Note on graduate course numbers and levels:
Please note that each course carries, along with the ENGL which identifies it as an English Department course, a three digit number, the first digit of which describes the general level of the course, as follows:
500-level - MA students and U3 undergraduates (usually Honours BAs)
600-level - MA and PhD students only
700-level - MA and PhD students only
Note on maximum and minimum enrolments for graduate seminars:
Graduate courses are limited to a maximum enrollment of 12 (for 6/700-level courses) or 15 students (for 500-level courses). 500-level courses with an enrollment of fewer than 7 students, and 600- or 700-level courses with an enrollment of fewer than 4 students, will not be offered except in special circumstances.
Note on registration in graduate courses:
Courses are open to students in Department of English programs. Students from outside the Department may enroll if space permits and if they have appropriate preparation for the course. In this case, students must seek the permission of the instructor and the Graduate Program Director to register.
500-level courses are restricted to an enrollment of 15 students and are open to Master's and advanced undergraduate students. B.A. students must receive permission from the instructor before registering for a 500-level course.  As a general rule, M.A. students are permitted to take two courses at the 500-level and Ph.D. students may only exceptionally register for 500-level courses after receiving permission from the Graduate Program Director. But PhD students should certainly not overlook 500-level courses when making their course selections, particularly if the subject matter of a particular course makes a good fit for a PhD studentâs research interests. Similarly, an M.A. student who has a good justification for taking a third 500-level seminar should contact the Graduate Program Director to be given permission to register for it.
Please click on the âfull course descriptionâ link below any of the following course titles to find a detailed description of the course goals, the reading list, and the method of evaluation.
2024-2025
ENGL 500 - Middle English
Pastoral Care, Wellbeing, and Soul-Health in Middle English Literature
Dr. Antje Chan
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Prerequisites: limited to Honours and MA students (see note below)
Description:
The medieval idea of health went beyond a mere freedom from illness or disease, and recognised the holistic and mutual nature of body and soul. In doing so, the concept of health went hand in hand with the concept of salvation, drawing on the Latin word salus and its dual meaning. The epistemological framework within which medieval people operated attested to the symbiotic relationship between medicine and religion. Hence, to pursue health meant pursuing both a state of physical wellbeing as well as spiritual wellbeing.
England entered a period of deep social and environmental changes in the fourteenth century amidst wars, insurrections, and a major pandemic which decimated one third of the countryâs population. Mortality was hence at the forefront of peopleâs lives, and many sought to understand and convey what it meant to live well.
From Gregory the Greatâs and St Augustineâs models and ideals of pastoral care, to John Mirkâs Instructions for Parish Priests, and John Lydgateâs Dance of Death, this course examines how both clergy and laity took part in fostering health by applying themselves to cura animarum (the cure of souls) throughout the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries in England. By exploring concepts such as spiritual seeking, therapeutic reading, soul-health, Ars Moriendi (the art of being towards death), and prayers for the dead, we will uncover what personal and communal wellbeing entailed for readers of these texts.
°Ő±đłæłÙČőÌę(Provisional):
- Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care
- Ancrene Wisse
- John Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations
- Minor poems of the Vernon Manuscript (selection)
- Selection of Middle English Lyrics
- John Lydgate, Dance of Death
- Thomas Hoccleve, âMy Compleinteâ
- John Audelay, selection of lyrics
Evaluation (Provisional): participation 10%; presentation 10%; short essays 30%; term paper 50%
Format:Ì곧±đłŸŸ±ČÔČč°ù
ENGL 503 - 18th Century
The Villain-Hero
Professor David Hensleyâ
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Prerequisites: limited to Honours and MA students (see note below)
Description: This course will contextualize the villain-hero of eighteenth-century English literature in a European tradition of philosophical, religious, and political problems, social criticism, and artistic commentary from the Renaissance to Romanticism. Against the background of representations of the desire for knowledge and power in Elizabethan drama, the anthropology of Caroline political theory, Satanic revolt in Milton, and libertine devilry in Rochester and Restoration plays, we will examine the villain-hero as a figure of persistently fascinating evil power â a power subversively critical as well as characteristically satiric, obscene, and cruel in its skepticism, debauchery, and criminality. The readings will focus especially on two examples of this figure, Faust and Don Juan, whose development we will consider from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
Texts: Books (tentative, to be confirmed in January 2025) will be available at The Word Bookstore, 469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640.
- NiccolĂČ Machiavelli, The Prince (Norton, Hackett, or Cambridge recommended)
- Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Hackett, Oxford, or Penguin recommended)
- La Rochefoucauld, Maxims and Reflections (Oxford recommended; or Penguin)
- John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, Selected Poems (Oxford) or Selected Works (Penguin)
- William Wycherley, The Country Wife
- William Congreve, The Way of the World
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Part One (Oxford or Norton)
- Pierre Choderos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Oxford or Penguin)
- Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life (Penguin)
- Lord Byron, Don Juan (Penguin)
- Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (Penguin recommended)
Films: Usually, one film will be shown each week. Viewing the films is a requirement of the course, and attendance at the screenings is an expected form of participation. Most screening sessions will last about two hours in a supplementary period following the seminar; some films will be longer. (The following list of films is provisional.)
- Jan Svankmejer, Don Juan (1970) and Faust (1994)
- Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (Greenwich Theatre, London; Stage on Screen, 2010)
- F. W. Murnau, Faust (1926)
- Hector Berlioz, La Damnation de Faust (dir. Sylvain Cambreling, 1999; and others)
- Charles Gounod, Faust (dir. Antonio Pappano, 2010)
- Alexandr Sokurov, Faust (2011)
- Wycherley, The Country Wife (1992); and Congreve, The Way of the World (1997)
- Stephen Frears, Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
- Mozart, Don Giovanni (dir. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, 1996; and others)
- Rupert Edwards, The Real Don Giovanni (1996)
- Benoit Jacquot, Sade (1999)
- Frederico Fellini, Felliniâs Casanova (1976)
- Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin (dir. Daniel Barenboim, 2007; and others)
Evaluation: A substantial amount of careful reading, a class presentation, and a close analysis of texts both in seminar discussion and in a final 20-page paper will constitute the work of the course. Weighting: paper (60%), presentation (20%), general participation (20%). Regular attendance is mandatory.
Format: seminar
Note on enrollment: Permission of the instructor is required. Enrollment is limited to 15 MA and advanced undergraduate students. Honours students in their final year have priority. MA and Honours students may register for this course but must confirm their registration with the instructor. All others must consult the instructor before registering. Students who are interested in taking this seminar but cannot register in Minerva should contact the instructor. (Please bear in mind that electronic registration does not constitute the instructorâs permission.)
ENGL 505 - 20th Century
Listen to This: Sound, Voice, Music, Noise
Professor Allan Hepburn
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: This course concerns sound in different media, mostly fiction, but also sound sculpture, sound diaries, sound-tracks, sound poetry, choruses and refrains, drama, opera, instrumental music, and song. A premise of this course is that literary texts create soundworlds and soundscapes. In some cases, they appeal to music, noise, dialogue, accents, and silences to communicate meaning. In other cases, they use sound effectsârhyme, for exampleâto widen the acoustic range of the text. What would it mean to interpret literary texts for their sonic dimensions? Is it possible to listen to a novel or a poem rather than read it? Does literature give access to the past, the future, or alternative realities when it appeals to sound? For some writers, literature operates like a recording technology, akin to a gramophone, cassette player, or MP3 file. These recording techniques allow sound to be transmitted to readers in diverse locations in ways that resemble the transmission of literary texts. In order to think about enhanced listening as a critical resource, we will consider acousmatic and non-acousmatic sounds, sounds as clues, sound and affect, sound and ideas, sound editing. We will also discuss prosody, telephony, sound theft, privacy, eavesdropping, eroticism, and racialized voices as acoustic properties within texts. Secondary readings will involve short theoretical pieces by R. Murray Schafer, Michel Chion, Jacques Attali, Walter Murch, and others. Listening exercises will supplement primary texts.
Texts (tentative):
- Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
- Mavis Gallant, âThe Concert Partyâ
- Margeurite Yourcenar, Alexis
- Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues
- Jean Cocteau, The Human Voice
- Robert Chesley, Jerker
- Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet
- Toni Morrison, Jazz
- Russell Smith, Noise
- selected poems by Auden, Bishop, Hughes, Dryden, Ondaatje, Bök, and others
- C.R.A.Z.Y.
- The Conversation
- Janet Cardiff, âParadise Instituteâ
Evaluation: attendance and participation (20%); recitation of a poem (10%); short paper (30%); long paper (50%)
Format: Seminar.
ENGL 512 - Contemp Studies in Lit&Culture / EAST 515 - Seminar: Beyond Orientalism
Literary Cultures of East and South Asia
Professor Sandeep BanerjeeÌę(·ĄČÔČ”±ôŸ±Čőłó)
Professor Gal Gvili (East Asian Studies)
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: How do literary and cultural texts speak to the experience of modernity in South and East Asia? We seek to illuminate this question by investigating common and diverging literary portrayals of such modern concerns as the making of national languages, the experience of colonialism, and the early formation of feminism, within emerging modern genres and forms such as realism, the short poem, the epic, and the novel. Our goal is to place the specificities of Asian forms of literary modernity and aesthetics in conversation with global theories and scholarship.
Texts: (provisional)
- Epic: The Slaying of Meghnad by M.M. Dutt (selections); Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu (selections)
- Poems by Rabindranath Tagore, Jibanananda Das, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Bing Xin, and Xu Zhimo;
- Short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Sadat Hasan Manto, Rasheed Jahan, Mao Dun, Lu Xun, Xu Dishan;
- Novels by Bankim Chatterji, Attia Hossain, Jhumpa Lahiri, Wu Zhuoliu, Ba Jin, Nieh Hualing, and Xiao Hong
This is an indicative list; course texts will be finalized closer to the start of the course.
Evaluation:Â Response papers; paper proposal; final essay.
Format:Ì곧±đłŸŸ±ČÔČč°ù.
ENGL 516 - Shakespeare
Unaccommodated: Shakespeare and Disability
Professor Wes Folkerth
Fall 2024
Time TBA
Full course description
Description: In this seminar we will study Shakespeareâs works from perspectives afforded by seminal works and more recent debates in disability studies. We will consider the plays both as literary texts and as theatrical events in which early modern understandings of and attitudes towards what we now call âdisabilityâ were (and still are) performed. The seminar will focus on problems and challenges associated with reading disability in early modern texts. We will also attend to the performance histories of the plays with respect to their representations of disability.
Evaluation: Seminar presentation (twenty minutes) (30%); essay (twenty pages) (50%); seminar discussion participation (20%)
Texts:
- Richard the Third
- Titus Andronicus
- Julius Caesar
- Hamlet
- Othello
- King Lear
- As You Like It
- Twelfth Night
- Allâs Well that Ends Well
- The Tempest
- critical readings in disability studies (TBA)
Format: Seminar
ENGL 528 - Canadian Literature
Hunger, Desire, Challenge: Food Voices Speak Out
Professor Nathalie Cooke
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: Why do authors feed their characters? Yes, it can make fiction seem more realistic, poetry more evocative. But there are other reasons deserving our attention.
In this course we will explore how listening to stories told in Canadian literatureâs âfood voicesâ offers readers compelling ways of investigating the shifting boundaries of gender, socio-economic class, community, and culture over time in Canadian society. Class discussions will tackle thorny questions in relation to specific texts and within the analytical frameworks of literary food studies. Readings will include well-known works by Canadaâs most lauded writers (e.g. Margaret Atwood, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Eden Robinson, and Gabrielle Roy) to explore a range of food voices and how literary texts create meaning through inclusion of non-verbal narratives involving food selection, service, and consumption. We will also discover ways in which sharing food, or the longing for food, is a major theme and vehicle for metaphor in other works by Canadian writers (among them, George Eliott Clarke, Marilyn Dumont, Hiromi Goto, Rabindranath Maharaj, Drew Hayden Taylor, Fred Wah). We will question how food voices support or undermine the dominant trajectory of textual meaning creation. How do food choices serve to define an individual or community in relation to others? What narrative emerges from the food choices made in the text? What do food scenes tell us about gender roles and expectations, the process of migration and cultural adaptation? In what way do food scenes serve to structure the work, signposting notions of time and alternative ways of timekeeping?
Where literary analysis differs from folkloristic or sociological study is the close attention it pays to the form in which food voices speak in literary texts. Consequently the class will pay close attention to literary form, to how authorsâ choices of mode, genre, and rhetorical device animate food voices and shape stories they can tell. Secondary readings theorizing the food voice (Lucy Long) and writing the meal (Sandra Gilbert, Diane McGee, and Anna Shapiro) will contextualize our investigations. However, students should be aware that there has been very little written about food scenes in Canadian literature specifically, despite an extraordinary abundance and variety of primary material. Existing bibliographies and studies of food in literature (e.g., Sandra Gilbert 2014, Nicola Humble 2020, Norman Kiell 1995) consistently overlook Canadaâs contributions â with the notable exception of Margaret Atwoodâs writing. And the few Canadian compilations of food narratives are now very dated: The Canlit Foodbook (1987) and the anthology Kitchen Talk (1992). At one level, then, this course and work developed through it aims to be an important critical intervention.
After the first class meeting on 30thAugust, classes will begin at 9:00 a.m.
Texts: A library of online materials will be made available through the ÎÛÎÛČĘĘźÊÓÆ” Library and MyCourses, consisting of podcasts, radio episodes, commentaries, short stories and poems:
- Rohinton Mistry, âSquatterâ
- Alice Munro, âHalf a Grapefruitâ
- Margaret Atwood, âAge of Leadâ
- Madeleine Thien, âSimple Recipesâ
- Selection from George Elliott Clarkeâs Whylah Falls (1990)
- Dead Dog Café Radio Hour episodes
Full-length texts:
- Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman (1969)
- Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989)
- Fred Wah, Diamond Grill (1996)
- Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach (2000)
- Tomson Highway, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout (2005)
- Michelle Good, Five Little Indians (2020)
- Suzette Mayr, Sleeping Car Porter (2022)
Format: Seminar and discussion.
Evaluation:
- seminar presentation (20%)
- Reading Journal: food metaphor analysis paragraphs, individual entries due throughout the term (40%)
- final research paper (30%)
- active participation, to include sharing with the class insights developed in reading journal entries (10%)
ENGL 533 - Literary Movements
Restoration Poetry and Culture
Professor Maggie Kilgour
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: In 1649, the English people cut off the head of a king named Charles and established a new revolutionary government. In 1660, that revolution came full circle when they put the crown on the head of another king named Charles and went back to a monarchy, celebrating the âRestorationâ of Englandâs old and true order. However, the revolutionaries had themselves claimed that they were restoring the ancient liberties of the English people which had been undermined by the innovations of the king. Similarly, the Protestant Reformation had been imagined as the return to the original spirit of the Gospels, uncontaminated by Popish institutions. In the seventeenth century everyone seemed mad with nostalgia for some purer, free time they longed to get back to.
In this seminar we will look at a range of literatures written between 1660, the year of the âRestoration,â and 1688, the year of the âGloriousâ or âBloodless Revolution.â We will consider how writers tried to make sense of the trauma of a civil war which had torn apart families and resulted in deaths of more than two hundred thousand people. It is easy to imagine the attraction of looking back from this mess to some fictitious time of ideal peace, and such nostalgia is still embedded in English mythology today. The Restoration order was deeply precarious, shaken by the outbreak of the plague, the great fire of London, war with Holland, unresolved religious and class conflicts, as well as a dissolute and heirless monarch. However, while full of yearning for a mythic past (itâs no coincidence that this is the time of Paradise Lost), this unstable time released an outbreak of astonishing creativity. It produced revolutionary works of political science (itself emerging as a field), natural science, religious faith, drama, poetry, and prose, and had room for writings as diverse as the raunchy poetry of Rochester and the tight couplets of Dryden, the seminal works of political theory of Hobbes and Locke, the sci-fi of Cavendish, and the intense religious experiences of Bunyan, Traherne, and Hutchison. The government was reimagined, the first scientific society established, and the nation became a global empire conquering through trade, above all a growing slave-driven sugar business. Women performed on stage and began to write in significant numbers. Underneath the myth of return to the past, England was transformed.
Texts: (tentative)
- Rochester, selected (but not censored!) poems
- John Dryden, selected poetry and plays
- Andrew Marvell, selected poetry
- Samuel Butler, selections from Hudibras
- Selections from Locke and Hobbes
- Abraham Cowley, âOde to the Royal Societyâ; De Plantis 5-6 (translated Nahum Tate, Aphra Behn)
- Thomas Spratt, selections from History of the Royal Society
- William Davenant (with William Shakespeare), Macbeth
- William Wycherley, The Country Wife
- Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; The Rover
- Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
- Lucy Hutchison, selections from Order and Disorder
- John Bunyan, Pilgrimâs Progress
- Thomas Traherne, selections from the poetry and Centuries of Meditation
- Milton, Samson Agonistes
- Samuel Pepys, selection from the Diary (just for fun)
Evaluation: book review (10%); short (15 minute) presentation (20%); research/interpretive paper (50%); active participation (20%)
Format: seminar discussions; presentations
ENGL 540 - Literary Theory 1
Theories of the Archive
Professor Camille Owens
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: What is an archive? And what is the place of âthe archiveâ in literary studies? Or in literature? In this seminar, we will approach these questions in theory and method. We will trace the historical and institutional formation of archives, examining the power dynamics they reproduce and the issues of provenance that trouble them. We will investigate methods for the keeping and transmission of knowledge that have existed outside of traditional archives, and the possibilities and perils of impermanency. And we will examine where archives appear in, inform, or form contemporary literary works. Throughout our readings, we will ask the question: what are the formal boundaries of an/the archive? What can, and cannot, be housed in an archive? Readings will include works by: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Brent Edwards, Saidiya Hartman, Ann Cvetkovich, Mishuana Goeman, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Arlette Farge, Carolyn Steedman, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Robin Coste Lewis, Ocean Vuong, Valeria Luiselli, Namwali Serpell, and Jesmyn Ward.
Selected Texts:
- Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past (1995)
- Saidiya Hartman, âVenus in Two Acts,â (2008)
- Michel Foucault, âThe Lives of Infamous Men,â (1977)
- Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (1995)
- Robin Coste Lewis, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (2022)
- Namwali Serpell, The Furrows (2021)
- Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive (2019)
Evaluation: seminar presentation (15%), short essay (30%), research paper (40%), active participation in every class meeting (15%)
Format: Seminar
ENGL 545 - Topics in Literature & Society
Write, Protest, Resist: Womenâs Work in the Revolutionary Age
Professor Carmen Mathes
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: When Percy Shelley wrote, âLet a great Assembly be / Of the fearless and the freeâ he was responding to an 1819 massacre of peaceful protesters. The crowd included many women, some carrying banners and flags, some carrying children, and all hoping for change. At stake was expanding voting rights. Not to include women, mind you, but to allow their working-class brothers, husbands, and fathers to have a voice in parliament. In the aftermath of the violence, perpetrated by what we might now call a volunteer police force, Shelley envisions each woman as akin to moral compass who will âpointâ to the perpetrators to turn them away in shame.
During the Romantic era in Britain, womenâs roles in the political life of their community and country, at home and abroad, were debated, characterized and caricatured, and as often as not ignored. Shelleyâs âgreat Assemblyâ reflects the historical reality of womenâs participation and raises larger questions about what women were understood to be able to contribute, and what they did contribute, to social and political movements in the ârevolutionary ageâ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
This is a course about politics and gender in (mostly) British poetry and nonfiction prose. We will read works by a variety of Romantic-era authors including Mary Wollstonecraft, Edmund Burke, Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Smith. Mary Robinson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Anne Yearsley, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Germaine de StaĂ«l, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Anna Liddiard, and others. We will explore womenâs responses to the revolution in France and the Napoleonic wars; questions of migration and dispossession; fights over labour reform; efforts to improve womenâs educations; and activities of abolitionists seeking to end the transatlantic slave trade. Along the way, we will explore historical and contemporary feminism(s) and feminist literary criticism.
Texts:
- The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Poetry, edited by Joseph Black et al., Broadview, 2016, ISBN 9781554811311
Format: seminar
Evaluation: participation (10%); book review (15%); proposal (15%); scholarly literature review (20%); final research essay (40%)
ENGL 585 - Cultural Studies: Film
Image/Sound/Text
Professor Ara Osterweil
Fall 2024
Time: TBA.
Class Meetings: once weekly, for three hours.
Mandatory Weekly Screening: once weekly, for three hours.
Full course description
Prerequisites: You must be a graduate student OR an undergraduate Honours student to register for this course; in all other cases, you need special permission from the instructor to register.
Expected Student Preparation: Please note that it is both a critical studies seminar AND a creative workshop. Some fluency in critical theory, cultural studies and/or art history is expected. Background in visual art, performance, poetry, dance, or music is encouraged but not required.
Description: This hybrid seminar/workshop is designed to: (1) teach students to respond critically and creatively to experimental art and literature; (2) enable students to create experimental forms of writing and visual media that respond to the texts we study.
Calling all creative misfits who long to engage in forms of critical thinking that expand beyond the traditional scholarly essay! By focusing on multi-media artworks that interrogate and undermine conventional forms of representation through their contrapuntal use of image, sound, and text, we shall explore how meaning in contemporary art is often generated across multiple registers. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to important examples of experimental film and video, poetry, Conceptual art, body art, photography, and installation art from the 1960s to the present. In addition to writing critically about these works, students will be asked to experiment with some of the artistic strategies we study to create their own self-directed artistic, literary, critical, or curatorial projects. In other words, students will not only be expected to discuss, think, and write about the works we study, but to design and execute creative projects that respond meaningfully to them. Occasionally, local and/or international artists will be invited to class to give special seminars and workshops. On other occasions, the class will meet outside of our normal meeting time and place to participate in screenings, exhibitions, and performances.
Films and artworks:
- Christmas on Earth (Barbara Rubin, US, 1963)
- Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, US, 1963)
- Wavelength (Michael Snow, US, 1967)
- T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G. (Paul Sharits, US, 1968)
- Fly (Yoko Ono, US, 1971)
- (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, US, 1971)
- Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas, US, 1972)
- Kitchâs Last Meal (Carolee Schneemann, US, 1973-1976)
- News from Home (Chantal Akerman, US/ Belgium, 1977)
- Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, France, 1983)
- The Blind. At Home (Sophie Calle, France, 1986)
- Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, US, 1989)
- Blue (Derek Jarman, UK, 1993)
- From Here I Saw What Happened and Cried (Carrie Mae Weems, 1995-1996)
- Les Goddesses (Moyra Davey, US, 2011)
- Love is the Message, The Message is Death (Arthur Jafa, US, 2016)
- Bird Calls (David Baumflek, Canada, 2018)
- Altiplano (Malena Szlam, Canada, 2018)
- earthearthearth (Daichi Saito, Canada, 2021)
- Quiet as its Kept (Ja Tovia Gary, United States, 2023)
- Selected films by Sky Hopinka, including Lore (2019), When Youâre Lost in the Rain (2018) and Iâll Remember You as You Were Not as What Youâll Become (2016)
- Feral Domestic (Sheilah & Dani Restack, 2022)
Texts: (provisional)
- Chantal Akerman, My Mother Laughs
- Terrance Hayes, American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin
- Fred Moten, All That Beauty
- Yoko Ono, Grapefruit
- Ara Osterweil, Flesh Cinema: The Corporeal Turn in American Avant-Garde Film
- Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Noopiming
Format: seminar, workshop, student âcrit,â and mandatory weekly screening
Evaluation: short form writing; experimental slideshow (text + image); video portrait; final essay, video, manuscript, or installation
ENGL 607 - Middle English Literature
Piers Plowman: Visions for a Just SocietyÂ
Professor Michael Van Dussen
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: William Langlandâs protean allegory Piers Plowman, written and revised over the last quarter of the fourteenth century, would come to inspire protesting labourers in 1381 and any number of religious reformists who found the plowman âPiersâ to be a fitting mouthpiece for their critiques of institutional ills throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This embryonic allegorical poem begins in a âfair field full of folkâ but quickly explodes into a challenging examination of the causes of injustice, societal division, and a quest to learnâthrough a process of intense questioningâhow best to live in an imperfect world. In the process, Langland explores the workings of the English legal and educational systems; the corrupt exercise of authority; ethical treatment of the poor and the disabled; the workings of the mind, the soul, and the natural world; and virtually every branch and level of medieval society. Though the poem does envision the betterment of society, utopian fantasy is fleeting, quickly undermined in an enormously complex and troubling series of visions that refuse to âarriveâ at a static or prescriptive program for living. Its protagonists witness and experience suffering and injustice, even as they imagine alternatives. The series of dreams and waking moments that make up Piers Plowman thus present visions âfor,â but not necessarily âof,â a just society, all the while drawing on sophisticated traditions of theological, political, philosophical, and scientific learning.
Topics to be explored in this seminar include, but are not limited to, the just treatment of the poor; labour conditions; excess and material possessions; authority and corruption; education and literacy; law and justice; tyranny and revolt; debt and salvation; sin and mercy; the individual in society; and the faculties of the soul. Students in this seminar will read Piers Plowman and a series of poems in the âPlowman Traditionâ in the original Middle English. No prior experience with the language is necessary or assumed; portions of several classes will be spent developing proficiency in Middle English.
Texts (provisional):
- William Langland, Piers Plowman (emphasis on the B-Text, with passages to compare from the A, C, and Z versions)
- Pierce the Ploughmanâs Crede
- The Ploughmanâs Tale
- The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe
- Mum and the Sothsegger
- Jack Upland, Friar Dawâs Reply, and Uplandâs Rejoinder
Evaluation: Short papers (25%); long paper (50%); presentation (10%); participation (15%).
Format: seminar
Maximum enrollment: 12 students
ENGL 661 - Seminar of Special Studies
Digital Humanities
Professor Richard So
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: This course provides hands-on training in the use of computers and statistical methods to analyze literature â an approach also known as âliterary text mining.â In the past ten years, computational methods to study culture, particularly literary texts, have increasingly moved out of the margins. Weâve seen the publication of a string of important articles in major literary studies journals, and the release of several new monographs. At the same time, weâve seen an increase in the number of academic positions advertised in the âdigital humanitiesâ and âcultural analyticsâ in English and literature departments. As research in this sub-field expands and improves, the digital humanities and cultural analytics will continue to grow, making larger and more significant interventions into the discipline.
This course means to prepare graduate students in English and literature to perform applied research in the digital humanities. In this seminar, students will learn how to write computer code in Python â a standard computing language used in data science â and the rudiments of statistical methods useful for a data-driven analysis of literary texts. By the end of the course, students will be able to perform simple to intermediate computational and statistical analysis on literary corpora, such as collocations analysis, most distinctive words analysis, and topic modeling. Most of the core âshallowâ methods for text analysis, like simple counting, as well as several âdeeperâ methods, like vector semantics, will be introduced in a live context. We will leverage the availability of a number of free online corpora â for example, a large collection of English-language novels from 1800 to 1923 â to build case studies.
At the same time, the second half of the class will introduce excellent recent examples of digital humanist and cultural analytics research from scholars such as Ted Underwood, Andrew Piper, Lauren Klein, Michael Gavin, and several others. The purpose of this is two-fold: first, to allow students to be aware of the âcutting edgeâ in this field â the most interesting work that is currently happening â and have an opportunity to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and second, to allow them to replicate existing examples of DH work from the ground-up. With the instructorâs help, we will often reproduce these arguments to see how they work. Students will thus acquire a useful template to develop their own ideas.
There are no prerequisites for this class. All that is required is a healthy dose of curiosity and open-mindedness. The course is aimed at literature students who do not think of themselves as âgood at math,â or even imagine themselves as averse to âscience.â The class will be challenging to students with no background in quantitative research insofar as it will train them in habits of thought somewhat alien to the humanities, such as mathematical logic and algorithmic thinking. However, the course will entirely be taught through a humanistic lens, meaning that the instructor will introduce all methods and concepts through literary-studies examples and the logic of familiar approaches like close reading. In other words, the course is not a seminar in âcomputer scienceâ; it is a seminar in humanistic research that ideally will become useful as part of the studentâs literary studies toolkit.
Texts (provisional):
- Andrew Piper, Enumerations
- Sarah Allison, Reductive Reading
- Daniel Shore, Cyberformalism
- Ted Underwood, Distant Horizons
- Katherine Bode, A World of Fiction
- Franco Moretti, Distant Reading
- Other texts to be provided on myCourses
Evaluation (provisional): weekly problem sets (50%); final project (25%); attendance and participation (25%).
Format: seminar
Maximum Enrollment: 12 students.
ENGL 662 - Seminar of Special Studies
Modernist Reading/Reading Modernism
Professor Miranda Hickman
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: From the dense allusiveness of T.S. Eliotâs The Waste Land and Virginia Woolfâs multi-perspectival free indirect discourse, E.E. Cummingsâ typographical antics and Joycean mischief to Gertrude Steinâs experimental âSteinese,â modernist poetry and prose challenged received ways of âhow to readââthe phrase is Ezra Poundâs. As Laura Riding and Robert Graves observed in A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927), one of the earliest studies of modernism as a cultural phenomenon, the modernists often occasioned anxiety in the âplain reader,â obliging readers to reimagine their ordinary procedures and acculturate themselves to new ones better adapted to modernist rhythms and idioms. Poet Mina Loy quipped that âone had to go into trainingâ to âgetâ such work as Steinâs; through both the difficulty of their signaling and often elaborate framing through notes, allusion, or schemata, modernist texts teach us how to read.
Bringing early twentieth-century reception of such modernist work together with current work in attentional studies and debates addressing how our culture reads now (e.g. Lucy Alford, Katherine Hayles, John Guillory, Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best, Rita Felski), this course addressing early twentieth-century experimental work considers how modernist texts demand and repay various modes of âcloseâ reading; what might emerge from engaging them through modes of âdistantâ and âsurfaceâ reading; and how what Shklovsky called the âroughenedâ language of modernist texts obliges us to enter unfamiliar attentional modes, as well as heightening self-awareness of reading processes. Leading from such work, we also consider how modernist texts feature acts of reading and attention toward their work of observation, critique, and cultural intervention.
Texts (provisional):
- Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
- T.S. Eliot, early poems and The Waste Land
- H.D., HERmione, Asphodel
- James Joyce, excerpts from Ulysses
- Mina Loy, Lost Lunar Baedeker; Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose
- Marianne Moore, Complete Poems
- Ezra Pound, Cathay and The Cantos
- Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of the Dead
- Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
- Melvin Tolson, Rendezvous with America
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, The Waves
Evaluation: brief essay (25%), weekly responses (10%), oral presentation (20%), final essay (35%), seminar participation (10%)
ENGL 670 - Topics in Cultural Studies
Contemporary Theories and Practices of Embodiment
Professor Alanna Thain
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: Twenty-first-century cultural theory is marked by a corporeal turn, reconsidering questions of embodiment, sensation, affect, and materiality in relation to questions of cultural production, identity, and social and political concerns. This class will read broadly across key theories and perspectives on the body of the last decade, including consideration of authors whose work is seen as foundational to these approaches. In parallel we will explore media, performance, and somatics to explore these questions through exceptional and everyday practices. Key areas of inquiry include feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, with a particular emphasis on women-of-colour feminisms, queer theory, and trans studies; affect theory; critical race theory; Indigenous studies; questions of the nonhuman; disability studies; and theories of immaterial and affective labour. Students will develop a semester-long exploration of a practice of embodiment in dialogue with these works.
Texts may include:
- Sophie Lewis, Full Surrogacy Now
- Sadiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval
- Edna Bonhomme and Alice Spawls, eds., After Sex
- José Munoz, The Sense of Brown
- Mel Chen, Intoxicated: Race, Disability, and Chemical Intimacy across Empire
- Alexander Weheliye, Feenin: R&B Music and the Materiality of BlackFem Voices and Technology
- Paul Preciado, Dysphoria Mundi and Orlando: My Political Biography
- Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life
- Jean Ma, The Edges of Sleep
- Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
- Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor
- Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science and Other Stories
- Donna Haraway, Staying With the Trouble
- Leanne Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance
- Anna Tsing et al, The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
- Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies
Evaluation: practices project 70%; weekly responses 30%
Format: seminar and workshops
ENGL 680 - Canadian Literature
Alice Munro
Professor Robert Lecker
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: This course follows the career of an author who has been called âthe best fiction writer now working in North America.â It starts by examining Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munroâs first and only novel (really a collection of linked short stories) about a young female narrator coming of age in a small country town. In that work, Munro found the voice that would propel her toward international fame and a long publishing history connected with The New Yorker magazine. We will study a selection of Munroâs finest stories from a chronological perspective in order to better understand her evolving concerns and the development of her narrative techniques over five decades, culminating in her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 as âmaster of the contemporary short story.â This trajectory will introduce us to a range of material about modern life, female experience, family intrigue, sexual deviance, erotic awakening. Munroâs stories are deceptively accessible, yet they are the product of deft structuring, compressed symbolism, and subtle narrative design. As W.H. New says, they âembed more than announce, reveal more than parade.â In reading Munroâs short stories we will also consider many of the features that distinguish modern short story writing. Each class will focus on a particular story, but we will also engage in a series of learning exercises designed to broaden the reading experience and to improve interpretive reading methods. We might spend a class looking at how Munro constructs a single paragraph. We might spend another class examining the revisions she made to a particular story and ask what effect those revisions have on our reading of the text. We might have a debate about the credibility of a particular narrator. Is she really who she says she is or is she faking it? The idea is to experience the stories from multiple perspectives and to entertain our reading in the process. Students are expected to read approximately four stories per week. The course will include one film screening (out of scheduled class time), based on an adaptation of one of Munroâs most celebrated stories. In this seminar-style course, weekly contributions to class discussion are essential.
Texts:
- Lives of Girls and Women
- My Best Stories
Evaluation: seminar presentation (20%); discussion questions prepared in advance (10%); short essay (20%); final essay (30%); attendance and participation in every class (20%).
Format: seminar (presentations and discussion)
ENGL 733 - Victorian Novel
Experimental Realism
Professor Tabitha Sparks
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: Victorian novels have long been subject to a historical lens that positions them as the precursors and latent foils to the revisionist, psychologically self-aware modernist novel. This class will examine several Victorian novels that critics have struggled to adapt to a conventional realist and historicist teleology. Rather than treat them as aberrations to the canon, we will approach their experimental design and proto-modern meanings as facets of a Victorian literary history that the dominant Romantic-Victorian-Modern-Postmodern chronology has elided. In addition to the novels, this course will engage with the critical history of the novel to think about how ârealism,â broadly conceived, has diluted the narratological sophistication of the Victorian novel.
Novels: (provisional)
- Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1834)
- Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
- W.M. Thackeray, Lovel the Widower (1860)
- Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm (1883)
- Margaret Harkness, A City Girl: A Realistic Story (1887)
- George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody (1889)
- Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
Critics: (list subject to grow)
- Virginia Woolf
- Georg Lukacs
- Mikhail Bakhtin
- Patricia Waugh
- George Levine
- Elaine Freedgood
- Audrey Jaffe
Evaluation: class participation (20%); discussion leading (15%); short essay (25%); long essay (40%)
Format: seminar (discussion)
ENGL 770 - Studies in American Literature
Roots of the Modern Short Story: Poe, Hawthorne, Melville
Professor Peter Gibian
Fall Term 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: This course will offer intensive study of short prose fictions and critical essays by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, as these foundational authors can be seen to work in dialogue with one another. We will explore aesthetic problems and cultural preoccupations crucial to mid-nineteenth-century America, studying at the same time how these authors break the ground for the emergence of the modern short story â anticipating the fundamental developments in form and theme that would become the bases for self-conscious, experimental short fiction produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
After a quick introductory review of some key works in contemporary short story theory, along with historical studies marking distinctions among the tale, the sketch, the novella and the emerging short story, we will devote about one month to each of the three authorsâclosely reading several of their lesser-known stories and essays while giving special attention to classic writings exploring a variety of fictional modes, such as: âThe Philosophy of Composition,â âThe Tell-Tale Heart,â âThe Black Cat,â âThe Cask of Amontillado,â âThe Man of the Crowd,â âThe Purloined Letter,â âThe Fall of the House of Usher,â âThe Oval Portrait,â âThe Birth-mark,â âThe Ministerâs Black Veil,â âRappacciniâs Daughter,â âMy Kinsman, Major Molineux,â The Scarlet Letter, âBartleby, the Scrivener,â âBenito Cereno,â and Billy Budd, Sailor.
Expected Student Preparation: Previous course work in American Literature before 1900, or in 19th-century British fiction, or permission of instructor.
Texts: (tentative; editions of collected short fiction TBA):
- Poe, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe
- Hawthorne, Selected Tales and Sketches
- Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
- Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor, and Selected Tales or Great Short Works of Herman Melville
Evaluation: (tentative): participation in seminar discussions, 20%; series of one-page textual analyses, 20%; oral presentation, 20%; final research paper, 40%
Format: seminar (discussion)
ENGL 776 - Film Studies
Film Thinks Itself
Professor Ned Schantz
Fall 2024
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: This course will explore film theory through and against the tradition and current practice of meta-cinema, broadly construed. It is designed to appeal to students of widely ranging film backgroundsâcertainly it can provide a substantial introduction to film studies for literary specialists; for more experienced cinema students, it can perhaps defamiliarize typical viewing habits and critical moves. Our themes will be loosely divided into three clustersâPart I (visibility), Part II (time and death) and Part III (production and performance)âthough expect and be prepared to seek out connections throughout the course.
Possible films include: Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924), The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933), Sunset Boulevard(Billy Wilder 1950), Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953), La JetĂ©e (Chris Marker, 1962), 8 Âœ (Fellini, 1963), Samuel Beckettâs Film (Alan Schneider, 1965), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Take One (William Greaves, 1968), Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973), Daughter Rite (Michelle Citron, 1980), Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990), After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda 1998), Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001), The Gleaners and I (AgnĂšs Varda, 2000), Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003), °äČ賊łóĂ© (Haneke, 2005), Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012), The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012), The Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012), Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, 2012), Long Dayâs Journey into Night (Bi Gan, 2017)
Evaluation: viewing journals 55%, participation 30%, presentation 15%
Format: seminar (presentations and discussion)
ENGL 778 - Studies in Visual Culture
The Contemporary Graphic Novel
Professor Sean Carney
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Description: How do you âreadâ a graphic novel? Does one âreadâ pictures, and if so, what does this mean? This course examines the unique formal and aesthetic qualities of the contemporary adult graphic novel, with particular emphasis on visual analysis. Considerable attention will therefore be paid to close reading and to the analysis of stylistic elements that distinguish comics as a unique artistic phenomenon. The course does not provide an historical survey of comics, nor does it examine popular genres such as superhero comics. The emphasis of the course leans towards recent graphic novels by single authors and narratives oriented to the adult reader. The texts will be chosen based not only on historical impact, verifiable influence, or general popularity with readers, but also with an eye to comics that experiment and expand the boundaries of the medium. There will be four thematic groupings: revisionist narratives within the mainstream, memoirs and confessionals, new journalism, and auteur comix.
Texts: writers and artists may include: Kate Beaton, Ebony Flowers, Thi Bui, Nick Drnaso, Ben Passmore, Sarah Glidden, Nora Krug, Adrian Tomine, Guy Delisle, David Mazzuchelli, Debbie Dreschler, James Sturm, Lynda Barry, Ivan Brunetti, Howard Cruse, Eddie Campbell, Art Spiegelman, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Alison Bechdel, David Collier, Ben Katchor, Marjane Satrapi, Rutu Modan, Jason Lutes, Jeff Smith, Joe Sacco, Carla Speed McNeil, David B., Chris Ware, Los Bros. Hernandez, Nick Abadzis, Rick Veitch, Phoebe Gloeckner, Harvey Pekar, R. Crumb, Jack Jackson, Craig Thompson, James Kochalka, Tom Gauld, Ed Piskor, Jeff Lemire, Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki, Gene Luen Yang, Faryl Dalrymple, Matt Kindt, Stephen Collins, Will Eisner, Alex Robinson, Scott McCloud
Format: seminar and discussion
Evaluation: seminar presentation with accompanying written component (20%); two 10-page essays (30% each); class participation (20%)
ENGL 785 - Studies in Theory
Bad Mathematics
Professor Amber Rose Johnson
Winter 2025
Time: TBA
Full course description
Bad Mathematics
Description: This seminar explores how the language, concepts, and iconography of mathematics and physics operate in contemporary Black Studies. We will begin with Katherine McKittrickâs seminal essay, âMathematics Black Life,â which articulates the ways in which Blackness was written into modernity, by way of colonialism and transoceanic chattel slavery, through numerical representation and quantification: weight, price, quantity, age, etc. We will rely heavily on the theoretical guidance of Sylvia Wynter, who explicates precisely how this âknowledge system that mathematizes the dysselectedâ came to be solidified through interlocking economic and juridical systems. Together we will consider how this âmathematizationâ continues to operate today through surveillance systems, digital data collection, and other capitalist strategies of documentation. Our first task is to understand how this same knowledge system produces both common understandings of our shared material world and also hierarchical social systems that justify dehumanization and violence. Contemporary Black artists, writers, and thinkers, however, are increasingly mis-using these disciplinary tools against their deadly tendencies. The second half of the course will turn our attention to contemporary Black cultural workers who differently deploy the language and symbols of mathematics and physics in their own work toward radical ends. Our theoretical guides for the second half of the course will include Denise Ferreira da Silva, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, and Michelle M. Wright, all of whom exemplify how core assumptions in math and physics discourses have been critically analyzed and repurposed by Black feminist thinkers. Together we will query how these artists and writers are pushing, stretching, and reformulating the language and operations of math and physics in their creative work in order to redefine Blackness and humanness. We will consider how these cultural producers provide different entry points to consider concepts including space, time, measurement, (e)valuation, and entanglement. The course will draw from a range of genres including poetry, film, visual art, live performance, novels, theory, and criticism. Examples include visual artist Kameelah Janan Rasheedâs 2021 exhibition, âEveryone Will be Saved Through Algebra (A Casual Mathematics),â Camonghne Felixâs experimental memoir Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscaluculation, and Kevin Jerome Eversonâs short film, Partial Differential Equations (2020). Students will have the option of producing either a final paper or a creative project with an accompanying critical reflection.
Texts: (Tentative)
- Dear Science and Other Stories by Katherine McKittrick
- Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation by Camonghne Felix
- Physics of Blackness: Beyond Middle Passage Epistemology by Michelle M. Wright
- Toward a Global Idea of Race by Denise Ferreira da Silva
- Long Division by Kiese Laymon
- Visual and performance art by artists including Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Fields Harrington, Kevin Jerome Everson, and others
- Other essays and materials made available from MyCourses and/or ÎÛÎÛČĘĘźÊÓÆ” Library
Evaluation: seminar presentation (15%), midterm essay (25%), final paper or creative project with critical reflection (30%), active participation / weekly blog (30%)
Format: seminar (presentations and discussion)
2025-2026
ENGL 500 - Middle English
The Age of the Wycliffite Bible
Professor Michael Van Dussen
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: This course explores the cultural environment that gave rise to the first full translation of the Bible in English, as well as the controversies and other developments that followed in its wake. The translation of the Wycliffite Bible by followers of the Oxford theologian and reformist John Wyclif was not only a textual project but a momentous cultural event. Produced in two main forms in the late fourteenth century, it soon came to circulate in greater numbers than any other Middle English text through to the end of the Middle Ages. The project led to an intense debate over the translation of Scripture into the vernacular, as well as legal efforts to curtail vernacular translation and theological discourse among the laity in English. Out of this controversy came refined theories of translation, textual criticism, authorship, and the nature of the material text.
Yet the Wycliffite Bible was also a product of broader, and pre-existing, cultural currents. Though it was associated with reformists, many of whom would be charged with heresy, there was nothing particularly controversial about the translation itself. Outside of England, several Bible translations already existed, and parts of the Bible had previously appeared in English, even as far back as the Old English period. The Wycliffite Bible was produced at a time when more and more texts were being written in English, many of which responded to the increasing demand for books from people who sought to cultivate their devotional lives. This was also a time when people sought out popular preachers, openly criticized those who fell short of their pastoral mission, attended civic performances of biblical stories, travelled to far-flung pilgrimage shrines â a time when more and more people could read, or at least knew someone who could read to them. The Wycliffite Bible, along with a number of impressive Wycliffite preaching aids, was intended to provide preachers with the means to respond to the spiritual needs of their communities and to base their preaching in Scripture.
Students in this course will study the debates that led to and stemmed from the production of the Wycliffite Bible. They will also read texts from a variety of genres that attest to the wider cultural currents that surrounded this translation. These will include anti-clerical satire, devotional writings written by (or for) the laity, popular sermons, heresy trials, and popular saintsâ lives. And students will, of course, study parts of the Wycliffite Bible itself, examining its forms, narrative framing, and production. This will include close work with digitized copies of this hand-written (manuscript) project and training in Middle English paleography. Most course texts will be read in the original Middle English. No prior knowledge of Middle English is required or assumed, and portions of several sessions will be spent bringing everyone up to speed on the language. Several workshops on medieval manuscripts will be held in ÎÛÎÛČĘĘźÊÓÆ”âs Rare Books and Special Collections and Osler Library.
Texts (tentative):
- Wycliffite Bible (selections, incl. the âGeneral Prologueâ)
- Wycliffite preaching aides, incl. the Glossed Gospels, Floretum, Rosaium
- Wycliffite and non-Wycliffite sermons in English
- John Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture (excerpts)
- texts from the Bible translation debate
- Constitutions of Thomas Arundel (and other legislation)
- The Testimony of William Thorpe and other trial records
- medieval passion plays (and the Wycliffite treatise against âmiracle playsâ)
- ecclesiastical (esp. antimendicant) satire
- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (selections)
- saintsâ lives
- Richard Rolle (selections from various writings, incl. the English Psalter)
- The Book of Margery Kempe (selections) and other vernacular devotional writing
- John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (Book of Martyrs) (selections)
- weekly secondary readings
Evaluation: manuscript/paleography project (25%); research paper (50%); presentation (10%); participation (15%)
Format: seminar and workshop
ENGL 527 - Canadian Literature
Leonard Cohen
Professor Robert Lecker
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: This course offers an in-depth exploration of the life and work of Leonard Cohen, from his poetry, to his novels, to his music. Cohenâs multifaceted career, spanning seven decades, provides a unique lens through which to study the convergence of literature, music, and popular culture. His work continually grapples with some of the most profound concerns of his era: the purpose of the writer, the nature of spirituality, the complexities of desire, the challenges of celebrity, and the transformative power of art. Beginning with his literary roots, we will trace the development of Cohenâs early poems and novels that established him as a prominent voice in the post-Beat generation. From his novelsâThe Favourite Game and Beautiful Losersâto his influential poetry collections, Cohenâs literary output reflects his deep engagement with the human condition. As his career evolved, Cohenâs artistic identity expanded to encompass music; his transition from poet-novelist to globally renowned singer-songwriter marks a key point of focus in this course. We will examine how Cohenâs musical career extends the themes present in his poetry, while also introducing new layers of spiritual and existential inquiry. Cohenâs lyrics, often dark, meditative and philosophical, are a natural extension of his poetic voice, adding a rich, auditory dimension to his artistic legacy. Through close readings, listening sessions, and film screenings, we will investigate Cohenâs complex relationship with fame and his continual quest for artistic and personal authenticity. Cohenâs later years, especially his return to touring in the 1990s, underscore his enduring need to reconcile the creative process with the demands of the performative life. For Cohen, that kind of reconciliation can be invigorating. As Cohen himself reflected, âI like life on the road. Itâs a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like youâre in a motorcycle gang.â
Texts: TBD
Evaluation (tentative): short paper (25%); group Presentation (20%); final paper (40%); participation (15%)
Format: seminar
Note: For BA English Majors, this course qualifies for the required three credits in Canadian literature or on a major author.
ENGL 533 - Literary Movements
Modernist Allusions
Professor Miranda Hickman
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: One signature of early twentieth-century modernist literature is its deep allusiveness â its marked tendency to signify through implicit reference to other texts. The bent of writers such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, H.D., Ezra Pound, and Marianne Moore for allusive writing forms a major part of what makes for both the richness of their work and its fabled âdifficulty.â The modernist tendency to deal in allusion, even rely on allusion for some levels of signification, also indicates ways in which modernist experimental writing was intentionally formed and informed by texts from other times and cultures. Joyceâs Ulysses parallels Homerâs Odyssey through extended allusion; H.D.âs poems often revise Greek myth; Marianne Mooreâs poems often read as networks of quotations; and Eliotâs The Waste Land bristles with allusions to a bewildering array of other texts. The modernist text can sometimes come across as a kind of cento, a fabric of allusion to other texts.
A subset of the larger category of intertextuality, as Allan Pasco notes, allusion is a technique whereby a text external to the one at hand is implicitly referenced, whether or not intentionally, and thus âgraftedâ on to the immediate text in a synergistic relation. George Steiner comments on how allusions make possible âthe compact largesse of the text.â Modernist allusions function variously: Mooreâs allusions can bring in a turn of concept from an external text that adds precision to her âhostâ text; what Ron Bush calls T.S. Eliotâs âpassionate allusionsâ signify through âemotional auraâ; in H.D.âs novels, allusion imports an ulterior world into the primary text. Modernist allusions can indicate a turn to anterior texts for wisdom or lexiconâor a reach to alterity as wellspring for innovation.
This course explores questions about the reasons behind such widespread modernist allusiveness. How might this tendency relate to what experimental modernists saw as their commitments and allegiances; and how might it bear on the complex, generative relationship between modernist work and what Eliot theorized as âtraditionâ? We address how different instances of allusion operate, addressing their effects on readersâ experience and how they contribute to the way a text makes meaning.
Texts (provisional):
- T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems
- H.D., HERmione, Trilogy
- James Joyce, Dubliners
- Marianne Moore, Complete Poems
- Ezra Pound, selections from Personae and The Cantos
- Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea
- Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of the Dead
- Melvin Tolson, âHarlem Galleryâ
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Evaluation (provisional): brief essay (25%); book review (20%); longer essay (30%); presentation (15%); participation (10%)
Format: seminar and discussion
ENGL 540 - Literary Theory 1
Literary Theory Now
Professor Richard So
Fall 2025
Full course description
This course offers a graduate-level introduction to compelling new theoretical work in literary and cultural studies, notably after the high mark of âcritical theoryâ ca. 1990. Topics to be covered include the New Formalism, Post-critical Reading, Afropessimism, Environmental Humanities, Digital Humanities, and other important new approaches in the discipline. The goal of the class is to provide potentially useful concepts and paradigms for students preparing to write undergraduate honours essays or MA theses.
Texts (tentative):
- Caroline Levine, Forms
- Rita Felski, Hooked
- Christina Sharpe, In the Wake
- Rob Nixon, Slow Violence
- Ted Underwood, Distant Horizons
Evaluation: presentation (40%); final paper (50%); participation (10%)
Format: Seminar and discussion. Each week weâll read one or two major works of criticism/theory, as well as one brief âcultural artifactâ to ground our discussion of each weekâs readings. Class will be split into two discussion halves, each about one hour. The first weâll discuss the theoretical material; the second weâll âapplyâ the theoretical concepts to a specific text.
ENGL 566 - Special Studies in Drama 1
Theatres of Knowledge: Performance and the Museum
Professor Katherine Zien
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: How do museums perform knowledge? How do they teach us, display their collected objects, and craft overarching narratives about shared and possible pasts, presents, and futures? Specifically, what techniques of dramaturgy, scenography, sound and lighting design, and spectacle do museums employ to make their acquisitions âperformâ for museumgoers, and to make us both audiences and actors in immersive museal spaces? Museums are complex institutions that have changed over time, from the cabinet of curiosities to the anthropological taxonomy to the contemporary white cube / science center / natural history hub. As prototyped and paradigmatic institutions, museums intersect with entertainment industries and questions of the archive; as sites of knowledge production, circulation, and reception, museums utilize performance practices centrally in determining which items to display and how to display them. Furthermore, museums are enmeshed in a range of political, economic, and social networks and institutions. Their exhibitions can enact change â including affective and epistemological transformation â on both individual and collective scales.
This course will survey theories, histories, and critical readings at the meeting points of museum studies, anthropology, theatre and performance studies, and art history and communication studies to understand how different kinds of museums have performed knowledge and cultural expression over several hundred years. We will also be taking trips to local museums to observe how these sites construct their objects of study in diverse ways, and to investigate the benefits and pitfalls of their strategies of display and (re)presentation.
Texts:
- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture
- Susan Bennett, Theatre & Museums
- Scott Magelssen and Rhona Justice-Malloy, Enacting History
- Scott Magelssen, Living History Museums
- Shimrit Lee, Decolonize Museums
- Bettina Messias Carbonell, Museum Studies
- Susan E. Cahan, Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power
- Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives (ed. Susan Sleeper-Smith)
- selections from The Theatre and Performance Historiography Reader (ed. Davis and Marx)
- additional readings by Harvey Young, Margaret Werry, Tracy C. Davis, Amelia Jones, Uri Macmillan, Liz Son, Pierre Nora, and others
Format: seminar and site visits
Evaluation: participation (20%); short essays (20%); presentation (20%); final essay (40%)
ENGL 568 - Topics in the Dramatic Form
Contemporary British Drama
Professor Sean Carney
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: Since the Brexit vote in June 2016 and the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, theatre in the UK has raised pressing questions about British cultural identity and the relationship of âBritishnessâ to the history of immigration to England. This course is concerned with representative plays by both established playwrights and the new generation of young dramatists in the United Kingdom. Our particular focus will be the representation of cultural and ethnic diversity in post-imperial England. The syllabus will be made up of plays that demonstrate an interest in the unique aesthetics of theatre while simultaneously evincing social commitment and an engagement with politics. Our syllabus is organized into three units: the political play pre-Thatcher, the political play post- Thatcher, and the political play post-Brexit. We will consider a variety of different dramatic responses to the transformations of British identity in the face of various significant historical events. Examples of such events include the decolonization of India, the decline of the British Empire, the increased waves of commonwealth immigration to the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, the Irish Troubles of the 1970s, the dismantling of the Soviet Union following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the siege of Sarajevo and the war in Bosnia, the ÎÛÎÛČĘĘźÊÓÆ” face of terrorism in the post 9/11 and 7/7 era, the financial crisis of 2007â8, globalization, the out-sourcing of labour to India and the growth of transnational capitalism, the âspecial relationshipâ between George W. Bush Jr. and Tony Blair, the international proliferation of truth and reconciliation commissions, and most recently the exit of the UK from the European Union.
Texts: TBA
Evaluation: TBA
Format: seminar discussions
ENGL 585 - Cultural Studies: Film
Ecology of Film
Professor Ned Schantz
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: This course will consider filmâs fundamental representational and transformational capacities from a broad ecological perspectiveâwhich is to say, in terms of the sustainable flourishing of life in any number of environments, such as the unforgiving terrains of cities, suburbs, highways, deserts, and oceans. Our concern will be to understand film ecologies socially, which means in terms of their principles of association, of how human and nonhuman members come into relationship. The course will therefore be as much about cinematic form as about âgreenâ themes, considering how cinema itself produces environments in specific relational terms. In short, the premise of this class is that film inevitably is social theory (whether implicit or explicit), and the procedure of this class will be to put film and film theory in conversation with other social theory, including Critical Space Theory, Ecofeminism, Animal Studies, Actor-Network Theory, and Affect Theory. Possible films include The Gleaners and I, Amores Perros, Leviathan, Killer of Sheep, The Turin Horse.
Texts:
- Hugh Raffles, Insectopedia
- coursepack
Evaluation: weekly film journals, presentations, participation
Format: seminar
ENGL 586 - Cultural Studies: Other Media
Spectrums of the Urban Night
Professor Alanna Thain
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: âNight is a world lit by itselfâ (Antonio Porchia). The emerging interdisciplinary field of Night Studies assembles perspectives that seek to account for how shifts in technology, labour, documentation, art, leisure, social imaginaries and chronology have altered or amplified the transformative and opaque space-time of the nocturnal. This course explores key contemporary textsâcritical, cinematic, artistic, and literaryâof the night that focus on urban nocturnality. Who inhabits the night? Who has the right to the night? Who is seen and unseen? How do we live the urban night in different relations of risk? What kinds of encounters are specific to the affordances of the urban nocturnal? What are the methods and epistemologies specific to the night? Our course will be split between seminars on key texts of the urban night, and creative and curatorial workshops focused on our semester long case study of the urban night in Montreal. Students will collaborate with the research project, âNighttime Design for/with Marginalized Communitiesâ on speculative curatorial projects and workshops on nighttime methods.
Texts: authors and artists may include William Straw, Sarah Sharma, Kemi Adeyemi, Nick Dunn, Matthew Fuller, Benjamin Reiss, Jean Ma, Jonathan Crary, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Tsai Ming Liang, Apitchatpong Weerasthekul, and Shu Lea Cheang
Evaluation: TBA
Format: seminar, discussion, and workshops
ENGL 587 - Theor Approaches to Cult St
Philosophy of Cinema
Professor Trevor Ponech
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: This seminar will focus on various topics central to the philosophical study of cinema, especially those having to do with the perennial question, âWhat is cinema?â In responding to this question, we will engage with a variety of ongoing debates and seemingly intractable puzzles having to do with the nature of cinema, the specificity of cinematic artworks, and the distinctive aspects of our experiences of works of that kind. Topics to be discussed include: theories of representation and illusion, linguistic and semiotic theories, authorship, categories of cinematic expression and art, differences between cinematic and literary narration, cognitive approaches to cinema studies, and cinemaâs possible contributions to philosophy.
Texts (tentative):
- Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (2008)
- Berys Gaut, A Philosophy of Cinematic Art (2010)
- Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi, eds., Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology (2006)
- Noël Carroll, Laura T. Di Summa, and Shawn Loht, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (2019)
- Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga, eds., Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (2009)
- selection of recent essays from analytic-philosophical aesthetics and related fields.
Evaluation: short essay (20%); seminar presentation based on short essay (20%); term paper (60%)
Format: seminar
ENGL 607 - Middle English Literature
Pastoral Care, Wellbeing, and Soul-Health in Middle English Literature
Dr. Antje Chan
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: The medieval idea of health went beyond a mere freedom from illness or disease, and recognised the holistic and mutual nature of body and soul. In doing so, the concept of health went hand in hand with the concept of salvation, drawing on the Latin word salus and its dual meaning. The epistemological framework within which medieval people operated attested to the symbiotic relationship between medicine and religion. Hence to pursue health meant both a state of physical wellbeing as well as spiritual wellbeing.
England entered a period of deep social and environmental changes in the fourteenth century amidst wars, insurrections, and a major pandemic which decimated one third of the countryâs population. Mortality was hence at the forefront of peopleâs lives, and many sought to understand and convey what it meant to live well.
From Gregory the Greatâs and St Augustineâs models and ideals of pastoral care, to John Mirkâs Instructions for Parish Priests, and John Lydgateâs Dance of Death, this course examines how both clergy and laity took part in fostering health by applying themselves to cura animarum (the cure of souls) throughout the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries in England. By exploring concepts and practices such as spiritual seeking, therapeutic reading, soul-health, Ars Moriendi (the art of being towards death), birth girdles, and prayers for the dead, we will uncover what personal and communal wellbeing entailed for readers of these texts.
Texts (provisional):
- Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care
- Ancrene Wisse
- John Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations
- The Book of Margery Kempe
- Minor poems of the Vernon Manuscript (selection)
- selection of Middle English Lyrics
- John Lydgate, Dance of Death
- Thomas Hoccleve, âMy Compleinteâ
- John Audelay, selection of lyrics
- birth girdles
Evaluation (provisional): participation 20%; presentation 10%; short essays 20%; term paper 50%
Format: Seminar
ENGL 615 - Shakespeare
Shakespeare and Social Justice Across Time
Professor Paul Yachnin
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: Is Shakespeare a force for the advancement of social justiceâthe recognition of the dignity and the right to flourish of all persons, no matter their race, religion, gender, sexuality, or abilities? The answer that the seminar begins with is âyes and no.â No: prejudices of all kinds are baked into Shakespeareâs texts. No amount of special pleadingâand there has been plenty of itâis able to transform the plays into texts that issue from some kind of enlightened wizard who sits in the sunbright air high above the darkness of Western social, political, and economic history. And yes: the history of the reception, performances, and adaptations of the plays often brings forward the full-fledged personhood of reviled charactersâall the way from Katherina in Taming of the Shrew to Shylock to Othello to Caliban. Is there something in Shakespeare and in theatrical practice that is able to bring us face to face with the humanity of shrews, Jews, Blacks, and what the First Folio calls the âsavage and deformed slave,â Caliban?
Members of the Shakespeare and Social Justice seminar will work together on the reception, performance, and adaptation history of three plays: Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Each member of the seminar will also choose one other play as their research focus and will develop an historically grounded account of how that play has moved across time (and perhaps space also) and how it has worked for and/or against the cause of social justice. Together the members of the seminar will produce a new, multi-sided history of Shakespeare and social justice.
Readings will include: work on what social justice is and how we might know when we have it (by thinkers such as Kant, John Rawls, Franz Fanon, Audre Lorde), strong arguments on both sides of the core question, discussions of how Shakespeare has changed and continues to change, and essays on the social-justice politics of Shakespeare as text, as performance, and as source and provocation for other artists. There is no prohibition against the use of ChatGPT and/or similar AI systems in the course.
Texts:
- Merchant of Venice, ed. Jay L. Halio (Oxford University Press, 2008)
- Anthony and Cleopatra, ed. Michael Neill (Oxford University Press, 2008)
- The Tempest, ed. JF Bernard and Paul Yachnin (Broadview Press, 2021)
- all other readings will be provided on myCourses
Evaluation: journal (30%); individual presentations (20%); participation (10%); research project (40%)
Format: informal lecture and discussion
ENGL 661 - Seminar of Special Studies
Text, Nature, World: Literature and the Environmental Imagination
Professor Sandeep Banerjee
Winter 2025
Full course description
Description: Karl Marx notes in Capital that human beings work on nature to transform it, and in so doing, transform themselves. The course will examine how scholars have taken Marxâs comment as a starting point to elaborate a materialist understanding of the social production of nature and space. The course will also draw on literary texts to understand how they imagine the environment and, just as crucially, the interaction between nature and human beings. It will also situate these texts in relation to theorizations of the production of nature and space. Additionally, the course will take up some of the recent theoretical scholarship on the climate crisis and the age of the capitalocene.
Texts (tentative):
- selections of poetry by William Wordsworth, John Keats, Rabindranath Tagore, Jibanananda Das
- James Hilton, Lost Horizon
- Indra Sinha, Animalâs People
- Peter Mathiesen, The Snow Leopard by
- Ursula K. Le Guin, City of Illusions
Evaluation: participation; eight critical responses; final paper (12â15 pp.)
Format: seminar
ENGL 710 - Renaissance Studies
Sex Differences and Sexual Dissidence in Early Modern Culture
Professor Kenneth Borris
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: This course will offer a study of the diversity of gender, sexual expression, and sexual affiliation in early modern culture from the later fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, encompassing viragos, prostitutes, sodomites, tribades, sapphists, and hermaphrodites among others, as they were represented within different literary forms, intellectual disciplines, and discourses. My own approach will combine sexual history, literary historicism, and historical formalism, and other approaches are welcome. Surveyed disciplines and discourses will include, with varying degrees of emphasis, medicine and the other former sciences (such as physiognomy and astrology), as well as verbal and visual erotica, theology, philosophy, and law. Our readings of primary sources will also encompass imaginative fictions such as Marloweâs Edward II, Shakespeareâs Twelfth Night, Miltonâs masque Comus, and, in translation, Nicholas Chorierâs Dialogues of Venus and some of Michelangeloâs sonnets, as well as Montaigneâs essay on friendship and Caterina Erausoâs remarkable autobiography. Depending on the size of the seminar, each member will likely do two seminar papers, each in a different part of the term. According to their own particular interests, students will determine their own topics for seminar presentations and hence related discussions, as well as discussion topics in the final period. Insofar as possible, presentations will be grouped in a series of informal âconference sessionsâ on related matters according to a schedule that we will establish at the start of the course, which will fully take into account the scheduling preferences of each person. This format aims to create a diverse, open, and responsive seminar.
Texts:
- general course reader, Same-Sex Desire in the English Renaissance: A Sourcebook of Texts, 1470-1650
- supplementary course reader with various additional readings including Miltonâs Comus
- Marlowe, Edward II (any edition)
- Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (any edition)
- Caterina de Erauso, Memoirs of a Basque Lieutenant Nun (paperback)
Texts will be available at the Word Bookstore, 469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640
Evaluation: two seminar papers, about 9â10 pages each (45% each); class attendance and participation, 10%
Format: seminar with papers and discussion.
ENGL 722 - Milton
Professor Maggie Kilgour
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: A close reading of Miltonâs major poetical works, focusing on Paradise Lost, but beginning with selected early poetry and some prose, and finishing with a brief look at the double volume of Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regainâd. We will trace Miltonâs development as a poet and its relation to his political thought as it evolved over time and in response to the dramatic social and political changes from the 1640s on. We will especially consider the relations between poetry, freedom, and change in his work. From Areopagitica on, Milton is a passionate defender of the freedom of the imagination as essential to a democratic society. His God is above all a creator who inspires creativity in others â not only Adam and Eve, but also the poet himself. Paradise Lost has itself has inspired many later responses and reworkings by writers and visual artists, from Drydenâs State of Innocence to Philip Pullmanâs His Dark Materials. Through critical readings and individual projects we will consider Miltonâs pivotal role in the canon and the many myths of Milton, Romantic revolutionary, as well as the source of Bloomâs anxiety of influence and Gilbert and Gubarâs spectral âbogey.â
Texts:
- Stella Revard, ed., John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
- Barbara Lewalski, ed., John Milton: Paradise Lost (Blackwell, 2007)
- selections from the prose, online
- selected criticism
Evaluation (tentative): book review (10%); editorial exercise (10%); reception project (10%); participation (includes class prolusion) (20%); final 20-page paper (50 %)
Format: Seminar
ENGL 730 - Romantic Theory and Poetry
Global Romanticisms
Professors Carmen Faye Mathes & (Concordia)
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: After a brief primer in the lyric poetry and prophetic visions of British and European Romanticism, this course considers how the Romantic movement spread outside of Europe into Africa, the Caribbean, India, North America, and other global contexts, where Romantic ideas landed with the force of colonialismâs civilizing mission, on the one hand, and liberalismâs moral and political ideals, on the other. In the nineteenth century, Romantic ideas were part of the Euro-western educations of colonial subjects; they also proved central not only to the abolishment of slavery but also to nationalist movements for freedom, liberation, and self-determination. Attention will be paid to the work of the progressive British aristocrat Lord Byron, whose models of liberation and self-assertion well-suited nineteenth-century Black radicals who took up Byronâs work as a way of processing their relation to the traditions of Romantic revolution. Authors to be considered beyond European Romanticism may include Henry Derozio (India), Egbert Martin (Guyana), Indigenous writers Jane Johnson Schoolcraft (Ojibwe), and E. Pauline Johnson (Kanien'kehĂĄ:ka), and Black US writers like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, George Moses Horton, Albery Allison Whitman, and Joshua McCarter Simpson. We will ask not only how global writers borrowed from European Romanticism but also, and perhaps more importantly, how that very borrowing changed the meaning and inflections of Romanticism itself.
Texts: TBA
Evaluation: TBA
Format: seminar
ENGL 734 - Studies in Fiction
Fictions of the Literary Field
Professor Alexander Manshel
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: In this course, we will examine contemporary fiction not as the product of a few lone author-geniuses (struck by inspiration as inexplicable as lightning), nor as the logical outcome of totalizing historical forces like political revolutions, economic crises, and technological innovations. Instead, we will consider literary works in the context of the social relations that govern their production, circulation, reception, and consecration. That is, we will investigate the various actors and institutions that bring books into the world, cast a select few as literature, and canonize fewer still as literary history. To do this, we will read a range of scholarly work on the sociology of literature alongside, and in alternation with, an array of novels that thematize the same logics and phenomena.
Texts (tentative):
- Mona Awad, Bunny (2019)
- Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art (1992; trans. 1996)
- Clayton Childress, Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel (2017)
- Beth Driscoll, The New Literary Middlebrow (2014)
- Percival Everett, Erasure (2001)
- Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun (2021)
- Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014)
- Mark McGurl, The Program Era: The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (2009)
- Simone Murray, The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (2011)
- Richard Jean So, Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction (2021)
- John B. Thompson, Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing (2021)
- John B. Thompson, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century (2010)
- additional texts (weeks 11â13) TBD by class consensus
Evaluation: class participation (10%); ten position papers (30%); five-minute research presentation (10%); ten-minute research presentation (20%); final research project (30%)
Format: seminar
ENGL 761 - 20th Century Novel
Human Rights and Literature
Professor Allan Hepburn
Winter 2026
Full course description
Description: Literature represents the limits and possibilities of human rights. Via a series of weekly discussions, this course will consider the emergence of human rights as a legal category in the twentieth century, which culminates, at least in a mid-century iteration, in the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Although that document is aspirational in its ideals rather than enforceable in practice, it sets parameters for discussions of justice for individuals, regardless of their nationality, citizenship, statelessness, race, sex, beliefs, or other criteria. In addition to the UDHR, we will consider legal documents such as the British Nationality Act 1948, the UN Convention against Torture, and the Geneva Protocol regarding civilians during times of war. We will question the utility and validity of reading legal documents against literary texts. This course will therefore draw upon law and history, but it will presume that human rights are a lived experience as well as problems in literary narrative. The majority of texts on this syllabus are novels, yet we will also read some non-fiction (Rebecca West, Primo Levi, Philip Gourevitch) and plays (Samuel Beckett). Some visual material, particularly photographs, will be discussed. A wide variety of topics ought to surface during discussions: refugees, dignity, torture, race, war, genocide, empathy, intervention, nationality, liberty, bare life, temporality, humanitarianism, witnessing, legality, judgment, internal dislocation, and so forth. The readings are not designed to limit discussion or set boundaries for human rights; instead, primary and secondary texts should serve as templates for application to other literary examples, regardless of national origin or genre. Contextual and theoretical readings by Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Ian Baucom, Seyla Benhabib, Joseph Slaughter, Lyndsey Stonebridge, and others will supplement primary texts.
Texts: (tentative)
- Omar El Akka, What Strange Paradise
- Nadine Gordimer, Julyâs People
- Caryl Phillips, Foreigners
- Rebecca West, A Train of Powder
- John le Carré, Mission Song
- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Primo Levi, If This is a Man
- Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
- Graham Greene, The Comedians
- Samuel Beckett, Rockaby, Happy Days, Not I, Rough for Radio II
- Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
- Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies
- Behrouz Boochani, No Friend but the Mountains
Evaluation: short paper 25%; long paper 60%; attendance and participation 15%
Format: seminar
ENGL 776 - Film Studies
The Cinema of Precarity
Professor Derek Nystrom
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: Over the past thirty years or so, the term âprecarityâ has been used by theorists and activists to identify the particular kinds of social and economic vulnerability generated by current conditions under globalized capitalism, especially the fraying of the social safety net and the attenuation of other forms of worker protection as part of capitalâs demand for a more âflexibleâ workforce. According to many critics, these conditions have generated a new âprecariatâ which is made up of not only the industrial and post-industrial working class but also undocumented immigrants and other marginalized workers not normally represented by labour movement institutions, as well as some highly-credentialed professional workers who have become newly exposed to the vicissitudes of âcontingentâ employment. This course will survey the theoretical and political work that has generated the concept of precarityâfrom the Italian âautonomistâ movement to more recent North American theorists of âpost-Fordist affectââand utilize this body of thought to examine a series of recent films from around the globe which attempt to visualize and narrate precarious life. How do these films depict our ÎÛÎÛČĘĘźÊÓÆ” social order? What narrative trajectories do they create for characters who are struggling (and sometimes failing) to locate themselves in this social order? Do the films indicate a precariat coming into being as a class-in-itself, or even a class-for-itself?
Films:
- Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, Italy 1948)
- Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1952)
- La promesse (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium, 1996)
- Lâemploi du temps (Time Out) (Laurent Cantet, France, 2001)
- Juventude em Marcha (Colossal Youth) (Pedro Costa, Portugal, 2006)
- Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani, U.S.A., 2007)
- 24 City (Jia Zhangke, China, 2008)
- Le silence de Lorna (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium, 2008)
- Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, U.S.A., 2009)
- Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, U.S.A., 2011)
- Atlantique (Mati Diop, France/Senegal, 2019)
- Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach, U.K., 2019)
- Nomadland (Chloé Zhao, U.S.A., 2020)
Readings: essays by Zygmunt Bauman, Angela Mitropoulos, SĂžren Mau, Michael Denning, Gilles Deleuze, Maurizio Lazzarato, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Jacques RanciĂšre, Giorgio Agamben, Kathi Weeks, the Institute for Precarious Consciousness, Lee Edelman, Lauren Berlant, Linda Williams, Karl Schoonover, and others.
Evaluation: class contribution; class presentation; final term paper
Format: weekly screenings, seminar discussion
ENGL 778 - Studies in Visual Culture
Autobiography & Portraiture in Experimental Film and Fiction
Professor Ara Osterweil
Fall 2025
Full course description
Description: This course is a hybrid seminar/artistic workshop that invites students to create their own non-conventional portraits and self-portraits in response to the literary and cinematic texts that we read and watch. Our focus will be on experimental novels, poetry collections, and films that challenge conventional understandings of autobiography and portraiture. This will include fictional autobiographies in which the author masquerades as their subject; portraits that intentionally depersonalize or otherwise objectify their subjects; and self-portraits which rely upon the construction of intertextual surrogates as a way of exploring the porous boundaries between reality and fiction. We examine these texts to explore how the boundaries between subject and object, and self and other, collapse in poetic investigations of the relational nature of subjectivity. In response to these texts, students will be asked to experiment with multimedia formats to create their own experimental portraits and self-portraits. While formal artistic training is not required for admission into the course, enthusiasm to experiment with both literary and cinematic form is necessary.
Evaluation: participation (15%); literary fragments or multimedia experiments (15%); experimental portrait or auto-portrait (illustrated essay, slideshow or video) (30%); final creative project (40%)
Books (tentative):
- Martin Buber, I & Thou
- Anne Carson, The Autobiography of Red
- Lynn Crosbie, Life is About Losing Everything
- Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee
- Eileen Myles, A Working Life
- Maggie Nelson, Jane
- Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family
- Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes
- Ocean Vuong, On Earth Weâre Briefly Gorgeous
Films & visual art by: Chantal Akerman, Laurie Anderson, Shirley Clarke, Jonathan Caouette, Moyra Davey, Hollis Frampton, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Su Friedrich, Nan Goldin, Barbara Hammer, Kahlil Joseph, Isaac Julien, Jim McBride, Jonas Mekas, Marlon Riggs, Carolee Schneemann, Andy Warhol
Format: This seminar is a hybrid of critical and creative practice. We will divide our time between discussing the course materials and sharing our own creative and critical work in a rigorous âgroup critâ format. There will be weekly screenings of the films.