200-level / Introductory Courses

Description: This is a survey of British and Anglophone literature from the late 18^th century to the present, with an emphasis on prose. As this period covers a rich range of texts and authors from various backgrounds, we will focus on writers who, until a few decades ago, were seldom considered to be part of the canon: women, writers of color, outsiders (Mary Wollstonecraft, Olaudah Equiano, Ben Okri, Angela Carter). In the case of the well-established writers (William Blake, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot) we will focus on texts that showcase the plight of the working class, distant imaginary or real landscapes, gender and sexuality, and less explored themes. We will study the characteristics of various literary genres, identify the historical and cultural concerns specific to each period, and read the themes and formal elements of poetry, prose and essays against the social and political background of each era.

Texts:

• The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors (Vol. 2; 9^th edition)
• Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
• Sam Selvon: The Lonely Londoners

Evaluation: Essay 30%, Midterm 25%, Final exam 35%, Short assignments and participation 10%

Format: Lectures and discussions

Prerequisite: None
Not open to students who have taken ENGL 200.  Open only to students in English Major and Minor programs.

 Description:  This is a survey of nondramatic English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period up to the eighteenth century. We will read a selection of texts from various genres, including epics and mock epics; sonnets and satires; and romances and autobiographies. The authors covered range from those who have long been considered part of the canon (Chaucer, Milton) to the recently recovered (Margery Kempe). Throughout the course, we will pause to reflect critically on how the canon of English literature has been constructed and what it means to call a text “canonical.” Other topics of discussion and debate will include the emergence of a modern, standardized English language, the contested origins of the English novel, and the popularity of female authors in the eighteenth century. The course will locate each text within its historical context and, in doing so, chart the development of various literary movements, forms and genres over several centuries. This broad, macroscopic focus will be counterbalanced by an emphasis on close reading. Students will be given the opportunity to develop and refine their skills of literary analysis. This course provides a grounding in early English literature that prepares students for more specialized study in the Minor, Major, and Honours program. 

Texts: Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume A (available at the Word Bookstore, 469 Milton Street)

Evaluation: 

• Midterm – 25%
• Essay – 30%
• Final Exam – 30%
• Attendance and participation (in conferences) – 15%

Format: Lectures and conferences

Description: ENGL 203 surveys English literature from the late 18th through the later 20th century, with emphasis on fiction and poetry in an historical context. We will pay particular attention to the developmental story that the assigned works tell, how they collectively comment upon the purposes of literature, and how they form a dynamic canon.   The course material and the three first novels broadly represent major periods in British literary history: the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern ages.    Like the works that comprise these ages, the periods themselves are subject to controversy and disagreement, but “periodization” remains a useful method of organization, especially in a course that covers a great deal of material in a short time.   “Periodization” is also an integral part of the history of British literature, and whatever its shortcomings, the concepts of Romanticism, Victorianism, and Modernism have been formative to the canon that we have inherited and continue to develop.  By the end of the course, you should be familiar with the outlines of these successive periods, as well as able to comment on  the ways that they speak across each other – and even call into question the ideological and formal divisions that define them as periods. 

Texts:

• The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Vol. B
• Austen, Jane.  Mansfield Park (1814)
• Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure  (1895)
• Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse (1927)
• Ishiguro, Kazuo.  The Remains of the Day (1989)

Evaluation: Attendance and participation (in conference section): 20%; midterm: 20%; essay: 25%; final exam: 35%

Format: Lectures and weekly conferences

Description: A representative sampling of Shakespeare’s plays will provide an introduction to the scope and variety of his drama as it relates to his cultural context and to the main genres of his writing.

Texts: 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Henry IV, Part One
As You Like It
King Lear
The Tempest

Evaluation: term paper, 50%;  take-home final exam, 40%;  conference attendance and participation, 10%

Format: lectures and weekly conferences

Prerequisites: None

Description: This course surveys American literature from 1950 to the present, focusing on key works in several major literary movements. The course aims to chart the evolution of the American literary tradition through considerations of both intellectual and material history. To this end, we will examine prose fiction and poetry in relation to landmark cultural and sociopolitical developments in contemporary America, including, among others: the growth of suburbia; the Civil Rights movement; the energy crisis; the end of the Cold War; the environmental movement; and the war on terror. One of the objectives of this course is to examine how literary depictions of the self have shifted as various hegemonic narratives of prosperity, ideological triumph, and unlimited growth have peaked over the past six decades. In a related vein, we will examine how stylistic and formal strategies in both poetry and prose have altered in relation to new constructions of individuality and American identity. 

Texts:(available at the McGill Bookstore)

• The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Literature since 1945. Eighth Edition. Volume E. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011
• DeLillo, Don. White Noise
• Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar     
• Walter, Jess. The Financial Lives of the Poets

Evaluation: 

• Mid-Term Exam: 25%
• Final Exam: 35%
• Essay: 25% (4 pages)
• Conference Participation: 15%

Format: Lecture and Conferences

Prerequisites: None

Description: A survey of English Canadian poetry and prose from the Second World War to the present. We will read poetry and short fiction to explore the development of Canadian literature. In addition to looking at the work of specific authors from 1945 to the present, the lectures will cover such topics as Canadian literary nationalism, realism, postmodernism, and different forms of experimentation. We will also look at the idea of nordicity as a central metaphor in Canadian writing and discuss the economic and cultural forces accounting for the construction of a national literature. 

Texts:

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

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lectures

Average Enrollment: 150 students

Description: This course provides a critical introduction to theatre studies, in its branches of dramatic literature, dramatic theory, and theatre history.  Our point of departure for this introduction to the field will be plays drawn from the major episodes of world theatre history, beginning with Ancient Greek drama through contemporary Canadian and postcolonial performance, and including the Department of English mainstage show.  Through the plays, we will examine what “theatre” is in different periods and places, how it is constituted by the material conditions of performance, codified in dramatic genres, and conceptualized in dramatic theory.  NB: This course is introductory in the sense of ‘foundational’; it offers the fundaments to the study of theatre, encasing them in a broad historical narrative about the theatre’s development over time.

“Introduction to Theatre Studies” is divided into units and ordered according to chronology. Each unit is built around a representative play or performance and explores a particular question or issue in theatre studies, for instance, the actor’s body, theories of genre, or women on stage. 

Texts: Available at the McGill Bookstore and on Reserve. W.B. Worthen, ed. The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama 5^th Brief Edition. 

Required Event: Department of English mainstage play – Moyse Hall Theatre, end of November

Evaluation: Midterm exam (25%); final exam (50%); participation (10%); short essay (15%)

Format: Lecture (2 hours/week) plus discussion sections (1 hour/week)

Enrolment Cap: 140

Description: This course will offer an overview of the study of the novel, with an emphasis on works that are formally and representationally innovative. In particular, we’ll examine novels that might be grouped together under the label of meta-fictional or self-conscious narrative. We’ll focus especially on novels that not only represent consciousness—psychologically rich realist works—but also playfully identify their own fictionality. In all of this, we will be highly conscious of the relationship between reader and text: how writers, through the development of certain novelistic techniques, control the experience of a work, shaping (and sometimes misleading) a reader’s perceptions of that fictional world.

Texts: 

• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (vol. I)
• Jane Austen, Emma
• Henry James, Turn of the Screw
• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
• Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
• Ian McEwan, Atonement

Evaluation:

• Attendance/Participation: 15%
• 3 Response Papers (500 words): 45% (15% each)
• Peer Review: 5%
• Final Essay: 40%

Format: TBA

Prerequisites: Open to Drama and Theatre Majors

Description: The focus of this course is on the actor as communicator, and on those things (material, physical, and textual) which are inescapably central to the theatrical performance.

Texts: The Practical Handbook for the Actor by Melissa Bruder, et al. (Vintage Books, 1986).  Actions: The Actor's Thesaurus by Marina Calderone and Maggie Lloyd-Williams (Drama Publishers, 2004). Plays TBA.

Evaluation: Class Participation 20%; Rehearsals and Presentations 55%; Written Analysis, Journals and Critiques 25%

Format: Improvisation; games; movement exercises; text interpretation; background research; scene work; warm-ups; discussion; presentations. 

Prerequisites: None

Description: This course, one of three required for the Cultural Studies concentration in the English major, will introduce various critical efforts to theorize the aesthetics, semiotics, and politics of popular culture over the past century. Beginning with a few crucial theoretical touchstones (Marx, Freud, structuralism), we will survey such critical movements as the Frankfurt School, American “masscult and midcult” theory, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, critical race studies, queer theory, and various feminisms, as they each formulate critical frameworks to explain how culture works. Along the way, we will consider the following questions: What does the “popular” in “popular culture” mean? Does the distinction between “high” and “low” culture have a political dimension? Furthermore, when we do cultural studies, whose culture should be investigated? And who should do the investigating? Finally, how can we grasp the meanings of popular culture: by examining the texts themselves, or by studying the audiences’ interpretations and uses of these texts?

Texts: Roland Barthes, Mythologies. Essays by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Andreas Huyssen, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, Louis Althusser, John Fiske, Janice Radway, Laura Kipnis, Constance Penley, Sara Ahmed, and others 

Evaluation: TBA

Format: lecture, weekly TA-led conferences

Average Enrollment: 150 students

Prerequisite:  Restricted to Cultural Studies majors/minors and Film Studies minors

Description: This course is designed to prepare students for future film courses at McGill.  It is therefore dedicated to three main goals: establishing a frame of reference for the history of film and film theory, introducing key analytical concepts and skills, and inspiring an ongoing interest in film.
NOTE: This course is for Cultural Studies majors/minors and Film Studies minors only, and to maintain fairness no exceptions can be made. 

Required Texts: coursepack

Evaluation: quiz 10%, 3-4 page paper 15%, 5-6 page paper 25%, conferences 15%, posted class notes 5%, final 30%

Format: Lecture and conferences plus weekly screenings

Average Enrolment: 140