鈥檚 Cabin, Melville鈥檚 鈥淏enito Cereno鈥 and 鈥淏illy Budd,鈥 Wharton鈥檚 The Age of Innocence, and Graham Greene鈥檚 The Quiet American鈥攚ill ground analysis of a variety of distinct versions of this national myth. After first tracing the development of paradigmatic plots, images, and characters associated with this complex of ideas, we will conclude with close readings of several classic literary works that are structured as tests or trials of this 鈥淎merican innocence.鈥澨
Texts听(Tentative; editions TBA):
- Coursepack鈥攊ncluding critical essays and short works such as: Emerson, selected essays; Whitman, 鈥淪ong of Myself鈥; Harte, 鈥淭he Luck of Roaring Camp鈥 and "The Outcasts of Poker Flats"; Hawthorne, 鈥淩appaccini鈥檚 Daughter鈥; James, 鈥淒aisy Miller鈥;
- Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;
- Stowe, Uncle Tom鈥檚 Cabin;
- Melville, Billy Budd and Other Stories;
- Wharton, The Age of Innocence;
- Greene, The Quiet American.
Evaluation听(Tentative): 20% mid-term exam; 25% essay; 15% conference participation; 40% final exam. (All evaluation鈥攐n exams as well as essays鈥攖ests abilities in literary-critical writing and analysis; none involves short-answer or multiple-choice exams graded by computer.)
Format: Lectures and discussions
Average Enrollment: 80 students.
ENGL 328 The Development of Canadian Poetry 1
Professor Brian Trehearne
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 8:25鈥9:55 am听
Full course description
Expected student preparation:听No formal pre-requisite, but students will be expected to have the skills of close reading and command of critical terms developed in ENGL 311 (Poetics).听 ENGL 228 (Introduction to Canadian Literature 1) provides appropriate background knowledge for this course
Description:听A survey of the development of Canadian poetry from the nineteenth century through the Second World War.听 Our discussion of substantial selections from major authors will explicate the historical and cultural contexts of their works and consider their relation to competing poetic traditions in England and America.听 We will attempt to articulate each poet鈥檚 idea of the Canadian poet鈥檚 special task: among them, skilful imitation; mimesis; cultural nationalism and autonomy; originality; psychological realism; and contemporaneity.听 We will also, necessar颅ily, clarify such period concepts as 鈥淩omanticism,鈥 鈥淰ictorianism,鈥 鈥淎estheticism鈥 and 鈥淢odern颅ism,鈥 and their distinctive Canadian manifesta颅tions, as we proceed.
Texts:听
- Gerson, Carole, and Gwendolyn Davies, eds.听 Canadian Poetry: From the Beginnings through the First World War.听 Toronto: McClelland and Stewart [New Canadian Library], 1994.
- Trehearne, Brian, ed.听 Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960.听 Toronto: McClelland and Stewart [New Canadian Library], 2010.
Evaluation:听2 essays, 5 and 8 pp., 20% and 30%; final examination, 40%; Partici颅pation in class discussion, 10% (Please note before registering for this course: I assess active participation in discussion and not attendance.听 Full attendance through the semester without speaking will earn 0/10 in this category and substantially affect your final grade.)听 Evaluation may change depending on class size; if necessary, changes will be announced before the end of the course change period.
Format: Lectures and discussions
Average Enrollment: 25
ENGL 329 English Novel of the Nineteenth-Century I
Professor听Tabitha Sparks
Fall Term 2014
Monday and Wednesday 11:35-12:55
Full course description
Description:听This course uses five wide-ranging British novels to study a foundational relationship in nineteenth-century fiction: the romantic relationship as a synecdoche of social organization.听 Perhaps more precisely, the relationships we will analyze in the course novels reveal anxieties and realities of social disorganization 鈥 with broken engagements, and failed or fractured marriages operating as signs of the century鈥檚 disruptive transformations in class structure and geopolitical identity.听听 With this topic in mind, we will better understand how the dominantly private settings in the nineteenth-century British novel and intimate plots yield commentary on industrial, economic, and political change.听听
Texts:听(available at the University Bookstore):
- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility 1811
- Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist 1838
- Anne Bront毛, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 1848
- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss 1859
- Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady 1875
- 329 Course pack
Evaluation:听Attendance and participation (includes reading quizzes in conference section): 25%; midterm: 20%; essay: 25%; final exam: 30%
Format: Lectures and听weekly conferences
ENGL 330 English Novel of the 19th Century 2
The Search for Vocation
Professor Yael Halevi-Wise
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05-11:25
Full course description
Description:听The primary goal of this course is to acquaint students with English masterpieces from the second half of the Nineteenth Century and a German bildungsroman influential at this time. While keenly engaged with the spirit of 鈥榩rogress鈥 and 鈥榬eform鈥 sweeping through their country, writers in this period tended to set the action of their novels a few decades back from their time of composition and publication. Keeping this historical perspective in mind, we will focus on how influential novelists such as Goethe and Dickens portrayed their protagonists鈥 struggle for meaningful employment in an increasingly secular and professionalized society that was still hedged in, however, by barriers of gender, class, and religious affiliation.听
Texts:
- The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- David Copperfield 听by Charles Dickens
- Villette by Charlotte Bront毛
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Evaluation:听15% attendance and participation; 60% four ongoing exploratory papers; 25% final essay due a week from last class
Format: Lectures and discussions
Average enrollment: 70 students
ENGL 332 Literature of the Romantic Period 2
Instructor Emily Kopley
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 8:35鈥9:55
Full course description
Description:听Following a roughly chronological route, this course focuses on British literature of the later Romantic period, emphasizing its various prose and verse genres. The period鈥檚 rich prose will be represented by the essays of William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and Thomas De Quincey, and by the fiction of Mary Shelley. We will devote substantial time to Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats, the three poets historically central to studying the period. We will read as well the poetry of Robert Burns, John Clare, and anonymous bards. Our lectures and discussions will focus on the meaning of 鈥渞omanticism,鈥 craftsmanship and inspiration, historical and biographical context, the figure of the poet, and the relation of genre and gender.
Texts:
- The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period (Vol. D), 9th edition
- Mary Shelley,听Frankenstein, ed. J. Paul Hunter (Norton)
Evaluation: 听
- Participation in class, including one 500-word response to a day鈥檚 reading, posted at MyCourses in discussion forum: 15%
- Paper 1 (1000 page close reading): 25%
- Paper 2 (1500 study of one work's influence on another): 35%
- Final exam (identification and brief analysis of short passages): 25%
ENGL 333 Development of Canadian Poetry 2
Professor Robert Lecker
Fall Term 2014听
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05鈥 14:25
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Description:听This is a course about really reading poetry, in this case, Canadian poetry. It focuses on a group of approximately ten Canadian poets who have formed and responded to the Canadian literary landscape since World War II. Most of the poets covered in the course are writers who confront modern and contemporary ideas about the nature of self, society, gender, and art, but we also look at the ways in which these writers are trying to deal with the existential implications of new views about science, God, and the poet鈥檚 place in his or her rapidly changing world. Since part of the reading involves thinking about aesthetic and theoretical issues, the course will deal with these issues, just as it will pay close attention to the meaning and resonance of particular poems. At the same time, it will consider the ways in which these poets (and us, as readers) construct the place called Canada as a metaphor that鈥檚 central to our daily lives. Students are encouraged to explore multi-media material related to each poet in question. The writing component of the course (frequent short essays but no term papers or exams) is designed to improve interpretive abilities and to encourage creative forms of critical expression. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to write short essays on a weekly basis, and to participate actively in class discussion.
Texts:听Lecker, Robert, ed. Open Country: Canadian Poetry in English. Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007
Evaluation:听A series of short essays on each of the poets studied in the course, 80%; attendance, 10%; participation, 10%
Format: Lectures and discussions
Average Enrollment: 25 students
ENGL听335 20th Century Novel 1
Britishness and the Novel
Instructor听Ariel Buckley
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 13:35-14:25
Full course description
Description:听This course introduces students to the major formal, thematic, and historical concerns of British fiction through a central question: how did notions of Britishness and the role of the British writer change over the course of the twentieth century? Our aim will be to explore ways in which the political and artistic aims of British novelists altered in response to contemporary crises and cultural developments. We will begin with Howards End, E.M. Forster鈥檚 depiction of relationships and social conventions in Edwardian England. Works by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce will allow us to map out the key themes and stylistic features of high modernism; we will explore how both 鈥淭he Dead鈥 and Mrs Dalloway link the literary representation of subjectivity, alienation, and fragmentation with wider social and political concerns in the wake of the First World War. Next, we will ask how two British estate novels, P.G. Wodehouse鈥檚 Code of the Woosters and Evelyn Waugh鈥檚 Brideshead Revisited, reflect the prewar and wartime conditions in which they were written, and how Muriel Spark鈥檚 comic novel reflects on Britishness and identity in the postwar world. Finally, Zadie Smith鈥檚 White Teeth, with its reimagining of Howards End, will allow us to reflect on changing notions of nationalism and narrative at the close of the century.
Lectures and discussions will blend close reading and thematic analysis with reflections on the social and historical conditions of literary production, with particular attention to the First and Second World Wars, the decline of the British Empire, the rise and fall of the Welfare State, postcolonial immigration, class distinctions, 鈥渕iddlebrow鈥 culture, and attitudes toward gender, sexuality, and race. Short stories and essays, as well as excerpts from films, radio broadcasts, and government publications, will supplement our focus on the novel, and allow us to chart its development in relation to wider issues and ideas in the twentieth century.
Texts:听(tentative)
- E.M. Forster, Howards End (1910)
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
- P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters (1938)
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945)
- Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
- Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
- Coursepack with critical readings
Evaluation:听
- 15% Participation
- 15% Short Writing Assignment
- 40% Research Paper
- 30% Final Exam
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 336 Twentieth-Century Novel 2
The Twentieth Century Writes Back
Professor听Monica Popescu
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05-14:25
Full course description
Description:听What would you do if a novel otherwise well-written ends on the wrong note or refuses to disclose enough information about a minor character that piqued your interest? The solution, as some contemporary writers discovered, is to redesign the work. 鈥淲riting back鈥 is a literary practice established in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is often associated with postmodern and postcolonial writers, but it is not restricted to them. It entails revisiting, modifying, and sometimes radically transforming a canonical work in order to expose its ideological biases, update its plot, or rework its ethics. The targets are almost always eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, works written at a time of economic transformations, technological innovations, the expansion of empires, and changes in social roles and hierarchies. How do twentieth century writers illuminate, transform, interpret and misinterpret the concerns of earlier authors? And what do these rewritings tell us about issues of authorship, canonicity, and literary influence? Aside from the clusters of novels, short stories, paintings, and films to be considered, we will read essays by Marx, Hegel, Cixous, Freud, Spivak, and Achebe.
Texts:听N.B. The final reading list will be available in late October 2014.
Coursepack
Novels:
- Daniel Defoe鈥Robinson Crusoe
- J.M. Coetzee鈥Foe
- Charlotte Bronte鈥Jane Eyre
- Jean Rhys鈥Wide Sargasso Sea
- Bram Stoker鈥Dracula
- Joseph Conrad鈥Heart of Darkness
Films:
- Bram Stoker鈥檚 Dracula. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
- Nosferatu. Dir. Werner Herzog
- Apocalypse Now. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Evaluation (tentative):听Short paper 20%; Midterm 30%; Final paper 35%; Participation (including webct assignments) 15%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 337听Underworlds and Otherworlds
Professor Michael Van Dussen
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05-11:25
Full course description
Description:听A rich body of literature developed in the European Middle Ages that explored 鈥渨orlds鈥 or 鈥渞ealities鈥 that stood somehow apart from the world of everyday experience. Yet these other (or 鈥渦nder鈥) worlds were never entirely separable from what medieval Europeans regarded as the world of their day-to-day lives; by exploring these worlds, authors and readers were simultaneously cultivating a renewed understanding of their own experience of time, geographical space, and the ways in which their belief systems infused both with meaning. In this course, students will analyze several literary accounts of worlds or landscapes that stand in some way apart from what their authors and audiences regarded as ordinary. We will read dream visions, including visions of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory; we鈥檒l encounter underworlds that are geographically continuous with specific places in Europe; we鈥檒l read narratives in which travelers encounter 鈥渢he exotic鈥 or 鈥渢he marvellous鈥; and we鈥檒l study narratives of fairy otherworlds. This course will introduce students to texts written in England, Ireland, Iceland, and on the European continent during the period c. 900-1500.
Texts:听(provisional)
- The Book of John Mandeville
- The Voyage of St. Brendan
- The Vision of Tundale
- St. Patrick鈥檚 Purgatory
- The Vision of St. Paul
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Pearl
- Chaucer, The House of Fame
- Sir Orfeo
- Sir Launfal
- Other required readings (incl. Icelandic sagas) available via MyCourses
Evaluation听
a) Mid-term exam: 25%
b) Final exam: 35%
c) Final essay: 30%
d) Participation and attendance: 10%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 342 Introduction to Old English
Professor Dorothy Bray
Fall Term 2014
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 11:35鈥12:35
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Description:听This course aims to be an intensive introduction to the study of Old English, the earliest form of the English language. We will begin with the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language (necessary but not necessarily painful), and advancing to the reading of selected texts in prose and poetry. The aim is to give students a basic grounding in the language to enable them to read works (like Beowulf) in the original. Classes will be devoted at first to grammar and translation, but we will also be examining representations of Anglo-Saxon literature through reading and translating the texts, some features of Anglo-Saxon culture, and certain aspects of the history of the English language, particularly the origins of words and their semantic evolution. The course culminates in a translation project, which will be a translation and analytical commentary of a selected text.
Texts:听An Introduction to Old English, by Peter Baker. 3rd. edition. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Inc., 2003; 2011. Also available as e-book.
Evaluation:听Class tests 35%; homework 30%; final project 25%; attendance and participation 10%
Format: Lectures, workshops, discussions
ENGL 345听Literature and Society
How Shakespeare Created Modern Society
Professor Paul Yachnin
Winter Term 2015
Thursday 14:35-15:55
Full course description
Description:听In this course, we consider how Shakespeare, his fellow playwrights, the actors, and the playgoers of early modern London rewrote the rules about who could be a public person and about who could take part in discussions about politics and social policy. Before Shakespeare, commoners (the vast majority of the population) were excluded from debates about matters of political concern. From the 1580s to the closing of the playhouses in the middle of the seventeenth century, the commercial theatre invited people of all social ranks to take an active role in thinking about and talking about a great range of social and political questions. Together, the theatrical practitioners and their customers laid the groundwork for the political culture of modernity.
We will read works by a number of Shakespeare鈥檚 fellow playwrights, a handful of other works from the period, and several modern historical studies and readings in political philosophy. But the focus of our attention will a selection of plays by Shakespeare himself.
Texts:听(all texts available at Paragraph Books)
- Other readings will be posted on the course website.
- Taming of the Shrew, ed. Callaghan (WW Norton)
- Hamlet, ed. Braunmuller (Pelican)听
- Merchant of Venice, ed. Halio (Oxford)
- Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed Sylvan Barnett (Signet Classics)
- Ben Jonson, Volpone and Other Plays (Penguin)
- Tempest, ed. Orgel (Oxford)
- Othello, ed. Neill (Oxford)
Evaluation:听
- Reading responses, 5% each 20%
- Short essays, 15% each 30%
- Participation 15%
- Final Exam 35%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 346 Materiality and Sociology of Texts
Professor Eli MacLaren
Fall Term 2014
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 10:35鈥11:25听
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Description:听The material forms and circumstances of texts fundamentally affect their meaning. This premise underlies the history of the book, a field of advanced study aimed at understanding the circulation of ideas in connection with technology, sociology, and economics. If the book is not only a vessel of ideas but also a thing of industrial manufacture that is marketed and consumed, then knowledge of the book industry and of the forces that influence it becomes important to literary and historical interpretation. In this course we will survey defining contributions to the history and theory of the book, reading canonical authors such as Shakespeare and Byron in light of new studies on the socioeconomic factors behind their creativity and reputation. Topics will include: the editing of Shakespeare, l鈥檋istoire du livre, copyright and piracy, the history of the book in Canada, and print culture. Students will learn the basics of analytical bibliography and scholarly editing, produce a book-history case study, and become familiar with defining contributions to the field.
Texts:听
- Levy and Mole, ed. The Broadview Reader in Book History
- Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Thompson and Taylor (Arden, 2006)
- George Gordon, Lord Byron. Selected Poetry. Ed. Jerome McGann (Oxford, 1998)
Evaluation:听response (2 pp.): 20%; short essay (5 pp.): 30%; long essay (10 pp.): 40%; participation in workshops: 10%
Format:听lecture and discussion
ENGL 347 Great Writings of Europe I
Foundations of Western Epic and Mythology: Homer, Virgil, Ovid
Professor Kenneth Borris
Fall Term 2014听
Monday and Wednesday 8:35-9:55
Full course description
Prerequisite:听None.听
Expected Student Preparation:听Previous university courses in English or classical literature. A basic knowledge of Homeric epic will be assumed in lectures. Students therefore should read the Iliad and the Odyssey before taking this course. Previous work on poetry is also strongly advised.
Description:听While concentrating on the major texts of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid in attractive modern translations, we will consider their role in the literary history of western Europe, especially England, up to and including the eighteenth century.听 The course will thus survey the development of classical myth, mythography, allegory, epic, and literary theory from Homer to Addison.听 It will provide an effective base of knowledge for reading literature that draws on such contexts, and for appreciating corresponding shifts in literary history and in the roles of myth in western culture.
If you have already taken ENGL 347 (Great Writings of Europe I) as a different course under that number, you may still take this course, but will need to see me in the first or second week of classes so I can arrange your enrollment.
The Course Reader and other texts will be available in paperback for purchase at the Word bookstore, 469 Milton Street, 845-5640.听
Texts:听
- Homer, Iliad, Fagles translation
- Homer, Odyssey, Lattimore translation
- Virgil, Aeneid, Fitzgerald translation
- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Mandelbaum translation
- Supplementary Course Reader
Evaluation:听term paper, 50%;听 take-home final exam, 40%;听 10% class attendance and participation.
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 348 Great Writings of Europe 2
Early European Literature
Professor Michael Van Dussen
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Wednesday & Fridays 09:35-10:25AM
Full course description
Prerequisite:听No formal prerequisite, but previous (or concurrent) university-level work in literary studies and a familiarity with the basics of literary analysis are expected.听
Description:听This course examines several major works of European literature that significantly influenced Western conceptions of literate practice, authorship, religion, and the place of the individual human in society and in the universe. Course texts include examples of literature spanning from Late Antiquity to the Italian Renaissance. The course has two main objectives: to introduce students to early literature as an object of study in its own right; and to explore this literature as an important background for the study of subsequent Western literature and culture, including in England. We will also discuss the problematics of periodization (e.g., what do we mean by 鈥淟ate Antiquity鈥, 鈥渢he Middle Ages鈥 and 鈥渢he Renaissance鈥?). The course will emphasize the following categories in particular: Language and Signification; Autobiography and Conversion; and Sacred and Secular. All course texts were written on the European continent, and will be read in modern English translation.
Texts:听(provisional)听
- Augustine, Confessions
- Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
- Chr茅tien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances
- Dante, The Divine Comedy
- Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose
- Petrarch, Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works
- Other required readings available via MyCourses
Evaluation:听
a) Mid-term exam: 25%
b) Final exam: 35%
c) Final essay: 30%
d) Participation and attendance: 10%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 355 Poetics of Performance听
Professor Katherine Zien
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 4:35-5:55PM
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Description:听This course engages meaningful issues and debates that have structured theatre and performance practice and scholarship from ancient Greece to the present. Beginning with an analysis of mimesis and representation in Plato鈥檚听Republic听and Aristotle鈥檚听Poetics, we will examine a chronological progression of scholarship on theatrical performance, supplementing course lectures with readings in theatre theory, artists鈥 manifestos, historiography, plays, and performance footage.
We will engage topics including the following:
- Historical debates about the dangers, pleasures, and purposes of theatrical representation
- Changing acting theories and methods
- Approaches to the construction and study of theatrical space
- Theories of reception
- The body onstage: materiality and semiotics
- 鈥楶ositioning performance:鈥 disciplinary relationships between theatre and performance studies
Texts:
- Daniel Gerould,听Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel.听NY: Applause, 2000
- Suzan-Lori Parks,听The America Play and Other Works.听NY: Theatre Communications Group, 1995
- A course packet including primary texts (Marina Abramovi膰, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Augusto Boal, Anne Bogart, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Brook, Edward Gordon Craig, Denis Diderot, Jerzy Grotowski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Femi Osofisan, Sophocles, Wole Soyinka, Konstantin Stanislavski, Zeami) and secondary sources (Rhonda Blair, Dwight Conquergood, Colin Counsell, Mark Fortier, Helen Gilbert, Gay McAuley, Jacques Ranci猫re, Joseph Roach, Richard Schechner, Diana Taylor, Philip Zarilli)
Evaluation:听In-class participation: 20%; critical theatre review: 20%; short response essay: 20%; midterm exam: 20%; final take-home exam: 20%
Format: Lectures and group discussions
ENGL 357 Chaucer
Canterbury Tales
Instructor Michael Raby
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05-14:25
Full course description
Prerequisites:听None. We will read Chaucer in the original Middle English. Previous experience with Middle English is not required. Instruction in Middle English will be provided.
Description:听Chaucer is one of the most formally inventive poets in English literature. His innovations include establishing iambic pentameter as a dominant poetic meter and introducing the sonnet into English. This course reads a selection of Chaucer鈥檚 most important works with a focus on their formal complexity and engagement with the classical and medieval rhetorical tradition. We begin by looking at several of Chaucer鈥檚 lyrics, which we will use to help familiarize ourselves with Middle English syntax and prosody. Then we turn to Troilus and Criseyde, a poem that persistently calls attention to its own rhetorical strategies. The second half of the course focuses on the Canterbury Tales, including the Nun鈥檚 Priest鈥檚 Tale, a brilliant parody of rhetoricians. Alongside Chaucer鈥檚 works, we will read some of the classical and medieval rhetorical manuals with which Chaucer would have been familiar.
By the end of the course, students will be able to identify a variety of rhetorical devices and formal structures that are used in Chaucer鈥檚 works. This training will be useful both for those who wish to continue their study of medieval literature beyond Chaucer and those studying the ars poetria of later periods. A sampling of secondary criticism will help to contextualize Chaucer鈥檚 poetry, as well as provide a sense of how questions of form have been treated by critical paradigms ranging from the New Criticism of the mid-twentieth century through to the recent emergence of New Formalism.
Texts:
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. Ed. Stephen Barney (Norton, 2006).
--. The Canterbury Tales. 2nd ed. Ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson (Norton, 2005).
[Instead of these two editions, students can use the Riverside Chaucer, but, in order for everybody to be on the same page, so to speak, please do not use editions other than the Norton or Riverside.]
Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Poetria Nova. Revised ed. Trans. Margaret F. Nims (PIMS, 2010).
Coursepack.
Evaluation听(tentative):听
- Participation 鈥 10%
- Mid-term exam 鈥 20%
- Close reading exercises 鈥 15%
- Essay (7-8 pgs) 鈥 30%
- Final exam 鈥 25%听
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 359 The Poetics of the Image
Professor Ara Osterweil
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 16:35 pm 鈥 17:25 pm | Mandatory Screening: Wednesday 17:35 pm 鈥 19:55 pm
Full course description
Description:听This course is designed to teach students how to meaningfully close read image-based cultural texts. Using multiple strategies of visual analysis, students will learn how to perform perceptive, informed and medium-specific interpretations of both still and moving images. Focusing our critical lens on some of the most innovative photography and film texts of the last century, we will study the nuances of composition, color, 尘颈蝉别-别苍-蝉肠猫苍别, framing, camera movement, editing and sound. Paying close attention to the ways in which visual style creates meaning, students will learn to look beyond narrative and dialogue in order to understand both the semiotics and poetics of the image.听 In addition to numerous close-reading exercises, we will be supplementing our investigation of images by reading several classical texts by theorists such as John Berger, Roland Barthes, Laura Mulvey, Andr茅 Bazin, Tom Gunning, Sergei Eisenstein, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, Christian Metz, Kaja Silverman, Mary Ann Doane, and others. 听Students must come to class prepared with all of the assigned reading, and will be expected to participate verbally in class on a weekly basis.听
Lectures will be illustrated by copious visual examples.听 In addition to lectures, there is a mandatory screening every week. There are also mandatory conference sections that will meet throughout the term (but not always regularly) instructed by the Teaching Assistant.听
Texts:听Selections from
- Roland Barthes
- John Berger
- Andr茅 Bazin
- Laura Mulvey
- Kaja Silverman
- Mary Ann Doane
- Christian Metz
- Bela Balazs
- Jacques Lacan
- Sigmund Freud
- Tom Gunning
- Sergei Eisenstein
- Laura Marks
Films to be Screened:
- (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, 1971)
- La Jet茅e (Chris Marker, 1962)
- The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
- The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
- Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
- Vivre sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)
- Daisies (Vera Chytilova, 1966)
- Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959)
- Sanctus (Barbara Hammer, 1990)
- Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)
- Fly (Yoko Ono, 1971)
Evaluation:听Attendance and Participation: 15%; 2 page mini-paper: 20%; two small papers (first worth 30%, second worth 35%): 65%
Format:听Lecture, Discussion, mandatory screening, and conference
ENGL 360 Literary Criticism
Professor听Sandeep Banerjee
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 16:05 am 鈥 17:25 pm
Full course description
Description:听This course will explore several topics that are central to modern and contemporary literary criticism and critical theory. These include among others: interpretation; culture; ideology; class, race, gender, and sexuality; discourse; hegemony; signification; and performativity. While we engage with these complex and contested issues of interpretation and criticism, we will read key texts from a range of critical schools and practices, including New Criticism, Marxism, Structuralism, and Post-Structuralism. We will also read selections from, among others, the writings of Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler. These texts will help us articulate and interrogate some of the most fundamental questions pertaining to the practice of literary studies: What constitutes literature? Who determines what texts mean, and how? How do texts relate to broader social structures? Considering these questions and texts will necessitate careful and patient reading and sustained engagement with lecture and discussion during class. The reading for this course will be at times difficult and dense. Thorough preparation for each class meeting is essential. This course is required for, but not restricted to, Honours students in English.
Texts:听
- Terry Eagleton: Literary Theory: An Introduction
- Frank Lentricchia & Thomas McLaughlin (eds.): Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd ed.听
Evaluation: Attendance and participation: 15%; short essay: 25%; Analytical Papers (x6): 60%听听 听听
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 363 Studies in the History of Film 3
1980s American Cinema
Professor Derek Nystrom
Winter Term 2015
Monday and Wednesday 11:35-12:55
Full course description
Prerequisites:听 None
Expected Student Preparation:听Familiarity with concepts and terminology from film studies and cultural studies will be very useful.
Description:听This course will survey U.S. cinema during what we might call the decade of Reagan. Indeed, critic Andrew Britton diagnosed the special effects-laden blockbusters that had displaced the more politically and aesthetically adventurous American filmmaking of the 1970s as examples of 鈥淩eaganite entertainment,鈥 which acclimated its audience to the military adventurism and 鈥渁uthoritarian populism鈥 of the Reagan administration. But the 1980s also saw the birth of a series of 鈥渘ew鈥 independent cinemas (New Queer Cinema, New Black Cinema, etc.), which generated innovative filmic vocabularies of race, gender, sexuality and class to dissent from Reagan鈥檚 political hegemony, as well as the cultural hegemony of Hollywood鈥檚 testosterone-fueled, action-adventure fantasies. Meanwhile, older Hollywood genres (the teenpic, the horror film) were being revamped for a new generation of filmgoers. And of course, the 1980s was the decade in which 鈥減ostmodernism鈥 became a household word. This class will examine all of these developments to trace the ways in which the cinema of this period worked through the political and cultural dilemmas of the period. We will do so while keeping in mind that, as Stephen Prince has observed, the 1980s was the decade in which 鈥渇ilm ceased to be primarily a theatrical medium, based in celluloid. 鈥 Movies took their place as one 鈥榮oftware鈥 stream among others 鈥 merchandised by global media companies who viewed their marketplace as the planet itself.鈥 In other words, the decade also marks a moment in which the definitions of 鈥渃inema鈥 and even the 鈥渘ational audience鈥 underwent dramatic changes.
Texts:听Essays by such critics as Robin Wood, Andrew Britton, Pam Cook, Thomas Schatz, Geoff King, Fredric Jameson, Jon Lewis, Justin Wyatt, Carol Clover, Fred Pfeil, Nicholas Rombes, William Warner, Warren Buckland, Peter Biskind, Janet Staiger, Thomas Waugh, Sharon Willis, and others.
Films:
- Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听听
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
- Friday the 13th, Part 2 (Steve Miner, 1981)
- Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982)
- Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984)
- Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984)
- Rambo: First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos, 1985)
- Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
- Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
- Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986)
- Parting Glances (Bill Sherwood, 1986)
- Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988)
- Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
Evaluation:听TBA
Format:听Lectures, discussions and weekly screenings
Average enrollment: 80 students
ENGL 364听Creative Writing
Fiction 2
Instructor Anita听Rau Badami听(2014-15听Richler Writer-In-Residence)
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday 9:30-12:30
Full course description
Prerequisites: 听Permission of the instructor required. Enrolment is limited to 15 students.
To apply, please submit a portfolio that includes these items:
1. An imaginative description of a character you鈥檝e met or invented (300-350 words).
2. Think of a moment in your life that is, or was, memorable and imagine yourself back there. Describe what made it so particular 鈥 in a good or bad way 鈥 why it affected you so deeply, if it changed you and how it did so. You are free to invent that moment if you wish. (300-350 words).
3. A work of fiction or creative non-fiction or a fragment of a longer piece (1500-2000 words) 听 听 听 听 听听
Submissions must be submitted as email attachments to the Department of English by 4.30 pm Friday October 24. Late submissions will not be considered. Students will be notified about their applications via email on or before November 14.
Description:听In this weekly workshop we will examine the art and craft of writing fiction with a primary focus on the short story. Students will study assigned examples of published short stories each chosen to highlight a specific element such as character, plot, structure, point of view, voice, place, mood, symbol, metaphor, style etc.. You will then be encouraged to use these elements effectively and imaginatively in the creation of your own short stories. Each week we will begin with a brief discussion of the assigned short story and one particular element. The remainder of the class will be devoted to critiquing your work in a respectful workshop environment. You will be asked to provide constructive verbal and written feedback to those of your classmates whose work is being discussed. Your end of term portfolio will consist of four short stories, three of which will be critiqued in class. The fourth story will be a polished piece in which you utilize the skills you have learned during this course. You are expected to attend every class, participate in class discussions, and hand in your assignments on time. There will be a good deal of reading and writing but that is part of the writing life, and if you are game for it, you will have an enjoyable and productive time in this class. Grades will be based on writing submitted to the workshop, constructive participation in the workshop, commentary on assigned readings, and a final portfolio of finished, edited pieces.
Texts:听Assigned readings compiled by instructor will include work by Anton Chekov, Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Alice Munro, and Francine Prose.
Evaluation:听
- Participation and engagement in class discussions and editing work of self and others: 20%
- Commentary on assigned readings: 10%
- Short fiction submissions for in-class critique: 35%
- Final Portfolio: 35%
Format:听Workshop and seminar
Average enrollment: 80 students
ENGL 365 Costuming for the Theatre I
Instructor Catherine Bradley
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05 - 11:25 am
Full course description
Prerequisites: None
Description:听Costuming I focuses on skills acquisition.听 The process of designing and coordinating costumes for a main stage theatre production is the practical project that fuels this class.听 Skills that will be covered include use of industrial sewing machines, hand sewing techniques, taking actor measurements, alterations, and garment fittings with the actors.
Character analysis and research inform our design choices.听听 The director will provide students with an initial directorial concept and vision for the show, emphasizing clear character delineation. Our discussion will focus on color palette, mood and the individual characters. The director returns two weeks later for the presentation and general discussion of the students鈥 rough sketches and /or inspiration images. Approximately a week later, the students each present finished renderings to the director and class for a final critique session.听 The design for the production will be chosen using the students鈥 sketches.
The English Department Main Stage theatre production provides an opportunity for students to practice their costuming skills in the atelier and backstage.听 The class will be in charge of the costumes for each actor from head to toe, and will be in charge of the costumes backstage. Each student will have a specific production duty as well as a hands-on production project.
Opening night of the production will find some of the costume team working backstage as costume crew. The dressing shifts will be divided among the class, along with day time maintenance of the costumes. The final night of the production all students will be required to attend strike, which is the dismantling of the show.听 Expect a very late night, with strike lasting until 2:00am.听 Students will be expected to strike the set as well as the costumes.听
Texts:听None required.听 Script will be provided on mycourses.听听
Evaluation:听sewing sample 5%, Personal Style Project 10%, charts 5%, Measurements 10%, Design Project (Main stage production) 10%, Production Project 20%, Production Duty 20%, back stage crew and strike 10%.听 Attendance 10% (1 mark lost for lateness of 5 minutes or more.听 2 marks lost for absence without illness.听 Students MUST inform the instructor of illness before class starts).
Format:听lectures, hands on projects, demonstrations, and practical work.听 Additional production hours outside of class time are required, and are often substantial.听 Expect a minimum of 9 hours per week.听 There is no maximum.
Average enrollment:听10 students, by permission of the instructor
ENGL 368 Stage Scenery and Lighting 1
Instructor听Keith Roche
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05 am 鈥 11:25 am
Full course description
Prerequisite:听None. Limited enrolment. Permission of instructor required. Not open to students enrolled in ENGL 365. This course is extremely time consuming and labour intensive. It requires a great deal of commitment.
Description:听This is a practical theatre course that focuses on technical aspects of theatre performances. Students will be introduced to the practices of lighting, sound, stage management, set and prop construction. The class will be involved in the Mainstage English Department Production and be responsible for the backstage running crew work during the run of the production.
Format:听Workshop demonstrations and practical assignments
ENGL 371 Theatre History: 19th to 21st Century
Latin American and Caribbean Theatre听
Professor Katherine Zien
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 11:35鈥12:55
Full course description
Prerequisites:听None
Description:听This course surveys modern and contemporary drama, theatre, and performance art from across the Western hemisphere, with special focus on Latin America, the Hispanophone Caribbean, and US Latina/o communities. As we move geographically through the hemisphere, we will learn about the political, cultural, social, and economic factors informing theatrical production. Thematic concerns will include: theatre against dictatorship in the Southern Cone and beyond; migration and exile; indigeneity; political theatre in the 鈥渂orderlands;鈥 gender and sexuality; populism, protest, and 鈥淭heatre of the Oppressed;鈥 histories of collective creation in the Americas; and expressions of Latina/o North American identities.听
Texts:听Our syllabus will feature plays and multimedia works by artists including the following:
- Carmen Aguirre (Chile/Canada)
- Lola Arias (Argentina)
- Sabina Berman (M茅xico)
- Enrique Buenaventura (Colombia)
- N茫o Bustamante (USA)
- Guillermo Calder贸n (Teatro en el Blanco, Chile)
- Carmelita Tropicana (Cuba/USA)
- Migdalia Cruz (Puerto Rico/USA)
- Nilo Cruz (Cuba/USA)
- FOMMA (Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya) (Chiapas, M茅xico)
- Mar铆a Irene Forn茅s (Cuba/USA)
- Coco Fusco (Cuba/USA)
- Griselda Gambaro (Argentina)
- Guillermo G贸mez-Pe帽a (Mexico/USA)
- Astrid Hadad (Mexico)
- LEGOM (Mexico)
- Antonio Machado (Cuba/USA)
- Mujeres Creando (Bolivia)
- Teatro Campesino (USA)
- Teatro L铆nea de Sombra (M茅xico)
- Violeta Luna (M茅xico)
- Teatro Malayerba (Ecuador)
- Teatro Oficina (Brazil)
- Juan Radrig谩n (Chile)
- Jos茅 Rivera (Puerto Rico/USA)
- Jesusa Rodr铆guez and Liliana Felipe (M茅xico/Argentina)
- Guillermo Verdecchia (Argentina/Canada)
- Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru)
Additionally, we will utilize the following base texts:
- Diana Taylor and Sarah J. Townsend, Eds. Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Latin American Theatre and Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2008).
- Ana Puga, Ed. Spectacular Bodies, Dangerous Borders. Latin American Theatre Review Books (University of Kansas Press, 2011).
- A course pack comprising secondary sources by scholars including Natalie Alvarez, Francine A鈥橬ess, Gloria Anzald煤a, Alicia Arriz贸n, Stuart Day, May Farnsworth, Jean Graham-Jones, Paola Hern谩ndez, Larry LaFountain-Stokes, Jill Lane, Jos茅 Mu帽oz, Ana Puga, Rossana Reguillo, Ram贸n Rivera-Servera, Leticia Robles, Camilla Stevens, Diana Taylor, and Tamara Underiner.
All texts will be available in English translation.听
Evaluation:听Group Presentation: 10%; short response essays: 40%; final analytical/research paper: 30%; in-class participation: 10%; question forum: 10%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 372 Stage Scenery and Lighting 2
Instructor听Keith Roche
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05 am 鈥 11:25 am
Full course description
Prerequisite:听None. Limited enrolment. Permission of instructor required. Not open to students enrolled in ENGL 377. Students interested in taking this course are instructed to contact Mr. Roche by email. This course is extremely time consuming and labour intensive. It requires a great deal of commitment.
Description:听This is a practical theatre course that focuses on the more advanced technical aspects of theatre performances. Students will be focus on the practices of lighting, sound, stage management, and set and prop construction as well as some aspects of design in these areas. The class will be involved in the Mainstage English Department Production and be responsible for the backstage running crew work during the run of the production.
Format:听Lectures, production demonstrations and up to 80 hours of production work
ENGL 374听American Film and Television of the 1950s
Professor Ned Schantz
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 16:05-17:25
Full course description
Prerequisite:听None
Expected Student Preparation: prior film or television studies is advantageous but not required. Students are asked to see Sunset Boulevard before the first class.
Description:听No decade in American history attracts a stranger combination of nostalgia and disgust. Indeed, no decade in American history is more peculiarly American鈥攎ore attached to the prevailing stereotypes of naive affluence, cynical arrogance, and reckless enthusiasm, not to say bobby socks, hula hoops, malted milks, and Elvis Presley. In this course we will dive headlong into the maw of the fifties beast, with all the suburbs, commercialism, and Cold War paranoia that entails. But our method of comparative media and genre studies will also seek out gaps in that old fifties picture. As an aging and blacklist-ravaged film industry confronts an upstart television culture in search of definition鈥攁s film noir rots, the Western peaks, and science fiction surges鈥攚e will increasingly seek not just the sleek surfaces of the fifties clich茅, but the churning history of our own present.
Possible films include: Ace in the Hole, Johnny Guitar, Glen or Glenda?, Rebel Without a Cause, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Imitation of Life, and Shadows.
Possible shows include: I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, The Honeymooners, Dragnet, Lassie, The Twilight Zone, and Perry Mason.
Note: As stated above, all students are asked to see Sunset Boulevard before the first class.
Evaluation:听 2 Quizzes 5% each, posted course notes 5%, journal 25%, term paper 40%, participation 20%.听
Texts: coursepack
Average enrolment:听 80 students
Format:听Lecture with discussion, conferences, and weekly screenings
ENGL 377 Costuming for the Theatre 2
Instructor听Catherine Bradley
Winter Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05 am - 11:25 am
Full course description
Description:听Learning modules in advanced costuming may include designing by draping fabric on the mannequins, and millinery techniques.听 Sewing skills that were gained in the first semester will be built upon in the second semester, through costuming the English Department Theatre Lab class production.听 This semester, emphasis is on gaining or perfecting skills, as well as working more independently.
The costume class will see the production through from design to closing night. Each student will have a specific production duty as well as a hands-on production project. Costuming II differs from Costuming I in the level of independence and leadership expected from each student.听 Production projects will be initiated by the students under the guidance of the instructor.听 Students will take an active part in defining and outlining their specific production duties by formulating a contract with deadlines, in collaboration with their classmates and instructor.听 This will give students an opportunity to manage all aspects of costume production independently.听听 The various aspects of production will take a substantial amount of time throughout the semester. It is important to note that there are costume production hours outside of class time.听
Texts:听None required.听 Script will be provided on mycourses.听听
Evaluation:听Alterations Project 10%, charts 10%, Measurements 10%, Design Project (Main stage production) 10%, Production Project 20%, Production Duty 20%, back stage crew and strike 10%.听 Attendance 10% (1 mark lost for lateness of 5 minutes or more.听 2 marks lost for absence without illness.听 Students MUST inform the instructor of illness before class starts).
Format:听lectures, hands on projects, demonstrations, and practical work.听 Additional production hours outside of class time are required, and are often substantial. Expect a minimum of 9 hours per week. There is no maximum.
Average enrollment:听10 students, by permission of the instructor
ENGL 378 Media and Culture
Inuit and M茅tis Literature and Media
Professor Marianne Stenbaek
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05-14:25
Full course description
Description:听This course offers an introduction to Inuit literature and media. There will also be a M茅tis component. The term "literature" includes oral literature, such as legends, stories, and songs handed down through generations and modern "collaborative life stories" as well as written pieces. The emphasis among Inuit has often been on oral culture with a resultant successful transition to modern media such as television and film.
The effects of colonialism will be discussed and whether or not it is now possible or relevant to talk about post-colonial criticism. Do we need a new paradigm?
The course will examine these developments in the context of Canada and, in regard to the Inuit component, in the context of the Canadian North and to a lesser extent of the circumpolar North.
Texts:听Books will be available at Paragraphe bookstore.听
- The Oxford Anthology of Canadian Native Literature听
- Wachovich: Saquiaq
- Voices and Images of Nunavimmiut, VOL I.
- Maria Campbell: Half Breed.听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听
Excerpts from films and videos will be shown in class and are considered an integral part of the class material for which you are responsible.
Evaluation:听There will be a short essay, worth 25 %, a midterm take-home test; one final research paper worth 50%. Topics will be given out in class.
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 382: International Cinema
Postwar Italian Cinema
Professor Ara Osterweil
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 14:35 pm - 15:25 pm | Mandatory Screening: Wednesday 17:35 pm 鈥 19:55 pm
Full course description
Description:听Italian Neorealism remains the most influential cinema of the postwar period. For in addition to forging a genuinely national cinema from the wartime experience of the Italian people, Italian Neorealism created an international model for the development of a politically and aesthetically radically cinema by any means necessary.听 Returning to the seminal moment that produced Rome Open City (1945), this course begins in the ashes of World War II, as Italian Neorealist filmmakers like Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti struggled to reclaim and redeem the everyday struggle of the Italian people. As the resistance to Nazism, American occupation, and Fascism was still being fought in the streets, Italian filmmakers--armed only with their cameras and the legacy of Gramscian Marxism--attempted to document everyday reality without conventional adornment. Using non-professional actors, natural lighting, and on-location shooting, the Neorealists changed the history of cinema.
This course examines the major aesthetic, political, and historical developments in Italian Cinema, including: the landmark birth of Neorealism at the end of World War II; the cinema of the economic miracle; the emergence of New Wave auteurs in the 1950s and 1960s; and the retrospective revision of wartime experience by filmmakers in 1970s and 1980s. By situating the innovative work of seminal postwar directors, such as Roberto Rosselini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Liliana Cavani, Ermanno Olmi, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Lina Wertmuller, in the context of Italian culture, society, and politics, we shall gain a deeper understanding of one of the most important national cinemas in the post-war period. In addition to weekly screenings, students will be expected to do a significant amount of reading about Italian film and history. Attendance at weekly screenings in mandatory.
Films Include:听
- Rome Open City (Roberto Rosselini, 1943)Paisa (Roberto Rosselini, 1946)
- Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
- La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti, 1948)
- La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954)
- Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli, 1958)
- Accatone (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1960)
- Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
- Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
- 尝鈥椭肠濒颈蝉蝉别 (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
- 8 陆听 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
- I Cannibali (Liliana Cavani, 1970)
- The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1971)
- Love and Anarchy (Lina Wertmuller, 1973)
- Night of the Shooting Stars (The Taviani Brothers, 1982)
Texts:听
- Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy
- Millicent Marcus, Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism
- Andr茅 Bazin, What is Cinema? Volume 2
- Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks
- P. Adams Sitney, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema
- Noa Steimatsky, Italian Locations: Reinhabiting the Past in Postwar Cinema
- John David Rhodes, Stupendous, Miserable City
- Angelo Restivo, The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film
- Karl Schoonover, Brutal Vision: The Neorealist Body in Postwar Italian 听听 Cinema
Evaluation:听Class Participation: 15%; Midterm Exam: 20%; Final Exam: 25%; Final Paper: 40%听 听 听听
Format:听Lecture, discussion, and mandatory weekly screenings
ENGL 383 Studies in Communications 1
The Kennedys in Media, Literature and Film
Professor Berkeley Kaite
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 16:05鈥15:25
Full course description
Description:听In this course we examine the (mostly) North American pre-occupation with the Kennedy family. President Kennedy and his family were featured in the news before his assassination but following it 鈥 and continuing to this day 鈥 there was a plethora of attention to him and them. We will examine the reasons for this intense media fascination: after all, Kennedy wasn鈥檛 the first US president to be assassinated but his name resonates like few others. Some of the media scrutiny is due to his being President while television was taking hold in American homes. Among other things, thus, we will focus on the cultural contexts for what can be referred to as the 鈥淜ennedy industries.鈥 These will include enhanced visibility of the presidential office and family, charisma and the photogenics of power, the culture of the 鈥渃old war鈥 and the transition from the late 50s to the early 60s. But, we will also look at some related issues and questions, among them: the role of trauma and the body in the maintenance of national identities; the investment in secrets, conspiracy theories and gossip in the mass media age; the function of popular memory; and some other central figures to the Kennedy narratives, among them, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Harvey Oswald and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and John Kennedy jr. Key questions here will be, among others, what do we need to remember of them and what do we insist on forgetting? Note: this course will be less concerned with getting at any truths about the Kennedys; rather it seeks to address the circulation of stories, the proliferation of statements, 鈥渇acts,鈥 and images which go into the 鈥渃ultural screen saver鈥* called JFK (*Thomas Mallon, Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Murder of John F. Kennedy, 2002). Using David M. Lubin鈥檚 Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images as our guide, we will look at the media treatment of JFK and others, from the late 50s to the present.
NOTE: to do well in this class students should have taken a university-level course in which literature and/or film were the focus and whose textual analysis was the basis for evaluation.
Texts:听(tentative)
- David M. Lubin, Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images (2003)
- Don DeLillo, Libra (1988)
- American Adulterer by Jed Mercurio (2009)
- Jackie Under My Skin by Wayne Koestenbaum (1995)
- November 22, 1963 by Adam Braver (2008)
- The Report of the Warren Commission into the Assassination of President John F Kennedy (1964)
- JFK (dir. Oliver Stone, 1991)
- The House of Yes (dir. Mark Waters, 1997)
- Smash His Camera (dir. Leon Gast, 2010)
- The Kennedy Assassination 24 Hours After (The History Channel, 2009)
- Selections from other documentaries, television shows, & films
Evaluation:听(tentative) attendance and participation: 10%; pr茅cis of book chapters (from Shooting Kennedy): 40%; pr茅cis of films: 30%; pr茅cis of Libra: 20%
Format: Lectures, discussion, presentation of visual materials, film screenings.
ENGL 385听Topics in Literature and Film
Solitude in Literature and Film
Professor Berkeley Kaite
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 16:35鈥17:25
Full course description
Description:听E. M. Forster听 says, 鈥淥nly connect.鈥澨 Janet Malcolm replies, 鈥淥nly we can鈥檛.鈥澨 In Loneliness as a Way of Life Thomas Dumm puts these thoughts into relief when he notes : 鈥溾 our most important understandings about the shape of our present communal existence 鈥 the division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged and isolating forms that our relationships with our most intimate acquaintances sometimes assume, the weaknesses of our attachments to each other and hence to our lives in common 鈥 are all manifestations of the loneliness that has permeated the modern world.鈥澨 In this course we will look at some literary and cinematic manifestations of this issue of solitude, how it is imagined, played out and, if not exalted, presented as inescapable: the experience of being one in a world.听 Solitude may be indescribable but it does find its expression in words and images.听 Do not despair!听 The works we will examine should not lead to responses of forlornness.听 Rather, they depict hope, longing and creative imaginings of ways to 鈥渃onnect.鈥
Texts:
- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love (2005)
- Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses, trans. Anne Born 听听(2005 [2003])
- Kathryn Harrison, Seeking Rapture (2004)
- Hjalmar Soderberg, Doctor Glas, trans. Paul Britten Austin (2002 [1905])
- Lorrie Moore, 鈥淧eople Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk,鈥 Birds of America (Picador, 1998)
- Selections from Thomas Dumm鈥檚 Loneliness as a Way of Life (2008)
Films & one TV show:
- Hiroshima, Mon Amour (dir. Alain Resnais, 1959)
- Last Tango in Paris (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)
- Paris Texas (dir. Wim Wenders, 1984)
- The Straight Story (dir. David Lynch, 1999)
- In Treatment (HBO, 2008-2010)
Evaluation:听(tentative) attendance and participation: 10%; pr茅cis of books and films: 90%
Format:听Lectures, discussions, and screenings
ENGL 393 Canadian Cinema
Canada鈥檚 Regions Onscreen
Instructor Olivia Heaney
Winter Term 2015
Monday and Wednesday 10:05鈥11:25 | Screening: Monday 14:35-17:25听
Full course description
Description:听Balancing critical readings from the Canadian context with broader theoretical approaches, this course considers the preoccupations, anxieties, and eccentricities of Canadian cinema with a particular emphasis on the way it reflects the complex and unstable notion of Canada as nation. We will seek to answer both cultural and aesthetic questions about Canadian cinema: How do Canada鈥檚 regions borrow from one another cinematically? How do transnational and transcultural flows contribute to and alleviate problems of distribution and exhibition? What are the relationships of diasporic and queer cinemas to Canadian cinema? Does film in Canada embody the 鈥渢hree-pillar鈥 approach (indigenous, francophone, anglophone) or are there in fact a variety of Canadian cinemas?
The course includes films from a variety of Canada鈥檚 regions (specifically the prairies, Quebec, and the east coast), with a particular focus on Qu茅b茅cois cinema. We will use close reading/analysis and critical frameworks to examine how听regional filmmaking, multiculturalism, and post-national discourse are re-shaping the production and reception contexts of cinema in Canada. Throughout the course, we will attempt to map out key moments in the development and transformation of the Canadian film industry, including the realist tradition (which stemmed from its documentary origins), the growth of independent film culture, and the increasing influence of digital technology on the creation and reception of films in the twenty-first century. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with the vocabulary and skills necessary to analyze films formally and thematically, and to situate them in their wider social and historical contexts.
Texts: A History of Violence (John Wagner and Vince Locke); essays by such critics/theorists as Andr茅 Loiselle, Thomas Waugh, Jim Leach, Lee Edelman, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Mark Seltzer, Houston Wood, Andr茅 Bazin, Mary Anne Doane, Scott Mackenzie, Noreen Golfman, Andrew Higson, Peter Morris
Possible Films (shorts and features):
- Nanook of the North (1922), dir. Robert J. Flaherty
- Neighbours (1952), dir. Norman McLaren
- Les raquetteurs听(1958), dir. Gilles Groulx and Michel Brault
- Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964), dir. Don Owen
- Goin鈥 Down the Road (1970), dir. Donald Shebib
- Mon oncle Antoine (1971), dir. Claude Jutra
- Les ordres (1974), dir. Michel Brault
- Les bons d茅barras (1979), dir. Francis Mankiewicz
- I鈥檝e Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), dir. Patricia Rozema
- Double Happiness (1994), dir. Mina Shum
- Exotica (1994), dir. Atom Egoyan
- Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner (2001), dir. Zacharias Kunuk
- La grande s茅duction (2003), dir. Jean-Fran莽ois Pouliot
- Ryan (2004), dir. Chris Landreth
- A History of Violence (2005), dir. David Cronenberg
- Bon Cop, Bad Cop (2006), dir. Eric Canuel
- My Winnipeg (2007), dir. Guy Maddin
- Incendies (2010), dir. Denis Villeneuve
- Bear 71 (2012), dir. Leanne Allison and Jeremy Mendes
- Laurence Anyways (2012), dir. Xavier Dolan
- Stories We Tell (2012), dir. Sarah Polley
- The Grand Seduction (2013), dir. Don Mckellar
Evaluation:听Participation (10%); Panel Presentation (20%); Screening Logs (30%); Final Paper/ Project Proposal (10%); Final Paper/Project (30%)
Format:听Lectures; mandatory screenings; panel presentations; discussions; in-class activities
Average Enrollment: 45 students
ENGL 395听Cultural and Theatre Studies
Theatricality and Performativity听
Professor Denis Salter
Fall Term 2014听
Tuesday and Thursday 14:35鈥15:55
Full course description
Prerequisite: None
Expected Student Preparation:听Previous university-level courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies.
Description:听The object of our seminar is to define, at a theoretical level and through applied case-studies, the epistemologically fraught terms 'theatricality' and 'performativity' (and their cognates) to determine not only why, how, and to what ends each term can / might be used, but also to arrive at an understanding of to what extent they are sovereign and / or complementary. As Josette F茅ral proposes: "I would argue [鈥 that there is no contradiction whatsoever between these two perspectives, which seem widely divergent. Rather, they complement each other, allowing us to better understand the phenomenon of representation, underscoring that performativity, far from contradicting theatricality, is one of its elements. In integrating performativity within itself, theatricality sees it as one of its fundamental modalities, giving theatricality its power and meaning. In fact, such an approach allows us to better understand any spectacle, which is an interplay of both performativity and theatricality."
In defining and using our evolving critical vocabulary, we shall be examining drama, theatre, and performance fields and sub-fields, including theatre and anthropology, gender studies, musicology, philosophy, linguistics, and critical theory. Key topics will include not only 鈥榯heatricality鈥 and 鈥榩erformativity (performance)鈥, but also presence and representation, embodiment and subjectivity / subject-positions, the archive and the repertoire, and the performance of the trinity of race, class, and gender / sexuality.
Our seminar will first devote itself to a close reading of a selection of mostly theoretical essays, several of which come from a special online issue of SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 31.2 & 3 (2002), ed. Josette F茅ral. These will include two essays by F茅ral, and one essay by Freddie Rokem and perhaps some others. Other theoretical readings to be found in the Course Pack and online are by Philip Auslander, J. L. Austin, Judith Butler,听David Savran, Dwight Conquergood, Diana Taylor, Rebecca Schneider, Jacques Derrida, W. B. Worthen, Peggy Phelan, Richard Schechner, Marvin Carlson, Victor Turner, Frantz Fanon, Homi K. Bhabha, Andrew Parker, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Michel de Certeau.
Our seminar will then examine some dramatic / film texts as case-studies, exploring, (re)interpreting, and applying the critical vocabulary that we have acquired and created to see what its use-value might be.
Texts:听
- Course Pack
- Michel Tremblay,听Albertine In FiveTimes, trans. Linda Gaboriau (Talonbooks)
- Georg B蠇chner,听Woyzeck听(Nick Hern Books)
- Federico Garc铆a Lorca,听The House of Bernarda Alba, trans. Rona Munro (Nick Hern Books)
- Lorena Gale,听Ang茅lique听(Playwrights Canada Press)
- Anton Chekhov,听Three Sisters, trans. Paul Schmidt, in听The Plays of Anton Chekhov听(HarperCollins)
Films:
- Baz Luhrmann,听Romeo + Juliet听(Bazmark Films), Baz Luhrmann, director, written by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce听 (Bazmark Films, 1996 ; Beverley Hills: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, ca. 2002)
- The Wooster Group, director, Elizabeth LeCompte, narrator Kate Valk,听Brace Up!听(The Wooster Group, 2009)
- Werner Herzog, director,听Woyzeck听(Anchor Bay Entertainment,听 ([2000])
- Mario Camus, director, written by Mario Camus and Antonio Larreta,听The House of Bernarda Alba听(1987; [Chicago]: Ci艅emateca, ca. 2005])
- Film Script: Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann,听Romeo + Juliet听-听
Evaluation听(tentative):听Active participation in the intellectual life of the seminar: 15%; one seminar presentation on a theoretical text or case-study: 15%; a distilled critical argument arising from the seminar presentation advanced in a 8-page long essay: 20%; a 20-page long scholarly essay from a choice of individually-negotiated topics: 50%
Format:听Brief, mid-sized, and longer lectures; led-discussions; presentations including interrogative Qs & As.