平特五不中

Prerequisite: None, though some knowledge of Renaissance literature or culture is highly useful

Description:This course approaches an exciting and pivotal period in the development of English poetry and drama through the writings of Shakespeare鈥檚 two great rivals, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. In many ways the two seem opposite: Marlowe, an anti-authoritarian rebel who celebrates outsiders and overreachers, and Jonson, a court poet who satirizes eccentricity. Yet, as T. S. Eliot first noted, 鈥淛onson is the legitimate heir of Marlowe.鈥� Equally contentious, egotistical, ambitious but self-destructive, both men were at odds with Elizabethan society while trying to fashion a place for themselves as authors within an increasingly mobile social order. We will trace how their works are central to the development of English poetry and drama, and how the conflicts between these two versions of the modern author, as well as the tensions within them each as individuals, are reflective of a turbulent and transformative period.

Texts:

Marlowe: Hero and Leander, Tamburlaine (Parts 1 & 2), Dr Faustus, Edward II, The Jew of Malta

Jonson: Selected poetry and masques, Volpone, The Alchemist, Epicoene, Sejanus, Bartholomew Fair, The Sad Shepherd

Evaluation: 2 papers; scene presentations; final (take-home) exam; participation

Average Enrollment: 20 students

Format: Class discussion

Description: In this course we will survey the 1590s, one of the most remarkable decades in English literary history, one which saw the initial publication of major works by Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Lodge, Greene, Nashe, Deloney, Drayton, Daniel, and Bacon, among others. We will read and discuss examples from popular contemporary poetic genres such as the sonnet sequence, the epyllion, the funeral elegy, and the pastoral. We will follow the decade鈥檚 prose as it ranges broadly from proto-novelistic romances to satirical pamphleteering, from underworld documentary to exotic travel narratives. Our literary study of the decade will also regularly cast an eye to other expressions of print culture, including contemporary news from abroad (especially concerning the wars in France and the continuing threat from Spain), as well as tales of piracy on lawless seas, gossip from the court, and accounts of witchcraft and other strange crimes.

Texts: A Course-pack of collected texts will be available at the 平特五不中 Bookstore

Evaluation: Midterm exam 25%; Essay 35%; Final exam 30%; Course participation 10%

Format: Lecture and class discussion

Average Enrollment: 30 students

Prerequisite: None.

Expected student preparation: previous university-level literature courses. This course is an advanced seminar, in which active participation will be required.

Description: Samuel Johnson鈥檚 final work, Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (1779-81), later known as Lives of the Poets, was among the most ambitious and influential of his many publications. It surveys the lives and writings of the major English poets from about 1600 to 1750: from the metaphysical poets and Milton to Johnson鈥檚 contemporary, Thomas Gray. In this course we shall consider a selection of these prefaces, together with some of the poetry under discussion: thus Johnson鈥檚 preface to Milton will be accompanied by a study of 鈥淟ycidas鈥� and his preface to Gray by a class on 鈥淓legy written in a Country Churchyard.鈥� The aim of the course is to consider the ways in which Johnson鈥檚 prefaces illuminate or obscure the work of his predecessors, as well as to examine how far eighteenth-century approaches to poetry differ from those of today. The course will also pay attention to Johnson鈥檚 own poetry, from 鈥淟ondon鈥� (1738) and 鈥淭he Vanity of Human Wishes鈥� (1751) to 鈥淥n the Death of Dr Robert Levet鈥� (1782). We shall study these poems in the context of some of Johnson鈥檚 theoretical remarks on the nature of poetry, made in Rasselas, in essays in The Rambler and The Idler, and elsewhere.

Texts:

• Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. John Mullan. Oxford World鈥檚 Classics.
• Coursepack

Evaluation: Seminar presentation 25%; participation in class discussion 25%; term paper 50%.

Format: Lectures, seminar presentations, and class discussion

Description: There is a significant gap between what scholars of Victorian literature consider great novels, and the novels that Victorians themselves considered great; relatively few of the best-sellers of the 1837-1901 period are represented in the canon of works examined in mainstream scholarship today. This course approaches the (once) popular Victorian novel in an effort to understand its former value. As most of the books we will read will seem unfamiliar in their melodrama, piety, idealism, or zeal, we will try to rethink our expectations for great novels, and we will also consider how and why our standards of evaluation have changed.

As a class, we will read four novels together, and students will select one additional novel to be read either in print or digital form (e-readers are not required but may be helpful). Students will have significant choice over the subject matter, assignment type, and deadlines in this course, but they will be expected to contribute regularly in oral and web formats, and to bring an open and experimental mind to an unfamiliar body of works.

It is recommended that students have some familiarity with the period and/or the canonical Victorian novel (i.e. any novels by Dickens, Eliot, the Bront毛s, Trollope, Hardy).

Evaluation: Participation: 20%; short essay (6-8 pp.): 20%; web postings: 20%; final assignment (chosen from a variety of written or web-based formats): 40%

Texts (required and available at the University Bookstore):

• Rhoda Broughton, Cometh Up as a Flower (Broadview)
• Mary Braddon, Thou Art the Man (url TBA)
• Rider Haggard, She (Broadview)
• Grant Allen, The Woman Who Did (Broadview)
• Course Reader
• + one additional popular novel, to be chosen by the student.

Format: lecture and discussion

Description: In the latter half of the twentieth century the broad mainstream of Canadian drama has contained strong counter-currents at its margins. These are the plays that deal with uncomfortable or difficult subjects and often contain characters that are very different from mainstream audience members. Homosexuality, the challenges faced by refugees, racism, the every day realities of Canada鈥檚 Native communities, are a few of the issues given voice in these dramas. This course will look at some canonical plays that fit into the above categories as well as some recent works that continue to challenge mainstream complacency.

Required Texts:

• Ross, Ian. FareWel.
• Roy, Anusree. Brothel #9
• Tomson, Highway. Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout
• Tremblay, Michel. Hosanna
• MacLeod, Joan. The Shape of a Girl and Jewel
• Wasserman, Jerry. Modern Canadian Plays. Vol.II

Highly Recommended Background Readings:

• Fennario, David. Balconville.
• Ryga, George. The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.
• Tremblay, Michel. Les Belles-Soeurs.
• All are available in the library

Evaluation: 15% Class Presentation, 15% Class Participation, 20 % Midterm Paper or project, 50 % Term Paper. Class participation means regular attendance (no more than 3 missed classes), keeping up with course readings and spirited, thoughtful participation in class discussions.

Format: seminar

Average enrollment:

Description: Although critics in the United States have interrogated their nation鈥檚 arrogation of the term 鈥淎merica鈥� since at least the 1970s, it is only since the mid-1990s that trends in literary and cultural studies have urged a more thorough examination of the connections and confluences that join the Americas鈥撯�搕he United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. As Winfried Siemerling and Sarah Phillips Casteel have recently observed, notably absent from this list is Canada, whose writers have nonetheless engaged the hemispheric dynamics found in the work of those more commonly associated with 鈥渘ew American studies鈥� (i.e., William Faulkner, Gloria Anzald煤a, Edouard Glissant).

Due to the fact that 鈥淐an Lit鈥� is a recently formed institutional, canonical, critical, and popular concept, scholars who study and teach in the field are, perhaps understandably, somewhat reticent about adopting transnational perspectives. What is to be gained from a hemispheric approach that, routed through the United States or not, insists on the common concerns and histories of writers in the Americas? What might be lost? The study of literatures in Canada has arguably long acknowledged the inter- and transnational connections that shape creative expression in this country; what then is new about the 鈥渘ew American studies鈥� for scholars in Canada? How might we undertake new analyses of the multilingual, diverse cultures of Canada鈥撯�損ast and present鈥撯�揻rom within a hemispheric frame?

Departing from critical and theoretical readings in hemispheric and transnational studies, we will read contemporary fiction, poetry, plays, and non-fictional essays by writers living in Canada. We will investigate issues such as the indigenous Americas, Canada鈥檚 storied relationship with the United States, the shared New World history of slavery, and the linkages among literatures in Canada and the Caribbean and South America.

Texts (provisional list)

• Course Reader: Dionne Brand (from) A Map to the Door of No Return; (from) Canada and Its Americas: Transnational Navigations (Ed. Sarah Phillips Casteel and Winfried Siemerling); George Elliott Clarke, 鈥淐ontesting a Model Blackness鈥�; Margaret Turner, (from) Imagining Culture; Edouard Glissant, 鈥淟鈥檃utre Am茅rique鈥�; Dennis Lee, 鈥淐adence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space鈥�; Jos茅 Mart铆, 鈥淣uestra Am茅rica鈥�
• Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing.
• Armstrong, Jeannette. Slash.
• Brand, Dionne. No Language is Neutral.
• Hill, Lawrence. The Book of Negroes.
• King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water.
• Laferri猫re, Dany. How To Make Love To A Negro Without Getting Tired. (trans. David Homel)
• Poulin, Jacques. Volkswagen Blues. (trans. Sheila Fischman)
• Wiebe, Rudy. The Blue Mountains of China.
• Verdecchio, Guillermo. Fronteras Americanas.

Evaluation: 2 Reading Responses (to be shared in class) 15% each; Essay (6 pages) 25%; Essay (10 pages) 35%; Participation 10%

Format: Lecture / Discussion

Average enrollment: 35

Prerequisite: No formal prerequisite. Because substantial attention will be paid to poetic and fictional form and style, however, this advanced course鈥檚 interests and discussions will be directed chiefly to English majors who have completed their required Poetics course. Students not in English programs must have my permission in advance to register. This course is not open to U1 students.

All students wishing to take this course must attend the first class, even if they have not yet been able to register; latecomers will not be admitted to the course, whether they have registered on Minerva or not.

Description: In this course we will read and listen to as many of the works of Leonard Cohen as time permits. From seductive song lyrics to the most scandalously hilarious novel, brutal poems, and moving prayers yet published in Canada, Cohen鈥檚 work rewards and usually demands scrupulous reading, and the bulk of course time will be given to group discussion of its developing vision and technique. This will help us to separate Cohen as a writer from the 鈥淟eonard Cohen鈥� cultural phenomenon, an important critical task. At the same time, we will be interested in that phenomenon, from its emergence after 1961鈥檚 Spice Box of Earth, his attainment of international celebrity after he turned to performance and recording in 1968, its severe waning through the 1970s, and its resurgence and reformation after The Future of 1992. We will try to get at the phenomenon鈥檚 premises and machinery by looking at reviews, interviews, and documentaries, and we will read the Nadel biography for a glimpse of Cohen鈥檚 experience and manipulation of his own 鈥減henomenon.鈥� Finally, students will attempt to situate (through in-class presentations or essays, depending on class size) the periods of Cohen鈥檚 work and of his fame in relation to relevant cultural contexts: Beat writing; 鈥渂lack Romanticism鈥�; the poetry of A.M. Klein, Irving Layton, and Michael Ondaatje; the Cold War; cultural representations of the Holocaust; the 1960s and their meanings and outcomes; modernism and post-modernism; the crisis of faith in modernity; neo-conservatism in the 1980s; celebrity and fandom. The professor is not expert in all these areas, so students鈥� ideas, knowledge, and experience will be essential to the course鈥檚 success. In its desired form the course will be a workshop for critical approaches to Leonard Cohen鈥檚 writing, which has yet to be given a rich or deep contextualization in the times during which he became a major Canadian artist and public figure.

Texts

• Cohen, Leonard. Beautiful Losers. 1966. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991.
• ---. The Favourite Game. 1964. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993.
• ---. Stranger Music. New York: Pantheon, 1993.
• Course-pack: selected poems by A.M. Klein and Irving Layton; Cohen鈥檚 complete The Spice Box of Earth (1961); articles and reviews.

Evaluation: Class presentation or short essay on cultural contexts (see above), 20%; essay on a particular song, volume, or album, 30%; major research paper, 40%; 10% participation in discussions. (Please note before registering for this course: I assess active participation in discussion and not attendance. Full attendance throughout the semester without speaking will earn 0/10 in this category and substantially affect your final grade.)

Format: Lecture and substantial discussion

Average enrollment: 32 students

Description: A detailed consideration of the works of six major Canadian poets whose work came to prominence after 1975: Michael Ondaatje, Robert Kroetsch, George Elliott Clarke, Patrick Lane, and Karen Solie. This course is designed for students who are interested in contemporary poetry, Canadian literature, and the making of Canadian culture. The poems under study allow us to explore ideas about gender, genre, race, agency, and differing concepts of poetic form. They also allow us to look into the beautifully warped minds of criminals, eccentrics, hangmen, homicide victims, mythological artists, and 鈥渢hose / who sail to that perfect edge / where there is no social fuel,鈥� to quote Ondaatje. We will examine the career of each poet in detail and read selections from the poet鈥檚 entire body of work. 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.

Texts: To be announced on Department of English website in November.

Evaluation: A series of short essays on each of the poets studied in the course, 80%; attendance, 10%, participation, 10%.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Average enrollment: 25 students.

Description: Shakespeare's time saw an efflorescence of historical writing, including works on classical and modern history, global histories such as Walter Ralegh's History of the World (1614), translations of the historical writings of Antiquity and modern Italy and France, local histories and "chorographies," and studies of historical method. History played a central role in the polemical struggles of the English Reformation, with a work such as John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the English Church (1563), arguing for the apostolic primacy of the England itself. Perhaps most important were the many histories of England, like those by Raphael Holinshed, Edward Hall, and Samuel Daniel, which inculcated national pride, aroused a sense of civic belonging, and cultivated habits of critical, political analysis of the past and the present.

The theatre played a vital role in telling the story of England to the English. Shakespeare's history plays and the historical dramas of many of this fellow playwrights shaped the historical consciousness of very many English men and women (many of them commoners and many illiterate), sharpened their political intelligence, and contributed to the formation of the political culture of modernity. In the course we will focus on Shakespeare's English histories and also read and think about a number of other history plays by writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, and Thomas Heywood. We will consider history writing in other forms including prose, poetry, and visual image. We will work toward an understanding of how dramatic history helped write the nation and also how it helped create a new public culture in early modern England.

Expected student preparation: some familiarity with twentieth-century poetry and/or modernist literature.

Description: In chronicles about literature of the early twentieth century, American expatriate poet Ezra Pound inevitably cuts a prominent, if maverick, figure. He is credited not only for his own diverse oeuvre of innovative poetry and prose, but also for his crucial contributions to the development of what we now regard as modernist literature. As a result, understanding of his work remains vital to an understanding of modernism鈥檚 evolution. But for a variety of reasons, Pound also remains deservedly notorious. This course argues that Pound鈥檚 work鈥攈is active career as poet, scholar, and impresario; his multidimensional corpus; his troubling prejudices and political allegiances鈥攊s ripe for reevaluation; and further, that reassessing Pound鈥檚 achievements can facilitate reconsideration of what we should make of modernism, now that the century from which its avant-garde work sprang has drawn to a close.

Pound is the hand behind The Cantos, the richly intricate magnum opus that became one of the twentieth-century鈥檚 major long poems: this was Pound鈥檚 committed effort to create a verse epic suitable鈥攁nd useful鈥攆or a modern age. He was also the enfant terrible, newly arrived in Europe from the U.S. in the 1910s, whom Gertrude Stein remembers as having held forth with such gusto during a poetic reading that he broke one of her chairs. And Pound was the indefatigable promoter of the careers of fellow writers who would later become some of modernism鈥檚 leading lights: Robert Frost, H.D., James Joyce, T.S. Eliot. Eliot鈥檚 鈥淟ove Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,鈥� in fact鈥擡liot鈥檚 first published poem鈥攕aw print due to Pound鈥檚 influence; and Pound鈥檚 collaboration with Eliot on revisions to The Waste Land made it into the poem we know today. Pound believed in both the importance of establishing a movement to revolutionize the arts and the need to excavate history in order to foster this revolution; he urged contemporary readers and writers to make contact with the vital currents and lessons of the past. Fellow modernist H. D. once described Pound as a 鈥渕agpie鈥濃�攇athering inspiration from a glittering array of historical sources to forge a poetic of assemblage and hybridity. For his erudite poetry, Pound drew upon the work of medieval poets such as Arnaut Daniel and Dante; writers from the classical world such as Ovid, Homer, and Sappho; Chinese writers such as the eighth-century poet Li Po; and luminaries from American history such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

But over Pound鈥檚 achievements there always hangs a shadow. Like many of the major modernists, Pound has drawn charges of masculinism, misogyny, and homophobia. He is known for virulent antisemitism, which showed itself especially later in his career, in broadcasts he made over Rome Radio during WWII, many in support of Fascist Italy. These broadcasts culminated more than a decade of admiration for Benito Mussolini. After the war, Pound was arrested by the U. S. for treason, but deemed mentally unfit to stand trial鈥攁nd committed to a mental institution for twelve years. Since mid-century, readers have struggled with the question of how awareness of Pound鈥檚 unconscionable prejudices and politics should affect our reading of his poetry. Pound wasn鈥檛 the only modernist writer lured by Fascism: considering Pound鈥檚 case will help us to address the larger problem widely debated in modernist studies鈥攁bout the nature of the relationship between modernist aesthetics and authoritarian politics.

Texts: include salient examples from the major periods and dimensions of Pound鈥檚 career: the shorter poetry collected in Personae, The Cantos, and samples from the essays. We will also consider a range of work by contemporaries whose trajectories intersected with Pound鈥檚鈥攕uch as H.D., Ford Madox Ford, T. S. Eliot, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, and Wyndham Lewis. During the course, in addition to the topics suggested above, we will address Pound鈥檚 involvement with Imagism, Vorticism, avant-garde little magazines of the day, and the making of The Waste Land.

Evaluation (subject to revision): 2 brief essays (5-6 pp.) final essay (12 pp.)

Format: Lecture and Discussion

Expected Student Preparation: Previous coursework in American Literature before 1900, or in 19th-century British fiction, or permission of instructor. (This course is designed as a participatory seminar for advanced students of literature.)

Description: Intensive study of shorter prose works by Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, as these works can be seen to explore aesthetic problems and cultural preoccupations crucial to mid-nineteenth-century America.

Texts: (Tentative; editions of collected short fiction TBA):

• Poe, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe
• Hawthorne, Selected Tales and Sketches
• Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
• Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor, and Selected Tales or Great Short Works of Herman Melville.

Evaluation: (Tentative): Participation in discussions, 15%; series of one-page textual analyses, 15%; two critical essays, 20% each; take-home final exam, 30%.

Format: Lecture and seminar discussion.

Average enrollment: 35 students.

Scholar Anne Nothof states: 鈥淭he comfortable myth of the 鈥榗ultural mosaic鈥� is an imaginative construct which reifies the Canadian self-concept of tolerance, freedom, and diversity.鈥� Whereas Canadians may grapple with former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau鈥檚 鈥渋dealist dream鈥� of multiculturalism, this policy differs greatly from attitudes toward cultural integration in the United States, which has not adopted an official policy of multiculturalism despite widespread recognition of the nation鈥檚 immigrant-based composition. How does cultural diversity impact the ways in which artists and scholars make and analyze theatre and performance? How have U.S. and Canadian theatre and performance practices embodied the promises and challenges of multiculturalism and articulate with official policymaking practices? In what ways do contemporary theatre and performance expose the socially constructed parameters and intersections of concepts of 鈥榗ulture,鈥� 鈥榬ace,鈥� and 鈥榚thnicity?鈥�

Description: This course will investigate works of North American theatre that take up questions of cultural exchange and clash, society鈥檚 multicultural 鈥榦thers,鈥� immigration, the contours of the hyphenated identity, and relationships among culture, race, class, gender, and sexuality in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beginning in the latter half of the twentieth century, we will consider theatre鈥檚 interventions in wide-ranging debates about cultural politics as shaped by sociohistorical forces of the Civil Rights and feminist movements, cultural nationalism, and Quebec鈥檚 Quiet Revolution. As we engage definitions of intercultural theatre and cosmopolitanism in North American cultural discourses, we will map complex, multilayered cultural milieux in Canada and the United States, including relationships between Francophone and Anglophone theatre artists, Quebec鈥檚 recent immigrant 鈥榦thers,鈥� the place of First Nations groups in multiculturalism, and the permeation of national borders by diasporic and transnational identities. We will supplement our readings with visits to local theatre companies such as MT Space, Teesri Duniya, and the Black Theatre Workshop.

Texts may include:听

• Himani Bannerji. The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender (2000).
• Ric Knowles and Ingrid M眉ndel, Eds. "Ethnic," Multicultural, and Intercultural Theatre. (2009)
• Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx, Eds. Textualizing the Immigrant Experience in Contemporary Quebec. (2004)
• Rustom Bharucha. The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking Through Theatre in an Age of Globalization. (2000)
• A course packet comprising selected readings by Jane Moss, Charles Taylor, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Josette Feral, J眉rgen Habermas, Joanne Tompkins, Helen Gilbert
• Play texts by U.S. and Canadian authors such as Ntozake Shange, Anna Deveare Smith, Lu铆s Valdez, David Henry Hwang, Monique Mojica, Trey Anthony, Djanet Sears, Guillermo Verdecchia, and Carmen Aguierre.

Evaluation: Short response essays: 20%; critical theatre review: 30% take-home final exam: 40%; in-class participation: 10%

Format: Discussion and lecture.

Expected student preparation: students enrolled in this course will ideally have already taken ENGL 230 Introduction to Theatre Studies and/or some drama and theatre coursework at the 300 level.

Description: This course explores a variety of forms of popular entertainment in England in the long eighteenth century (c. 1660-1830). Traditional theatre flourished in the eighteenth century but the division of the theatrical evening into mainpiece and afterpiece allowed new forms to develop beyond the conventional tragedies and comedies that were staged in the main slots. Afterpiece forms such as farce, dramatic satire, burletta and most notably pantomime developed at this time and it was often unclear whether audience members paid to see the mainpiece or to experience the exciting new forms of entertainment that made up the second half of the evening. In the early nineteenth century, the growth of the 鈥渋llegitimate鈥� theatre scene gave rise to additional new types of entertainment, including melodrama, burlesque, equestrian entertainment (the forerunner of the modern circus) and the further development of pantomime, which reached a high degree of artistic and technological sophistication in this period.

Our focus in this course will be on the theatrical forms noted above, particularly the development of pantomime, but we will also look at popular pastimes that could be pursued outside the theatre, such as pleasure gardens, public executions and visiting asylums, if time permits.

In addition to reading and discussing theatre history documents and play texts, students will also participate in practical workshops in which we will seek to understand these forms of popular entertainment through performance.

Texts: the primary and secondary texts we will study will be supplied in a coursepack

Evaluation (tentative): participation 10%; midterm assignment 20%; practical assignment 30%; final paper 40%

Format: lecture, discussion, group work, practical work

听

This course will allow students to undertake special projects, frequently involving background readings, performances, and essays. This course is normally open to Major or Honours students in the Department. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

The application deadline听for Fall 2012听registration is听Wednesday September 12, 2012听and for听Winter 2013听is听Monday, January 14, 2013.

Application forms are available in the Department of English General Office, Arts 155.

Prerequisite:听None.

Expected Student Preparation: Previous university-level course work in American Literature, or permission of instructor.

Description: Studies of race mixture have focused traditionally on conflict and the trope of a 鈥渕ythical home.鈥� The tragic mulatto character type offers the perfect example of racialized conflict brought to the level of the individual body, of warring blood, and played out in the search for belonging in either the white or black world--both choices being limited in their ability to satisfy the full desires of this being destined for tragedy. Contemporary public debates about race mixture, importantly, retain threads of this conflict, often reinforcing it through a reliance on identity politics, which so often imagines race as essential and quantifiable, even while it struggles to articulate racial understandings of individual and collective harmony. This class will introduce these issues by first taking up antebellum and reconstruction era explorations of race mixture within the context of African-American literature--specifically, slave narratives and sentimental novels centering on the tragic mulatto figure. Following that, we will investigate the genres of autobiography and contemporary memoir. A final unit then looks to postmodern, 鈥減ost-black鈥� work, studying contemporary novels that might move toward a more progressive political engagement through the exploration of race mixture.

Format:听Lecture/discussion

Evaluation: (Tentative; subject to change): Participation鈥�10%; Bibliography鈥�10%; Two Papers鈥�40%; Final Exam鈥�40%

Texts: (Tentative; to be chosen from among the following):

• Frances E.W. Harper,听Iola Leroy听
• Nella Larsen,听Passing听
• Heidi Durrow,听The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
• Trey Ellis,听Platitudes & The NBA
• Fran Ross,听Oreo听听
• Rebecca Walker,听Black, White, Jewish听听
• Neela Vaswani,听You Have Given Me a Country
• Emily Raboteau,听The Professor鈥�s听Daughter
• Charles Johnson,听Oxherding Tale听

听Average Enrolment:听30 students.

Prerequisite: None, but some university-level course work in literature is expected.

Description: Fairy tales have not always been aimed at children. This is a fairly recent development in the history of fairy tales, one which tends to occlude their importance as a literary genre. The literary fairy tale as a modern genre begins to appear in the sixteenth-century, when such tales were composed for an adult audience (a tradition beginning with tales by Giovan Straparola and Giambattista Basile). In seventeenth-century France, Charles Perrault, whose fairy tales are among the most familiar in western European literature, was only one of several writers who wrote fairy tales for the literary salons of Paris in the ancien r茅gime. His contemporary, Madame Leprince de Beaumont composed the story of Beauty and the Beast; likewise, Madame la Comtesse d鈥橝ulnoy charmed her social and literary circle with her tale of the White Cat. Literary fairy tales aimed at adult audiences were in vogue into the eighteenth century, and have continued to be written into the twenty-first. The aim of this course is to examine the literary fairy tale as a narrative genre; to look at different manifestations of well-known tales, from Perrault to the present-day; and to explore how their themes are continually re-imagined, reconfigured and reinterpreted. Some of the authors to consider are likely to include Charles Perrault as translated by Angela Carter, Hans Christian Anderson, Oscar Wilde, Italo Calvino, and Angela Carter 鈥� as well as others, before and since.

Texts:

• The Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar (W.W. Norton, 1999).
• The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, by Angela Carter (Penguin Books, 1993). [first published 1979]
• Coursepack

Evaluation: Participation and attendance, essay, final paper, other to be determined.

Format: Lecture and discussionr

听

Description:This course offers an introduction to Canadian First Nations and Inuit literature and media. The term "literature" includes oral literature, such as legends, letters, diaries, stories, and songs handed down through generations and modern "collaborative life stories" as well as contemporary pieces. Because the emphasis has been and is very much on oral culture, the change-over to modern media such as television and film has been carried out very successfully and will be examined. The emphasis in the course will be strongly on Inuit literature and its development since the 1770鈥檚. These developments will be studied in the context of the Canadian North and to a lesser extent in the circumpolar North.

Texts: Books will be available at Paragraphe bookstore.

• The Oxford Anthology of Canadian Native Literature
• Tomson Highway: The Rez Sisters, Mythologies.
• Wachovich: Saquiaq
• Other readings from the Nunavimmiut books will be added.
• 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: 2 Short papers (5-7pages): 25 % each unless there are conferences Final Exam 50%

Format: Lectures and discussions.

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Description: In her book Woman, Native, Other, Trinh Minh Ha criticizes of essentialism with which women from the 鈥淭hird World鈥� are treated by the West: with special readings, seminars, and workshops dedicated to the 鈥渘ative woman,鈥� it is as if 鈥渆verywhere we go, we become Someone鈥檚 private zoo.鈥� Trinh鈥檚 outburst highlights the uneasy yet attractive alliances between feminists in the West and those in the rest of the world and between postcolonial studies and gender scholarship. Starting from these convergences, we will discuss the differences between Western feminism and womanism and we will trace the evolution of forms of femininity and masculinity in various colonial and neocolonial contexts, with a focus on Africa and the Caribbean. We will talk about the relationship between women and their bodies, ideas of beauty, rebellion and conformity. We will equally explore normative and subversive forms of masculinity, and the role of states in creating willing soldiers. Theoretical readings by Sara Suleri, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Gloria Anzald煤a, Frantz Fanon and bell hooks will help us to think about relations between mothers and daughters; young men and the state; sexuality; violence inscribed on the female body and representations of women.

Texts:

• Tsitsi Dangarembga鈥�Nervous Conditions
• Mark Behr鈥�The Smell of Apples
• Lewis Nkosi鈥�Mating Birds
• Ama Ata Aidoo鈥�Our Sister Killjoy
• Michelle Cliff-No Telephone to Heaven
• Coursepack with relevant articles.

Films:

• The Battle of Algiers. Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo
• Reassamblage. Dir. Trinh T. Minh-ha
• U-Carmen eKhayelitsha. Dir. Mark Dornford-May

Evaluation: Short paper 20%; Midterm 30%; Final paper 35%; Participation (including webct assignments) 15%.

Format: Lecture and discussion

Prerequisite: No formal prerequisite; however, familiarity with classical and/or Renaissance literature, the mythological tradition, is an asset.

Description: One of the most famous of all mythological heroes, Hercules is also the most complex: the legendary worker who saves the world from monsters and even harrows hells is also a cross-dresser, mad man, and murderer, who kills his own family and himself meets a tortured and fiery end. While political rulers have often used Hercules as an icon for authority, law and order, many artists have been interested in exposing the anti-social nature of this figure. In this course we will consider broadly the cultural and social uses of myth by looking at some of the conflicting treatments of this contradictory hero, first in classical works, and then in the later verbal and visual art of the Renaissance.

Texts: (tentative; some of these, as well as supplemental readings, will be available on Web CT):

• Sophocles, Women of Trachis
• Euripides, Herakles
• Apollonius of Rhodes, Voyage of the Argos
• Virgil, Aeneid (Book 8)
• Ovid, Metamorphoses (9,12)
• Spenser, Faerie Queene 5
• Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
• Jonson, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue
• Milton, Samson Agonistes
• John Dryden, All for Love

Evaluation: 2 papers; 2 class presentations; final take-home exam; participation

Format: Class discussion

Average enrollment: 15 students.

Prerequisite: A minimum of three credits of prior or concurrent coursework (from at least the 300-level) in either Middle English or Old English is strongly recommended (e.g., ENGL 306, 337, 342, 356, 357, 358, 452, 456, 500鈥攃ourses in which Middle English or Old English texts were read in the original, or in which the languages were studied substantially). Students with no prior coursework in Middle English or Old English must seek approval from the professor.

Note: Students who have taken ENGL 456 under a different course topic are free to take this version of the course. Although the course number is the same, the content is entirely different; therefore, these will count as two different courses toward university and program requirements.

Description: The human impulse of desire鈥攂odily and spiritual鈥攊s one of the most salient preoccupations of the imaginative literature of medieval Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Love, to medieval writers and intellectuals, is an essential feature of our humanity that links us to the godhead but also, if unregulated or misdirected, can reduce us to bestiality. The focus of this course in its broadest form is on the concept of love in medieval English literature. More specifically, it explores the widely encountered phenomenon of erotomania鈥攄esire in its most extreme, overwhelming form鈥攁s represented in secular as well as sacred Middle English texts. Love of self, love of other, and love of God are the forms such urgent desire most commonly takes. Those affected by erotomania in medieval literature run the gamut from courtly lovers to narcissists to lecherous priests to mystical visionaries to Christ himself鈥攁ll of whom are faced with the challenge of managing and communicating the imperative of desire in relation to the hierarchy of soul and body. Furthermore, the medieval lovers featured in these texts present acute challenges to the reader, who is inevitably drawn in to a circuit of desire that results in acts of interpretation ethically founded either in sympathetic participation or in moral critique. Our concern, then, will be both with how Middle English texts of various genres stage erotic experience, and how our own involvement as readers partakes in this intimacy and animates textual constructions of desire in ways that reinforce a program of moral education.

Readings will be grouped according to the following generic segments: erotic lyric and complaint; fabliau and sexual comedy; mystical/contemplative writing and affective spirituality; and courtly romance. Our interests will center on the diversely constituted corpus of Middle English texts concerning erotic and spiritual love, which we will situate in relation to contemporary vernacular poetry from the Continent (French and Italian) and relevant Christian and classical materials written in Latin. All foreign language materials will be read in translation; Middle English will be read entirely in the original, with the aid of glosses and vocabulary lists distributed in class.

This course assumes a basic working knowledge of Middle English (or still earlier forms of the English language). We will review the fundamentals of Middle English language and pronunciation early in the semester and will work toward a more advanced proficiency鈥攊ncluding exposure to various dialects鈥攖hroughout the semester. Language review and instruction will be kept brief and is not aimed at total newcomers (who are encouraged to take a 300-level Middle English course instead); primary readings in Middle English will begin in the second week of the semester.

Texts:

1. Moral Love Songs and Laments, ed. Susanna Greer Fein (TEAMS Middle English Texts Series), 1998.
2. The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, ed. Georgia Ronan Crampton (TEAMS Middle English Texts Series), 1994.
3. Anon., Stanzaic Morte Arthur, in King Arthur鈥檚 Death: The Middle English 鈥楽tanzaic Morte Arthur鈥� and 鈥楢lliterative Morte Arthure.鈥� Ed. Larry D. Benson, rev. Edward E. Foster (TEAMS Middle English Texts Series), 1994.
4. Coursepack

Evaluation (tentative): Middle English recitation (10%), shorter essay (15%), longer essay (25%), take-home final exam (35%), class participation (15%)

Format: Lecture and discussion.

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Description: This seminar will examine key readings in movement theory as they map the formation of theatrical choreography as a defining art of western modernity. Drawing from the publication of Chor茅graphie in 1699鈥撯�揻rom the Greek khoreia (dancing) and graphein (writing)鈥撯�揳s a system of dance notation, the course will follow the transformation of the relation between the score and the event; writing and moving; philosophy and dance from the Baroque period to contemporary experimentations. Considering a range of paradigms and compositional problems brought forth by diverse writers, philosophers, and choreographic artists, we will investigate choreography across issues of technique, technology, mobilization, subjection, discipline, legibility, freedom, and the ephemeral. By exploring the critical and creative intersections between acts of writing and dancing, the students will be encouraged to reflect upon, problematize, and reenergize the space between theory and movement.

Texts: The readings will include key authors in dance theories and philosophies of movement, such as Gilles Deleuze, Georges Didi-Huberman, Raoul-Auger Feuillet, Elizabeth Grosz, Bojana Kunst, Erin Manning, Randy Martin, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Baptiste Noverre, and Peter Sloterdijke, among others.

Evaluation (tentative): 2 papers (30% each); 1 in-class presentation (30%), participation (10%).

Format:Lectures, presentations, discussions.

Description: The Greek term for 鈥榯heatre,鈥� th茅膩tron, means 鈥渁 place for viewing.鈥� In this course, we seek to interrogate theatre鈥檚 strategies and modes of viewing (and hearing, smelling, and even tasting) over several centuries. The course will explore historical and theoretical facets of theatrical spectatorship and reception as theatre audiences have interacted with performers, theatre spaces, and each other. Audiences are never neutral; rather, they are bodies to entertain, educate, manipulate, and police. The emergence of the 鈥榤odern spectator鈥� in the nineteenth century has given way to reflexive, intersubjective forms of theatre practice that create 鈥榮pect-actors鈥� or attempt to collapse participation and viewing into an 鈥渁utopoietic feedback loop.鈥� Given the 鈥減erformative turn鈥檚鈥� progressive closure of the gap between spectator and performer, is theatre still able to 鈥渙ffend the audience?鈥�

Focusing largely on theatre reception in Western Europe, we will cover issues and debates central to the development of contemporary interpretations of theatrical reception and theatregoing practices. The course is divided into two general units: the first, proceeding historically, will address changing forms of theatrical spectatorship in tandem with modifications in theatre spaces and the rise of what J眉rgen Habermas identifies as the bourgeois 鈥榩ublic sphere.鈥� Devoting special attention to relationships between theatregoing and sociality, we will employ historiographic texts to discuss the ways that class stratification and gender regulation structured theatre spaces and shaped audience perception. In the latter half of the course, we will segue to an analysis of postwar and contemporary attempts by theatre theorists and practitioners to intervene the construction of theatrical spectatorship. We will supplement our readings with play texts and our own theatregoing practices.

Texts may include: A course packet comprising theoretical and historical works by authors such as Susan Bennett, Marvin Carlson, Marc Baer, Jeffrey S. Ravel, Sheryl Kroen, Jim Davis, Victor Emeljanow, Emmanuel L茅vinas, Guy Debord, Patrice Pavis, Augusto Boal, Jill Dolan, Susan Manning, Jacques Ranci猫re, Hans-Thies Lehmann, and Erika Fischer-Lichte.

Evaluation: Question posting on discussion forum: 20%; short response essays: 20%; critical theatre review: 20%; final paper (6-8 pgs): 20%; in-class participation: 20%

Format: Lecture and Discussion

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor required. Enrolment is limited to 15 students.

To apply, please submit a minimum of six and a maximum of ten pages of poetry. (Depending on the length of the applicant鈥檚 poems, the portfolio can include anywhere from one to ten poems). Submissions by e-mail attachment will not be considered鈥攑lease submit the poems on paper and use Times New Roman size-12 font. And note that the ideal spacing for poetry鈥攊n terms of readability and breathing room, so to speak鈥攊s neither the single nor double spacing option but the 1.5 spacing option. Please try to use that.

Portfolios should be submitted to the Department of English by Monday, October 22, 2012, at 4 pm. Late submissions cannot be considered. Please include your email address with your submission. Students will be notified about their applications, via email, on or before November 12, 2012.

Description: This weekly seminar and workshop will immerse students in the elements of poetic craft, to help them become better poets and better poetry readers. In the first part of each session, the instructor will talk briefly about some element of the craft and will offer for discussion an outstanding poem鈥攃lassic or modern鈥攔elevant to that day鈥檚 subject. The second part of each class will involve a traditional work-shopping session during which the instructor will lead the group in a civil, helpful discussion of a student鈥檚 poems (one or two students per week).

Students will be expected to attend at least one literary reading during the semester.

Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on the basis of a final portfolio of polished work; on the degree to which their writing improves over the course of the semester; and on the quality (not necessarily the frequency) of their comments during class discussions and work-shopping sessions.

Format: Seminar and workshop

Suggested References:

• Attack of the Copula Spiders (Douglas Glover)
• Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage (Janice McAlpine & Margery Fee)
• Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology (Carcanet)/>

Limited enrollment: Permission of instructor required. Priority will be given to Drama and Theatre students. Admission to the class requires attendance at an audition and an interview, which will be held in mid to late April. Please email a statement of interest to Professor Sean Carney at: sean.carney [at] mcgill.ca.

Prerequisites:ENGL 230, ENGL 269 and/or permission of instructor.

Description: This course is a practical creative workshop in which students complete a variety of in-class rehearsal exercises and collaborate on the creation of a theatrical performance. The course also includes critical reflection assignments. The course will culminate in a production in late March 2012 to be performed in Moyse Hall Theatre as the Department鈥檚 main stage production. Students interested in acting, directing and design will be admitted, however potential directors and designers must also be part of the acting ensemble throughout the course. This course is an extremely large time commitment with a great deal of rehearsal and preparation outside of class time, particularly in the Winter 2013 term. You must be able to enroll in both the Fall and Winter sections of 465 to be a member of this class.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Average enrollment: 16 students

Expected Student Preparation: Previous university-level courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies of the kind that have taught you how to undertake original research and disseminate your interpretations of that research by various means.

Description: This line from the distinguished American stage and screen actress, Ethel Barrymore, sums up in a witty fashion the complex subject who is at the front and centre of this research seminar: "For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros."

There are literally hundreds of biographies of and autobiographies by actresses. There is a large body of scholarly and non-scholarly literature on the history of the actress, on the lives, times, and careers of individual actresses, and on how the actress has been re/ presented in diverse ways, some of which are contradictory, paradoxical, and bogus.

There are plays and films in which actresses are traduced, celebrated, venerated, and demonized.

There are novels in which actresses (or their surrogates) are major and minor characters, frequently involved not only in acting but in acts of theatrical self-fashioning.

In so many of these works, the actress is mimesis-in-action, portrayed as a whore or as an angel or as somebody in-between, a hybrid, liminal, protean, threatening and / or comforting figure, often a Jungian archetype, a bewitching figure haunting, and haunted by, a dream grotto, someone 'made up' rather than 'real.'

There remains, however, so much more to learn about the actress: not only about her ever-shifting complexly gendered "iconic" status鈥攁nd why, how, and to what ends it is constructed / has been constructed to create sexuality, identity, image, and re/ presentation--but also about the material conditions which she has faced and continues to face as she has sought to create or been forced to assume that iconic status.

These conditions include training (both in formal acting programs and as tyros on the stage), actually getting work and being properly paid, being chosen and not chosen for particular (ideally star) roles, experimenting with innovative interpretations and sometimes subversive, sometimes conventional styles of performance, working within an ensemble, recognizing her perhaps ascendant position within a long genealogy of performance traditions, making or not making the transition from silent film to sound film, developing a repertoire defining the singularity of her persona both on and off the stage, wooing her fans, becoming and not becoming a sex symbol, dealing with both popular and specialist criticism, going into management as a practical act of agency, touring both at home and abroad, contesting social, family, and social stigmas, challenging racism and white-only casting and anti-theatrical hostility, struggling through the difficulties of aging, including the devastating impact of memory loss, and problematically achieving iconic autonomy and emancipation in a theatrical world often dominated by men exercising patriarchal principles and practices. And this is just a short list of some of those material conditions.

This is an advanced research seminar which will allow you the opportunity to engage in research into primary and secondary sources鈥攎emoirs and biographies, photographs and drawings, indeed all types of iconographic material, performance reviews, histories of the theatre, plays, films, and novels, the growing catalogue of scholarly work about the figure of the actress, etc.鈥攚ith the following interrelated objectives, among others:

鈥� To interpret the multiple significances of these different kinds of sources;

鈥� To rethink the functions, forms, and limitations of extant scholarship about the actress

鈥� To reconsider the functions, forms, and, in some cases, the ideological and perhaps hidden agendas of the signifying codes in artistic representations of the actress;

鈥� To expand our collective understanding of why, how, and to what effects the actress has functioned, continues to function, in society as both a complex, mobile heterogeneous sign system and as a working woman;

鈥� To enable all members of the seminar to undertake original research and to develop original scholarly analysis;

鈥� To learn about the careers of individual actresses and about movements of actresses;

鈥� To learn about performance genealogies; the stage history of a given role and how actresses have situated themselves in relation to that stage history, both in interpreting it and in executing it;

鈥� To come to an understanding, in a preliminary way, of the material conditions of actresses' performances;

鈥� To develop effective ways by which to analyze the work of actresses within socio-political, historical, aesthetic, geographic, broadly cultural, and gendered contexts.

Texts: The Cambridge Companion to the Actress, ed. Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes (Cambridge UP, 2007)

Film: Stage Beauty (2004), written by Jeffrey Hatcher, directed by Richard Eyre

Evaluation (tentative): Continuing full participation in the intellectual life of the seminar 15%; an annotated and / or written-out 'bibliographic / methodologies' report 15%; a presentation on an actress or group of actresses, analytical and issue-related 30%; a scholarly essay on an individually-negotiated topic in connection with our subject in the order of 15 to 20 pages (approximately 4000鈥�5,000 words) 40%

Prerequisite: permission of instructor required; please download and fill out the application form and return to Professor Thain by APRIL 30: application_for_admission_to_engl_476_alternative_approaches_to_media.pdf

Description: This research-creation workshop course gives students the opportunity to experiment with production in film, video and new media in the context of theoretical questions arising out of the contemporary mutations of the cinematic landscape in the face of new media. Our focus will be on exploring 鈥渢he matter at hand鈥� in two senses. The first sense involves thinking about the question of medium specificity in cinema; what is the relation between the various material elements of cinema itself (cameras, the film strip, digital video, exhibition spaces) and the ideas or assumptions we make about what cinema is and how it gives us new experiences of time and space? The second question concerns practice鈥攚hat exactly is the 鈥渕atter at hand鈥� when it comes to our own practice of production? As such, students will be encouraged to think broadly and creatively about what exactly constitutes their own production practice, and what materials and approaches are available to them. To this end, we will be experimenting in practice throughout the semester, in groups and individually, using a variety of different approaches and mediums. This term, we will be particularly interested in exploring a new 鈥渆xpanded cinema鈥� beyond the movie theatre (new sites for watching and making films, such as the cell phone, the museum, public, spaces, etc.) Exercises will include working with found footage, editing, cameraless animation, 鈥減re-cinematic鈥� and other animation styles, digital video and producing films for a variety of 鈥渆nd points鈥�, such as the cell phone screen. Please note that this class is not an 鈥淚ntroduction to Film Production鈥�; the focus is on experimenting with modes of cinematic production in order to think through, from a different perspective, the questions around 鈥渨hat is cinema鈥� today. Students participating in this class should be prepared to be doing practical work on an on-going basis, both individually and in groups, and to work collaboratively and creatively throughout the term. No previous experience in film or video production is required, but you must have the permission of the instructor to register.

Texts: TBD.

Evaluation: TBD; students are expected to produce creative work on a weekly basis.

Format: discussion, screenings, in-class production exercises and critiques.

Average enrollment: 19

Description: This course explores the 19thC. origins of the theatrical genre that came to dominate North American popular culture in the 20thC. The plays are filled with action and spectacular stage effects. Sentimentality is celebrated and exploited rather than disdained, and the villains are truly villainous. Some of the plays on the reading list, such as The lady of the Camelias, continue to influence such contemporary plays and films as Rent and Moulin Rouge. As suggested by the course title, students will be encouraged to explore other links.

Texts: Course pack and Early American Drama. Both are available in the University Bookstore.

Evaluation: 15% participation; 15% presentation; 30% short paper; 40% final paper

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Description: Costumes do not exist in a vacuum; they respond to social and political factors specific to the era in which they were created. They are inextricably linked to the art and architecture of their day as they are to the current political and moral beliefs. A micro mini skirt comments on the sexual mores of the 1960鈥檚 as succinctly as any treatise on sexual liberation. We, along with Webster's Dictionary, use the term 鈥渃ostume鈥� to mean a style of clothing, ornaments, and hair used especially during a certain period, in a certain region, or by a certain class or group.

The structure of this course will alternate between instructor information and student response. The instructor will present the costume history of each specific era through slide format, example pieces, and embodied learning. In the next class, students will present their oral projects which respond to the specific era. They will answer questions such as: What is the common aesthetic between furniture and clothing design of the Victorian era (or 鈥淗ow the heck did they sit down in that鈥�?). How does the music of the 1920鈥檚 effect dance, and in turn, clothing styles? How do the political and economic realities of the day impact upon the clothing of the 1930鈥檚?

Historical overview of costumes will be enhanced by embodied learning and an inquisitive look at the link between clothing and the culture that created them.

Texts: none required. Expect one museum entrance fee during the semester.

Evaluation (subject to change): attendance/participation 10%, costume critique 10%, oral presentations 40% (two presentations worth 20% each), mid-term quiz 10%, long paper or major independent project 20%, end of term quiz 10%.

Format: Alternating lectures by the instructor and oral presentations by the students.

Enrollment: cap of 25 students. Contact the instructor if you wish to be put on a waiting list once the course is full.

Prerequisites: There are no official prerequisites for this course. However, since much of the reading material will be highly theoretical in nature, some familiarity with cultural studies concepts and terminology will be useful. Furthermore, previous experience with courses in film and/or television studies, while not required, will obviously aid you in navigating the material under consideration.

Description: This course will survey recent critical and theoretical work in film and media studies on the question of spectatorship, one of the central questions of the past forty years of film and television theory. We will mainly focus on two related questions: (1) How do film and television texts 鈥減osition鈥� the viewer? and (2) How do certain viewers and audiences position themselves with respect to film and television texts? The course will begin with a fairly in-depth survey of work on film spectatorship, especially that influenced by psychoanalysis and feminism. In doing so, we will explore both the benefits and the limits of textual analysis in understanding how actual spectators view and respond to a given film. We will then move on to studies of television, and explore the ways in which this different medium, at least initially, entailed a different organization of spectatorship. We will consider the more reception- and audience-based cultural studies work in both film and television studies that has suggested ways in which viewers resist the text鈥檚 efforts to position them. Finally, we will also survey accounts of the recent points of convergence between these two media, and the effect of such convergence on spectatorship.

Texts:

• Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (Oxford UP)
• Sue Thornham, ed., Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (NYU Press)
• Course pack
• Select essays on WebCT

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture, discussion; screenings during most weeks

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Description: Fewer thinkers have been more influential in shaping modern cultural theories and practices than Karl Marx. It is our goal to understand how Marx was not a singular, unchanging philosopher, but a dynamic writer and activist whose ideas have profoundly affected everything from personal artistic philosophies to major political upheavals. We trace the development of Marx鈥檚 ideas through a range of media and disciplines including theoretical, philosophical, and political texts; literature; film; visual art; and new media. We begin with a two-week overview of texts by Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, including excerpts from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Capital, The Communist Manifesto, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, and The German Ideology. Building on this foundation, we encounter work by theorists and artists who are vocally indebted to his ideas, including Louis Althusser, Alain Badiou, Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jacques Derrida, Terry Eagleton, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Goddard, Antonio Gramsci, Fredric Jameson, Vladimir Lenin, Catharine MacKinnon, Antonio Negri, Roberto Rossellini, Raymond Williams, and Slavoj 沤i啪ek. In our consideration of political events, we think critically not only about 鈥渙fficial鈥� Marxist projects, like the Soviet Union, but also movements that dovetail with Marxism in less explicit ways 鈥� anti-colonialism efforts, feminist and queer activism, the Arab Spring, the 鈥淥ccupy鈥� movements. We aim to understand Marxism and Marxist activity through an interrogative process, investigating major questions throughout the course, including: to what extent, and to what end, is the landscape of contemporary culture, art, and politics still influenced by Marx鈥檚 work? What does it mean for a work of art to be 鈥淢arxist鈥�? How does Marxist thinking facilitate the intersection of political, artistic, and scholarly concerns? What are the limitations of Marxist ideas and practices?

Provisional Texts:

• Louis Althusser, For Marx (excerpts)
• Alain Badiou, What Is Communism?
• Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History (excerpts)
• Dipesh Chakrabarty, 鈥淢arx After Marxism: History, Subalternity, and Difference鈥�
• Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx (excerpts)
• Terry Eagleton, 鈥淚ntroduction鈥� to Marxist Literary Theory
• Sergei Eisenstein, selected essays and films
• Fredric Jameson, 鈥淐ognitive Mapping鈥�
• Vladimir Lenin, Collected Works (excerpts)
• Catharine MacKinnon, 鈥淒esire and Power: A Feminist Perspective鈥�
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Capital, The Communist Manifesto, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, and The German Ideology (excerpts)
• The Marxist-Feminist Literary Collective, 鈥淲omen鈥檚 Writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh鈥�
• George Orwell, 鈥淲hy I Write鈥�
• Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (excerpts)
• Slavoj 沤i啪ek, 鈥淲hat Does It Mean to be a Revolutionary Today?鈥�

Evaluation: journals/online project (20%); project proposal and workshop (20%); final project (40%); participation (20%)

Format: Discussion and some lecture

Description: This course is devoted to some contemporary memoirs with a view to investigating issues of authority, authenticity, discourse, truth value, memory, silence, confession. There are many ways to focus a course such as this and a focus is necessary given the historical sweep of the genres and given the current mania for autobiography and memoir writing. Our focus will be on 鈥渇athers.鈥� All the books we will read address that issue head-on, and obliquely, and all are written by children about their parents/father (rather than parents about their children).

• Foreskin鈥檚 Lament, Shalom Auslander
• The Kiss, Kathryn Harrison
• Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
• The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster
• Patrimony, Philip Roth
• The Bill from my Father, Bernard Cooper

Evaluation: (tentative) likely short pr茅cis of the books; participation

Format: Lecture, discussion; attendance in class is mandatory

Enrollment: 15

Prerequisite: ENGL 491-D1. No credit will be given for this course unless both ENGL 491D1 and ENGL 491D2 are successfully completed in consecutive terms ENGL 491D1 and ENGL 491D2 together are equivalent to ENGL 491

Restrictions: Open to Honours English Students in U3.

Average Enrollment: 40

Prerequisites: By arrangement with individual instructor. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Application deadline for听Fall 2012听registration: Wednesday,听September 12, 2012.听Application forms are available in the Department of English General Office, Arts 155.

Description: Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in departmental studies. This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department

Prerequisites: By arrangement with individual instructor. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Application deadline for winter 2013 registration: Monday, January 14, 2013. Application forms are available in the Department of English General Office, Arts 155.

Description: Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in departmental studies. This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department

Internship with an approved host institution or organization.

Restrictions: Open to English Majors in U2 or U3

Open to U-2 and U-3 English majors after they have completed 30 credits of a 90 credit program or 45 credits of a 96-120 credit program, with a minimum CGPA of 3.0, and permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies in English. This course will not fulfill English program requirements. Students will normally register in the Fall semester for Summer internships.

Students wanting more information on how to apply for ENGL 498 should go to the Internships website. This page contains downloadable application forms as well as links to further information about internship programs supported by the Faculty of Arts.