平特五不中

Description: 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.

Required Texts: 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 and editions below is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in January 2024.)

• The Song of Roland (Hackett)
• Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose (Oxford)
• Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (Oxford)
• Abelard and Heloise, The Letters and Other Writings (Hackett)
• Lazarillo de Tormes (Norton)
• Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote (Norton)
• Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Cl猫ves (Norton)
• Aphra Behn, Oronooko and Other Writings (Oxford)
• Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess (Broadview)
• Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (Norton)
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (Oxford)
• Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela (Oxford)

Evaluation: 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 and discussion.

Description: This course provides an overview of dramatic forms and theatrical practices in Britain from the medieval to the early modern period, encompassing medieval religious drama, morality plays, court masques, city entertainments, and the theatre of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Rather than taking a chronological approach, we will examine early theatre in a way that highlights continuities as well as divisions between the medieval and the early modern stage, especially against the strong background of the social, religious, and political changes that unfolded in a time of exploration and emergent imperialism, the rise of new, scientific thinking, and the Reformation and the religious struggles across Christian Europe. We will analyze the conditions of performance (playing spaces, actors, audience, technology, etc) as well as studying a selection of representative plays. We will always bear in mind that the texts we are studying were, above all, performed by amateur and professional theatre artists for audiences of living spectators rather than literary works written to be read by readers.

We will organize our study of medieval and early modern English theatre around six interrelated thematic focuses:

• Faith forms of worship, God and the afterlife, purgatory?, the power and justice of the divine
• Knowledge how do we know about the world, other people, God, the cosmos?
• Justice how is justice brought about? is justice human-made or wrought by God?
• Power what are the sources and the ground of power in the home and the state?
• Identity how do I become who I most authentically am? How do I know that I have become that person?
• Theatre what does theatre do? is it mere make-believe or does it go deeper? does theatre benefit or does it damage the players and playgoers? how might it do either of these things?

We will make use of ChatGPT and/or similar AI systems in the course.

Your tasks

• keep a journal where you can think by writing about the texts we are studying and the questions that we are developing. It is also something you do for marks, so you have to write at least a page (about 350 words) about each week鈥檚 readings, presentations, performances, and discussions. Your journal certainly doesn鈥檛 have to be formal like an essay. After all, it is mostly for you and about your thinking, questioning, arguing. But it鈥檚 also going to be read by me, so make it reader-friendly. And don鈥檛 hesitate to include your own creative work (artwork is just fine);
• do a three-minute presentation on a topic chosen from a list of topics that will be provided. This assignment is based on the three-minute thesis program, where graduate students compete for prizes in recognition of the clarity, succinctness, value, and appeal of their research /skillsets/offerings/3mt . We鈥檒l take the competition out of what we do, but leave in the emphasis on clear, succinct, and engaging accounts of valuable research. You鈥檒l prepare one slide for your presentation, and your presentation will be notes-free (in other words, you鈥檒l have to know just what you want to say when you say it). We鈥檒l do prep work in advance of the first set of presentations;
• work with a group of your colleagues on a group presentation. Each presentation will feature a performance of a key scene of the chosen play and a staged discussion of key ideas and questions;
• meet with me for an oral examination. Each exam will begin with the text or idea or question that you find most interesting and important and then will connect with other texts, ideas, and questions that we have studied.

Evaluation:

• Journal 30
• Individual presentation 15
• Participation 10
• Group presentation 15
• Oral exam 30

Academic Integrity: 平特五不中 values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see for more information). Cases of plagiarism will be reported to the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts, in keeping with University policy.

Students with Disabilities: The University accommodates students with disabilities through the Office for Students with Disabilities in consultation with the English Department. Please speak with me about special arrangements you might require for exams, papers, or instruction.

Religious Observances: 平特五不中鈥檚 Policy for the Accommodation of Religious Observances recognizes and respects the diversity of its members, including diversity of religious faiths and observances. Students who because of religious commitment cannot meet academic obligations, other than final examinations, on certain holy days are responsible for informing their instructor, with two weeks鈥� notice of each conflict. When the requested accommodation concerns a final examination, students are responsible for advising their Faculty office as soon as possible and not later than the deadline for reporting conflicts. Additional documentation confirming their religious affiliation may be requested. For more information see .

Description: In this course we will survey the impressive yield of English Renaissance drama written by writers other than William Shakespeare. We will read twelve plays from the period, about one a week, including The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd), Gallathea (John Lyly), The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe), Arden of Faversham (Anon), The Tragedy of Antony (Mary Sidney), The Shoemaker鈥檚 Holiday (Thomas Dekker), A Woman Killed with Kindness (Thomas Heywood), The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Francis Beaumont), Volpone (Ben Jonson), A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Thomas Middleton), The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster), and The Convent of Pleasure: A Comedy (Margaret Cavendish). We will study these plays as exemplars of swiftly-changing and varied theatrical tastes in the period. Many of these works provide purviews onto the cultural situation of early modern London that are rarely found in Shakespeare鈥檚 works.

Text: (available at the Word on Milton): Kinney, Arthur F. and David A. Katz (eds). Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments. 3^rd edition. Wiley/Blackwell, 2022. ISBN 978-1-118-82397-2.

Evaluation: First Essay, 7-8 pages (25%); Final Essay, 10-12 pages (35%); Final Exam (30%); Participation (10%).

Format: Lecture and class discussion.

Note: There will be multiple sections of this course, each with a different instructor: Eli MacLaren, Nathalie Cooke and two graduate course instructors.

Prerequisite or co-requisite: ENGL 202 or ENGL 200. This course is open only to English majors in the Literature stream. All Literature Majors must sign up for a section of ENGL 311 in their first year in the Literature program.

Description: 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. Although many critical methods can be applied to the works in this course, Poetics focuses on teaching students how to talk and write precisely about a wide range of formal and stylistic techniques in relation to literary meaning in poetry and prose fiction. All the critical methodologies you will learn in your other English courses will benefit from your knowledge of the material of ENGL 311. You will read some works in Poetics that are also required in other courses, such as ENGL 202 and 203, the Departmental Surveys of English Literature. In Poetics, we study such works not primarily in historical context, or as engagements with literary, cultural or social history, but for the techniques of literary art with which they communicate. The course instructors assume that students enrolled as English majors will already have some facility explaining what given works of literature mean; we instead focus on understanding how literature creates meaning. Discussions and assignments will therefore involve the memorization, identification, and application of concepts and terms essential to the study of literary techniques. The English Literature program requires that ENGL 311 be taken in U1 so that all Literature students will be well prepared for their other studies with a shared terminology and training in critical writing.

Texts:

• Abrams, M.H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 11th ed. Wadsworth-Cengage, 2014.
• Bausch, Richard, and R.V. Cassill, eds. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Shorter 8th ed. New York: Norton, 2015.
• Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 6th ed. New York: Norton, 2018.
• Messenger, William E., et al., eds. The Canadian Writer鈥檚 Handbook. 6th ed. Toronto: Oxford, 2015.

Evaluation: First essay, close reading of poem, 4 pp.; second essay, on short story, secondary research required, 6 pp.; mid-term exam (in class); formal final examination common to all sections of Poetics; class attendance and participation; short assignments, such as pop quizzes, writing exercises, scansions, and recitations. This evaluation is the same for all sections of Poetics.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected Preparation: Previous university courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies.

Description: This course will explore significant works of theatre and performance in the context of Canada and Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island. We will explore topics including:

• Artistic and theatrical movements and styles associated with Canada
• Major institutions and performance groups including Playwright's Workshop Montreal and Native Earth Performing Arts.
• Canadian national identity and its connection to theatre and performance
• The relationship between Indigenous nations and Canada
• Artistic movements, histories, concepts, techniques and styles associated with Indigenous nations
• The relationship between Quebecois and Canadian identities and artistic traditions
• The concept of "Canadian Theatre" as having a distinct national theatre and arts scene, and the tension of this concept within the context of Canada as a settler-colonial state.
• Local opportunities for student engagement and involvement in the theatre scene of Tiohti脿:ke/Montreal.

Texts: Plays will likely include (along with some others):

• Thomson Highway, The Rez Sisters
• Judith Thompson, Lion in the Streets
• Waawaate Fobister, Agokwe
• Anne-Marie MacDonald, Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliette)
• James Reaney, Sticks and Stones
• Sharon Pollock, Komagata Maru
• Michel Tremblay, Hosanna
• Ian Ross, fareWel
• Trey Anthony, How Black Mohters Say I Love You
• Marie Clements, The Unnatural and Accidental Women
• Ins Choi, Kim's Convenience

Evaluation: Quizzes: 30%, Local Engagement: 10%, 2 Papers: 60%

Description: 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 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, and Love鈥檚 Labor鈥檚 Lost. Before the midterm we will also read one of Shakespeare鈥檚 popular narrative poems, 鈥淰enus and Adonis.鈥� After the midterm we will focus on three plays 鈥� Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream (world classics of history, tragedy, and comedy) 鈥� which he wrote all within the space of about a single year. The Merchant of Venice, and Henry the Fourth, Part One round out the decade of the 1590s, and our course. The plan is to cover approximately one play per two weeks. Are you Shakespearienced? After this course you will be. The pace will be fast, 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: The Norton Shakespeare Volume I: Early Plays and Poems. 3rd edition. ISBN 978-0-393-93857-9. Will be available at The Word Bookstore on Milton Street. Norton also makes an electronic of this text available.

Evaluation: midterm exam (30%); final essay (30%); final exam (30%); conference participation (10%)

Format: Lecture and conference sections.

Expected Student Preparation: This is a challenging course. Previous university courses in English literature, especially ENGL 202, and/or some knowledge of Renaissance literature or culture and of poetry are desirable.

Note: If course is full, students who would like to take it should contact the professor to be put on the waiting list and should come to the first class.

Description: 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, a libertine advocate of regicide and divorce. His poetry celebrates freedom and pleasure. At the same time, for a modern reader especially, his writing is complex and challenging, demanding 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鈥檚 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 place in the Western literary tradition.

Texts (required texts are available at 平特五不中 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 MyCourses
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (recommended)
• King James Bible (recommended)

Evaluation: 25% mid-term; 40% term paper on Paradise Lost; 25% take-home exam; 10% class participation.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Average enrolment: 25 students

Description: In this course, we study key literary works that have helped create our ideas about the private and the public and that think critically about the private and the public. These include three plays by Shakespeare, readings from the two influential 鈥渃onfessions鈥� of St. Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and two novels鈥�Passing by Nella Larson and Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler. Our literary reading will be supplemented by the work of a number of important thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, J眉rgen Habermas, Michael Warner, and Alice Marwick and danah boyd.

The course is about the history of the ideas, practices, spaces, and technologies that have created the shifting zones of private and public life. We鈥檒l move toward a deeper understanding of how our world has been shaped by the history of privacy and publicity (i.e., the condition of being public).

We will make use of ChatGPT and/or similar AI systems in the course.

Your tasks

• Keep a journal where you can think by writing about the texts we are studying and the questions that we are developing and also relating those texts and questions to your own lived experience. It is also something you do for marks, so you have to write at least a page (about 350 words) about each week鈥檚 readings and discussions. Your journal certainly doesn鈥檛 have to be formal like an essay. After all, it is mostly for you and about your thinking, questioning, arguing. But it鈥檚 also going to be read by me, so make it reader-friendly. And don鈥檛 hesitate to include your own creative work (artwork is just fine);
• Do a three-minute presentation on a topic chosen from a list of topics that will be provided. This assignment is based on the three-minute thesis program, where graduate students compete for prizes in recognition of the clarity, succinctness, value, and appeal of their research /skillsets/offerings/3mt . We鈥檒l take the competition out of what we do, but leave in the emphasis on clear, succinct, and engaging accounts of valuable research. You鈥檒l prepare one slide for your presentation, and your presentation will be notes-free (in other words, you鈥檒l have to know just what you want to say when you say it). We鈥檒l do prep work in advance of the first set of presentations;
• Work with a group of your colleagues on a group presentation鈥攐ne presentation on each of the seven literary works we will study. Presentations on the three plays will feature performances of key scenes;
• Meet with me for an oral examination. Each exam will begin with the text or idea or question that you find most interesting and important and then will connect with other texts, ideas, and questions that we have studied.

Texts: Texts will be available from Paragraph Books. All the other readings for the course, including the sections of Rousseau鈥檚 Confessions, will be available on our myCourses site.

• Hamlet, ed. G. R. Hibbard (Oxford University Press).
• Twelfth Night, ed. Roger Warren and Stanley Wells (Oxford University Press).
• All鈥檚 Well the Ends Well, ed. Susan Snyder (Oxford University Press).
• Saint Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press).
• The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories. Edited and with an Introduction by Charles R. Larsen (Anchor Books, 2001). Please try to get this edition (paperback or as an ebook) so that we will have the same page numbers. You should know that Passing, a novel by a leading Black novelist and member of the Harlem Renaissance, contains the N-word.
• Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts (London: Harper Collins, 2021).

Evaluation

• Journal 30
• Individual presentation 15
• Participation 10
• Group presentation 15
• Oral exam 30

Academic Integrity: 平特五不中 values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see for more information). Cases of plagiarism will be reported to the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts, in keeping with University policy.

Students with Disabilities: The University accommodates students with disabilities through the Office for Students with Disabilities in consultation with the English Department. Please speak with me about special arrangements you might require for exams, papers, or instruction.

Religious Observances: 平特五不中鈥檚 Policy for the Accommodation of Religious Observances recognizes and respects the diversity of its members, including diversity of religious faiths and observances. Students who because of religious commitment cannot meet academic obligations, other than final examinations, on certain holy days are responsible for informing their instructor, with two weeks鈥� notice of each conflict. When the requested accommodation concerns a final examination, students are responsible for advising their Faculty office as soon as possible and not later than the deadline for reporting conflicts. Additional documentation confirming their religious affiliation may be requested. For more information see .

Expected Preparation: Limited to students in English programs.

Description: This course will survey the evolution of theories and methodologies in scholarship, especially in literary criticism, both from ancient intellectual models and in modern thought since the seventeenth century. As a basis for understanding and evaluating the role of 鈥渟ocio-historical approaches鈥� in literary and cultural studies, we will contextualize the debate between formalism and historicism in the opposition between Kant鈥檚 philosophy and the alternative of dialectical thinking in Hegel, hermeneutics, and Marx. Our readings will reflect the far-reaching impact of this ideological opposition as a pattern of methodological assumptions and institutional practices. We will also review the formal and historical claim that one literary genre in particular 鈥� the novel 鈥� embodies or expresses the characteristic philosophical problems of modernity. Note: This course is not open to students who took ENGL 317 with Prof. Hensley.

Required Texts: Most of the books for this course will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). The textbooks listed below will be among those required. (Please note that Pluhar's translation of Kant is the only acceptable edition! The full list of texts and editions will be confirmed in September 2023.)

• Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, eds., Critical Theory Since Plato (edition to be discussed)
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Hackett)
• Georg Luk谩cs, The Theory of the Novel (MIT)

Evaluation: Papers (80%), test (10%), 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 and discussion.

Description: This course offers an advanced undergraduate level introduction to compelling new theoretical work in literary and cultural studies, notably after the high mark of 鈥渃ritical theory鈥� ca. 1990. Topics to be covered include the New Formalism, Post-critical Reading, Afropessimism, Environmental Humanities, Digital Humanities, and other important new approaches in the discipline.

Workflow: Each week we鈥檒l read one or two major works of criticism/theory, as well as one brief 鈥渃ultural artifact鈥� to ground our discussion of each week鈥檚 readings. Class will be split into two discussion halves, mapping on to the two class meetings each week. In the first, we鈥檒l discuss the theoretical material; in the second we鈥檒l 鈥渁pply鈥� the theoretical concepts to a specific text.

Texts: All readings will be posted to Mycourses as pdf files one week before they are due. You don鈥檛 have to purchase any books or texts on your own, only unless you want to. Some examples include: Forms by Levine; Slow Violence by Nixon; Distant Horizons by Underwood; In the Wake by Sharpe; etc.

Evaluation: Do all the reading, come to class, write the final paper, and participate.

• Attendance: 10%
• Participation: 30%
• Final Paper: 60%

Expected Preparation: This course is intended for English majors and minors, as it assumes a basic grounding in the methods of literary studies. However, there are no prerequisites for this course, and it will be broadly useful to students interested in the history and aesthetics of the global South as well as those contemplating the decolonization of knowledge and academic institutions.

Description: What do recent calls to 鈥渄ecolonize the university鈥� mean? This course considers this imperative from a historical perspective by tracing the economic, psychological, and cultural significance of 鈥渄ecolonization鈥� in twentieth and twenty-first century literature and theory. We will begin by examining resistance to colonialism and imperialism in the early twentieth century, before turning to mid-century independence movements. We will then ask how the failures of these movements precipitated what we now call postcolonial studies, the academic analysis of empires and their aftermaths, with an array of related historical topics addressing nation, class, and gender. We will follow these lines of inquiry into our so-called age of globalization to see how they have prompted a further set of questions about race, diaspora, indigeneity, and the environment. Throughout, we will approach literature as an object capable of both posing and responding to theoretical questions. By the end of the class, students will understand a) the landmark historical features of modern anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism and how they might bear on contemporary social problems; b) how postcolonial literary forms mediate social, political, and economic problems; and c) some of the classic theoretical texts of Anglo-American postcolonial studies as well more recent efforts to decolonize knowledge.

Required texts may include:

• Raja Rao, Kanthapura (1938)
• Aim茅 C茅saire, selections from Notebook of a Return to a Native Land (1939) and Discourse on Colonialism (1950)
• Ousmane Semb猫ne, God鈥檚 Bits of Wood (1960)
• Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968)
• Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy (1977)
• Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps (1993)
• Helon Habila, Oil on Water (2010)
• NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names (2013)
• Various theoretical texts on decolonization posted to MyCourses

Evaluation: In-class participation; several discussion posts; one five-page paper; one eight-page paper.

Format: Lectures and in-class discussions.

*Fulfills the Theory/ Criticism requirement for the major in English

Description: 鈥淐riticism is as inevitable as breathing,鈥� T.S. Eliot suggests, enigmatically, in 鈥淭radition and the Individual Talent鈥� (1919), the essay whose ideas of criticism and creative process exerted major influence on the early twentieth-century modernist moment and beyond. By 鈥渃riticism,鈥� Eliot means literary criticism and beyond鈥攃ultural commentary and critique, designed to register readers鈥� thoughts and feelings; guide attention; focus thought; identify literary and cultural questions; and respond to and evaluate the texts and ideas of a culture, often toward developing visions for the future.

Eliot鈥檚 essay, and the thinking about the activity of 鈥渃riticism鈥� it represents, reads as the early twentieth-century鈥檚 answer to Matthew Arnold鈥檚 challenge of the mid-nineteenth century: Arnold鈥檚 鈥淭he Function of Criticism at the Present Time鈥� paved the way for a late nineteenth- and early twentieth century preoccupation with the work of criticism 鈥� what role does the commentary associated with criticism, and the figure of the cultural critic, play in the making of culture? How can the critic support what F.R. Leavis and Denys Thompson called the development of 鈥渃ritical awareness,鈥� with respect to the texts of a culture? The critic is alternately imagined in the work of this period (sometimes called the 鈥淎ge of Criticism鈥�) as 鈥渟age,鈥� respondent, watchdog, spur, cynic, Virgilian guide, curator, judge, jester, and rhapsode.

Contemporary cultural historian John Guillory, in Professing Criticism (2022), recognizes the importance that the practice of criticism has held for the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and acknowledges that in the field of English, when people teach 鈥渓iterature,鈥� in fact they are often teaching criticism. Taking a cue from Guillory and theorists such as Terry Eagleton - whose The Critical Revolutionaries (2021) will provide points of departure - this course traces a genealogy of criticism as we have inherited the concept, focusing especially on examples from the eighteenth-, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries that have shaped our contemporary conception of what criticism entails and does.

Texts:

Early readings include essays by Pope, Coleridge, Carlyle, and Arnold; the late Victorian aesthetic criticism of Walter Pater, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde; and twentieth-century work by a range of twentieth-century critics invested in the challenge of reimagining 鈥渃riticism鈥� for the needs of a modern era 鈥� such as Eliot, I.A. Richards, Q.D. and F.R. Leavis, Lionel Trilling, and Northrop Frye. We close by considering a range of later and recent work from critics committed to the 鈥渨ork of the critic鈥� such as Susan Sontag, Edward Said, James Baldwin, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Gayatri Spivak, Merve Emre, and Zadie Smith.

Evaluation: 3 brief critical essays and projects; longer critical essay; participation.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: The rise of the woman novelist coincided and contributed to the popularization of the novel in the Victorian period (1837-1901), but in many ways 鈥渨omen鈥檚 novels鈥� were peripheral to the genre, which was centrally organized around realism and masculine intellectual authority. This class examines novels by Victorian women as they define, respond to, and enlarge the understanding of realism; several of the novels we鈥檒l read interrogate the influence of the novel as an element of the plot. Topics and settings of the primary texts include industrial conditions, empire and racial mixing, historical materialism, and the occult. The course will emphasize the great breadth of thematic and stylistic features of the novels and novellas assigned, paying closer attention to formal characteristics than authorial biography. A select number of historical and critical texts will accompany the list of novels, and students will have the opportunity to revise the writing assignments if they choose.

Statement Regarding Academic Integrity: 平特五不中 values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offenses under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures ().

Expectations of this course: attendance and participation are important components of this class. If you are in the habit of regularly missing lectures, this is not a good class for you. Late policy: the written work in this class can be turned in up to the last day of class, but students who want to reserve the possibility of a revision are advised to submit work by the 10^th week of the semester.

Texts (available at the University Bookstore):

• Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)
• Dinah Mulock Craik, 鈥淭he Half-Caste鈥� (1851)
• George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860)
• Mary Braddon, Lady Audley鈥檚 Secret (1860)
• Charlotte Riddell, The Unfinished House (1875)
• Margaret Harkness, A City Girl (1888)

Evaluation (subject to change):

1. participation: 25% (includes attendance, group work)
2. short essay: 15%
3. long essay: 30%
4. Final exam (in class): 30%

Format: Lecture, discussion, and quiz section led by TA OR regular group work.

Course Description: Romanticism is a philosophical and literary movement; the Romantic era is an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical period. The meanings, scope and timelines associated with both these statements have been oft debated and contested, particularly when it comes to Romantic-era Britain鈥檚 global reach. This course situates British Romanticism in a global context, and it does so by thinking about love. At a time of imperial and colonial expansion, how did Romantic novelists and poets think about the potentials and pitfalls of love? What kinds of connections鈥攐r animosities, or fantasies, or projections鈥攎ight love bring to the surface or, alternatively, stifle, reject, or repress? We will read three novels (by Jane Austen, Sydney Owenson and Mary Shelley) and many poems by writers including Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, John Keats, John Hamilton Reynolds, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.

Required Texts: The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Literature Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814) Sydney Owenson, The Missionary (1811) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818) Format: Lecture and discussion

Evaluation: TBD

Format: Lecture and discussion

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

Description: 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, sexuality, 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, religion, and the poet鈥檚 place in a 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 (a series of short assignments and a final paper) is designed to improve interpretive abilities and to encourage creative forms of critical expression. For this reason, this course will appeal to students who wish to broaden their understanding of poetry in general and will provide new ways of thinking about how poetry works. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to participate actively in class discussion.

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

Evaluation: A series of short assignments (50%); final paper (25%); attendance (10%); participation (15%).

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: In his discussion of Victorian poetry, John Stuart Mill writes that 鈥済reat poets are often proverbially ignorant of life. What they know has come by observation of themselves.鈥� Together, we will interrogate this inward turn in nineteenth century poetics, and discover how itemerges in the dramatic monologues, elegies, sonnets, ballads, blank verse, and epic poems ofthis era. Various styles of Victorian prosody, along with the aesthetic conventions, morals, ambitions, and history of these works, will be discussed. We will investigate recurring themes such as first love, sexuality, queer subjectivity, the Victorian New Woman, the pastoral and village life, Darwinism, religion, medieval revivalism, and class labour. Traces of the Romantic as it appears in these works will be the subject of some lectures. Students will learn how to place these poems within formalist, historical, sociological, biographical, and theoretical contexts.

Expected Preparation: As this class is intermediate level, it is strongly recommended that students have taken at least one 200-level course and preferably two further courses in English, such as Poetics and Survey.

Texts: The textbook will be available from Paragraphe bookstore (across the street from campus). This text will also be on reserve through the library.

• Black, Joseph et al., eds. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 5: The Victorian Era. Broadview Press, 2021.

Evaluation: Keep up with the reading and be prepared to discuss works in class. Suggested essay topics will be distributed in advance on MyCourses, but you are welcome to choose your own. Essays will be submitted in physical form on the day they are due. The midterm will be written in-person. The final exam will be a take-home submitted on MyCourses.

• Participation and attendance: 15%
• In-class midterm exam, 20 Feb: 25%
• Essay (2000 words), due 4 April: 30%
• Take-home final exam, due date TBA: 30%

Format: Lecture and in-class discussion.

Description: This course provides a survey of modernist British fiction, plus one non-fiction text by George Orwell. In addition to a discussion of modernist innovations of time and consciousness, we will take into consideration ethical stances of twentieth-century British writers, whether those stances are specifically political or, more generally, moral. Recurring novelistic tropes鈥攆irst love, country houses, the Great War, the place of the avant-garde, snobbery, class consciousness, labour, money, industrialization, crime, death鈥攚ill be investigated. We will also consider generic conventions of comedy, tragedy, and melodrama as they mix with novelistic representation.

Prerequisite: Students should have 2 or 3 prior courses in English literature, preferably survey and poetics. This course is pitched to an intermediate level.

Texts: six novels will be chosen from the following list:

• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
• Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
• E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
• George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
• Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
• Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Evaluation: Essays, attendance and participation, final exam.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Enrollment: 40

Expected Student Preparation: 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.

Note: If course is full, students who would like to take it should contact the professor to be put on the waiting list and should come to the first class.

Description:听This course will examine the development of classical Greek and Roman myth through modern English translation of core texts. A major aim of the course is to familiarize students with Greek and Roman epic via an extended consideration of Homer鈥檚听Iliad, Virgil鈥檚听Aeneid, and Ovid鈥檚听Metamorphoses. By reading these works together we will seek to clarify the intertextual continuities between them, and often starkly different visions of their poets with respect to heroism, social formation, desire, and poetry itself. Other classical poetic and philosophical deployments of ancient myth will be explored as well鈥攁ccounts which at times strive to eroticize, intellectualize, purify, or parody these mythic worlds. Through a reading of Platonic dialogue, Sapphic poetry, and ancient satire, we will assess how the divine is represented differently in various ancient contexts, and how the hero鈥檚 journey might be mapped onto different moral terrain than that of the epic. Throughout, the course will inquire into the ways in which desire is represented in myth in an attempt to discern its function, valuation, and transformative potential across different works. While the predominant focus will be on exploring the texts themselves, their often tremendous influence on later literature means that some attention will be given to their subsequent reception (both ancient and modern) as a way of pointing towards their many afterlives.

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

• Homer, The Iliad, trans. Emily Wilson (Norton)
• Sappho, Poems and Fragments, trans. Aaron Poochigian (Penguin)
• Plato, Symposium and Phaedrus, trans. Joe Sachs (Paul Dry Books)
• Virgil, Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (Vintage)
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (Harcourt and Brace)
• Lucian, Selected Dialogues, trans. C.D.N Costa (Oxford)

Other shorter readings and excerpts will be provided on MyCourses.

Evaluation: Two short discussion papers (10%); Mid-term (20%); term paper (35%); oral exam, (25%); participation (10%).

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Average enrolment: 30 students.

Pre- or Co-requisite: ENGL 230

Limited to students in the English Major Concentration, Drama and Theatre Option

Course Description: This course examines how meaning and significance emerge in theatrical art. Beginning from the assumption that theatre, like all art, is a form of communication, our study examines the qualities unique to theatrical communication in all its forms. The course is a combination of practical analysis of play scripts and theatre, and consideration of theoretical texts.

Commencing with Aristotle, we interrogate the premises of his Poetics and the marginalization of opsis (spectacle) in his study.

The rest of the course is composed of a series of units: our first unit examines theatrical communication with an emphasis on the dramatic text and how the text may be broken down into minimal communicative units of action.

Our second unit moves from the practical study of a script to the analysis of live theatre with an emphasis on how meaning emerges in the spectacle. We will consider both theoretical ideas about theatrical signs and theatre semiotics, and also practical tools for analyzing theatre.

Our third unit examines the function of the actor on stage and how the actor鈥檚 performance creates meaning and significance in theatrical communication. We also consider the dynamic relationship between humans and objects in the theatre, such as puppets or stage props, and what these elements tell us about the experience of theatre as a whole.

Finally, our fourth unit opens us to broader questions about communication in the theatre: the implications of theatre as storytelling, the importance of the spectator鈥檚 experience of the theatre as the locus of meaning, and the function of stage and theatre spaces in theatre art. As a case study we will consider the contemporary example of Verbatim theatre. The overall goal of the course is to give you a foundational understanding of key theories of the poetics of performance, so that you may build upon this knowledge through your later studies as Theatre and Drama majors.

Required Texts: A course kit of readings.

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture and class discussion.

Description: This course is designed to teach students how to: 1) meaningfully close read image-based cultural texts, and 2) refine their writerly voice when writing analytic essays about visual media. 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, mise-en-sc猫ne, 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 to understand both the semiotics and poetics of the image. In addition to numerous close-reading exercises, we will be supplementing our investigation of images with several classical essays by theorists such as John Berger, Roland Barthes, Laura Mulvey, Andr茅 Bazin, Kaja Silverman, Jacques Lacan, and Sigmund Freud. Students must come to class prepared with all the assigned reading and will be expected to participate verbally in class on a weekly basis.

Lectures will be illustrated by copious examples. In addition to lectures, there is a mandatory screening every week as well as several discussion sessions led by a Teaching Assistant throughout the semester.

Required Films:

• (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, US, 1971)
• La Jet茅e (Chris Marker, France, 1964)
• The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925)
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, Denmark, 1925)
• Persona (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1964)
• Vivre sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1962)
• Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, US, 1943)
• Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, US, 1959)
• Fly (Yoko Ono, US, 1970)
• Sanctus (Barbara Hammer, US, 1990)

Required Books:

• John Berger, Ways of Seeing
• Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
• Additional essays will be available on MyCourses

Evaluation: Attendance and Participation; two-page diagnostic essay; two small five-page sequence analyses.

Format: Lecture, discussion, mandatory weekly screenings, and occasional writing workshops.

Note: This is a required course for students of the Literature Honors stream. All other students should contact me for permission to register.

Description: This course will explore several topics that are central to modern and contemporary literary criticism and critical theory. These include, but are not limited to, representation, narrative, interpretation, ideology, signification, discourse as well as categories of difference such as class, race, gender, and sexuality. We will read excerpts from key texts from a range of critical thinkers, schools and practices to interrogate and engage with some of the fundamental that have animated literary studies: What constitutes literature? Who determines what texts mean, and how? How do texts relate to broader social structures? Considering these questions will necessitate careful and patient engagement with critical texts that will on occasion be dense and difficult.

Texts:

• Terry Eagleton 鈥� Literary Theory: An Introduction
• Readings from works by specific theorists will be provided.

Evaluation: Take home exams and papers.

Format: Lectures and discussion.

Prerequisite: None. Permission of the Instructor required.

Expected Student Preparation: Willingness to work in the atelier and backstage in addition to regular class time.

Description: Costuming I focuses on skills acquisition. The focus is on industrial sewing machine use, and hand sewing techniques. Both beginners and more advanced students will have equal opportunity to gain skills. We will practice the skills needed to make costumes with a small practical project. This will provide an opportunity to become comfortable with industrial machinery, while gaining skills and confidence needed for fittings.

Each semester the work includes costume design for a play. Character analysis and research inform our design choices. The director will provide students with an initial directorial concept and vision for the show, emphasizing clear character delineation. Design discussion focuses on color palette, mood and the individual characters. Later, the director will assess the students鈥� inspirational images, and decide which images will carry forward into the production design. The design for the production will be chosen using the students鈥� inspirational images. Each student may make a costume or costume element based on the production design.

Format: Lecture, demonstrations, hands-on learning, backstage duties. Practical projects will be pursued during production hours, outside of class time.

Evaluation: Script analysis, practical projects, production duty, backstage duties, attendance.

Required Texts: Play script TBD.

Required tools: Sewing kit (scissors, thimble, etc. Full list available with instructor permission.)

Enrollment: 10

Please note: This description may change based on the needs of the production and available infrastructure.

Expected Preparation: There are no prerequisites for this course, but familiarity with concepts and terminology from film studies and cultural studies is expected.

Description: This course will engage in a more or less chronologically organized survey of the American teen film, understood as a genre that is not only about but also made for teenagers (although a few of our screenings will test this definition). We will begin in the 1950s, when 鈥渢he teenager鈥� as a sociological category (and target market) took on a new prominence in American cultural life, and the films about them developed more intentional strategies of addressing the teen audience. As we trace the genre鈥檚 development, we will explore how it functions as an arena in which anxieties about individual subject formation and the larger social order are played out. As Jon Lewis has argued, teen films are about the breakdown of 鈥減atriarchy, law and order, and institutions like the school, the church, and the family鈥� even as they often conclude with 鈥渢he eventual discovery of viable and often traditional forms of authority.鈥� In other words, teen films depict stories of social control and resistance while also operating as their own form of interpellation. But we will also investigate the ways in which the films provide textual resources for their young audiences that do not necessarily line up with dominant forms of power. In short, this course will examine the complex cultural work that the teen film performs.

Required Films: The final screening list will likely include most of the following films:

• Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955)
• Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)
• Gidget (Paul Wendkos, 1959)
• American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)
• Cooley High (Michael Schultz, 1975)
• Over the Edge (Jonathan Kaplan, 1979)
• Valley Girl (Martha Coolidge, 1983)
• The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)
• Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989)
• Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995)
• But I鈥檓 a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 1999)
• Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
• Dope (Rick Famuyiwa, 2015)
• Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018)
• Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019)
• Unpregnant (Rachel Lee Goldenberg, 2020)

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture, discussion, screenings.

Description: TBA

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: TBA

Description: This course explores representations and constructions of U.S. national identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular theatre and entertainments. As the nation experienced industrialization, urbanization, immigration, changing sexual and gender norms, and violent cultural and racial conflicts in the afterlife of Trans-Atlantic slavery and Indigenous genocide, popular entertainments attracted mass audiences and created spectacles of national inclusion and othering. Units on blackface minstrelsy, 鈥淚ndian plays,鈥� vaudeville, social dance, and other popular form address antebellum and post-Emancipation stagings of race; frontier spectacles; freak shows and penny museums; imperialism; and the complexities of social inequity in the Golden Age/Progressive Era. Through discussions and lectures, we will consider the place of the 鈥減opular鈥� 鈥� in its classed, ethnic, racial, gendered, erotic, commercial, and hegemonic valences 鈥� in forging styles of U.S. citizenship and belonging that persist to the current day, albeit often in camouflage.

Texts: all texts will be provided via myCourses.

• Play texts (including Metamora; The Octoroon; Uncle Tom鈥檚 Cabin)
• Films (including The Jazz Singer; Ethnic Notions)
• Online secondary sources including texts by W.E.B. Du Bois, Andrew Erdman, Susan Glenn, Saidiya Hartman, Julie Malnig, Andrea Most, Robert Rydell, David Savran, Kiara Vigil, and S.E. Wilmer, among others.

Evaluation: In-class participation: 10%; midterm exam: 30%; short response essays: 30%; research paper: 30%.

Format: Lectures and discussions.

Description:听TBA

Format:听TBA

Evaluation:听TBA

Format: TBA

Prerequisite: None. Permission of the Instructor required.

Expected Student Preparation: Willingness to work in the atelier and backstage in addition to class time.

Description: Emphasis is on costume construction techniques. There are two main learning modules: Technical Skill Development, and Draping. Sewing skills that were gained in the first semester will be built upon through specific practical exercises in a skill building project. Draping techniques will be practiced on half-scale mannequins, and will culminate in a themed project.

The focus of the semester鈥檚 work is on costuming the English Department Mainstage production, which the costume class will work on from inception to closing night. We begin with the text, and create charts as a medium for script analysis. Next, the characters are translated into image form, through the Inspirational Images project. The costume design springs from the Image project, and each student will create a costume based on their own design. The hands-on process of making the costume is the Production Project. Costuming II differs from Costuming I in the level of independence expected from the students. The various aspects of production will take a substantial amount of time throughout the semester. Students who are unprepared for the time commitment are asked to reconsider accepting a place in the class.

Students take an active part in defining and outlining their specific production duties by formulating a contract with milestone dates and deadlines, in collaboration with their classmates and instructor. This will give students an opportunity to manage all aspects of their production duties independently. Students are expected to refer back to their contract throughout the semester in order to maintain the schedule that they formulated.

Format: Lecture, demonstrations, hands-on learning, backstage duties. Practical projects will be pursued during production hours, outside of class time.

Evaluation: Script analysis, practical projects, production duty, backstage duties, attendance.

Required Texts: Play script TBD.

Requires tools: Sewing kit (scissors, thimble, etc. Full list available with Instructor permission.)

Class size: 10

Please note: This description may change based on the needs of the production and available infrastructure.

Expected preparation: This course is open to students interested in Canadian indigenous literature.

Description: This course offers an introduction to Canadian Inuit literature. Video and film will be discussed to a limited extent.

We will look at works in English, either original or translated. It will only consider works actually written by Inuit. The focus will mainly be on works from 1950 to the present day.

The common themes are survival, reconciliation, indigenous feminism and the effects of colonialism, in whatever form this may take, as well as a search for a renewed or continued identify in the contemporary world.

Required texts:

• Excerpts from Arctic Dreams and Nightmares. Alootook Ipellie. Theytus Books Ltd. 1993. Please note that all necessary excerpts will be posted online.
• Saqiyuq: Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women. Nancy Wachowich. 平特五不中-Queen's University Press. 2001.
• The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab. University of Ottawa. 2005.
• Sanaaq. Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk. University of Manitoba. 2014
• The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic, and the Whole Planet. Sheila Watt-Cloutier. University of Penguin Canada. 2016. Paperback
• Split Tooth. Tanya Tagaq. Penguin, Random House. 2018.
• Excerpts from Voices and Images of Nunavimmiut volume 1. Edited by Stenbaek and Grey. The Daisy Watt story is in this volume. 2010.

Evaluation: Five reviews of a text (10% marks each) as well as one final longer essay (50%).

Format: Lectures, group discussions, in-class Q&A sessions.

Expected Preparation: This course is open to students interested in Canadian indigenous film.

Description: This course is an introduction to the films by the Canadian Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk.

His influence on the development of an Inuit film aesthetics which he terms 鈥榲isual sovereignty鈥� and his influence on other contemporary filmmakers will be explored. The development will be viewed through the selected films by Zacharias Kunuk that include animated films, political and social documentaries, as well as re-creations of Inuit life and legends.

Texts: TBA.

Films: Viewing of films is required, a list will be published at the beginning of term, but will include Atanarjuat, Kivitoo, A Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk and Angakusajaujuq; The Shaman鈥檚 Apprentice. Other films and TV prediction will also be screened.

Evaluation: Five reviews of a text (10% each) as well as one final longer essay (50%).

Format: Lectures and discussions. In-class viewing of some sections of film.

Expected Preparation: This course is open to students interested in Canadian indigenous media.

Course Description: This course will examine the role of minority media through a case study of the Canadian Inuit media experience in regard to television, film and social media. The premise is that television and film productions made by members of the cultural and socio-economic group, they are portraying, are usually more accurate and truthful than productions made by outsiders. Some international films will be viewed.

The course will look at the development right from the start of the advent of satellite communications and ANIK in Canada. The early experiments and policy considerations. The establishment of The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation. The influence of the National Film Board, particularly its Challenge for Change program. The role of APTN (which will also include productions by First Nations and M茅tis). A variety of TV productions by Tagramiut Nipingat, IBC and APTN will be examined.

Texts:

• Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada (2010). Ed by Waugh, Baker, Winton. 平特五不中-Queen鈥檚 University Press.
• Other texts will be added. Some articles will be distributed on myCourses.

The text is available at the Paragraphe bookstore, across the street from the Roddick gates (located at 2220 平特五不中 College Avenue). . They are also available through the 平特五不中 Library or on Amazon.ca. .

Evaluation: 5 reviews or critique of a text, a film or TV production (10% each) 50%; one longer essay 50%.

Format: Lectures and discussion groups. Some modules with background information will be posted on My Courses. The schedule of film showings will be posted on myCourses.

Expected Preparation: This course is intended for students who have completed one of the English department鈥檚 required foundational courses (i.e. Poetics 311, Poetics of the Image 359, Theory of English Studies 317 or 319). Since students will work closely with special collections and digital databases, primary source literacy is recommended.

Description: What is a menu? What is in a menu? What does a menu do? What stories can menus tell?

Four fundamental questions structure this course. Our provisional answers will be enriched by readings from ephemera studies, social and culinary history, marketing literature and food journalism, as well as reader response theory. Put another way, where does the genre of the menu fit in the larger landscapes of print ephemera, historical artifacts, consumer marketing, and literary document? Answers will become foundational to our understanding of how menus matter.

Readings will include commentary from methodological approaches and also delve into a tasting sampler of a wide range of menus drawn from diverse periods and places. For diners and prospective diners, menus seem to serve the obvious purpose of clarifying and rendering transparent the choices and experiences available. I say 鈥榮eem鈥� here because we will often find that menus obscure choices as much as they clarify them. Menus strategically arrange choices to elicit particular outcomes and reactions.

As we scrutinize menu matters in this course, we will notice and discuss among other things the evolution of particular dishes; vexed notions of culinary authenticity; evidence of changing notions of gender, class, and race over time; changing notions of health and about the role of children; and the construction (mis-, de- and re-construction) of familial, regional and national identities.

Required texts: a course-pack of menus, as well as readings in ephemera studies, historiography, sociology and linguistics, consumer marketing and journalism. Students will also be guided to become familiar with database resources for internationally-renowned menu collections.

Recommended texts:

• Dan Jurafsky, The Language of Food, A Linguist Reads the Menu, Norton 2014;
• Rebecca Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant : Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, Harvard 2020.

Evaluation: In-class participation and short written and oral in-class assignments; critical interpretation papers; journal assignment.

Format: Socratic lectures, group discussions, on-site work and visits to special collections reading room as 平特五不中 library renovation work permits, in-class close-reading and analytical exercises.