This version of the 平特五不中 Department of English, Undergraduate Studies site is deprecated but has been preserved for archival reasons. The information on this site is not up to date and should not be consulted. Students, faculty, and staff should consult the new site using the link below.
All 500-level courses and a certain number of 200-, 300- and 400-level courses have limited enrolment and require instructors' permission. Students hoping to enroll in these courses should consult the course descriptions on the Department of English website for the procedures for applying for admission.听
ENGL 404 Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature 1
Tagore: The Myriad-minded Man
Professor Sandeep Banerjee
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 11:35鈥12:55
Full course description
Description:听Rabindranath Tagore (1861 鈥 1941) was one of the most important public intellectuals of British India. He produced a vast canon comprising poems, songs, novels, plays, short stories, dance dramas as well as paintings and sketches in addition to critical essays on colonialism, nationalism, aesthetics, education, and culture inspiring the label of 鈥 as one of his biographies suggest 鈥 the 鈥渕yriad-minded man.鈥 In this course we will examine a selection from Tagore鈥檚 diverse and extensive corpus of poetry, novels, plays, and essays, reading them in relation to his historical context of colonial India. By examining how Tagore works with, and brings together, Indian and European literary forms, philosophies, and conceptions of art and aesthetics in his works, we will ask how Tagore鈥檚 works embody the socio-cultural processes underlying the Indo-British colonial encounter of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will also engage with some of the central concerns in his works, namely, women鈥檚 equality, the critique of caste and religious fundamentalism, anti-colonialism, nationalism and the role of education and literature in a (post)colonial society. Finally, we will also explore how Tagore was viewed by his Indian and European contemporaries and his legacy in contemporary South Asia.
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- Novels: Home and the World,听Farewell Song
- Plays: The Post Office,听The Red Oleanders
- Essays: 鈥淭he Religion of Man鈥, 鈥淭he Crisis of Civilization鈥
- Selections from his poems, short stories, letters.
- Satyajit Ray (dir): Home and the World
Evaluation:听Attendance and participation: 15%; short essay: 15%; midterm: 30%; final paper: 40%
贵辞谤尘补迟:听Lectures and听discussion
ENGL 405 Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature 2
The Sensation Novel
Professor Tabitha Sparks
Fall Term 2014
Monday and Wednesday 8:35-9:55
Full course description
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听In the early 1860s, a new genre of fiction captivated and shocked Victorian readers. Termed 鈥渢he Sensation genre鈥 in response to the physiological responses it stirred (palpitating hearts, chills down the spine) as well as its engagement with cultural controversies, this genre features bigamous wives, secret twins, illegitimate children, and criminal plots in that most unlikely setting, the private and overtly peaceful family home.
In this course we鈥檒l read a number of sensation novels from the 1860s and 1870s, as well as some later novels that sustain or recover sensational plots and narrative techniques. We will also study the critical and popular reception of the genre in an investigation of fiction鈥檚 contentious and focal place in culture.听
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- Collins, The Woman in White
- Wood, East Lynne
- Braddon, The Doctor鈥檚 Wife
- Trollope, Cousin Henry
- Moore, Esther Waters
- Du Maurier, Rebecca
Evaluation:听Attendance and participation: 20%; cumulative web postings : 25%; essay: 25%; final exam: 30%
Format:听Lectures and听weekly conferences
ENGL 409 Studies in a Canadian Author: Alice Munro
Professor Eli MacLaren
Fall Term 2014
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 12:35鈥13:25听
Full course description
Expected Student Preparation: previous university courses in English literature.
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听Alice Munro deserves her reputation as one of Canada鈥檚 great writers. Through ordinary settings and characters and an accessible prose style, she nevertheless conveys insights that arrive with the force of shock. Her chosen genre, the short story, is now connected to her name perhaps as indissolubly as to James Joyce鈥檚 and Edgar Allan Poe鈥檚. In this course we will become Munro scholars, reading across the arc of her oeuvre from her first pieces published in Canadian magazines in the 1950s to her most recent collections. The work of the course will consist, first, in interpreting her brilliant stories one at a time; second, in tracing the shape of her career, which took a decisive turn in 1976 when The New Yorker began publishing her work; and third, in positioning her writing in relation to larger patterns, including regionalism, the Gothic, gender studies, and the postmodern mingling of fact, memory, and fiction. In 2009 Alice Munro was awarded the Man Booker International Prize; in 2013 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. We will follow the juries in compassing her lifetime achievement.
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- Dance of the Happy Shades (Penguin)
- Lives of Girls and Women (Penguin)
- Who Do You Think You Are? (Penguin)
- The Progress of Love (Penguin)
- Friend of My Youth (Penguin)
- Open Secrets (Penguin)
- The View from Castle Rock (Penguin)
- Too Much Happiness (Penguin)
Evaluation:听short essay (3 pp.): 20%; medium essay (5 pp.): 30%; long essay (10 pp.): 40%; participation: 10%
Format:听lecture and discussion
ENGL 410 Theme or Movement in Canadian Literature
2014-2015: Ethical Readings in Canadian Modernism
Professor Brian Trehearne
Winter Term 2015
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:35-12:55
Full course description
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听Canadian modernist writing has been read through successive critical and theoretical paradigms: at first for its major themes, which were chiefly of interest at the time if they supported a nationalist cultural agenda; later for its emulation and development of a number of Anglo-American and European modernist aesthetics, forms, and styles (such work has preoccupied the present instructor); and, most recently, for the special textual and editorial problems underpinning its canonical decline.听 As a period and body of Canadian writing, our modernism has never been taken to articulate a significant strand of Canadian ethical consciousness, nor, indeed, to have significant philosophical content of any kind.听 This course will constitute an effort to re-direct Canadian modernist literary studies towards philosophical questions and to clarify the complexity of the writers鈥 intellectual heritage and gravity.
In discussion we will seek to articulate the often conflicting notions of 鈥渢he good,鈥 of 鈥渉uman excellence,鈥 and of 鈥渢he well-lived life鈥 that Canadian modernist writers take for granted, suppose, represent, critique, and urge in their poetic and fictional works.听 We will take our methodological cues primarily from readings in the work of Wayne Booth, Martha Nussbaum, and Marshall Gregory, not only to familiarize ourselves with such key concepts as 鈥渕oral luck鈥 but also to respond to their common demand for and defence of ethical approaches to the study of literature.听 None of the three attends extensively to poetry, but we will address Canadian modernist poetry on an equal footing in the course, on the hypothesis that a typically non-narrative, impersonal, fragmented poetics may speak with particular acuteness to the author鈥檚 philosophical concerns.听 While this cannot be a course per se in modernist poetics, we will work continually to understand the ways in which poetic and novelistic form can further, and/or can call into question, the apparent ethical interests of given personae, characters, narrators, and authors.听 It will be our constant challenge to disentangle the ethical notions we explicate in our discussions of poetry and fiction from the notion of authorial intention, but in the process we will hope to arrive at a more complex model of authorial intention that is not reducible to a single conscious impulse moving each literary work to hermeneutic closure.
Because substantial attention will be paid to poetic and fictional form and style, this advanced course鈥檚 discussions will be directed chiefly to U2 and U3 English Literature majors who have completed the required Poetics course (ENGL 311).听 Students in all other programs must have my permission to register; registration on Minerva alone does not guarantee you a place in this course.听 This course is not open to U1 students.听 A prior course in modernism and/or in Canadian modern literature would be helpful background preparation.
罢别虫迟蝉:听TBA, but drawing six to eight authors from:
- Buckler, Ernest.听 The Mountain and the Valley. (1952)
- Cohen, Leonard.听 Beautiful Losers. (1966)
- Dudek, Louis.听 Infinite Worlds: Selected Poems.
- Glassco, John.听 Selected Poems.
- Grove, Frederick Philip.听 Fruits of the Earth. (1933)
- ---. The Master of the Mill. (1944)
- Klein, A.M.听 The Second Scroll. (1951)
- ---.听 Selected Poems.
- Layton, Irving.听 Selected Poems 1945-1989: A Wild Peculiar Joy.
- Livesay, Dorothy.听 The Self-Completing Tree: Selected Poems.
- Page, P.K.听 Kaleidoscope [Selected Poems].
- Pratt, E.J.听 Selected Poems.
- Scott, F.R.听 Collected Poems.
- Smart, Elizabeth.听 By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. (1945)
- Smith, A.J.M.听 The Complete Poems of A.J.M. Smith.
- Watson, Sheila.听 The Double Hook. (1959)
- Webb, Phyllis.听 Selected Poems: The Vision Tree.
- Wilson, Ethel.听 The Equations of Love. (1952)
Evaluation:听Essay, 8 pages, 25%; essay, 12 pages, 35%; formal or take-home final examination, 30%; participation in class discussions, 10%.听 Please note before registering for this course: I assess active participation in discussion and not attendance.听 Full attendance through the semester without speaking will earn 0/10 in this category and substantially affect your final grade).听Evaluation may alter ac颅cording to class size.
贵辞谤尘补迟:听Lecture and substantial discussion
Average Enrolment: 32 students
ENGL 411 Studies in 20th Century Literature
Six Contemporary Canadian Poets
Professor Robert Lecker
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 10:05鈥11:25
Full course description
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听A detailed consideration of the works of six major Canadian poets whose work came to prominence after 1975: Anne Carson, Lynn Crosbie, Robert Kroetsch, Michael Ondaatje, 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, artists, punkers, hangmen, homicide victims, mythological artists, and 鈥渢hose听 / 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. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to write short essays on a weekly basis, and to participate actively in class discussion.
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- Carson, Anne. Autobiography of Red (Vintage)
- Crosbie, Lynn. Queen Rat (Anansi)
- Kroetsch, Robert.听Completed Field Notes听(U of Alberta Press)
- Lane, Patrick.听Witness听(贬补谤产辞耻谤)
- Ondaatje, Michael.听The Cinnamon Peeler听(M & S)
- Solie, Karen.听Modern and Normal听(础苍补苍蝉颈)
Evaluation:听A series of short essays on each of the poets studied in the course, 80%; attendance, 10%, participation, 10%.
Format: Lectures and discussions
Average Enrolment: 25 students
ENGL 413 Special Topics in Canadian Drama and Theatre
The Case of Quebec听
Professor Erin Hurley
Winter Term 2015听
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05鈥14:25
Full course description
Expected Student Preparation:听Previous university-level courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies.
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听This course will offer a selective survey of Quebecois drama, theatre, and performance from the 1960s to the present. With a focus on French-language theatre (to be read in English translation), we will trace the changing aesthetics and politics of this dynamic dramatic tradition, being careful to read them in light of the shifting performance and social contexts.听 The class will be framed by an opening consideration the role institutionalization, professionalization, and nationalism played on Quebecois theatre鈥檚 efflorescence in the 1960s and 70s and by a closing unit on Quebec performance鈥檚 place on the international stage.听 In between we will read (and view, where possible) plays by established as well as up-and-coming playwrights, some of whom will be invited to discuss their work with us.听 Units of study may include some of the following:听 the language question on the Quebec stage; the theatre of images; corporeal dramaturgies; feminist theatrics; queer drama; representations of the self and the other; popular performance.听 Wherever possible, and depending on the theatrical season鈥檚 offerings, we will go to see contemporary Quebec theatre together.听
罢别虫迟蝉:听In addition to a course-pack available at the 平特五不中 Bookstore, other texts may include:
- Louise H. Forsyth, Anthology of Quebec Women鈥檚 Plays in English Translation. Vol 3, 2004-8
- Larry Tremblay, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi
- Michel Tremblay, Les belles-soeurs
- Nathalie Claude, The Salon automaton
- Marianne Ackerman, L鈥橝ffaire Tartuffe
- Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies
- Abla Farhoud, When I Was Grown Up, or The Girls from the 5-and-10
- Michel-Marc Bouchard, Lilies
- Normand Chaurette, Provincetown Playhouse 1919
- Louisette Dussault, Mummy
- Broue / Brew
Evaluation:听Participation (15%); Group Presentation (25%); Short paper (20%); Final Research paper (40%)
Format:听Lectures and discusssions
Enrollment Cap: 30
ENGL 414 Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 1
Women in Modern Poetry
Professor Miranda Hickman
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10:35鈥11:25
Full course description
Expected Preparation:听Students are expected to have the background provided by Survey of English Literature 1 (English 202) or 2 (English 203), Poetics (English 311), or previous work with poetry.
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听Until the 1980s, the canon associated with modern anglophone poetry, established by mid-twentieth-century critical work, was assumed to consist of the work of major figures such as W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. This mid-century critical consensus, now problematized but still influential, largely overlooked many women who had contributed crucially to the development of modern poetry. Between 1900 and 1960, however, many women were actively engaged in the effort to revolutionize anglophone poetry: within early twentieth-century literary circles, their work was esteemed, and they fulfilled pivotal cultural roles. This course offers extensive consideration of the women that Bonnie Kime Scott has called the 鈥渇orgotten and silenced makers鈥 of modern poetry. We will examine how women shaped the development of modern poetry not only as poets, but also as critics, patrons, publishers, and editors. And as we engage their work, we will also consider how recent scholarship and criticism has sought to redress the historical record, return them to attention, and acknowledge their achievements.
We begin by reviewing a range of examples of how women are figured in well-known modern poetry鈥攖o discern some of the roles for and assumptions about women inscribed in poetic work of this period. We then move to the work of poets such as H.D., Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stevie Smith, Muriel Rukeyser, Dorothy Livesay, P.K. Page, and Elizabeth Bishop. We will also consider the work of women editors of little avant-garde magazines, such as Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson of Poetry, and Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap of The Little Review: these were editors who published the work of aspiring, experimental modern poetry when mainstream magazines were refusing it, often thereby helping to launch the careers of many poets now considered dominant among the moderns.
As we focus on women poets, in addition to reckoning closely with their poetry, which often involves the many forms of 鈥渄ifficulty鈥 associated with modern poetry, we will also engage from a literary-historical angle their contributions to the 鈥渕aking of modern poetry鈥: we will address, for example, H.D.鈥檚 vital (and hitherto unacknowledged) role in the formation of the poetic movement of 鈥淚magism,鈥 as well as her influential critical engagements with Ancient Greek literature; tensions between Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound over command of Imagism as a movement; Millay鈥檚 鈥渋t girl鈥 celebrity; Mina Loy鈥檚 fraught alliance with Italian Futurism and her 鈥淔eminist Manifesto鈥 of 1914; Marianne Moore鈥檚 editorship of The Dial; collaborative relationships between H.D. and Moore, and Moore and Bishop; and Gertrude Stein鈥檚 many connections with the visual arts.
罢别虫迟蝉:听Readings will include poetry by Elizabeth Bishop, H.D., Dorothy Livesay, Amy Lowell, Mina Loy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, P.K. Page, Muriel Rukeyser, Gertrude Stein, and Stevie Smith; we will also consider work by E.E. Cummings T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and W.B. Yeats.
Evaluation:听Brief critical analysis (5-6 pp., 20%), Book review (3 pp., 20%), fictional autobiography (4 pp., 15%), final essay (8-9 pp., 30%), participation (15%)
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL听415 Studies in 20th Century Literature 2
The Messiah in Jewish and Christian 20th Century Literature
Instructor Emily Kopley
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 14:35-15:55听
Full course description
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听The 20th century saw an outpouring of fiction about the Christian or Jewish messiah. This work variously imagines the contemporary arrival of a messiah, retells the story of Jesus Christ or of false Jewish Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, studies the messianic differences between Judaism and Christianity, and expresses an impatience for the Messiah鈥檚 arrival. What accounts for this abundant fiction? For the answer, we will consider the theological underpinnings of Jewish and Christian messianism and study major 20th-century concerns such as the World Wars, the Holocaust, immigration, assimilation, political movements (Zionism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism), race relations, and the conflict or compatibility between Christianity and Judaism. Some poetry and film will complement the fiction.
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
- Shalom Asch, The Nazarene
- Jacob Kastein, The Messiah of Ismir
- Arthur A. Cohen, In the Days of Simon Stern
- Cynthia Ozick, The Messiah of Stockholm
- A.M. Klein, The Second Scroll
- Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle
- Coursepack
Evaluation:听
- Participation in class discussion: 15%
- 5 500-word responses to course reading,听posted at MyCourses in discussion forum: 20%
- Paper 1 (4-5 page close reading): 25%
- Paper 2 (10-12 page research paper): 40%
Format:听Lectures and discussions听
ENGL 416 Studies in Shakespeare
The Politics of the Past: Writing the Nation in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
Professor Paul Yachnin
Winter Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05鈥14:25
Full course description
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听Shakespeare鈥檚 time saw an efflorescence of historical writing, including works on classical and modern history, global histories such as Walter Ralegh鈥檚 History of the World (1614), translations of the historical writings of Antiquity and modern Italy and France, local histories and 鈥渃horographies,鈥 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 English histories and also read and think about a number of other history plays by writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, and Thomas Dekker.听 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.
罢别虫迟蝉:听Shakespeare鈥檚 and Marlowe鈥檚 plays are available at Paragraphe Bookstore. All other texts will be in electronic form.
- Richard II, ed. Anthony Dawson and Paul Yachnin (Oxford, 2011)
- Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and Other Plays, ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (Oxford, 2008)
- King John, ed. Claire McEachren (Pelican, 2000)
- Henry IV, Part I, ed. David Bevington 听(Oxford, 2008)
- Henry IV, Part 2, ed.听Rene Weis (Oxford,听2008)
- Henry VI, Part Two, ed. Roger Warren (Oxford, 2003)
- Henry V, ed. Gary Taylor (Oxford, 1982; rpt. 2008)
- Henry VIII, ed. Jay L. Halio (Oxford, 1999; rpt 2008)
- Cymbeline, ed. Roger Warren (Oxford, 2008)
- John Bale, King Johan
- Anon, Sir John Oldcastle
- Thomas Middleton, Hengist, King of Kent
- Short readings: Samuel Daniel, Raphael Holinshed, Mirror for Magistrates, John Foxe
Evaluation:听
- Four reading responses (1 page double-spaced each) 20
- Participation 15
- Final paper 45
- Presentation (3 pages) 20
Format:听Lectures, presentations, discussion
ENGL 419 Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature
Americans Abroad
Instructor Laura Cameron
Winter Term 2015
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:35-12:55
Full course description
Expected Student Preparation: ENGL 311 Poetics and previous university courses in English, ideally in American literature
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听This course considers a selection of twentieth-century prose texts (novels, short stories, and essays) written by and/or about Americans abroad. Expatriates and tourists, adventurers and wanderers, journalists and soldiers, ambassadors and exiles, these travellers look back at customs of their own country with the perspective afforded by distance. Travel can both stabilize and destabilize personal and national identity. What do Americans learn about themselves from their travels abroad? How do American writers expose the flaws or promote the virtues of America in their narratives? How do representations of Americans abroad change over the course of a century in which America鈥檚 economic, military, and cultural power increased dramatically? With our writers and their characters, we will explore the globe, visiting countries such as France, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Spain, Greece, Morocco, Nigeria, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, India, Cuba, and Mexico. As well as considering the historical and ideological realities of the twentieth century that have influenced international perspectives on America and shaped Americans鈥 own self-image, we will study the cultural movements and trends that inspired the tone and form of the novels.
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country (1913)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1934)
- James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (1956)
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)
- Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers (1974)
- Joan Didion, The Last Thing He Wanted (1996)
- Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories (1988)
- Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station (2011)
Additional short stories and critical readings to be posted on myCourses.
Evaluation:听
- Critical Article Review (15%)
- Short Creative Assignment (10%)
- Short Essay, 6-8 pages (25%)
- Final Essay, 8-10 pages (35%)
- Participation in class (15%)
Format:听Lectures and discussion
Average Enrolment: 30 students
ENGL 421 African Literature
Ngugi wa Thiong鈥檕
Professor Monica Popescu
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 8:35-9:55
Full course description
Description: In early 1987, the police in Kenya were searching for an activist called Matigari, who was stirring the peasantry and the workers with his demands for truth and justice. Matigari, however, existed only as the protagonist of Ngugi wa Thiong鈥檕鈥檚 novel of the same title鈥攁n embarrassing discovery for the police that turned them against the book and its author.听 This anecdote attests to the transformative powers of literature within the social and political realms, especially in a postcolonial context.
One of the giants of African literature, author of numerous novels, plays, collections of essays, a prison diary, and children鈥檚 literature, Ngugi has influenced contemporary debates on postcolonial literature and globalization, the role of leftist esthetics, decolonization and neo-colonialism, the language(s) of African literature, nationalism and literary production, oral literature and its audience in the era of the internet and, more recently, the concept of 鈥減oor theory.鈥 The questions he raises in his works resonate with those posed by other postcolonial intellectuals so that to read them is to discuss cultural dilemmas representative of the past 50 years around the world. We will read a selection of his works in tandem with essays by Chinua Achebe, Kwame Nkrumah, Molara Ogundipe Leslie, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak, Karl Marx, Georg Lukacs, Raymond Williams, Simon Gikandi and others.
罢别虫迟蝉:听N.B. The final list of readings will be available by the end of October 1014. You are encouraged to start reading before the beginning of classes in January 2015.
- Coursepack
- Novels:听A Grain of Wheat,听Petals of Blood,听Devil of the Cross,听Matigari,听Wizard of the Crow听
- Essay collections:听Decolonizing the Mind,听Writers in Politics,听Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing
Evaluation听(tentative): Short paper 20%; Midterm 30%; Final paper 35%; Participation (including webct assignments) 15%
Format:听Lectures and discussions
ENGL听434 Independent Theatre Project
Fall 2014 and Winter Term 2015
Full course description
This course will allow students to undertake special projects, frequently involving background readings, performances, and essays.听
Description:
- This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department.
- Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in Departmental studies.
- Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.
Application Deadlines:
Fall 2014 Term | Wednesday | September 10, 2014 | 4:00 pm |
Winter 2015 Term | Wednesday | January 14, 2015 | 4:00 pm |
Application Form听(Also available in the Students Affairs Office,听Arts Building, Room 155)
ENGL听437 Studies in Literary Form
Autobiography and the Novel
Professor David Hensley
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 14:35-15:55
Full course description
Description:听This course will approach the form of autobiography in the Enlightenment through a brief survey of the European tradition of autobiographical texts from antiquity to the Renaissance. Against this background the readings will include not only 鈥渞eal鈥 autobiographies but also contributions of first-person narrative to philosophy as well as fiction in the 鈥渓ong鈥 eighteenth century (1650-1850). Reference to classic models such as Plato鈥檚 Apology, Marcus Aurelius鈥檚 Meditations, and Saint Augustine鈥檚 Confessions should help us appreciate intellectual developments and problems in the motivation and methods of later writing in autobiographical form. In particular, we will relate these models to the emergence of the novel, which, insofar as it represents and reflects on inner experience, cannot be understood without taking into account the conventions of spiritual autobiography and the presuppositions of the construction of selfhood in other forms of first-person storytelling such as dramatic monologue, letter writing, and the diary. Although much work in this seminar will concentrate on the interpretation of particular autobiographical narratives, we will thus constantly be concerned with general theoretical issues. The historical range of our primary readings should provide a meaningful basis for addressing such issues while the written work for the course will invite careful thinking about critical concepts through focused analysis of the texts that we will study and discuss.
罢别虫迟蝉:听The required reading for this course will include most or all of the following books, which will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 845-5640). (The list of texts below is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in January 2015.)
- St. Augustine, Confessions (Hackett or Oxford)
- Benvenuto Cellini, My Life (Oxford)
- John Bunyan, Grace Abounding (Oxford)
- Daniel Defoe, Roxana (Broadview or Oxford)
- Denis Diderot, The Nun (Oxford)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sufferings of Young Werther (Norton)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (Oxford)
- Benjamin Constant, Adolphe (Oxford or Penguin)
Evaluation:听paper (60%), presentations (20%), and participation (20%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies). Two or three optional film screenings may be offered in this course, depending on the interest and schedules of the participants.
Format: Seminar听discussions
ENGL 447 Cross Currents in English and European Literature
The Adventures of Hercules
Professor Maggie Kilgour
Fall Term 2014
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 14:30-15:30听
Full course description
Prerequisite: No formal prerequisite; however, familiarity with classical and/or Renaissance literature, the mythological tradition, is an asset.听
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.听 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:听(some of these, as well as supplemental readings, will be available on Mycourses):
- 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:听2 papers; 2 class presentations; final take-home exam; participation
Format: Lectures
ENGL 456听Middle English: Literature and Material Culture
Professor Michael Van Dussen
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 13:05-14:25
Full course description
Description:听Attending to the material culture of the Middle Ages allows us to think of literature not just in terms of style (and the hierarchies of aesthetics that accompany such an approach), but also in terms of the materials that mediate texts to us and that conditioned the circumstances in which medieval texts were produced, read, and circulated in the first place. At the same time, we can study the ways that medieval people 鈥渞ead鈥 the material world around them and expressed themselves in terms of the material. What happens when we read The Book of John Mandeville alongside medieval maps? How was medieval documentary culture taken up for poetic purposes? And how do print and digital editions condition our own interactions with medieval texts in different ways? The course will be organized around several general categories including: 鈥淭ravel and Collecting鈥; 鈥淕eography and Landscape鈥; 鈥淧iety and Material Culture鈥; 鈥淟iterature and Documentary Culture鈥; 鈥淲orking with Medieval Manuscripts鈥; 鈥淢edieval Materials in Early Modern and Modern Hands鈥; and 鈥淎ntiquarianism and the Modern Archive鈥. A primary aim of this course will be to introduce students to the study of original materials from the Middle Ages.
Texts: TBA
Evaluation:听
a) Mid-term essay: 25%
b) Final research essay with transcription project: 50% (transcription worth 10% of total)
c) Rare books session response papers (x2): 10% (5% each)
d) in-class translation: 5%
e) Participation: 10%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENG 459听Theories of Text and Performance II, Theatre and Feeling
Professor Erin Hurley
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 13:35-14:25听
Full course description
Expected Preparation: Previous university-level courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies.听
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听We will read the major dramatic theories concerned with the production, management, or solicitation of feeling and a play to which we might connect those theories in each unit of study.听 Students will conduct research into topics of special interest and present their findings to the class. During each unit, we will devote a session to putting the theory into practice through focussed scene-work, dramaturgical exercises, and/or acting exercises.听
听Units may include:
- Sturm und drang (Schiller鈥檚 The Robbers)
- Romanticism (Joanna Baillie鈥檚 Plays on the Passions)
- Melodrama
- Musical theatre
- Stanislavski technique: feeling and identification
- Cognitive science approaches to feeling and acting
罢别虫迟蝉:听Custom course reader composed of selections from acting theory, reception theory and performance theory; Erin Hurley Theatre & Feeling.
Evaluation:听Reading Journal (30%); Praxis session (30%); Discussion Prompts (10%); Research Paper (30%)
Format:听lecture, discussion, and practical work
Enrollment Cap: 30听
ENGL听465: Theatre Lab听
Professor Myrna Wyatt Selkirk
Fall Term 2014 and Winter 2015
Mondays and Wednesdays 14:35-17:25
Full course description
Description:听An in depth analysis and investigation of dramatic text(s) as well as study of the playwright(s) and their context. This course will involve a very physical approach to acting. 听The course will culminate in a production in March of 2015. Actors and Actor/Directors will be admitted. 听This course is an extremely large time commitment with a great deal of rehearsal and preparation outside of class time.
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005.
- Playscript(s): TBA
Evaluation:听Class participation and attendance (attendance is mandatory) 15%; Compositions 10%; November Presentation 10%; Research Paper 15%; March Production: Compositions, Engagement. Development, Rehearsals, Performances 30%; Journals, Reflections, Critiques 20%
Format:听Warm-ups; discussion; improvisation; movement and voice exercises; text interpretation; viewpoints; presentation of research; scene work; oral presentations and rehearsals for a March Production.
ENGL 467 Advanced Studies in Theatre History
Seminar on the Actress
Professor Denis Salter
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 11:35鈥12:55听
Full course description
Expected Student Preparation:听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:听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:
- To interpret the multiple significances of these different kinds of sources
- To rethink the functions, forms, and limitations of extant scholarship about the actress
- 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
- 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
- To enable all members of the seminar to undertake original research and to develop original scholarly analysis
- To learn about the careers of individual actresses and about movements of actresses
- 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
- To come to an understanding, in a preliminary way, of the material conditions of actresses' performances
- To develop effective ways by which to analyze the work of actresses within socio-political, historical, aesthetic, geographic, broadly cultural, and gendered contexts
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- The Cambridge Companion to the Actress, ed. Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes (Cambridge UP, 2007)
Films:听
- Stage Beauty (2004), written by Jeffrey Hatcher, directed by Richard Eyre
- The Lives of Others / Das Leben der Anderen听 (2006), 听written and directed by Florian听Henckel von Donnersmarck
Evaluation听(tentative):听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: 40%.
贵辞谤尘补迟:听Brief, mid-sized, and longer lectures; led-discussions; individual and collective presentations including interrogative Q & As; and mini-performances when warranted
ENGL听469: Acting 3
Winter Term 2015
Mondays and Wednesdays 11:35-13:25
Full course description
Prerequisites: ENGL: 230 and 269 and/or permission of instructor.听听
Description:听This course enhances skills already acquired by addressing the demands of public performance.听 Units of work will be based on diverse theatrical periods before 1900 and will involve study of some of the major European and North American acting theories and practices.听 Scenes and poems will be analyzed and explored in a variety of ways in an effort to understand and own the text.听 The needs of individual students will be addressed in terms of acting and interpretive skills.听 Students will be introduced to the skills needed to speak verse and other heightened language.
罢别虫迟蝉:听
- Five Approaches to Acting by David Kaplan (West Broadway Press, 2001).
- Actions: The Actors' Thesaurus by Marina Caldarone, Maggie Lloyd-Williams, 2004.
- Play texts TBA.
Evaluation听(tentative):听Attendance and Participation; Scenes and Presentations; Written Analysis, Journals and Research.听
贵辞谤尘补迟:听Text interpretation; voice and movement exercises; background research; scene and sonnet work; warm-ups; discussion; presentations.
Limited enrollment:听Password required. See Professor Selkirk for permission. Sign-up sheets for interviews will be on the door of Arts 240 in early April.
ENGL 479 Philosophy of Film听
Professor Trevor Ponech
Fall Term 2014
Monday and Wednesday 13:05鈥14:25 pm
Full course description
Prerequisite: None. This is an upper-level seminar intended for an audience of advanced undergraduates with a high degree of interest in cinema studies.
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听This seminar will focus on a selection of topics central to the philosophical study of cinema.听 Those first and foremost among these pertain to the nature of cinema.听 Here we encounter deep and, for the most part, intractable puzzles about the definitions of such key concepts as "cinema," "film," and "medium."听 We also tangle with perennial questions about what, if anything, makes movies different from works in all other art forms and whether cinema has a distinct nature or essence.听 The standard descriptions of cinema's nature--as representation of reality, as the production of illusion, or as signifying system--shall be surveyed and evaluated in light of more recent statements about cinema's ontology.听 Another of our focal concerns will be cinematic narration.听 We'll examine in detail the arguments over what differentiates cinematic from literary narration, how unreliable cinematic narration is possible, whether cinematic narrators per se exist, and what or who is the executive source of the narration. Against various theories evoking the shadowy being of a grand imagier, I will make a case for believing that only certain movies have something analogous to a literary narrator and that only an actual "cinematic agent" can be the presenter, the proximal source, of the story.听 Throughout our seminar, we'll also take heed of some recent and provocative statements about what sorts of contributions cinema might itself make to philosophical thought.
罢别虫迟蝉:听A selection of recent readings drawn from the area of philosophy of film, including essays from Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga, eds., The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (2009); No毛l Carroll and Jinhee Choi, eds., Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (2006); Richard Allen and Murray Smith, eds., Film Theory and Philosophy (1997).听 These articles will be available in a photocopied course pack.
Evaluation:听A term paper; seminar participation
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 481听A Filmmaker II
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Professor Ara Osterweil
Fall Term 2014
Monday and Thursday 16:05-17:25听| Mandatory Screening: Wednesday 17:35-19:55听
Full course description
Prerequisites:听Students taking this course should be proficient in film analysis, and should have taken Introduction to Film Studies, and either Introduction to Cultural Studies, Poetics of the Image, or another Film elective course.
听顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听This course takes an in-depth look at the brief, furiously prolific career of German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982).听 The enfant terrible of New German Cinema, Fassbinder was also its most innovative practitioner. Working at breakneck speed, Fassbinder made forty-four films in fourteen years, all of which ruthlessly attack German bourgeois norms and values. Exploring the political and social contradictions of a society recently emerged from the devastation of the second world war, Fassbinder鈥檚 films interrogate his own, and the nation鈥檚, attempt to come to terms with fascism.
This course looks at more than a dozen of Fassbinder鈥檚 most important films, including The Marriage of Maria Braun, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Lola, Veronika Voss, Lili Marleen, and In the Year of Thirteen Moons.
In addition to copious reading in critical theory, Germany history, Fassbinder鈥檚 cinema, and queer & gender theory, there is a required screening every week. Students who cannot attend the screening should not take the course.
Texts include readings by:
- Antonin Artaud
- Bertolt Brecht
- Gilles Deleuze
- Julia Kristeva
- Peter Brooks
- Thomas Elsaesser
- Kaja Silverman
- Douglas Crimp
- Judith Butler
- Richard Dyer
- Joyce Rheuban
- Judith Mayne
Films To Be Screened:
- The Marriage of Maria Braun
- The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
- Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
- Katzelmacher
- Fox and His Friends
- The American Soldier
- The Merchant of Four Seasons
- Martha
- Lola
- Veronika Voss
- Effi Briest
- Lili Marleen
- In the Year of Thirteen Moons
- Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven
- The Third Generation
Evaluation:听Attendance and Participation: 15%; midterm: 20%; Final Exam: 25%; Final Paper: 40%
Format:听Lecture, discussion, and mandatory screening
ENGL听483 Contemporary Narrative Film and Literature
Professor Ned Schantz
Winter Term 2015
Monday 14:35-17:25 | Screening TBA
Full course description
听顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听This course will test Garrett Stewart鈥檚 recent claim that, in the past few decades, narrative has come to suffer from 鈥減lot exhaustion,鈥 from an inability to render contemporary social forces and lived experience in the form of a coherent, forward-moving story with a satisfying resolution. Homing in on three of the more striking tendencies in recent fiction鈥攖he time-manipulation narrative, the multi-plot melodrama, and the inward turning meta-narrative鈥攚e will consider to what extent these narrative strategies confirm our worst dilemmas in the way Stewart suggests, and to what extent they offer new ways of conceptualizing the relations that make up our world. Possible films include The Double Life of Veronique, Memento, Primer, Before the Rain. Possible novels include First Light, Life After Life, The Intuitionist.
Text:听coursepack of narrative theory
Evaluation:听
- film journals 35%
- paper proposal 5% 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听
- term paper 40%
- participation 20%
Format: Seminar
Average Enrollment: 30 students
ENGL 485 Special Topics in Theatre History 1700-1900
History of Scenography
Professor Patrick Neilson
Winter Term 2015
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 11:35鈥12:25
Full course description
Prerequisite: None, but students should have completed at least one introductory theatre course such as ENGL 230.
Description: 听This course will explore scenographic practices and theatrical architecture from the opening of the Patent theatres in 1660 until the turn of the 20thC.听 While looking at the evolution of stage design over two centuries students will learn how to read theatrical scenery, how to discuss it, and how to write about it.听 What is the linkage between scenery and narrative? How does stage scenery convey information? What is the relationship between ludic space and scenic space?
Topics will include:
- The advent of moveable scenery and the English Baroque stage
- Understanding perspective elevations
- The importance of stage lighting
- Italian innovations
- Neo-classicism
- The Gothic and Romantic pictorial stages
- Sensation scenery
- Realism and Expressionism
- Adolph Appia, Edward Gordon Craig and the New Theatre
- Stage machinery
罢别虫迟蝉:听Course pack available at the 平特五不中 Bookstore
Evaluation:听Attendance and participation 15%; Two short class presentations 10% each; Short paper 15%; Final paper 50%
Format: Lectures and discussions
ENGL 486 Special Topics in Theatre History
History of Costume: 1850 to 1969
Instructor Catherine Bradley
Fall Term 2014
Friday 8:35-11:25
Full course description
Prerequisite: None.
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听Costumes do not exist in a vacuum.听 They are a response to social and political factors specific to the era in which they were created.听 They are inextricably linked to the art and architecture of their day as they are to the current political and moral beliefs.听 A micro mini skirt comments on the sexual mores of the 1960鈥檚 as succinctly as any treatise on sexual liberation.听 The structure of this course will alternate between instructor information and student response.听 In the first half of the three hour block, the instructor will present the costume history of each specific era through slide format, example pieces, and embodied learning.听 In the second half of the class, students will present their oral projects which respond to the specific era.听 They will answer questions such as:听 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?).听 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? 听
Texts:听None required.听 All course materials on mycourses.
Evaluation:听Attendance and participation: 10%, short written analysis: 10%, two presentations: 20% each, two quizzes: 10% each, 听final paper or project: 20%
贵辞谤尘补迟:听听One three hour block weekly, divided equally into
- Instructor led slides, demonstrations, information, and discussion of the clothing of each era.
- Student led oral presentations contextualizing clothing through the impact of art, architecture, music, dance, historical context and more.
Average Enrollment:听25 students maximum
ENGL听488 Special Topics in Communications and Mass Media 2
Janet Malcolm as Public Intellectual听
Professor Berkeley Kaite
Fall Term 2014
Tuesday and Thursday 11:35-12:55
Full course description
顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听Janet Malcolm is a contemporary author and essayist who has written on a number of topics, from photography to psychoanalysis to journalism, among others. In this course will place her non-fiction in the context of considerations of what it means to be a public intellectual, i.e., one who writes for an educated public on questions inflected by ideological concerns. The public intellectual writes without the constraints of academic prose and argumentation yet there is scholarly emphasis on processes of reading and writing; the role of the author and authority; writing as a public activity; the role of the critic and self-criticism; matters of principle and matters of judgement, among others. Our focus is on what Malcom isolates for discussion and how she does this.听
罢别虫迟蝉:听from the following (with brief descriptions)
- In the Freud Archives (1985): covers the intellectual and administrative changes at the Freud archives in London, and the take-over by Jeffrey Masson.听 Malcolm鈥檚 comments about Masson鈥檚 were challenged by Masson in a court of law.听 That court case spurred Malcolm鈥檚 interest in another legal dispute in which a convicted murderer sued the journalist who had written a 鈥榯rue-crime鈥 account of the case.听
- The Journalist and the Murderer (1990): Malcolm鈥檚 concerns are the inevitable (as she sees it) lack of ethics in the journalistic enterprise and the delicate, intimate, vexed and sometimes fraught relationship between writer and subject (human or otherwise).
- Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1982): psychoanalysis 鈥 particularly Freudian 鈥 is offered as the companion and antidote to the 鈥渋nstability of human knowledge.鈥澨 Questions of truth and the vanity of authenticity were posed in Malcolm鈥檚 New Yorker essays, assembled in her first book,
- Diana and Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography (1980): Questions of truth and the vanity of authenticity-- 听Malcolm investigates the relationship between art and the visual medium of photography and one of the binding themes is the contradiction between display, concealment and disavowal, as well as the provenance of value.
- Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007): her project is the writing of the self, the self-as-other, and the unknowns at the center of the 鈥渒oan of autobiography.鈥澨 Malcolm begins by writing about Gertrude Stein and her sketch morphs into a consideration of Alice B. Toklas, Stein鈥檚 partner (in various senses).
- Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial (2011): Malcolm herself covers the trial of a woman accused of murdering her husband in the presence of their young child and has to arrive at conclusions based on the evidence offered, evidence conjectured and evidence concealed: what constitutes evidence in the presentation of an autobiographical and legal narrative?听听 Malcolm places the accused 鈥榦n the couch鈥 and listens: with an ear for cadence, motive, deception, fear, denial and possibly innocence.
- The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (1994): Malcolm attempts a biography of Plath鈥檚 life that is attentive to the tropes of biographical writing.听
- Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey (2001), the biographical subject is read through the writer鈥檚 re-tracing of Chekhov鈥檚 life in Yalta and recognition of the 鈥榣ocal鈥 focus of his stories: Malcolm is acutely attentive to Chekhov鈥檚 own writing of, and from, states of emotional exile. 听
Evaluation (tentative):听attendance and participation: 20%; pr茅cis of books: 50%; discussion paper 30%
贵辞谤尘补迟:听听Lectures and discussions
ENGL 489 Culture and Critical Theory 1
Marxist Literary and Cultural Theory
Professor Derek Nystrom
Winter Term 2015
Tuesday and Thursday 14:35-15:55听
Full course description
Prerequisites:听None
Expected Student Preparation: Familiarity with the basic concepts of literary and/or cultural theory will be very useful.
Description: 听This course will review and critically examine the efforts within the Marxist tradition to theorize literary and cultural production. We will survey several critical movements within this tradition, such as the Frankfurt School (and its descendents), structuralist Marxism, British cultural studies, postcolonialist inquiry, and the development of various post-Marxisms. In doing so, we will engage the writings of such literary and cultural theorists as Theodor Adorno, Georg Luk谩cs, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Fredric Jameson, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Aijaz Ahmad and of course Marx himself. We will also examine some primary works of literary and cultural production to test out many of the claims of these theorists. The guiding metaphor for our inquiries will be that of base and superstructure: How are literary and cultural productions related to the realm of economic production? What role does the study of aesthetic form have in Marxist analysis? What is the role of culture in capitalism? How are we to understand the political and cultural value of the aesthetic strategies put on offer by realism, modernism, and postmodernism? What place does the avant-garde have within struggles against capitalism?
Format: Lecture, discussion
Evaluation: TBA
Required Texts:听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听
- Ruis, Marx for Beginners
- Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne, eds., Marxist Literary Theory: A听Reader
- Ronald Taylor, trans. and ed., Aesthetics and Politics听
- Course pack 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听听
Average enrollment: 30 students
ENGL 495 Individual Reading Course
Fall Term 2014
Full course description
Prerequisites:听By arrangement with individual instructor. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.
Description: 听
- This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department.
- Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in Departmental studies.听
Application Deadlines:
Fall 2014 Term: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 by 4:00 PM
Application Form (Also available in the Department of English General Office,听Arts 155)
ENGL 496 Individual Reading Course
Winter Term 2015
Full course description
Prerequisites:听By arrangement with individual instructor. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.
Description: 听
- This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department.
- Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in Departmental studies.听
Application Deadlines:
Winter 2015 Term: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 by 4:00 PM
Application Form (Also available in the Students Affairs Office,听Arts Building, Room 155)