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Prerequisite: None.

Expected Student Preparation: some background in English literature, preferably with a bit of medieval literature.

Description: This course aims to examine the idea of the fantastic and the grotesque in some of the most popular forms of literature in the Middle Ages - heroic romances and legends of saints - in the light of medieval heroic tradition, popular culture, and medieval ideas of monstrosity.

The fourteenth-century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, provides a starting point to explore depictions of the grotesque and the discourse of both monstrosity and sanctity. Reading about saints was not confined to the cloister; these stories were read and heard alongside secular tales, both of which could feature demons, dragons and damsels in distress. The fantastic extended to human-animal interaction, the perception of the foreign and exotic (the 鈥榦ther鈥�), and certain tropes in both secular and ecclesiastical narratives where virtue must win out (such as the use of prophecy or the plot line of loss and recovery). The questions which are arise are: what was considered monstrous and what was human? What was the divide between humans and animals, humans and monsters? How should we approach the grotesque?

The course includes (but is not confined to) readings from the South English Legendary and other saints鈥� Lives (such as the legends of St Eustace, St. Margaret, and St George (with that dragon!)); the fantastic pilgrimage in St Patrick鈥檚 Purgatory; some popular Middle English romances; the werewolf tale of Bisclavert by Marie de France; the Welsh tales of Arthur and of Merlin; the fictional Letter of Alexander the Great; and the account of Sir John Mandeville, whose travels to the East provided much influential, fantastic fare.

Texts:听TBA

Evaluation: Seminar presentation, 15%; essay, 25%; term paper, 50%; attendance and participation, 10%.

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment:听15 students.

Prerequisites: Limited to Honours and MA students (see note below).

Description:听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 鈥� 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:听The reading for this course includes the following books, which will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). (The list of texts below is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in January 2021.)

• Niccol貌 Machiavelli, The Prince (Norton or Hackett 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:听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)
• 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, Fellini鈥檚 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 comprise the work in the course. The evaluation of this work will be weighted as follows: paper (60%), presentation (20%), and general participation (20%). Regular attendance is mandatory.

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: 15 students.

Note on Enrollment: Permission of the instructor is required. As a rule of thumb, 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 Professor Hensley. (Please bear in mind that electronic registration does not constitute the instructor鈥檚 permission.)

Prerequisite:听Open to Graduate Students.

Description:听The Brexit vote and its aftereffects have turned the world鈥檚 eyes towards the United Kingdom and raised pressing questions about British cultural identity and the relationship of 鈥淏ritishness鈥� 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.

Special attention will also be paid to the 鈥淚n-Yer-Face鈥� moment of theatre in the mid-1990s (Kane, Ravenhill) as an unorthodox response to the 鈥渟tate-of-the-nation鈥� play and the aftereffects of this theatrical moment on the contemporary UK theatre scene.

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 de-colonization 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 changing face of terrorism in the post 9/11 and 7/7 era, the financial crisis of 2007-08, globalization, the out-sourcing of labor to India and the growth of transnational capitalism, the 鈥渟pecial relationship鈥� between George W. Bush Jr. and Tony Blair, the international proliferation of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, and most recently the (pending) exit of the UK from the European Union.

Texts to be chosen from (tentative):

• Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine
• Brian Friel, Translations
• David Edgar, Destiny
• David Edgar, Pentecost
• Sarah Kane, Blasted
• David Edgar, Testing the Echo
• Ayub Khan-Din, East is East
• Sebastian Barry, The Steward of Christendom
• Robin Soans, Talking to Terrorists
• Richard Bean, England People Very Nice
• Mark Ravenhill, Product, Some Explicit Polaroids
• Caryl Churchill, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You
• Anupama Chandrasekhar, Disconnect
• Jez Butterworth, Jerusalem
• debbie tucker green, Truth and Reconciliation
• Phil Davies, Firebird
• Rory Mullarkey, The Wolf from the Door
• Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone
• Mike Bartlett, Albion
• Alistair McDowell, Pomona

Evaluation:
Seminar presentation with accompanying written component, 20%;
Two ten-page essays, 30% each;
Class participation, 20%.

Instructional Method: Seminar discussions

Maximum Enrollment: 15 students

Description:听Members of the 鈥淧erforming the World鈥� seminar will work together toward a wide-ranging and deep understanding of 厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 Sonnets. In addition to our central work on the Sonnets themselves, our readings will include selected poetry by 厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 near-contemporaries (Sidney and Spenser especially) and predecessors(especially Petrarch). We鈥檒l dig into the critical literature, which variously brings forward how the Sonnetsspeak brilliantly to concerns in social politics (including gender, sexuality, religion, and social rank), philosophy (including philosophies of the self, language, knowledge, and natural and human temporality), and the arts (including how poetry lives in the worldand what it is able to do in the world). That extraordinary breadth of address in the Sonnetsthemselves will enable members of the seminar to develop their individual research projects, which will in turn contribute to the shared understanding of how the Sonnetshave become formative new ways of performing the world.

A special feature of the 鈥淧erforming the World鈥� seminar will be the opportunity for seminar members to meet and workwith the actor and writer Jessica B. Hill. Jessica will share with us her work-in-progress, The Dark Lady, a play that stages an imaginedlove relationship between Shakespeare and AemiliaBassano by bringing the Sonnets intopassionate and brilliant dialogue with Bassano鈥檚 Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, the first poem by a Englishwoman to be printed in England.

Texts:

These texts are available free from Oxford Scholarly Editions Online.

• The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems, ed. Colin Burrow (2008).
  
• Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,ed. Ian Small
  

Note that you have to be signed onto the 捆绑SM社区 system by VPN to access these texts.

In addition, there are excellent online collections of major sonnet sequences:

• Petrarch, Canzoniere
  
• Thomas Wyatt, Sonnets
  
• Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella
  
• Edmund Spenser, Amoretti
  
• Samuel Daniel, Delia
  
• Barnabe Barnes, Parthenophil and Parthenophe
  
• Anne Locke, Meditation of a Penitent Sinner
  

Evaluation:听Journal 30%;听3-minute presentation 10%; research paper (12-15 pages) 35%; non-academic version of your paper 10%; participation 15%.

Notes:听

Journal
Your journal is, first of all, for you to do some thinking by writing at each step of the course. But it is also something you do for marks, so you have to write at least a page (about 350 words) about each week鈥檚 readings. Think about writing twelve journal entries in all. You can write about the discussions we鈥檝e had in class, but do undertake to devote most of your thinking by writing about two or three or four unfolding and growing questions and/or ideas that you find particularly important and interesting. Your journal certainly doesn鈥檛 have to be formal like an essay. After all, it mostly for you and about your thinking, questioning, arguing. But it鈥檚 also going to be read by me, so make it reader-friendly.

Presentation
From near the start of the course, you鈥檒l be thinking about the research paper that you will want to write. I鈥檒l work with you and provide a sounding board for your ideas. We鈥檒l put on a course conference in the middle of the term. You will have three minutes to present the question and/or argument that you will develop into your research paper. This part of the course is based on the three-minute thesis program, where graduate students compete for prizes in recognition of the clarity, succinctness, value, and appeal of their research. We鈥檒l take the competition out of what we do, but leave in the emphasis on clear, succinct, and engaging accounts of valuable research. We鈥檒l do prep work leading up to the course conference. And note that the presentations will be prerecorded by you on powerpoint with audio.

Research Paper
Your course paper will develop a topic of your own devising. Your work will need to take account of the most important research on the argument you鈥檙e developing. What you write does not have to be original work, in the sense that it does not have to be an idea or a view that no one has thought of before. But it does have to be work that you care about, have thought a good deal about, and are keen to share with others. So you could write about the Sonnets as a rethinking of the sexuality of the self, which is not a new idea, but you could do that with new evidence, with thinking that takes previous work further than it was willing or able to go, and with a conclusion that might shift the perspective from which we see the relationship among poetry, sexuality, and selfhood in 厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 time.

Public Scholarship
Once you鈥檝e completed your course paper, you鈥檒l have one more task. This one is non-traditional, even experimental. You鈥檒l create a version of your paper鈥檚 central argument as if for a non-academic audience鈥攑eople who are intelligent and thoughtful but who have not taken the course and who are not in the academy (though they might have an undergrad education in their past). So think about writing a piece on 厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 Sonnets for the weekend edition of the Globe and Mail, or The Walrus, or maybe as a script for a Ted Talk. We鈥檒l take a bit of time during the course to look at models for this kind of writing.

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

Maximum Enrollment: 15 students.

Description:听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, exploring aesthetic problems and cultural preoccupations crucial to mid-nineteenth-century America at the same time that they break the ground for the emergence of the modern short story鈥攁nticipating 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.

Expected Student Preparation: Previous coursework in American Literature before 1900, or in 19th-century British fiction, or permission of instructor.

Texts听(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:听Seminar discussion.

Maximum Enrolment: 15 students.

Prerequisite:听None.

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

Description: This course deals with the poetry of four major contemporary Canadian poets: Margaret Atwood, Robert Kroetsch, Michael Ondaatje, and Karen Solie. Through a study of some of their most rewarding and challenging poems, we will explore a number of central issues: perceptions of Canada, modern adaptations of myth, politics and poetry, and the representation of female agency (Atwood); the nature of postmodernism and its relation to our understanding of history, creativity, and place (Kroetsch); the confessional mode and questions about the identity of the modern writer (Ondaatje); eco-feminism and renditions of figurative landscapes transformed through human intervention and climate change (Solie). We will devote approximately three weeks to each poet, focusing on some of their richest works. The course will also explore a variety of reading methods that can be applied to the interpretation of poetry in general. A background in Canadian literature is helpful but not required. Evaluation is based on a series of personal responses to the poetry (the online journal entries); a library research project that will familiarize students with basic research skills; collaborative discussion of particular poems that will focus on developing reading methods; and a final paper that will be geared toward potential publication.

Texts:听A coursepack will be available containing the required texts.

Evaluation: A series of short, online journal entries (40%); a library research project (15%); participation (15%); final paper (30%).

Format:听Weekly seminars, discussion.

Maximum Enrolment: 15 students.

Description:听A study of diversities 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 Marlowe鈥檚 Edward II, 厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 Twelfth Night, Milton鈥檚 masque Comus, and, in translation, Nicholas Chorier鈥檚 Dialogues of Venus and some of Michelangelo鈥檚 sonnets, as well as Montaigne鈥檚 essay on friendship and Caterina Erauso鈥檚 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, members 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 鈥渃onference sessions鈥� on related matters according to a schedule we will establish at the start of the course, that will fully take into account the scheduling preferences of each member. 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 Milton鈥檚 Comus
• Marlowe, Edward II (edition is optional)
• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (edition is optional)
• 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 9/10 pages of text each (12 point), to count 45% each class attendance and participation, 10%.

Format:听Seminar听with papers and discussion.

Average听Enrolment: 7 to 10 students.

Description:听鈥淣ational one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the many national and local literatures, a world literature arises.鈥� This trenchant statement was not issued in the past decade; more than a century and a half earlier, and following in the footsteps of their compatriot Goethe, Marx and Engels made it part of their argument in the 鈥淐ommunist Manifesto.鈥� Yet their call resonates today in the academic world. Since the start of the new millennium countless tomes have been dedicated to asking what is world literature?; how does one read world literature?; how is canon of world literature formed?; what is the relation between the world-system and world-literature?; how does a specific national literature relate to world literature? To these, we will add a few of our own questions to unearth what other models of world literature exist but might have been forgotten by mainstream scholarship. In order to get a better sense of these issues, we will look at paradigms and methodologies from the latter half of the twentieth century that have allowed researchers to transcend a narrow focus on national literatures: Third World literature studies, postcolonial studies, Pan-Africanism, Tricontinentalism, and comparative literature studies. We will engage with contemporary essays and books by Pascale Casanova, David Damrosch, Franco Moretti, The Warwick Research Collective, Maria Khotimsky, Rossen Djagalov, Fredric Jameson, as well as with earlier theorizations by J. W. von Goethe, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Maxim Gorky, as well as within journals like Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings. We will use a couple of novels (for instance Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie鈥檚 Americanah and Gabriel Garcia Marquez鈥檚 One Hundred years of Solitude.)

Texts: TBA

Evaluation:听TBA

Format:听Seminar.

Maximum Enrollment: TBA

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:听This hybrid seminar/workshop is designed to:

1) teach students to create experimental forms of writing and visual media, and

2) to teach students to respond critically and creatively to experimental art and literature.

By focusing on multi-media artworks that incorporate elements of image, sound, and/or text, we shall explore how meaning in contemporary art and culture is often generated across multiple registers. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to important examples of experimental film and video, Conceptual art, body art, photography, sculpture, 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 in order to create their own self-directed visual art and curatorial projects. In other words, students will not only be expected to discuss, think and write about the works we study, but to create creative projects that respond 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 in order to attend contemporary art exhibitions and performances.

Required Films and Artworks

• Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger, 1949, US)
• Un Chant d鈥橝mour (Jean Genet, France, 1959)
• 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)
• Theme Song (Vito Acconci, US, 1973)
• The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Nan Goldin, US, 1985)
• Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas, US, 1972)
• Kitch鈥檚 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)

Required Texts:

• Yoko Ono, Grapefruit
• Roland Barthes, Camera Obscura
• Derek Jarman, Chroma
• Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
• Anne Carson, Short Talks
• Maggie Nelson, Bluets
• Carol Mavor, Blue Mythologies

Evaluation:听Short form writing; experimental slideshow (text + image); video portrait; final video, manuscript, or installation.

Format:听Seminar, workshop, student 鈥渃rit,鈥� and mandatory weekly screening.

Maximum Enrollment: 15 students.

Description:听Students in this course will analyze literary texts, dramatic scripts, trial records, and other accounts that comment on or otherwise represent a broadening of social participation in key debates, controversies, and cultural developments in late-medieval England (ca. 1375-1500). During this dynamic period concepts of authorship, communication, textual production, and literate activity were undergoing tremendous change. English was developing quickly as England鈥檚 official language, overtaking the use of French and Latin. Heresy and its suppression met with a burgeoning humanist movement, and popular expressions of religious devotion were vibrant and varied. More people were finding it necessary or expedient to navigate legal systems and documents that encroached upon their daily lives. In the second half of the fifteenth century, the new print technology coexisted with a booming manuscript culture. Crucially, all of these developments unfolded in ways that cut across boundaries between Latin and the vernacular, the learned and the lay, the religious and the secular鈥攁 fact that was celebrated by some and resisted by others. Intellectual debates that were once relatively confined were now characterized by the concerns and participation of a wider, and mixed, English population.

We will begin in the late fourteenth century, with the serious debates surrounding the controversial Wycliffite reformists, who produced the first full translation of the Bible in English and brought sophisticated theological debates out of the Latinate sphere of the university and into the 鈥渟treets鈥�. We鈥檒l discuss the Bible translation debate c. 1401, legislation aimed at limiting vernacular activity, and trials or dialogues in which the possibilities and limits of lay participation in these debates were negotiated. In this context we鈥檒l study lay participation in sophisticated scholastic and scientific discourses, as seen in the writings of Chaucer and his contemporaries. We鈥檒l read the Book of Margery Kempe to explore the possibilities for (and limits of) female participation in text-based practices, and to get a sense of how laypeople interacted with books and deployed their learning in their communities. A significant portion of the course will be devoted to medieval drama. We鈥檒l study the work of ambitious playwrights who imagine sophisticated audiences that can navigate doctrinal impasses, complex scriptural treatments, the playful intermingling of sacred and profane, and the possibilities of dramatic form. As part of many of our discussions we will attend to changing concepts of authorship, the mingling of law and vernacular poetry, and the idea of public texts in a manuscript culture. Students will be asked to question received notions that link 鈥減ublic鈥� with print, or which place the formation of a public sphere after (sometimes long after) the fifteenth century. Attention to the materials and circumstances of communication and textual circulation will be central to the course, and some sessions will be spent working with original medieval manuscript and early print material in 捆绑SM社区鈥檚 Rare Books and Special Collections. Most primary texts will be read in the original Middle English, though no previous knowledge of the language is required or assumed. Portions of several classes will be spent developing proficiency in Middle English.

Texts (provisional):听

• Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (selections)
• Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (with selections from the Showings of Julian of Norwich)
• Thomas Hoccleve, 鈥楳y Compleinte鈥� and Other Poems
• John Lydgate, The Temple of Glas
• Reginald Pecock (selections from various writings)
• Medieval drama: the Chester Mystery Cycle, the N-Town Plays, and the Towneley Plays (selections)
• Readings from the Bible translation debate
• Select heresy trials and records
• Weekly readings from secondary scholarship

Evaluation: Short papers (25%); long paper (50%); presentation (10%); participation (15%).

Format:听Seminar.

Maximum Enrollment:听12 students.

Description:听Scholarly attention to the figure of the fool听in Shakespeare has tended to focus on the festive licence the fool enjoys in听his interactions with other听characters. 厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 鈥渁rtificial鈥� or 鈥渨ise鈥澨齠ools derive this licence from their mimicry of 鈥渘atural鈥� fools鈥攊ndividuals of听limited mental capacity听who were known in the period by a variety of names such听as听idiot,听imbecile,听mome,听moron, and numerous similar epithets听still in use today. Broader studies of the fool as a literary and historical听type also highlight the figure鈥檚 ambivalence, an听ambivalence which seems to听originate in medieval and early modern attitudes toward individuals with听intellectual disabilities. The fool鈥檚 very lack of cognitive ability was also听considered a positive trait, for such individuals remained impervious to and unaffected听by the corruptive effects of social life and manners. What rendered the natural听fool special in听terms of his relationship to the social environment was his听aloofness from it. This positive quality was frequently construed in a听religious sense as sacred.

厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 fools are a class of character听that audiences, readers, and even scholars of today typically have enormous听difficulty understanding. In听this seminar we will study 厂丑补办别蝉辫别补谤别鈥檚 works听that represent some of the natural fool鈥檚 many guises as a familar social type听in early modernity,听including听The Two听Gentlemen of Verona,听Much Ado About听Nothing,听Henry the Fourth Part One,听A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream,听Hamlet,听As You Like It,听Twelfth Night,听All鈥檚 Well That Ends Well, and听King Lear. Along the way we will also听consider听the enduring cultural influence of the humanistic 鈥渃ult of folly鈥� in听the work of Erasmus, as well as early modern accounts of fools in the writings听of Robert Armin and Timothy Granger.听Recent work on the history of intellectual听disability by scholars such as C.F. Goodey and Tim Stainton will provide听important context for our efforts as we trace the fool鈥檚 connections听to other closely-related听figures such as clowns, fairy changelings, melancholics, and madmen.

Texts:听Specific texts are TBA.

Evaluation: Seminar presentation 35%;听long paper听50%;听participation 15%.

Format:听Seminar.

Average Enrollment:听15 students.

Description:听鈥淧erformance鈥� has gained widespread currency as a heuristic device and analytic tool in the humanities and social sciences. From pedestrian business usage (鈥減erformance indicators鈥�) to rather more involved literary theories of 鈥減erformativity,鈥� the metaphor of performance has proven useful to a range of academic disciplines and critical projects. Indeed, in Perform, or else, Jon McKenzie speculates that 鈥減erformance鈥� will be to 21st century thought what 鈥渄iscipline鈥� was to the 19th.

We will read widely in performance theory from the 1970s to today, beginning with an exploration of the ontology of performance through readings of now-classic texts in performance theory, and engagements with a series of performance art events.

Required texts:
(at 捆绑SM社区 Bookstore and on reserve at Mclennan Library)
Laura Levin and Marlis Schweitzer, ed. Performance Studies in Canada. Montreal and Kingston: 捆绑SM社区-Queen鈥檚 UP, 2017.
Custom coursepack

Evaluation: Presentation (30%), final research paper proposal (15%); final research paper (40%); participation (15%).

Format:听Seminar.

Maximum Enrollment: 12 students.

Description:听This course provides hands-on training in the use of computers and statistical methods to analyze literature 鈥� an approach also known as 鈥渓iterary text mining.鈥� In the past ten years, computational methods to study culture, particularly literary texts, have increasingly moved out of the margins. We鈥檝e 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, we鈥檝e seen an increase in the number of academic positions advertised in the 鈥渄igital humanities鈥� and 鈥渃ultural analytics鈥� 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 鈥� a standard computing language used in data science 鈥� 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 鈥渟hallow鈥� methods for text analysis, like simple counting, as well as several 鈥渄eeper鈥� methods, like vector semantics, will be introduced in a live context. We will leverage the availability of a number of free online corpora 鈥� for example, a large collection of English-language novels from 1800 to 1923 鈥� 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 鈥渃utting edge鈥� in this field 鈥� the most interesting work that is currently happening 鈥� 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 instructor鈥檚 help, we will often reproduce these arguments to see how they work. This then provides a useful template for students to develop their own ideas.

There are no prerequisites for this class. All that is required is a healthy dose of curiosity, open-mindedness, and willingness to learn. It is particularly aimed at literature students who do not think of themselves as 鈥済ood at math,鈥� or even imagine themselves as averse to 鈥渟cience.鈥� 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. But 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 鈥渃omputer science鈥�; it is a seminar in humanistic research that ideally will become useful as part of the student鈥檚 literary studies toolkit.

Texts听(provisional):听

• 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:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment:听12 students.

Description:听This course is designed to bring together Literature and Cultural Studies students around the concept of the uncanny鈥攁 concept that cuts straight to the troubled heart of narrative media in their definition and practice. The course may also appeal to theoretically minded Drama and Theatre students, since the uncanny haunts the scene of theatricality. Together, we will track far and wide a peculiarly mobile generic constellation: the tradition in which 鈥渢hings are not what they seem,鈥� in which tidy complacencies give way to vast unknown forces, where time is out of joint and the individual character/reader/viewer radically lost. We will provisionally expect the uncanny in three overlapping domains: in social worlds that resist navigation, in natural environments that defy mastery, and in technology that creates its own imperatives.

Note: for the first class meeting all students will read the first three items in the coursepack鈥擧offmann, Freud, and Royle, as well as Charlotte Perkins Gilman鈥檚 鈥淭he Yellow Wall-Paper.鈥�

Texts:

• Possible novels include: Linden Hills, Duplex, When We Were Orphans, Fingersmith
• Possible films include: The Invitation, Blue Velvet, Cure, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Evaluation: Weekly journals 60%; presentations 10%; participation 30%.

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: 12 students.

Description:听Patricia Kathleen Page (1916-2010) is now widely recognized as one of the two or three major Canadian poets before Atwood. She has been studied for her modernism; for her depictions of selfhood, psychology and identity; for her variant of feminism; for the fascinating arc of a creative career that included a prolonged period of creative crisis as a poet and a stunning turn to the production of visual art that receives increasing acclaim and scrutiny; and for her practice of memoir, of particular interest to recent post-colonial scholars who investigate her responses to Brazilian and Mexican periods of residence. Receiving slighter scrutiny are her short fiction and her work as a scriptwriter for the National Film Board of Canada during the Grierson era. Page is currently the subject of an expansive editorial project directed by Zailig Pollock that includes digital reproduction of her complete works in all her chosen arts (The Digital Page) and a series of printed volumes making her selected poems, fiction, memoirs, and visual art available. A graduate seminar spending a full thirteen weeks on close interpretation of Page鈥檚 works would be fully justified.

In this course, however, we will also try to position this diverse artist as thoroughly as possible in the contexts that make her legible, whether to readers of her time or to us today. These will include contexts with which the instructor is familiar, such as the sources of her written modernism (Imagism, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden) and of her Canadian modernism; her negotiations with the literary cultures of sentimentalism and impersonality; and her engagement with Surrealism, and especially with the Surrealist women painters with whom she associated during her time in Mexico. Of equal interest will be contexts and 鈥渢imes鈥� with which the instructor is less familiar and which will require fully engaged student investigation and input. These may include the techniques, media, and sources of her visual art; the Sufism that inspired her later works; the Spanish courtly verse form known as the glosa, that would dominate her later poetic career and her impact on younger poets; new technologies for the dissemination of Canadian writing, such as radio, television, and film; the theory and canonization of post-modernism in Canadian writing, by Linda Hutcheon and others, in the 1980s; and Page鈥檚 own canonical history, which saw her rise from a period of substantial neglect in the late 1980s and 1990s to her widely recognized eminence today.

As this is the course鈥檚 first iteration, it will work partially on a workshop model in which a given week鈥檚 discussions give rise to a set of questions that will be assigned for follow-up reports by students to the next week鈥檚 seminar. As far as is practicable, the subject matter of those reports and investigations will be suggested by students on an ongoing basis, and the instructor鈥檚 role (apart from a necessary evaluation) will be to make sure such impromptu assignments are equally distributed among all participants across the semester. The course is on P.K. Page, and its primary objective will be a thorough knowledge among all seminarists of her works, but the ideal realization of the course will also develop students鈥� understanding of the variety of cultural and historical contexts within which any such major author of the twentieth century can be studied.

Texts:

• the presently available selection of Page鈥檚 poetry: Kaleidoscope, ed. Zailig Pollock, The Porcupine鈥檚 Quill, 2010
• as well as her late volume Holograms, Brick Books, 1994
• one or both memoirs may be assigned: Brazilian Journal, eds. Suzanne Bailey and Christopher Doody, The Porcupine鈥檚 Quill, 2011; Mexican Journal, ed. Margaret Steffler, The Porcupine鈥檚 Quill, 2015
• depending on the Fall 2020 status of The Digital Page, the instructor will seek access for seminarists to yet-to-be released materials
• a course-pack will likely be necessary for access to Page鈥檚 fiction and some other writings

Evaluation:听

• 25%: Some combination of short research and writing tasks: for example, a two-page report on a given facet or context of Page鈥檚 works (e.g. 鈥淲omen Surrealist Painters鈥�), assigned one week and delivered verbally to the seminar the next week. The mark will assess both the verbal delivery of your report and the discussion it occasioned, a short bibliography you will distribute guiding your peers鈥� further research, as well as a formal polished document submitted for marking shortly afterward. I presently envision that you will complete two such short assignments in the semester. Given the workshop model of the course, the timing of your assignments may not be knowable in advance;
• 50%: Major research paper, minimum 20 maximum 25 pp. It will combine close study of a selection of Page鈥檚 works and research into the intellectual, historical, cultural, and / or critical contexts you think essential to their study. Your paper鈥檚 topic must be proposed and approved at least one month in advance of the due date, at or shortly after the end of term;
• 25%: Preparedness for and participation in all seminar discussions, including discussion of research and reports presented by your peers. NB: attendance is not relevant to this portion of your evaluation, since at the graduate level it is assumed you will attend every class without exception. A failing grade (below 鈥淏鈥�) must be given in this category to those who don鈥檛 participate consistently, constructively, and in an informed way in class discussions.

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: 8 students.

Description:听We live in a world that is a coherent whole, intimately connected through structures of capital and supranational political and legal institutions. At the same time, it is also profoundly uneven, manifested not only in the underdevelopment of the Global South but also through the dynamics of core and periphery in metropolitan regions of Euro-America. This course focuses on combined and uneven development to understand how it has shaped 鈥� and continues to shape 鈥� aesthetic forms and norms in both the metropolitan as well as peripheral regions of the world. Specifically, it will interrogate four formal categories in a global and comparative framework: Realism, Modernism, Irrealism, and the National Allegory. Drawing on literary texts, critical work from literary and cultural studies as well as theory, this seminar will attempt to think through the aesthetics (and politics) of uneven development on a global scale.

Texts: We will study a selection of novels, poems, and short stories by authors such as Rabindranath Tagore, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Mulk Raj Anand, Alejo Carpentier, Jibanananda Das, Toni Morrison, and Arundhati Roy.

Theoretical texts may include essays or extracts from longer works by Gyorgy Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Raymond Williams, Herbert Marcuse, Gayatri Spivak, Fredric Jameson, Aijaz Ahmad, Benita Parry, Susan Andrade, and Ulka Anjaria.

This is an indicative list. Final texts will be decided in August 2020.

Evaluation:听Participation; critical responses (x10); final paper.

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: TBA

Description:听A close reading of Milton鈥檚 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 Regain鈥檇. We will trace Milton鈥檚 development as a poet and its relation to his political thought, considering especially the relations between poetry, freedom, and change. 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 鈥� 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 Dryden鈥檚 State of Innocence to Philip Pullman鈥檚 His Dark Materials. Through critical readings and individual projects we will consider Milton鈥檚 pivotal role in the canon and the many myths of Milton, Romantic revolutionary, as well as the source of Bloom鈥檚 anxiety of influence.

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, on-line
• Selected criticism

Evaluation (tentative): Book review 10%; editorial exercise 10%; reception project 10%; participation (includes class Prolusion) 20%; final 20 page paper 50 %.

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: 15 students.

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

Instead of understanding the scientific and the literary as separate spheres, however, we will trace their mutual construction and imbrication in the face of increasing disciplinary differentiation. This seminar will thus necessarily reflect on the relationship between scientific and literary forms, interrogating the professionalization of science and rise of the universal discourses of so-called subjectivity and objectivity. While our discussions will encompass the relationship between Victorian debates about vivisection, degeneration, and progress in an increasingly global world, they will also examine prior Romantic concepts of natural history, taxonomic discourse, and deep time.

This seminar will also reevaluate the origins of science fiction and its generic relatives: utopian fiction, adventure fiction, gothic literature, and scientific romance. We will study how these works anticipate present-day insights and interventions in science and technology studies and feminist science studies. These early literary experiments offer visions of what Darko Suvin terms the simultaneous experience of 鈥渆strangement and cognition鈥� and what Sherryl Vint terms the imagination of 鈥減ossible future selves . . . as sites for identification.鈥� These works collectively redefine the borderlines between nature and culture, experimenter and experiment, body and machine, and here and elsewhere. Together, we will attempt to map the contested ground of the nineteenth century鈥檚 alternative visions of scientific community and practice, exploring what counts as science and who defines the role of the scientist.

Texts:

• Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden (1791)
• Charlotte Smith, Beachy Head (1807) and selected sonnets
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818), 鈥淩oger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman鈥� (1826), and 鈥淭he Mortal Immortal鈥� (1833)
• Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844, selections)
• Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)
• Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
• Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly (1872), including Carmilla
• Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872)
• Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)
• Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and selected stories
• H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure (1887)
• H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
• Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World (1912)
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915) and selected short fiction
• Selected essays/book chapters from Alan Bewell, Donna Haraway, Gillian Beer, Sherryl Vint, Darko Suvin, Laura Otis, Robert Mitchell, Bruno Latour, Anne K. Mellor, Theresa Kelley, George Levine, Lorraine Daston, Robin Valenza, Kevis Goodman, John Rieder, Alan Richardson, Sandra Harding, Londa Schiebinger, Sander L. Gilman, Jon Klancher, Evelyn Fox Keller, Thomas Kuhn, Ian Duncan, Peter Logan

Evaluation: Participation (15%), reading responses (25%), presentation (10%), seminar paper (50%).

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: 12 students.

Description:听Epistolary fiction, in which the narrative is conveyed through an exchange of letters, has ancient and medieval antecedents. This course, however, begins with Pamela (1740), the first (and much the shortest) of Samuel Richardson鈥檚 three novels, in which he began to develop the epistolary techniques that he would deploy further in his later fiction. We shall also study two of the earliest, and finest, of the many parodic responses to Pamela: Henry Fielding鈥檚 Shamela (1741) and Eliza Haywood鈥檚 Anti-Pamela (1741). We shall then turn to three comic novels published in the decade from 1769 to 1778: Frances Brooke鈥檚 The History of Emily Montague, set partly in Quebec City and showing the interplay between French, English and Huron communities; Tobias Smollett鈥檚 final novel, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, in which the author experimented with epistolary fiction for the first and only time; and Frances Burney鈥檚 dazzling first novel, Evelina, in which she exploits the resources of epistolarity to the fullest, only to abandon it in her three subsequent novels. We shall conclude with three of Jane Austen鈥檚 short youthful writings of the 1790s: 鈥淟ove and Friendship,鈥� 鈥淟esley Castle,鈥� and 鈥淟ady Susan.鈥� For all her admiration of Richardson, Austen was acutely conscious of the limitations of epistolary form. After parodying it in her juvenilia, written when she was in her mid-teens, she wrote the novella-length 鈥淟ady Susan,鈥� which she completed but did not attempt to publish. In considering why Austen, like Burney, made the move from epistolarity to third-person narration, we shall fulfil part of the course鈥檚 principal objective: to examine the various advantages and disadvantages of telling a novel in letters.

Texts:

• Samuel Richardson, Pamela, Oxford World鈥檚 Classics
• Henry Fielding, Shamela and Eliza Haywood, Anti-Pamela, Broadview
• Frances Brooke, The History of Emily Montague
• Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, Norton
• Frances Burney, Evelina, Oxford World鈥檚 Classics
• Jane Austen, Manuscript Works, Broadview

Evaluation: Seminar presentation (30%); term paper (50%); participation (20%).

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: TBA

Description:听What is contemporary literature? Is it a literary-historical category? An aesthetic one? An empty placeholder? To hear Theodore Martin tell it, 鈥渢he contemporary has its problems鈥�: historically indeterminate and formally ambiguous, 鈥渁 moving window鈥� without a proper frame. Students in this course will study a selection of major works from the early twenty-first century, alongside the critics who have grappled with them, in an effort to bring the contemporary鈥攁nd its problems鈥攊nto focus. From the so-called 鈥渨ar on terror鈥� to catastrophic climate change, from rapid technological advancement to rampant inequality and the global refugee crisis, this course will work to investigate literary representations of recent history, as well as to situate those representations in longer literary-historical timelines. Paying close attention to issues of form, we will try to identify both what is new鈥攁nd not so new鈥攁bout twenty-first-century American fiction. Toward the end of the semester, we will hold a public symposium on contemporary literature, presenting original work, fielding questions from other scholars, and identifying avenues for further research. The final text in the course will be nominated and selected by the seminar.

Texts:

• Jennifer Egan,听A Visit from the Goon Squad
• Mohsin Hamid,听Exit West听
• Ben Lerner,听Leaving the Atocha Station
• Tao Lin,听Taipei
• Cormac McCarthy,听The Road
• Richard McGuire,听Here
• Ottessa Moshfegh,听My Year of Rest and Relaxation
• Ruth Ozeki,听A Tale for the Time Being
• Philip Roth,听The Plot Against America
• Jesmyn Ward,听Salvage the Bones
• Colson Whitehead,听Zone One
  Final Text TBD by Student Vote

Evaluation (tentative):听Participation (10%); research presentation (20%); conference paper (30%); final paper (40%).

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤.

Maximum Enrollment: 12 students.