300-level / Intermediate Courses

Description: This course will canvas some of the “origins” of the English novel and trace its development (particularly as anti-romance satire and realism) up to the mid-eighteenth century. Our readings and discussion will refer to the European context of the evolution of this narrative form in England. We will consider the novel as responding to a network of interrelated problems – of the self and its imaginative politics – at the representational crossroads of medieval epic, courtly romance, spiritual autobiography, picaresque satire, colonialist adventure, gallant intrigue, baroque casuistry, bourgeois conduct book, sentimental love story, moral treatise, psychological realism, and mock-heroic “comic epic in prose.” As the emerging literary “form of forms,” the early modern novel vibrantly juxtaposes and interweaves all these different generic strands. Our work together will aim at a critical analysis of the textual ideologies articulated in this experimental process of historical combination.

Texts: The required reading for this course will include most or all of the following books, which will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). (The list of texts and editions below is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in January 2022.)

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

Evaluation: Paper (50%), tests (40%), participation (10%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies).

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Prerequisite: ENGL 202 and Poetics both strongly advised, as we’ll be discussing aspects of literary history as well as analyzing poetic forms.

Description: A survey of 17^th-century poetry and prose (excluding Milton). In England, the 17^th century was a time of revolution: of social upheaval and Civil War, as well as radical changes in philosophy and science. The literature of this turbulent time is also marked by its vitality and its variety as writers experimented with new genres and forms to represent the shifting experiences of this turbulent time. In this course, we will read representative short works by writers including Jonson, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Marvell, Cowley, Lanyer, Cavendish, Philips, Bacon, Burton, and Browne. Beginning with Jonson and Donne, poets whose careers were forged in the 1590s, we will trace the development of English verse through the period of Civil War up to the Restoration. Our primary focus will be formal and literary historical, as we consider this critical period in the shaping of English literature. At the same time, we will interpret formal innovations in the context of larger social, political, and philosophical changes: urbanization, developments in science and industry, the effects of deforestation and environmental change, debates over religion and the place of women, the agitation for political reform, and, most of all, the Civil War itself.

Texts: The Broadview Anthology of 17^th Century Verse & Prose (available at McGill Bookstore.)

Other supplementary materials will be posted on myCourses.

Evaluation: Midterm (20%); 8-page term paper (40%); final exam (30%); participation (10%).

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: In this course we will survey the impressive yield of English Renaissance drama written by writers other than William Shakespeare. We will read twelve plays from the period, about one a week, including The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd), Edward II (Christopher Marlowe), Arden of Faversham (Anon), The Tragedy of Antony (Mary Sidney), The Shoemaker’s Holiday (Thomas Dekker), A Woman Killed with Kindness (Thomas Heywood), The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Francis Beaumont), A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Thomas Middleton), The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster), The Changeling (Middleton and Rowley), and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (John Ford). We will study these plays as exemplars of swiftly-changing and varied theatrical tastes in the period. Many of these works provide purviews onto the cultural situation of early modern London that are rarely found in Shakespeare’s works. An essay from this course may be nominated for the Catherine M. Shaw Early Drama Award.

Texts (available at the Word on Milton): Kinney, Arthur F. (ed). Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments. Blackwell, 2005. ISBN 978-1-4051-1967-2.

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

Format: Lecture and class discussion.

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

Description: This course introduces students to the formal and stylistic elements of poetry and prose fiction, provides them with a shared vocabulary for recognizing and analyzing different literary forms, and develops their reading, writing, and critical discussion skills.

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

Texts: 

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

Evaluation: First essay, close reading, 4 pp., 10%; second essay, comparison of poems, 5 pp., 15%; third essay, on short story, secondary research required, 6-7 pp., 15%; mid-term exam, 10% (in class); formal final examination common to all sections of Poetics, 30%; class attendance and participation, 10%; willing and effective completion of occasional short assignments, such as pop quizzes, writing exercises, scansions, and recitations, including such assignments and discussion opportunities as may be posted on the course website, 10%. This evaluation is the same for all sections of Poetics.

Format: Lecture and discussion, chiefly discussion.

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

Description: This course will offer a selective survey of drama in Quebec from the 1950s 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 tradition, contextualising them in performance and social contexts, and alert to figurations of insiders and outsiders in the dramatic corpus. A secondary focus will be minority-language dramatic output and theatrical production in Quebec in the same period, with a particular emphasis on that produced in English. This course also offers the opportunity to conduct primary-source research and analysis on under-documented, minority-language drama Quebec theatre. To this end, students will read and analyse largely unpublished plays by English-language Quebec playwrights. In addition, we will hear from theatre artists working in Montreal today in the form of guest-lectures and interviews.

Texts: Coursepack of critical and secondary readings Plays will be selected to capitalize on the theatrical offerings in Montreal in Fall 2021. However, significant texts such as the following may feature on the reading list.

• Claude Gauvreau, The Charge of the Expormidable Moose (La charge de l’orignal épormyable)
• Jovette Marchessault, Night Cows
• Michel Tremblay, Les belles-sœurs
• Collective, La nef des sorcières
• David Fennario – Balconville
• Larry Tremblay, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi
• Omari Newton, Sal Capone, The Lamentable Tragedy of
• Wajdi Mouawad, Scorched
• Evelyne de la Chenelière, Bashir Lazar
• Annabel Soutar, Seeds
• Alexis Diamond and Hubert Lemire, Faux amis

Evaluation: Participation; Posted class notes; corpus analysis; Short paper.

Format: Discussions, discussions, discussions; lectures, small, medium-sized, long; presentations / performances and other pedagogical means which can be arrived at through an exchange about possibilities.

The Greeks called him “a poet” . . . It comes of this word poiein, which is, “to make”; wherein, I know not whether by luck or wisdom we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him “a maker”: which name, how high and incomparable a title it is, I had rather were known by marking the scope of other sciences than by any partial allegation.

--Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy

Description: Sidney called poets “makers” in order to affirm “how high and incomparable” they were, but the word “maker” also suggests an artisan who labours with his hands and with other artisans in the making of objects for sale. In this course, we study “Shakespeare the Maker” in both senses of the word—the poet whose critical and creative imagination was able to see the world anew and to teach thousands of playgoers new ways of seeing, speaking, and being in the world and also the playwright who worked shoulder to shoulder with the actors, musicians, carpenters, costume makers, and others and who crafted wonderfully entertaining plays for sale in the early modern playhouse.

In the course, we read plays from the beginning, middle, and end of Shakespeare’s career as a professional playwright. We study his work in the four key dramatic genres—comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. We consider how the playhouse and the practices of performance made Shakespeare the great theatrical artist that he became, how in his turn Shakespeare made the professional theatre a big-time popular and money-making success (and the founding institution of the modern entertainment industry), and how together Shakespeare and the theatre helped transform the world.

Texts:  Shakespeare texts will be available either at Paragraph books or online.

• Titus Andronicus, ed. Jonathan Bate, Arden Shakespeare (Bloomsbury)
• Love’s Labor’s Lost, ed. Peter Holland, Pelican Shakespeare (Penguin Books)
• Richard II, ed. Anthony Dawson and Paul Yachnin (Oxford)
• As You Like It, ed. David Bevington (Broadview)
• Measure for Measure, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Oxford)
• Othello, ed Michael Neill (Oxford)
• Cymbeline, ed. Peter Holland, Pelican Shakespeare (Penguin Books)
• Henry VIII, ed. Jay Halio (Oxford)

Evaluation: 

Journal: 40%
Group presentation: 15%
Participation: 15%
Course essay (10 pages double-spaced, 3,000 words approx.): 30%

Journal: Your journal is, first of all, for you to do some thinking by writing at each step of the course. But it is also something you do for marks, so you have to write at least a page (about 350 words) about each week’s readings (and our discussions of the readings). It certainly doesn’t have to be formal like an essay. After all, it mostly for you and about your thinking, questioning, arguing. But it’s also going to be read by me, so make it reader-friendly.

Group Presentation: Members of the class will join designated groups and develop and stage group presentations (either live or by video or with some combination of the two). The group presentations will focus usually on a single scene in one of the plays on the course. The members of the group will perform the scene assigned to them and will bring critical and creative commentary to the scene.

Participation: Participation requires your vital, active presence in class and in conference. You have to come to each class with questions, ideas, puzzlement (which you have to speak about), expressions of joy or grief. It is true. It’s really true: there is no such thing as a stupid question.

Course Essay: Toward the end of the course, I will bring forward a set of essay questions for you to choose from. What you write in your course essay does not have to be original work, in the sense that it does not have to be an idea or a view that no one has thought of before. But it does have to be work that you care about, have thought a good deal about, and are keen to share with others.

Expected Student Preparation: Warning: this is a challenging course. Previous university courses in English literature, especially ENGL 202 are needed; in particular, some knowledge of Renaissance literature or culture is also desirable.

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

Description: A study of the poetry and selected prose of one of England’s most important, influential, and still controversial writers. While to many people today Milton seems the epitome of literary and political orthodoxy, in his own time he was known as a radical thinker, an advocate of regicide and divorce. His writing is complex and challenging, demanding close and active engagement from his readers. In this course we will take up his challenge to see especially how he speaks to current concerns. In the first few weeks, we look at Milton’s early poetry and some of his political writings, tracing his development as a poet in relation to his social, political, and literary context. The centre of the course will focus on a close reading of Paradise Lost. In conclusion, we will look briefly at his last works, Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, and discuss Milton’s later reputation and his place in the Western literary tradition.

Texts: (required texts are available at McGill Bookstore):

• Stella Revard ed, John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
• Barbara Lewalski, ed. John Milton: Paradise Lost (Blackwell, 2007).
• Selections from the prose: on MyCourses
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (recommended)
• King James Bible (recommended)

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

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected Preparation: Limited to students in English programs.

Description: This course will survey the emergence of theories and methodologies in philosophy and scholarship, especially in literary criticism, both from ancient intellectual models and in modern thought since the seventeenth century. As a basis for understanding and evaluating the role of “philosophical approaches” in literary and cultural studies, we will compare and contrast several kinds of critical thinking with the distinctive claims of philosophical formalism articulated influentially by Immanuel Kant. The Kantian legacy – not only its principles of moral and aesthetic autonomy and disinterestedness but also its emphasis on the conditions of knowledge and criteria of judgment – provides a powerful and continuing alternative to the nineteenth-century revival of dialectical thinking in Hegel, hermeneutics, and Marx. Our readings will reflect the far-reaching impact of the ideological opposition between the Enlightenment and Romanticism as exemplified by Kant and Hegel. We will examine the history of this opposition as a pattern of methodological assumptions and institutional practices. We will also review the claim that one literary genre in particular – the novel – embodies or expresses the characteristic philosophical problems of modernity.

Required texts: Most of the books for this course will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). The textbooks listed below will be among those required. (Please note that Pluhar’s translation of Kant is the only acceptable edition! The full list of texts and editions will be confirmed in September 2021.)

• Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, eds., Critical Theory Since Plato (edition to be discussed)
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Hackett)
• Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel (MIT)
• Gerald Graff, Professing Literature (University of Chicago)

Evaluation: Papers (80%), test (10%), participation (10%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies).

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected Preparation: This course is one of the 300-level offerings that fulfills the theory and criticism requirement for students majoring in Literature, Drama and Theatre, or Cultural Studies. It is recommended that students take this course after they have completed the introductory required courses in their stream. Students not enrolled in an English program but who are interested in cultural theory may also take the course, if space is available.

Description: This course is a survey of some recent developments in cultural theory, especially as they apply to the study of literature; film, television, and other screen media; and theatre and other modes of performance. We will focus on theoretical interventions that seek to grasp new developments in the social and cultural field; in turn, we will consider how these interventions cause us to look at the literary and cultural past with new eyes. We will situate these theoretical approaches in relation to the wider traditions of Marxist, feminist, materialist, queer, affect, trans, Indigenous, and critical race theory. The course is organized in five thematically linked units: Theories of Reading, Then and Now; Identity Now; Capitalism Now; Colonialism and Empire Now; and Climate Now. The course aims not simply to instruct the student in recent theoretical approaches to these topics, but also to encourage the practice of theoretical reflection on one’s literary and cultural encounters more generally.

Texts: These will likely include essays by Sharon Marcus, Ted Underwood, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tavia Nyong’o, Cáel M. Keegan, Annie McClanahan, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Lauren Berlant, Sianne Ngai, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Jasbir Puar, Rob Nixon, José Esteban Muñoz, and others.

Evaluation: Short responses papers and a longer final paper.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

**among the “Theory or Criticism” courses for the major in English

Description: Through an historical tour of the early years of the field of “English” (1920-1960), this course considers the genealogy of two practices long central to the field and receiving renewed cultural attention today – “close reading,” that set of practices crucial to both literary and cultural studies, and on the other, “criticism” or critical commentary (which poet T.S. Eliot once mischievously called “as inevitable as breathing”). In “English,” we still train in these two key practices, albeit in reframed versions: they are essential to the inheritance of the discipline and the “transferable skills” afforded by a degree in English. The course aims to foster greater awareness of how theorize and practice both close analysis and critical commentary.

Recently, the topic of “close reading” has been much in the cultural spotlight, as commentators in the digital humanities, neuroscience, and media theory have been reassessing our cultural reading practices, then and now. At the forefront for many commentators is the question of “how we read now.” We consider work from digital humanists such as Richard So and Hoyt Long, media theorist N. Katherine Hayles, and cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf. Hayles suggests a link between the ability to “close read” and our capacity for “deep attention” that some claim digital lives are “eroding,” even as important new approaches to reading and digital literacies are on the rise. Since 2005, close reading has also attracted considerable debate in the field of English: thinkers as diverse as Jonathan Culler, Terry Eagleton, Jane Gallop, John Guillory, and Camille Paglia all voice fears that the analytical skills it represents may be a vanishing art. Other commentators, meanwhile, ask if we are facing a comparable “death of criticism” in our social media-saturated age – at least a waning of the kind of commentary that belonged to the early twentieth century “Age of Criticism.” Others suggest that criticism has not disappeared; it’s just appearing in new forms.

This course engages such questions by revisiting the history of English as an academic field, which first emerged in the 1920s in the UK from experiments by critic I.A. Richards, whose pioneering explorations in close reading (then called “practical criticism”) provided the seedbed for the establishment of the field, in the UK and North America, the circle around the journal Scrutiny at Cambridge, by whom Marshall McLuhan was originally trained. We also consider the fabled “New Critics” in the U.S., whose association with “close reading” contributed to bringing the practice of close reading under a cloud of controversy. Through the history of what Terry Eagleton calls “the rise of English” as a field, we seek greater clarity about what it is we do when, as Eliot put it, “articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it.”

Texts: Contemporary commentary on reading practices; commentary on the history of English (e.g. Graff and Eagleton); contemporary voices on close reading (e.g. Guillory, Gallop, Paglia, Love); historical readings from Matthew Arnold, Henry James, Walter Pater, T.S. Eliot, Woolf, Cambridge critics such as I.A. Richards, F.R. and Q.D. Leavis, and William Empson; American “New Critics”; Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan).

Evaluation (subject to revision): Brief critical essays, quizzes, close reading exercises, final essay.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Prerequisites: At least two prior courses in English, such as an introductory course, survey, or poetics.

Description: This course surveys twentieth-century American novels and short stories. Although the syllabus is primarily about fiction, several non-fiction essays will also appear. We will question how American writers think of themselves and the republic, in terms of race, politics, individualism, and business. What makes an American novel? What myth sustains American identity? Why are American writers drawn to epic form and the problems of justice? In what ways do American writers critique the media and to what purpose? Writers on the left, writers on the right, writers at home and abroad will be discussed. Examples of material from nearly every decade in the twentieth century will be considered. Attention will also be paid to real estate, dating, virginity, inheritances, conspiracy theories, shopping and consumerism, language theory, romance, queerness, and other topics pertinent to the literature under discussion.

Texts:

• Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country
• Willa Cather, A Lost Lady
• Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
• Don DeLillo, Libra
• Toni Morrison, Jazz
• Stories by Ernest Hemingway, David Gates, Donald Barthelme, Walter Abish, Eudora Welty
• Essays by Rachel Carson, Joan Didion

Evaluation: Essays, attendance and participation, final exam.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected Student Preparation: Previous university-level course work in American Literature, preferably before 1900, or permission of instructor.

Description: A mid-level survey of later-19th-century prose fiction forms representing a wide range of literary movements and modes. The course will be organized to trace ever-widening geographical, literary, and cultural horizons. A first unit will explore “regionalist” or “local color” writings (by authors such as Irving, Harris, Harte, Twain, Chopin, Stowe, Jewett, Cable, Chestnutt, and Alcott) rooted in the specificity of a unique geographical place that is seen to define a unique cultural or psychological identity. The second course unit will survey classic writerly responses to the late-19th-century city—seen (in authors such as Dreiser, James, and Wharton) as a new sort of humanly-constructed, hybrid environment or economy in which diverse strangers from a variety of homes and backgrounds are brought together to work out forms of coexistence. The final unit will then follow another group of turn-of-the-century writers as they expand American horizons even further, reflecting the nation’s move into the international arena with new fictional treatments of the International Theme. Authors such as James and Wharton ground their writing in the ever-shifting experience of cross-cultural travel and meditate anxiously on the situation of the writer as “cosmopolite”--perfectly placed (or dis-placed) to explore the problems and possibilities of inter-national interchange in a modern, globalizing world.

Texts (Tentative; editions TBA): To be selected from authors noted in the description above. Readings will include not only short stories but also several longer novels; the amount of assigned reading will be fairly substantial—especially at the end of the semester.

• Coursepack—a collection of short stories.
• Alcott, Little Women;
• Dreiser, Sister Carrie;
• Wharton, The Age of Innocence;
• Baym, ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature (8th ed., Vol. C).

Evaluation (tentative): 25% mid-term exam; 25% term paper; 10% class attendance and participation; 40% formal final exam. (NB: All forms of evaluation in this course—on exams as well as essays—test abilities in literary-critical writing and analysis; there will be no short-answer or multiple-choice exams graded by computer.)

Format: Lectures and discussion sections.

Expected student preparation: Because substantial attention will be paid to developments of poetic form and style, the material of this course is directed chiefly to English Literature majors who have completed the required Poetics course (ENGL 311) in the English department. Students in other English department programs who have completed their relevant Poetics course are also welcome but should be prepared for the literary focus and methods of this course. Students in other departments must have my permission to register. Please communicate with me at once if you are registered for this course but not in an English department program.

Description: A survey of the development of Canadian poetry from the nineteenth century to the Second World War. We will read more than a dozen poets in their period contexts and in relation to major themes and formal innovations that have particularly preoccupied Canadian writers. We will be attentive to developments of form, structure, and style in early and modern Canadian poetry, and we will situate Canadian poetic practice in the contexts of Anglo-American poetry within which it emerged. This means, though our readings will not be arranged strictly chronologically, that we will also study the periods of English-language writing—Romantic, Victorian, and modernist—in relation to which our authors envisioned their unique Canadian projects.

Texts:

• Gerson, Carole, and Gwendolyn Davies, eds. Canadian Poetry: From the Beginnings through the First World War. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart [New Canadian Library], 2010.
• Trehearne, Brian, ed. Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart [New Canadian Library], 2010.

Evaluation: Depending on class size, either 1 essay, 8 pp.,, 30%; mid-term, 20%; final examination, 40%; or 2 essays, 5 and 8 pp., 20% and 30%; final examination, 40%. In either case add: participation in class discussion, 10%.

Please note before registering for this course: I assess active participation in discussion and not attendance. Full attendance through the semester without speaking will earn 0/10 in this category and substantially affect your final grade.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected Student Preparation: Familiarity with literary analysis.

Description: This course explores how prominent Nineteenth-Century novelists opened and closed their complex narratives. We will analyze how opening gambits and end moves engage and challenge the cultural expectations of their era in terms of social manners and literary conventions such as genres. We will compare sets of works by the same author to reflect on how and why they handle social and literary problems differently in divergent instances. This method of analysis will draw us more actively into the world of the Nineteenth-Century English novel, sharpening the tools that we use when we talk about nuanced and complex literary productions.

Texts: 

• Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion & Sanditon by Jane Austen
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
• Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
• Critical studies by Elizabeth Ermarth, Northrop Frye and E. M. Forster

Evaluation:

Class participation and attendance (15%);
3 short essays 20% x3 (60%);
Final essay (25%).

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: At the end of the eighteenth century, London was the largest city in Europe with a population of one million. The urban heart of the rapidly expanding British Empire and the Industrial Revolution, London was an economic powerhouse connecting peoples of the globe. This era, known as the early Romantic period, was a turbulent one of revolution and social upheaval, and the writers of this time were deeply concerned with issues of wealth disparity, political corruption, gender inequality, and the ongoing slave trade. As they grappled with these complex issues, they experimented aggressively with form and style, mixing old genres and creating new ones. With a focus on women, BIPOC, and other marginalized writers, we will read and discuss a wide range of representative literature from the period including samples of poetry, plays, prose, novels, and short stories. The course will end with a discussion of modern imaginings of the era including Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix series Bridgerton (2020) and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton (2015). Students may choose to write about such pieces in their final essay.

Texts:

• Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects (1773)
• Elizabeth Inchbald, Lovers’ Vows (1798)
• Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
• Maria Edgeworth, “The Purple Jar” (1796)
• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787)

Evaluation (tentative): Participation 10%; 18th c. journal assignment 20%; Midterm exam 30%; Final essay 40%.

Format: Lecture, discussion, group work.

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

Description: This is a course about really reading poetry, in this case, Canadian poetry. It focuses on a group of approximately ten Canadian poets who have formed and responded to the Canadian literary landscape since World War II. Most of the poets covered in the course are writers who confront modern and contemporary ideas about the nature of self, society, sexuality, gender, and art, but we also look at the ways in which these writers are trying to deal with the existential implications of new views about science, religion, and the poet’s place in a rapidly changing world. Since part of the reading involves thinking about aesthetic and theoretical issues, the course will deal with these issues, just as it will pay close attention to the meaning and resonance of particular poems. At the same time, it will consider the ways in which these poets (and us, as readers) construct the place called Canada as a metaphor that’s central to our daily lives. Students are encouraged to explore multi-media material related to each poet in question. The writing component of the course (frequent short essays but no term papers or exams) is designed to improve interpretive abilities and to encourage creative forms of critical expression. For this reason, this course will appeal to students who wish to broaden their understanding of poetry in general and will provide new ways of thinking about how poetry works. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to write short essays on a weekly basis, and to participate actively in class discussion.

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

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

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: The achievements of English poets in the second half of the nineteenth century were prodigious. In Aurora Leigh, the first epic by a woman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning recast the vocation of the poet in modern terms. Robert Browning developed the dramatic monologue to an extent that redefined the genre for subsequent writers. Alfred, Lord Tennyson analyzed despair and its corruption of the public sphere in his epic retelling of the legend of King Arthur. Pre-Raphaelitism, a new movement linking poetry and visual art, came to the fore in Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his sister, Christina, and their circle. The purpose of this course is to delve deeper into Victorian poetry than the samplings of the typical general anthology permit, in order to discover the tumultuous social issues with which British poets grappled between 1850 and 1900, as well as their influential decisions about the ancient art of poetry and its techniques. Emphasis will fall on the authors named above – on theme, metre, and form in their major works, as well as on their lives, careers, and experiences with the publishing industry. We will also have occasion to discuss their writing during the high tide of British imperialism, comparing them to Canadian writers of the same period, such as Charles Sangster. Through extensive first-hand engagement with the primary works, students will acquire a rich and complex knowledge of the excellent poetry that lies between romanticism and modernism.

Texts:

• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems, ed. John Robert Glorney Bolton and Julia Bolton Holloway (Penguin Classics)
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, ed. J.M. Gray (Penguin Classics)
• Robert Browning, Robert Browning’s Poetry, ed. James F. Loucks and Andrew M. Stauffer (Norton)
• Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems, ed. Candace Ward (Dover)
• Charles Sangster, The St. Lawrence and the Saguenay and Other Poems; Hesperus and Other Poems and Lyrics, ed. Gordon Johnston (University of Toronto Press)
• Shorter primary readings and secondary sources (TBA)

Evaluation: Quizzes; essays; participation.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Prerequisite: Students should have 2 or 3 prior courses in English literature, preferably survey and poetics.

Description: This course will focus on British fiction written between the Second World War and the end of the twentieth century. This survey of selected novels will focus on class, the Welfare State, responses to the war, housing, planning, conceptions of the future, the status of children and refugees, evil, women, gender, the decline of imperialism, sexuality, and fictional technique. Generic conventions of comedy and tragedy as they mix with novelistic representation will inform lectures, as will distinctions between mass-market and highbrow fiction.

Texts:

• Ivy Compton-Burnett, Manservant and Maidservant
• Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
• Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
• Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
• John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn
• Hilary Mantel Fludd

Evaluation: Essays, attendance and participation, final exam.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: This course aims to be an intensive introduction to the study of Old English, the earliest form of the English language. We will begin with the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language (that is, basic grammar, which is necessary but not necessarily painful), and advance to the reading of selected texts in prose and poetry.

The aim is to give students a grounding in the language to enable them to read works in the original. Along the way, we will look at some of the history of the English language, how it works as a language, and how it has changed and developed. This may offer some insights into the structure and workings of present-day English. Classes will be devoted at first to grammar and translation, but we will also be examining representations and interpretations of Anglo-Saxon literature through the reading and translating of the texts.

Throughout the course, we will be doing translation exercises and tests. Many of the exercises will be done in class, so attendance is important. We will ‘workshop’ translations through an analysis of the grammar and vocabulary, and eventually discuss possible interpretations of the texts. The course culminates in a reading of one of the finest poems in the English language, regardless of period, The Wanderer, and a translation project with a short essay component.

Text: An Introduction to Old English, by Peter Baker. 3rd. edition. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Inc., 2003; 2011.

Evaluation: Class tests 35%; homework and exercises 35%; final translation project 20%; attendance and participation 10%.

Format: Lecture, workshop, discussion.

Description: The course will study the rise of science fiction and the relationship between literature, science, and technology during the long nineteenth century. This period’s fictional experiments and scientific romances famously engage the invention of modern geology, the rise of evolutionary discourse, and the institution of new industrial technologies. Our diverse investigations of the changing relationship between literature and science during the age of empire will encompass mad doctors, reanimated bodies, lost worlds, two-dimensional universes, and artificial people. This course seeks to account for the historical relations between the era’s new scientific paradigms, technologies, and theories and laboring-class, feminized, and non-Western bodies.

Instead of understanding the scientific and the literary as separate spheres, however, we will trace their mutual construction in the face of increasing disciplinary differentiation. This course will necessarily reflect on the relationship between scientific and literary forms, interrogating the professionalization of science and rise of new universalizing discourses of subjectivity and objectivity. While our discussions will encompass the relationship between Victorian debates about vivisection, degeneration, taxonomy, and progress in an increasingly global world, they will also examine prior Romantic concepts of vitalism, suspended animation, monstrosity, and organic form.

Our discussions will trace and reevaluate the origins of science fiction and its generic relatives: utopian fiction, adventure fiction, gothic literature, the weird tale, and the scientific romance. We will also probe nineteenth-century anticipations of present-day insights and interventions in science and technology studies and feminist science studies. These early literary experiments offer visions of what Darko Suvin terms the simultaneous experience of “estrangement and cognition” and what Sherryl Vint calls the imagination of “possible future selves.” Early science fiction collectively redefines the borderlines between nature and culture, experimenter and experiment, body and machine, self and other, and here and elsewhere. Together, we will attempt to map the contested ground of the nineteenth century’s alternative visions of scientific community and practice, exploring what counts as science and who defines the role of the scientist.

Texts: TBA, but will include selections from Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W. E. B. Du Bois, and others.

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: This course offers an introduction to literature written by Asians living in North America. We first cover canonical works of Asian American literature from the 1970 to 1990 period, including texts by Maxine Hong Kingston and Frank Chin. We then next cover examples of Asian American and Asian Canadian literature from before 1970 – widely regarded as the “early” period of this literature – to examine articulations of Asian-ness in North America before its codification as a formal social and cultural category. Then, we look at more contemporary expressions of this literature: in the 1990s “multicultural moment” (Native Speaker); its diasporic iteration, particularly for South Asian American authors; its Canadian iteration, looking at Joy Kogawa’s major novel Obasan; and finally, in our current moment of “post-race,” considering what does it mean to even “write” as an “Asian American” or “Asian Canadian.” Broadly, we will consider themes and issues of immigration, hyphenated identity, transnationalism, and cultural citizenship. The course focuses on fiction but will also cover examples of poetry, non-fiction and memoir, drama, and graphic novels.

Texts:

• Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior;
• Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker;
• Joy Kogawa, Obasan;
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies;
• Adrian Tomine, Shortcomings

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: The material forms and circumstances of texts fundamentally affect their meaning. This premise underlies the history of the book, a field of theoretical and historical scholarship aimed at understanding the material circulation of ideas in society, in connection with technology, economics, and culture. If the book is not only a vessel of ideas but also a thing of industrial manufacture that is marketed and consumed, then knowledge of the book industry and of the forces that influence it is essential to literary interpretation. In this course we will survey defining contributions to book history by W.W. Greg, D.F. McKenzie, Pierre Bourdieu, and others, highlighting five theoretical approaches: (i) bibliography and scholarly editing, (ii) the history of copyright and publishing, (iii) studies of authors, authorship, and authority, (iv) sociology and cultural studies, and (v) studies of reception and censorship. We will apply these approaches to three case studies drawn from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canadian literature (Susanna Moodie, Anne Marriott, and Margaret Laurence). What factors shaped their creativity? How did they become best-selling authors and figures of public significance? Readings from industry commentators, Roy MacSkimming and Elaine Dewar, will deepen our knowledge of Canadian publishing. Students will write critical responses to secondary readings and a research essay on the material and social forms of the Canadian novel. In sum, the goal of the course is to learn a major theoretical approach to literary scholarship, and the principal examples will be Canadian.

Texts:

• Michelle Levy and Tom Mole, eds. The Broadview Reader in Book History (Broadview)
• Susanna Moodie. Roughing It in the Bush (excerpts)
• Anne Marriott. The Wind Our Enemy
• Margaret Laurence.  The Diviners

Evaluation: Summaries of secondary readings; research essay; final exam; participation.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: While concentrating on the major texts of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid in attractive modern translations, we will consider their role in the literary history of western Europe, especially England, up to and including the eighteenth century. The course will thus survey the development of classical myth, mythography, allegory, epic, and literary theory from Homer to Addison. It will provide an effective base of knowledge for reading literature that draws on such contexts, and for appreciating corresponding shifts in literary history and in the roles of myth in western culture.

If you have already taken ENGL 347 (Great Writings of Europe I) as a different course under that number, you may still take this course, but will need to see me in the first or second week of classes so I can arrange your enrolment.

The Course Reader and other texts will be available in paperback for purchase at the Word bookstore, 469 Milton Street, 845-5640.

Texts:

• Ÿ Homer, Iliad, Fagles translation
• Ÿ Homer, Odyssey, Lattimore translation
• Ÿ Virgil, Aeneid, Fitzgerald translation
• Ÿ Ovid, Metamorphoses, Mandelbaum translation
• Ÿ Supplementary Course Reader

Evaluation: Term paper, 50%; take-home final exam, 40%; class attendance and participation, 10%.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: The Arthurian legends grew to become an extremely rich and diverse body of literature by the later Middle Ages, and the idea of Arthur continues to fascinate today. Having emerged in the fifth and sixth centuries, tales about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have since spread across six continents and dozens of languages. They have inspired fictional stories, blockbuster movies, and historical study internationally. Further, they touch upon many fields of study including literature, history, and archaeology. Our goal in this course is to examine this phenomenon as it developed in the medieval period (to ca. 1500) and explore some of the reasons why the Arthurian legends have become so integral to multi-cultural and interdisciplinary pursuits.

Over the course of the semester, we will engage the Arthurian legends by investigating how their central themes, figures, and literary situations change across different linguistic and cultural traditions and periods. Where is the line between fact and fiction in Arthurian legends? What constitutes an Arthurian legend? Why do the legends occupy such an important place in the literary and cultural imaginations of medieval writers and readers? How and why are medieval notions of “courtly love” and “chivalry,” as exhibited in the Arthurian legends, important to readers in later social and historical contexts? How are Arthurian stories rewritten or adapted by various authors, and how do these different texts represent the concerns or preoccupations of different historical moments?

We will read most texts in modern English translation, though some will be read in the original Middle English. Prior experience with Middle English is not mandatory or expected, and regular practice with the language will be included in many class sessions.

Texts (provisional):

• Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (selections)
• Wace, Roman de Brut
• Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (incl. Chrétien’s influential Lancelot and grail romances)
• Marie de France, Lais
• Thomas of Britain, Tristan
• Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival
• Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (selections)
• Contextual readings and short romances from other traditions

Evaluation: Mid-term exam, 25%; final exam, 35%; short essays, 30%; participation and attendance, 10%.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected Preparation: This course is intended for students in the Drama and Theatre stream who have completed ENGL 230: Introduction to Theatre Studies. It is to be taken in the Winter term of U1 or in the first Winter term after the student’s selection of the Drama and Theatre major or minor program. For Drama and Theatre majors, this is a required course.

Description: This course has three interrelated goals. First, it introduces students to the formal and stylistic elements of drama, theatre, and performance in a global context. How do drama (as a work of imaginative literature) and theatre (as a live, time-based performance) communicate to readers and audiences? By what technical, stylistic, and affective means do they make meaning? Second, the course offers instruction in a range of critical approaches to interpreting and analysing dramatic texts and live performance – that is, both text-based and image-based works of theatre. Finally, the Poetics of Performance explores issues and debates that have structured theatre and performance practice and scholarship from Ancient Egyptian processional performance and African ‘total theatre’ to the ‘new dramaturgy’ of post-dramatic theatre. Indigenous dramaturgy, Black acting methods, and major European artistic statements of the 20th century will anchor the second half of the course.

Students must come to class prepared with all of the assigned reading and will be expected to participate verbally in class on a weekly basis. By collectively interpreting samples plays and performances in class, and in debating the readings of each unit, we will build a concrete, shared, discipline-specific vocabulary and sets of analytical practices for the interpretation of the dramatic text and the theatrical event. In this way, this required course for Drama and Theatre majors, prepares Drama and Theatre students for all other courses in the stream.

Texts: a course-pack of readings in dramatic and performance theory including texts in aesthetics, staging, reception, semiotics, phenomenology, narratology, dramaturgy, reading the body, structuralism and post-structuralism, and more.

Recommended texts: Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms Concepts, and Analysis. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998; Paul Alain and Jen Harvie, The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance. New York: Routledge, 2006

Evaluation: In-class participation; short, critical interpretation papers; group project; final take-home exam.

Format: Lectures, group discussions, in-class close-reading and analytical exercises.

Description: England in the fifteenth century saw a flourishing of dramatic and theatrical production, though this activity—some of it only known from late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts—had a longer history in England and on the European continent. Productions ranged from court tableaux to elaborate communal pageants held in large cultural centers and even smaller communities, and in many cases people would gather seasonally from entire regions to witness these spectacles. Evidence survives of travelling companies of players, some of them attracting a significant following, though the identities of few of the playwrights have come down to us. Students in this class will read medieval “mystery” and Passion plays, liturgical dramas, political pageantry, court mummings and entertainments, and a number of contextual readings. The approach will be literary-historical, with attention to the circumstances of performance and reception, manuscript contexts of the surviving texts, and readings of the texts as literary works that provide social, political, and religious commentary. All texts will be read in the original Middle English. Prior experience with Middle English is not mandatory or expected, and regular practice with the language will be included in many class sessions.

Texts (provisional):

Selections from the following cycles/compilations: the Chester cycle; the N-Town plays; the York Corpus Christi play; the Towneley pageants

Other readings will include:

• Richard Maidstone, Concordia
• John Lydgate, Mummings and Entertainments
• The Somonyng of Everyman
• The Croxton Play of the Sacrament
• The Wycliffite “Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge”

Evaluation:

Mid-term exam: 25%
Final exam: 35%
Short essays: 30%
Participation and attendance: 10%

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Expected Preparation: This course is intended for students in the Cultural Studies stream. It is a required course for Cultural Studies majors, and should be ideally taken in the term after the student has taken Introduction to Film Studies and Introduction to Cultural Studies, although this timeline is not required. This course can also potentially count towards the World Cinema minor, provided that the student has not taken too many other courses in the English department.

Description: This course is designed to teach students how to meaningfully close read image-based cultural texts. Using multiple strategies of visual analysis, students will learn how to perform perceptive, informed, and medium-specific interpretations of both still and moving images. Focusing our critical lens on some of the most innovative photography and film texts of the last century, we will study the nuances of composition, color, mise-en-scène, framing, camera movement, editing and sound. Paying close attention to the ways in which visual style creates meaning, students will learn to look beyond narrative and dialogue in order to understand both the semiotics and poetics of the image. In addition to numerous close-reading exercises, we will be supplementing our investigation of images with several classical texts by theorists such as John Berger, Roland Barthes, Andre Bazin, Sergei Eisenstein, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Stan Brakhage, and Maya Deren. Students must come to class having completed all of the assigned reading and will be expected to participate verbally in class on a weekly basis.

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

Art and films by:

• Andy Warhol
• Cindy Sherman
• Dorothea Lange
• Hollis Frampton
• Chris Marker
• Paul Mpagi Sepuya
• Jean-Luc Godard
• Sergei Eisenstein
• Ingmar Bergman
• Carl Theodor Dreyer
• Maya Deren
• Stan Brakhage
• Yoko Ono
• Barbara Hammer

Texts: A course pack of readings available on myCourses, as well as the following books: John Berger, Ways of Seeing; Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Older versions of these texts may be used.

Evaluation: Engaged in-class participation; one 2-page (diagnostic) essay; two 5-page sequence analyses.

Format: Two lectures/ discussions per week, one mandatory screening per week, and occasional writing workshops led in additional conference time with the Teaching Assistant.

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

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

Texts: Terry Eagleton – Literary Theory: An Introduction

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: Following the historical development of image technologies from proto-cinematic devices to the post-cinematic media constellation comprising video games, Virtual Reality etc., this course will map out the aesthetic tenets of speculations on cinema’s future. Diverse in their technological presumptions (e.g., immersive, interactive and polysensory) these projections ultimately converge in a utopian model: cinema as an autonomous and immediate interface configured according to the bodily conditions of the viewer. Therefore the recurrent topic of “future cinema” will serve as a conceptual framework to investigate the visual paradigm where the corporeal subjectivity of the observer becomes the active producer of optical experience. Each week will focus on a particular technology (stereoscopic 3D, VR, video games etc.) once posited to be the future cinema and redefine the position of the medium of cinema within the contemporary media landscape.

Screenings (list is subject to change):

• ORA (Canada, Philippe Baylaucq, 2011)
• Avatar (USA, James Cameron, 2010)
• Selected VR works from Felix and Paul Studios.
• Pina (Germany, Wim Wenders 2011)
• Film Before Film (Germany, Werner Nekes, 1986)

Texts:

• Crary, Jonathan. “Techniques of the Observer.” October 45 (1988): 3–35.
• Hansen, Mark B. N. “Between Body and Image: On the ‘Newness’ of New Media Art.” In New Philosophy for New Media
• McLuhan, Marshall, and W. Terrence Gordon. “The Medium Is the Message.” In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man : Critical Edition, Critical edition., 7–23. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003.
• Wade, Nicholas J. “Capturing Motion and Depth Before Cinematography.” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 25, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 3–22.
• Eisenstein, Sergei. “On Stereocinema.” In 3D CINEMA AND BEYOND. Public. Toronto; Bristol; Chicago: Intellect Ltd, 2014.
• Bazin, André. “CINERAMA AND 3D.” In Andre Bazin’s New Media, edited by Dudley Andrew, 215–67. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2014.
• Hayles, N. Katherine. “Boundary Disputes: Homeostasis, Reflexivity, and the Foundations of Cybernetics.” Configurations 2, no. 3 (September 1, 1994): 441–67.
• Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. “Virtual Reality.” In Remediation: Understanding New Media, Revised ed. edition., 160–68. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2000.

Evaluation:

Future Cinema Prototype 30%
Synthesis Paper 15%
Final Assignment Proposal 10%
Final Assignment 45%

Expected Preparation: Permission of the instructor required for registration.
All applicants welcome, although priority will be given to Drama & Theatre Majors and Minors. It is possible to add a Drama & Theatre Minor to an existing Major or Minor in another Department.

Description: The course focuses on learning basic costuming skills, and does so in two ways.

1. Eco Fashion - Experiencing the design process from conception to confection through the lens of sustainability.
2. Costuming Practice - Learning the skills needed to costume the Department of English, Moyse Hall Production.

Eco Fashion: Costuming is part of the larger garment industry, which includes the fashion industry. The garment industry is understood to be one of the worst polluters in the world. Our class starts by analyzing current practices in the garment industry in order to assess their environmental and social impact. Through research, we begin by identifying the specific aspects of textile and garment production that cause the most harm to the environment. It is not enough to generalize about problematic practices – our aim is to understand specifics, and by understanding causes, we can then study best practices and propose positive actions.

To pair our research with practice, each student will design and produce eco friendly “zero waste” clothing. The class begins with research on best and worst practices, and then moves into the design and conceptualization phase. Sourcing of repurposed materials follows, and segues into the garment construction and fitting phase.

Eco Fashion Projects:

• projects may include making and/or transforming garments and accessories using eco friendly sources and methods. This includes styling, fittings, alterations, and confection of garments, accessories and other details.
• It is possible to include existing fashion basics (such as black leggings and plain t-shirts) to augment a constructed garment for the purpose of styling a complete outfit.
• Materials used must be responsibly sourced – the class will decide together upon the ethical parameters. No purchase of new materials is permitted.
• Garments made for this project are assessed in terms of long term viability – solid construction techniques, good fit and functionality. Fast fashion is discouraged.
• One of the goals of the course is sewing skills advancement; therefore, starting skill level has no impact on overall performance in the class. Each student is encouraged to leap forward from his or her own individual starting point.

Costuming Practice - Learning the skills needed to costume a production. At the time of writing this syllabus, the script and production style for the Department of English, Moyse Hall Production for Fall 2021 have not yet been finalized. Once these details are confirmed, the exact nature of this learning module will be elaborated upon. The production team at Moyse Hall is committed to maintaining a safe environment for students, staff, and audience members alike. Please feel free to email the instructor for updates on this evolving situation.

Texts: 

• (Recommended) Karpova, Elena, and Sara B. Marcketti. The Dangers of Fashion: towards Ethical and Sustainable Solutions. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.
• Play script TBD.

Evaluation: TBD, but will include hands-in projects, and a short oral presentation on the ecological impact of the fashion industry.

Format: Lectures (in person or through zoom, as appropriate), hands on projects, demonstrations, and practical work. Additional hours outside of class time are required in order to build skills demonstrated in class, and to complete the hands on projects. Depending on circumstances, these hours may take place in the costume atelier, or at home.

Class size: Ten students, by permission of the instructor. Priority given to D&T Majors and Minors.

Equipment:

• Required: Sewing kit consisting of thimble, fabric scissors, stitch ripper, one package of needles, one box of dressmaking pins, a pencil and notepad.
• Optional: Those who feel that they will benefit from a more complete sewing kit are welcome to add a measuring tape, pin cushion, a few metal pushpins, a tracing wheel, tailoring wax (white is most useful), needle nosed pliers, inexpensive paper scissors and a small sharp pair of fabric scissors for trimming and clipping.
• Optional: Depending on circumstances, it may be useful to have a sewing machine at home, but this is not a course requirement.

Description: TBA

Format: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Expected Student Preparation: Priority will be given to Drama and Theatre majors and minors; ideally students enrolled in this course will have already taken ENGL 230 Introduction to Theatre Studies.

Description: An overview of dramatic forms and theatrical practice in Britain from the Restoration through the eighteenth century to the Romantic period (c. 1660-1843). The course is divided into four chronological units encompassing the reopening of the professional theatre and the advent of the professional actress, the rise of morality and sentiment in drama, the age of Garrick and the professionalisation of theatre, and the development of stage spectacle. Each unit will cover the theatrical conditions of the period and will examine a representative play staged at the time. Emphasis is placed on the plays as theatrical works rather than literary texts. Students will be asked to conceptualise performances of the plays as they might have taken place in the long eighteenth century and to consider how these plays might have been performed and received at the time they were written. We will also analyse historical documents to explore themes such as genre, acting style, audience experience, theatre architecture, financial practices, regulation of the stage, and company management. We will visit McGill Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections (in person or virtually) to complete a series of hands-on workshops and assignments with a collection of playbills from the period. This will allow us to deepen our understanding of eighteenth-century theatre through the study of print culture.

Texts: Peter Thomson, The Cambridge Introduction to English Theatre, 1660-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); a selection of representative plays (tentative): Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677); Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722); David Garrick and George Colman the Elder, The Clandestine Marriage (1766); Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Pizarro (1799); historical documents to provide context.

Evaluation (tentative): Participation 10%; production proposal assignment 20%; series of playbill assignments 30%; take home final exam 40%.

Format: Lecture, discussion, group work, work with rare books and special collections.

Note: Students who have taken ENGL 371 previously, with a different topic, may take ENGL 371 again for credit with the signature of a Department of English advisor.

Description: This course explores representations and constructions of U.S. national identity in nineteenth and twentieth century popular theatre and entertainments. As the nation experienced industrialization, urbanization, immigration, changing sexual and gender norms, and violent cultural and racial encounters, popular entertainments attracted mass audiences and created spectacles of national inclusion and ‘othering.’ Units address the following themes and forms: racial and reform melodramas; antebellum and post-Emancipation stagings of race (including blackface minstrelsy and abolitionist performances); frontier spectacles (such as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West); freak shows and penny museums; popular dance and vaudeville; imperialism and world’s fairs; and the Jazz Age. Through discussions and lectures, we will consider the place of the “popular” – in its classed, ethnic, racial, gendered, erotic, commercial, and hegemonic valences – in forging styles of U.S. citizenship and belonging that persist to the current day, albeit often in camouflage.

Texts:

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

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

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: TBA

Format: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Expected Student Preparation: Prior film or television studies is advantageous but not required. Students are asked to see Sunset Boulevard before the first class.

Description: No decade in American history attracts a stranger combination of nostalgia and disgust. Indeed, no decade in American history is more peculiarly American—more attached to the prevailing stereotypes of naive affluence, cynical arrogance, and reckless enthusiasm, not to say hula hoops, malted milks, and Elvis Presley. In this course we will dive headlong into the maw of the fifties beast, with all the suburbs, commercialism, and Cold War paranoia that entails. But our method of comparative media and genre studies will also seek out gaps in that old fifties picture. As an aging and blacklist-ravaged film industry confronts an upstart television culture in search of definition—as film noir rots, the Western peaks, and science fiction surges—we will increasingly seek not just the sleek surfaces of the fifties cliché, but the churning history of our own present.

Possible films include: Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar, Glen or Glenda?, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Shadows, and The Apartment.

Possible shows include: I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and Perry Mason.

Note: As stated above, all students are asked to see Sunset Boulevard before the first class.

Texts: A coursepack.

Evaluation: Quizzes, posted course notes, short assignments, term project, participation.

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Note: The course title in the calendar is “Interpretation of the Dramatic Text” but this doesn’t accurately express the course content. The course is heavily dependent on improvisation, not text. Please read below for clarification.

Description: This course is an opportunity for students to act in simulations for the Social Work, Couples and Family Therapy (CAFT) Program. You will be acting as clients coming to simulated therapy sessions either in a couple or as part of a family. This course offers you a great opportunity to do long form improvisation and to help therapists in training.

Requirements:

• Experience as an Actor.
• Experience with improvisation.
• Drama and Theatre Major or Minor and/or permission of instructor.

Activities and Evaluation:

• Class simulations, 1 hour per week: 65%
• Improvisations, rehearsals and planning, 2 hours per week: 25%
• Journals: 10%

Application Procedure: Written Application and participation in a Zoom Entrance Workshop in April. Information on the workshop will be sent to you after you submit your application, which you should do as soon as possible.

Submit answers to the following questions to myrna.wyatt.selkirk [at] mcgill.ca.
Subject Heading of your e-mail: ENGL 375 Application. In your application please use both the number and subject for each response:

1. Acting Experience:
2. Improvisation Experience:
3. Theatre courses taken at McGill or elsewhere:
4. Any other relevant experience:
5. Other things we should know about you:
6. Expected year of graduation and Major(s) and Minor(s):
7. Have you taken ENGL 230? ENGL 269?
8. What will you bring to this course? This can expand on numbers 4 and 5 above. Discuss special attributes and personality traits. Talk about your ability as a collaborator.
9. What do you hope to get out of this course? Why is it of special interest to you?

Expected Preparation: Permission of the instructor required for registration.
All applicants welcome, although priority will be given to Drama & Theatre Majors and Minors. It is possible to add a Drama & Theatre Minor to an existing Major or Minor in another Department.

Please note: In Winter 2021 the course is designed specifically for online delivery, and provides different opportunities from the version of ENGL377 taught in the atelier. The Winter 2021 course focuses specifically on costume design, whereas the atelier version of the course includes sewing and costume production. Since the course content is significantly different, it is possible to take both versions of ENGL377 in subsequent years. The two versions of ENGL377 will complement each other, and provide students with different opportunities.

Description: Emphasis is on costume design for the theatre, and the development of the various tools and tricks used to communicate design concepts. Weekly design modules focuses on tools such as script analysis, colour palette, developing a design concept, transformation of characters, design stylization - all focused on the creation of original costume designs.

The concepts covered in class will be practiced by students in weekly skill building exercises, culminating in individual final projects. Students will work from home on creative exercises using the supplies that they have on hand. The main communication tool is sketching, using each student’s medium of choice, such as water colour paints, design markers, coloured pencils, or digital tools. It is not critical to be proficient at sketching – it is more important to have creative ideas and the motivation to communicate visually, but also verbally, and in written form.

The various homework exercises and projects will take a steady amount of time throughout the semester, and culminate in a final project.

Learning outcomes – by the end of the class students will have the opportunity to:

• Interpret a director's vision to create a design concept
• Create original costume designs
• Use colour to portray character affiliations, mood, symbolism, plot points
• Envision the environmental, social, and hierarchical elements that inform costume design
• Plan costume flow, taking into account multiple roles, quick changes, and available resources
• Work in a collaborative team environment
• Understand theatrical practice in terms of interdepartmental collaboration
• Increase creative and visual communication skills
• Practice integrity as a designer by crediting sources
• Explore creative mediums

Texts:

1. Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare – any version
2. Free choice – sci-fi or fantasy novel or short story for Future & Fantasy Worlds project
3. Free choice – play script for Final Costume Design project

Evaluation:

Weekly at-home exercises - 50%.
Participation – 10%
Final project – Independent costume design which integrates all learning modules into one final creative endeavour. The assignment is based on a script of the student’s own choosing. The project is comprised of the following components: Script analysis, Scene breakdown, Design concept statement, Colour palette, Costume sketches. 30%

Format: Lectures, demonstrations, collaborative learning processes, and at-home artistic exercises.

Enrollment: 10 students, by permission of the Instructor.

Art Supplies:

Important note: any or all art supplies can be replaced by the use of a graphics program and stylus if you prefer to work digitally and have your own program. If not:

• One or more medium for applying the full spectrum of colour. Any of the following will work. More than one option can be fun, but is not required.
  • Fine tip black rollerball pen or other medium for making a thin black outline
  • Water colour paints + a small tube of white + brushes
  • Watercolour pencils + brushes
  • Design markers - optimally 24 colours
  • Pastels
  • Coloured pencils - better quality coloured pencils will produce more intense colours, but any will work
  • Glue stick - optional
• Paper or cardboard or art boards or other surface to apply colour to. The surface should be suitable to the medium that you intend to apply, for instance a watercolour block pad is useful if you intend to use watercolours. Any pads of paper and loose ends that you have access to will be fine.
• A sketch pad for jotting ideas - no specific quality requirement, dollar store will be fine.

*Please do not feel the need to invest a lot of money in art supplies if you do not plan to continue using them after the course is over.

Please note: this course description is subject to change.

Description: This course offers an introduction to Canadian Inuit, Métis and First Nations literature. Video and film will be discussed to a limited extent. It should be clear that the course is only an introduction because Canada is a very vast and varied country with over 600 different First Nations tribes, 4 distinct Inuit regions and several Métis groups who all have different traditions, often different languages and quite different histories.

We will look at works in English, either original or translated.

The course will look at oral literature, storytelling and legends handed down through generations as well as contemporary “collaborative life stories”, novels, and essays. Examples of productions in television and film are included.

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

Texts:

Inuit:

• Wachovich: Saqiyuq
• Excerpts from Voices and Images of Nunavimmiut volume 1. Edited by Stenbaek and Grey
• Legends, handed out in class.
• Website www.inuitfirstcanadians.wordpress.com

Métis:

• Maria Campbell: Half-Breed

First Nations:

• Richard Wagamese: Indian Horse.

Some articles will be posted.

The books are available at the Paragraphe bookstore or you may be able to find them second-hand.

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lecture and discussion.

Description: This course will introduce students to the film and television produced and distributed under the name of Alfred Hitchcock. Not content to rediscover the man’s genius, we will instead seek to understand his success in cultural terms, including his importance for feminist and queer film theory. The premise will be that Hitchcock’s cinema of suspense probes fault lines of modernity, testing for prospects of hospitality.

Texts: Tania Modleski The Women Who Knew Too Much

and a coursepack

Evaluation: Quizzes, posted class notes, short assignments, term project, participation.

Format: Lectures and conferences.

Description: Solitude is paradoxical: we are at once alone, capable of contemplation, and we are in the world of others. This course looks at the fictional treatment of characters who negotiate their solitude, their sense of self and their relation to other people and cultural and social markers. We will find metaphors of belonging – and its failures – and ask questions of what it means to know another and to know one’s self.

Texts (tentative): books or selections from –

• The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison
• Make it Scream, Make it Burn, Leslie Jamison
• Enigma Variations, André Aciman
• Knots, Gunnhild Øyehaug
• Seeking Rapture: Scenes from a Woman’s Life, Kathryn Harrison
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
• How to Pronounce Knife, Souvankham Thammavongsa

Films (tentative):

• Arrival (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
• Hiroshima Mon Amour (dir. Alain Resnais)
• Paris Texas (dir. Wim Wenders)
• Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins)
• Cold War (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski)
• In Treatment (HBO)

Evaluation (tentative): 20% weekly short responses (250 words each; 10 @ 2% each); 80% two short essays (c. 2000 words each; 40% each)

Format: Lecture, discussion, screenings.

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

The course will look at the development right from the start of the advent of satellite communications and ANIK in Canada. The early experiments and policy considerations. The establishment of The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation. The influence of the National Film Board, particularly its Challenge for Change program. The role of APTN (which will also include productions by First Nations and Métis). The films of Zacharias Kunuk and contemporary independent TV and filmmakers.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Description: Monsters have always captured our imaginations—many of the earliest surviving writings are tales of epic battles between heroes and monstrous creatures. This course examines monster figures in English literature and culture from approximately 600AD-1666 and their modern adaptations. Surveying over 1000 years of werewolves, witches, giants, demons, and other fantastic beasts, we will read everything from Liber Monstrorum, the “Book of Monsters,” to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, to a piece of proto-science fiction, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World. Interspersing medical writing, demonological treatises, court documents, and pulp-press pamphlets with a variety of poetry, plays, and prose fiction, we will approach all of these diverse texts as cultural artifacts that offer us a window into the monsters of past worlds.

Through our course readings, we will discover how monsters personified and mediated anxiety over global travel, race, religious difference, gender performance and presentation, women, sexuality, disability and the body, magic and science, and the borders between the human and non-human. Working mostly chronologically, we will trace how attitudes toward monsters and monster-hunting shifted over time and pay attention to how moral interpretations of monstrosity operated alongside scientific and medical inquiry and taxonomy. In the final section of the course, we will watch and read recent film, television, and literary adaptations that reproduce these monsters for the modern age, including an episode of the current Netflix series The Witcher with its taciturn monster-hunter, the supernatural horror films The Conjuring (2013) and The Witch (2015), and the psychological and trippy quest narrative The Green Knight (2021). In our last week together, we will dip our toe into the ever-expanding and immensely lucrative market of paranormal romance, exploring humanity’s ongoing fascination with occult phenomena.

Texts (tentative): Texts provided as pdfs on myCourses.

• Liber Monstrorum
• Beowulf
• Wonders of the East
• The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
• Montaigne, “Of Cannibals”
• Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, excerpts
• Marie de France, Bisclavret and Yonec
• Anonymous, Melion
• Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Shakespeare, Macbeth
• Ford, Rowley, and Dekker, The Witch of Edmonton
• Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
• Excerpts from demonological writing (assembled as a single pdf packet)
• Excerpts from witchcraft pamphlets (assembled as a single pdf packet)
• Excerpts from monstrous birth pamphlets (assembled as a single pdf packet)
• Excerpts from demonic possession and medical writing (assembled as a single pdf packet)
• Paranormal romance novel (TBD)

Evaluation: 10% participation; 60% two course essays (5-6pp); 30% take-home final exam.

Format: Lectures, group discussions, in-class close-reading.

Description: This course offers an introduction to the wide spectrum of works that fall under the general umbrella of “electronic literature,” ranging from more traditionally “literary” works experimenting with digital media to text-centric videogames. Our study will be divided in three units: adventure games and interactive fiction; hypertext fiction and digital poetry; and visual novels. Our aim will be in part to trace the history and development of these different genres and the ways in which they have been theorized, as well as to reflect on how they enrich and challenge traditional concepts and methodologies of literary and media studies. As such, we will explore questions surrounding interactivity, immersion, authorship, non-linear and branching narratives, media specificity, and the ludology/narratology debate, among others.

Texts: Primary works will include afternoon, a story (1987, Michael Joyce), Patchwork Girl (1995, Shelley Jackson), Galatea (2000, Emily Short), 80 Days (2014, Inkle), Kentucky Route Zero (2011-2020, Cardboard Computer), Butterfly Soup (2017, Brianna Lei) and If Found… (2020, Dreamfeel), along with secondary literature from N. Katherine Hayles, Janet Murray, Espen Aarseth, Henry Jenkins and others.

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lectures and discussions.

Description: In this course, we ask, is Shakespeare modern? Is he a precursor of the political culture of modernity? Is he the author of our ideas about what it is to be a happy and fulfilled person? And what, after all, do we mean when we say the word “modern”? We address these questions by thinking about our own ideas and practices, by reading plays by other early modern playwrights, some other works from the period and a few key readings in political philosophy, history of race, and history of science. But the focus of our attention is a selection of plays by Shakespeare himself.

The course will also feature student presentations on all the plays and all the key issues in the course. You will sign up to create one three-minute presentation on a topic you will choose from a list of topics.

We will spend time developing effective skills of interpretation, argument, and presentation—how to gather, organize, and analyze evidence, how to develop an idea/argument, how to engage and persuade your auditors.

Texts: (Shakespeare texts will be available either at Paragraph books or online. All other readings will be provided on myCourses.)

• Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, ed. Frances E. Dolan (Bedford/St Martin’s)
• Anon, A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/jest.html
• Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, The Roaring Girl, ed. Kelly Stage (Broadview Press)
• Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. Sylvan Barnet (Signet Classics)
• Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. J.F. Bernard and Paul Yachnin (Broadview Press)
• Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, ed. Jay Halio (Oxford)
• Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Evaluation: 

Journal: 40%
Presentation (3 minutes, 1 slide): 15%
Participation: 10%
Course essay (mostly on King Lear)
(10 pages double-spaced, 3,000 words approx.): 35%

Journal: Your journal is, first of all, for you to do some thinking by writing at each step of the course. But it is also something you do for marks, so you have to write at least a page (about 350 words) about each week’s readings (and our discussions of the readings). It certainly doesn’t have to be formal like an essay. After all, it mostly for you and about your thinking, questioning, arguing. But it’s also going to be read by me, so make it reader-friendly.

Presentation: You will produce a three-minute presentation on the topic you sign up for. You are allowed one slide. This part of the course is based on the three-minute thesis program, where graduate students compete for prizes in recognition of the clarity, succinctness, value, and appeal of their research. We’ll take the competition out of what we do, but leave in the emphasis on clear, succinct, and engaging accounts of valuable research. We’ll do prep work in advance of the first set of presentations.

Participation: Participation requires your vital, active presence in class and in tutorial. You have to come to each class with questions, ideas, puzzlement (which you have to speak about), expressions of joy or grief. It is true. It’s really true: there is no such thing as a stupid question.