捆绑SM社区

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 country鈥檚 population. Mortality was hence at the forefront of people鈥檚 lives, and many sought to understand and convey what it meant to live well.

From Gregory the Great鈥檚 and St Augustine鈥檚 models and ideals of pastoral care, to John Mirk鈥檚 Instructions for Parish Priests, and John Lydgate鈥檚 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.

罢别虫迟蝉听(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, 鈥楳y Compleinte鈥�
• John Audelay, selection of lyrics

Evaluation聽(Provisional): participation 10%; presentation 10%; short essays 30%; term paper 50%

Format:听厂别尘颈苍补谤

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 鈥� 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 saints鈥� 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 捆绑SM社区鈥檚 Rare Books and Special Collections and Osler Library.

Texts (tentative):

• Wycliffite Bible (selections, incl. the 鈥淕eneral Prologue鈥�)
• 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 鈥渕iracle plays鈥�)
• ecclesiastical (esp. antimendicant) satire
• Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (selections)
• saints鈥� 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

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. Cohen鈥檚 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 Cohen鈥檚 early poems and novels that established him as a prominent voice in the post-Beat generation. From his novels鈥�The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers鈥攖o his influential poetry collections, Cohen鈥檚 literary output reflects his deep engagement with the human condition. As his career evolved, Cohen鈥檚 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 Cohen鈥檚 musical career extends the themes present in his poetry, while also introducing new layers of spiritual and existential inquiry. Cohen鈥檚 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 Cohen鈥檚 complex relationship with fame and his continual quest for artistic and personal authenticity. Cohen鈥檚 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, 鈥淚 like life on the road. It鈥檚 a lot easier than civilian life. You kind of feel like you鈥檙e in a motorcycle gang.鈥�

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.

Description: One signature of early twentieth-century modernist literature is its deep allusiveness 鈥� 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 鈥渄ifficulty.鈥� 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. Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses parallels Homer鈥檚 Odyssey through extended allusion; H.D.鈥檚 poems often revise Greek myth; Marianne Moore鈥檚 poems often read as networks of quotations; and Eliot鈥檚 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 鈥済rafted鈥� on to the immediate text in a synergistic relation. George Steiner comments on how allusions make possible 鈥渢he compact largesse of the text.鈥� Modernist allusions function variously: Moore鈥檚 allusions can bring in a turn of concept from an external text that adds precision to her 鈥渉ost鈥� text; what Ron Bush calls T.S. Eliot鈥檚 鈥減assionate allusions鈥� signify through 鈥渆motional aura鈥�; in H.D.鈥檚 novels, allusion imports an ulterior world into the primary text. Modernist allusions can indicate a turn to anterior texts for wisdom or lexicon鈥攐r 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 鈥渢radition鈥�? We address how different instances of allusion operate, addressing their effects on readers鈥� 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, 鈥淗arlem Gallery鈥�
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Evaluation (provisional): brief essay (25%); book review (20%); longer essay (30%); presentation (15%); participation (10%)

Format: seminar and discussion

This course offers a graduate-level introduction to compelling new theoretical work in literary and cultural studies, notably after the high mark of 鈥渃ritical theory鈥� 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 we鈥檒l read one or two major works of criticism/theory, as well as one brief 鈥渃ultural artifact鈥� to ground our discussion of each week鈥檚 readings. Class will be split into two discussion halves, each about one hour. The first we鈥檒l discuss the theoretical material; the second we鈥檒l 鈥渁pply鈥� the theoretical concepts to a specific text.

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 鈥減erform鈥� 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 鈥� including affective and epistemological transformation 鈥� 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%)

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 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. 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 changing face of terrorism in the post 9/11 and 7/7 era, the financial crisis of 2007鈥�8, globalization, the out-sourcing of labour 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 exit of the UK from the European Union.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: seminar discussions

Description: This course will consider film鈥檚 fundamental representational and transformational capacities from a broad ecological perspective鈥攚hich 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 鈥済reen鈥� 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

Description: 鈥�Night is a world lit by itself鈥� (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 texts鈥攃ritical, cinematic, artistic, and literary鈥攐f 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, 鈥淣ighttime Design for/with Marginalized Communities鈥� 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

Description: This seminar will focus on various topics central to the philosophical study of cinema, especially those having to do with the perennial question, 鈥淲hat is cinema?鈥� 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 cinema鈥檚 possible contributions to philosophy.

Texts (tentative):

• No毛l Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (2008)
• Berys Gaut, A Philosophy of Cinematic Art (2010)
• No毛l Carroll and Jinhee Choi, eds., Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology (2006)
• No毛l 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

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 country鈥檚 population. Mortality was hence at the forefront of people鈥檚 lives, and many sought to understand and convey what it meant to live well.

From Gregory the Great鈥檚 and St Augustine鈥檚 models and ideals of pastoral care, to John Mirk鈥檚 Instructions for Parish Priests, and John Lydgate鈥檚 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, 鈥楳y Compleinte鈥�
• John Audelay, selection of lyrics
• birth girdles

Evaluation (provisional): participation 20%; presentation 10%; short essays 20%; term paper 50%

Format: Seminar

Description: Is Shakespeare a force for the advancement of social justice鈥攖he 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 鈥測es and no.鈥� No: prejudices of all kinds are baked into Shakespeare鈥檚 texts. No amount of special pleading鈥攁nd there has been plenty of it鈥攊s 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 characters鈥攁ll 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 鈥渟avage and deformed slave,鈥� 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

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 Marx鈥檚 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, Animal鈥檚 People
• Peter Mathiesen, The Snow Leopard by
• Ursula K. Le Guin, City of Illusions

Evaluation: participation; eight critical responses; final paper (12鈥�15 pp.)

Format: seminar

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 Marlowe鈥檚 Edward II, Shakespeare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, 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 鈥渃onference sessions鈥� 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 Milton鈥檚 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 9鈥�10 pages each (45% each); class attendance and participation, 10%

Format: seminar with papers and discussion.

Description: 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 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 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 and Gilbert and Gubar鈥檚 spectral 鈥渂ogey.鈥�

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

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 colonialism鈥檚 civilizing mission, on the one hand, and liberalism鈥檚 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 Byron鈥檚 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'keh谩: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

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 11鈥�13) 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

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, July鈥檚 People
• Caryl Phillips, Foreigners
• Rebecca West, A Train of Powder
• John le Carr茅, 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

Description: Over the past thirty years or so, the term 鈥減recarity鈥� 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 capital鈥檚 demand for a more 鈥渇lexible鈥� workforce. According to many critics, these conditions have generated a new 鈥減recariat鈥� 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 鈥渃ontingent鈥� employment. This course will survey the theoretical and political work that has generated the concept of precarity鈥攆rom the Italian 鈥渁utonomist鈥� movement to more recent North American theorists of 鈥減ost-Fordist affect鈥濃�攁nd 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 changing 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)
• L鈥檈mploi 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 (Chlo茅 Zhao, U.S.A., 2020)

Readings: essays by Zygmunt Bauman, Angela Mitropoulos, S酶ren Mau, Michael Denning, Gilles Deleuze, Maurizio Lazzarato, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Jacques Ranci猫re, 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

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 We鈥檙e 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 鈥済roup crit鈥� format. There will be weekly screenings of the films.