平特五不中

Prerequisite: Required course open only to English Majors and Minors.

Description: Why does anyone write literature? Even more importantly for us, why and how does anyone read it? Why do you study it? Many people, some of whom you will know, will argue that studying literature, above all English literature, is irrelevant and useless today. Yet during the recent pandemic, many others found literary works of all kinds essential, not just as a form of escape from a reduced reality into another world, but also as creative and imaginative stimuli that kept us active and engaged humans.

This course considers these questions by looking at the development of major non-dramatic works in English from the Anglo-Saxon period to the mid-18^th century. It introduces students to the early history of English literature, while reflecting upon the meaning of tradition, literary history, the idea of a 鈥渃anon鈥�, and especially the concept of 鈥淓nglishness.鈥� We will trace the development through time of specific literary forms and genres, including lyric, elegy, epic, satire, sonnet, romance, and pastoral. At the same time, we will explore the relation of literature to religion, politics, and culture broadly, to see why in different periods people read and write literature, and to follow the changing ideas of the writer and his/her role in society. What especially is the relation between the aesthetic and the ethical: does/should literature have a moral purpose?

This course gives students a knowledge of early literature in English that prepares them for more advanced and specialized study in the department. Class discussions (especially in small weekly conference groups) and written assignments will help students develop skills of interpretation and communication.

Texts: (texts are available at 平特五不中 Bookstore):

• Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol 1. 9^th Edition.
• Edmund Spenser鈥檚 Poetry. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Anne Lake Prescott and Andrew D. Hadfield. (Included free with the Anthology if purchased at the Bookstore)
• The Canadian Writer鈥檚 Handbook. 6^th Edition. Ed. William E. Messenger et al. Toronto: Oxford, 2015. (RECOMMENDED)

Evaluation: 20% in-class mid-term; 40% 5-6 page term paper; 30% formal final exam; 10% conference participation.

Format: Lecture and conferences.

Average enrollment: 150 students

Description: This is a survey of English literature from the late 18th century to our contemporary moment where we will read a wide range literary texts from Britain as well as from its former colonies. We will examine the texts for their content but also their formal qualities and innovations (such as, the development of Realism; the Romantic Lyric; magic realist novel). In addition, we will look at how these texts are classified into periods (such as The Long Nineteenth century; Romantic; Victorian; Modern; Postcolonial; Contemporary) and interrogate the logic of periodization. Furthermore, we will also consider the texts and genres in relation to key themes and concerns of their time, namely, the development of capitalism and the industrial revolution in Britain, European imperial expansion, the immiseration of the working classes, the 鈥渨oman question,鈥� mechanized warfare, decolonization, and the Cold War. The course will also discuss the origins of the discipline of English 鈥� first formalized in the colony (India) before being brought to the metropole (England) 鈥� as well as its development and subsequent transformation besides interrogating the politics of canon-formation.

Required Texts:

• Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume B (Third Ed.)
• Mary Shelley: The Last Man
• H. Rider Haggard: King Solomon鈥檚 Mines
• Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
• Vikram Seth: The Golden Gate

This is an indicative list and course texts will be finalized later.

Evaluation: Take home exams and papers.

Description: TBA

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: TBA

Description: This introductory course surveys African American literature from its 18th-century beginnings to the horizon of its 鈥淩enaissance鈥� in the 20^th century. During this period, African Americans developed a heterogenous literary culture across poetry, memoir, novels, folktales, songs, and stage performances. The innovations, creativity, and political power of their literature was deeply influential on U.S. literary culture as a whole, however, their work was undertaken against the backdrop of slavery鈥攚here not only literature, but black literacy was largely forbidden; and later, against the backdrop of Jim Crow, where black culture was often exploited and uncredited by white Americans. In this course, we will examine the dynamism of African American literature in context of this history. From the artful poetry that Phillis Wheatley penned while an enslaved teenager in the 1760s, to James Weldon Johnson鈥檚 invention of a psychologically modern narrator in the 1910s, we will study how African American writers and cultural producers interpreted the conditions of black life in the U.S. and ask how their imaginative work contributed to reshaping those conditions. Offering a wide-ranging study of major authors including Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Frances E.W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Charles Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Jean Toomer, this course also reaches toward performance and music鈥攆rom stage spectacles to the blues鈥攁s key sites in the making of African American literature and culture. By placing canonical literature in broader cultural context, students will develop foundational skills of literary study, while also building a wider toolkit of cultural analysis. Demonstrating the richness of African American literature before the Harlem Renaissance, this course is designed to anchor further coursework in a deep appreciation of the creative traditions from which later African American authors drew, and still draw.

Evaluation: Short essays, quizzes, midterm exam, final exam.

Format: Lecture and discussion section.

Description: This course will provide students with a broad survey of American fiction from the mid-twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first. Through the close study of a diverse group of American writers, we will work to identify the evolving aesthetics of several distinct literary periods: from social realism and late modernism at mid-century, to the postmodern play of the 1960s and 1970s, to the varieties of contemporary experience at century鈥檚 end. We will encounter outlaws, scoundrels, detectives, veterans, fugitive slaves, municipal elevator inspectors, and washed-up punk rock stars. Moreover, we will consider the literary history of the twentieth century alongside cultural and historical phenomena such as World War II, the atom bomb, suburbia, the civil rights movement, the rise of television, the changing literary canon, and the dawn of the internet age.

Required Texts May Include:

• Ann Petry, selected short stories
• Vladimir Nabokov, TBA Lolita or Pale Fire
• Flannery O鈥機onnor, selected short stories
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
• Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
• Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
• Don DeLillo, White Noise
• Toni Morrison, Beloved
• Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist
• Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Evaluation

• Attendance and Participation (10%)
• Midterm Essay (20%)
• Midterm Exam (20%)
• Final Essay (25%)
• Final Exam (25%)

Format: Lecture and weekly discussion sections.

(Note: For English Majors, this course qualifies for the required three credits from a course in Canadian literature)

Description: A survey of English Canadian poetry and prose from the Second World War to the present. We will read a range of poetry and short fiction by many of Canada鈥檚 most accomplished writers in order to explore ideas about the nature of Canada and the literary representation of race, identity, politics, and indigenous experience in Canada. In addition to looking at the work of major authors from 1945 to the present, the lectures will also cover such topics as Canadian literary nationalism, realism, postmodernism, and different forms of experimentation. We will also look at the idea of the north as a central metaphor in Canadian writing and will discuss the economic and cultural forces accounting for the construction of a national literature. Students will be introduced to a number of concepts related to literary analysis. Please note that in addition to weekly lectures there will be one conference meeting each week.

Required texts: Lecker, Robert, ed. Open Country: Canadian Literature in English. Toronto: Nelson, 2007.

Evaluation: Tentative: Lecture attendance (10%); conference attendance (10%); participation (10%); discussion boards (10%); in-class essays (30%); final take-home exam (30%).

Format: Lecture and conference.

Description: Theatre is a tree with deep roots and many branches: not only does the history of world theatre stretch millennia long, but theatre studies encompasses both textual analysis and investigation of all the aspects of a staged production: lighting, sound, movement, vocalizations and uses of language, set design, and stage-audience interactions. Given the complexity and breadth of the field, this course provides a critical introduction to theatre studies, focusing on play texts, drama theory, and theatre history. We will cover both western and non-western theatrical events, examining a range of works from Ancient Greek tragedy through contemporary and postcolonial performance, and including the Department of English mainstage show. Through the plays, we will examine what 鈥渢heatre鈥� is and does in different periods and places. We will learn how theatre is constituted by the material and social conditions of performance, codified in dramatic genres, and conceptualised in dramatic theory.

Required Texts:

• Textbook TBA.
• Additional play texts and production videos, where available, will be provided through myCourses.

Evaluation: Quizzes: 20%; short essays: 20%; midterm exam: 30%; final exam: 30%.

Format: Lecture, discussion, and group work.

Prerequisites: This class is restricted to declared Majors in Drama and Theatre who have completed or are completing ENGL 230 and ENGL 355. Admission is by permission of the instructor only: sean.carney [at] mcgill.ca

Course Description: This course will introduce you to basic tools and techniques used in acting, improvisation, and dramatic analysis. You will develop vocal and physical warm-ups, learn about breath support and a free and placed voice, explore the performance of Shakespeare monologues, participate in improvisation exercises, explore spontaneity, imagination and creativity, learn about the analysis of a contemporary dramatic script and the use of that analysis in the actor鈥檚 work. Throughout the course you will be asked to commit fully to the class, the group and the process, and you will be expected to work on your own, outside of class, rehearsing your monologues and scenes.

Required Texts: TBA

Evaluation: A combination of class participation (various exercises and presentations totalling approximately 50% of the evaluation) and various types of written assignments (approximately 50% of the evaluation).

Instructional Method: Group discussions, practical exercises, class presentations.

Course Description: This course, a required course for Cultural Studies majors and minors, will introduce various critical efforts to theorize the aesthetics, semiotics, and politics of mass and popular culture. We start by looking at some foundational texts and theories in this tradition, moving from British Culture Marxism to the Frankfurt School. Next, we explore more specific attempts to extend this tradition to look at questions of gender, race, and empire by key scholars such as Edward Said and Judith Butler. Then we look at some general attempts to theorize culture in relationship to 鈥減opular culture,鈥� postmodernism, and finally, ending with technology and media. Overall, this class provides a survey of a number of founding texts in the tradition of Cultural Studies, as well as some important more recent attempts to enhance this tradition to take on pressing contemporary concerns of identity, mass media, and science.

Required Texts: All essays will be posted on Mycourses a week before the reading is due.

Evaluation:

• Test 1: 30%
• Test 2: 30%
• Conference presentation: 30%
• Conference attendance: 10%

Format: Lectures are from 1.35pm to 2.25pm on Monday and Wednesday; weekly TA-led conferences (except during the first week of the term, during which there will be lectures on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with no conferences). Conference attendance is mandatory. Registration for conferences will open on the first week of the semester. Most conferences will take place on Friday but it is possible you will have a conference on another day.

Description: This course is designed to prepare students in the Cultural Studies and World Cinemas programs for future film courses at 平特五不中. The course will introduce the student to central concepts in film form and aesthetics, as well as key theories of film production and reception. The main goal of the course is to familiarize the student with analytical tools to investigate and explain how a film generates its multiple effects鈥攊n short, to articulate how a film works.

Required texts:

• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction
• Selected essays posted on class myCourses page

Required films: (this list is subject to change)

• Man with a Movie Camera (U.S.S.R., Dziga Vertov, 1929)
• Exotica (Canada, Atom Egoyan, 1994)
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Germany, Robert Wiene, 1920)
• Do the Right Thing (U.S.A., Spike Lee, 1989)
• Breathless (France, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
• The Conversation (U.S.A., Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (U.S.A., John Ford, 1962)
• The Hole (Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang, 1998)
• The Thin Blue Line (U.S.A., Errol Morris, 1988)
• Dog Star Man: Prelude (1961), Mothlight (1963), The Wold Shadow (1972), Rage Net
• (1988), Black Ice (1994) (all U.S.A., Stan Brakhage)
• Scorpio Rising (U.S.A., Kenneth Anger, 1964)
• Meshes of the Afternoon (U.S.A., Maya Deren, 1945)
• Vertigo (U.S.A., Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Evaluation: A series of quizzes, two short papers, conference participation.

Format: Lecture; weekly, TA-led discussion sections; screenings.

Expected Preparation: None. This is a required course for students in the World Cinemas minor.

Description: Designed as one of the two core courses for World Cinemas Minors, this course introduces key historical moments, cinematic movements, formal styles, as well as historiographical and theoretical debates in the history of world cinema. The course maps out diverging trajectories and merging paths of exemplary filmmakers and filmmaking collectives in various nations and geo-political regions against the backdrop of the changing technological media environments. While we distinguish chronology from history, the course follows the transformation of cinema from its emergent era to the present. Students will read both historical and contemporary texts to gain a broad sense of the seminal debates in film studies, reception and criticism. This course aims to foster a critical understanding of cinema as an international, distributed and polycentric phenomenon.

Required texts: Coursepack.

Format: Lectures, screenings and discussion.

Evaluation: TBD

Description: This course provides a critical introduction to postcolonial and world literature by engaging with the rich corpus of literary and filmic texts from South Asia. At the same time, it provides a critical introduction to modern South Asia by drawing on a range of novels, poems, short stories, travelogues, and films produced in that region during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The course examines how these texts conceive of, and represent, the lives and life-worlds of the South Asian region while situating them in relation to the critical and theoretical preoccupations of postcolonial and world literature studies. The course interrogates the (often contested) meanings of the term postcolonial and asks how it relates to categories such as anti-colonial and colonial besides familiarizing students with some of the key issues and contemporary debates in the field. In so doing, the course prepares students for further study in postcolonial and world literature.

Note 1: Conference attendance (and, if scheduled, film screenings) is mandatory. No exceptions.

Note 2: This is one of the required courses for the South Asian Studies minor (Stream 1: Culture and Civilization).

Required Texts:

Novels:

• Anita Desai 鈥� Baumgartner鈥檚 Bombay
• Salman Rushdie 鈥� Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Megha Majumdar 鈥� A Burning

Travelogues:

• Vikram Seth 鈥� From Heaven Lake

Short Stories:

• Selections from Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, Rabindranath Tagore, Sadaat
• Hasan Manto.

Poetry:

• Selections from Rabindranath Tagore; Agha Shahid Ali

Films:

• Shatranj ke Khiladi [The Chess Players] (Dir: Satyajit Ray, 1977)
• Peepli, Live! (Dir: Anusha Rizvi, 2010)

This is an indicative list and course texts will be finalized later.

Evaluation: Take home exams and papers.