Combined Honours English students may select only ONE 4th-year seminar.

Students who choose more than the number of required seminars will be removed from the

extra(s)

400a Shakespeare’s Dramatic Language: Theory and Context

F MWF 10:30 - 11:20 3883 Dr. L. O’Dell

In this course we will examine Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry and prose from the perspective of actors playing roles

in his plays. We will have a look at the three Shakespeare plays being performed during the 2013 season at the

Stratford Shakespearean Festival: Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, and Cymbeline, as well as one or two more

texts to be selected in connection with local performances of Shakespeare. This co-ordination will allow students

to select the option of reporting on a live performance of a play we’ve studied, though attendance at performances

will not be a required component of the course. Topics for consideration in discussions and seminars will include the

text in context, metaphor and emotion, language and characterization, and the challenges of performing Shakespeare

in the modern theatre. Film screenings will include A Midwinter’s Tale and scenes from Slings and Arrows and

Playing Shakespeare.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 1 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs and is excluded

from the restriction on Shakespeare courses in the Honours English program.

409f War in Literature and Film F Lec. W 7:00 - 9:50 3884 Dr. P. Gates

Scr. R 7:00 - 9:50 3885

This is a fourth-year honours seminar course that offers students an in-depth look at film and literature produced

in response to war. These texts represent an effort to cope with, and illustrate to others, the experience of war.

The course begins with representations of World War I and then explores the dramatic shift those representations

took with America’s involvement in World War II and Vietnam. Since the American involvement in Vietnam,

there have been many books written and films released about the war and American culture continues to attempt

to come to terms with the impact of the conflict—even while examining other wars (for example, World War II).

There has been a growing emphasis in recent decades to offer the “real” story of war—authentically and

graphically. Themes on the course will include masculinity, realism, and storytelling and will be explored

through a comparison of their treatment in literature and film. The texts explored on the course include books

such as Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990) and films such

as Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998).

[Cross-listed with FS443a]

NOTE: This course counts in Category 3 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

410a Gender, Race, and Class in Renaissance Drama

F TR 10:00 - 11:20 2904 Dr. V. Comensoli

The course examines how Renaissance playwrights interrogate categories of gender, race, and class as defined by

dominant and emerging ideologies and structures of authority. The focus is on how dramatic representations of these

categories intersect with generic forms and theatrical practices, and with discursive and social constructions of the

gendered body, subjectivity, and sexuality. Dramatists whose works are studied include William Shakespeare,

Elizabeth Cary, Thomas Dekker, and Aphra Behn.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 1 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

410e Women & Culture in Early Modern Period

W TR 8:30 - 9:50 3605 Dr. A. Russell

The course will analyze women's roles and representations in early modern England by focusing on literary texts

written by women. We will begin by considering legal regulations and social practices which affected women’s lives

in the seventeenth century. We will also consider critical practices related to the reading, writing, and circulation of

texts. What genres and topics did women writers choose, and under what circumstances? What were the implications

of their decisions to distribute their work in manuscript (handwritten) form or in print? How do current literary and

critical theories illuminate works by early modern women writers? We will read works in different genres by writers

including Aemilia Lanyer, Ann Bradstreet, Katherine Philips, Anna Trapnell, and Aphra Behn. Class time will

include some lectures, but the primary focus will be on individual presentations and class discussion.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 1 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

420m Autobiography in Texts and Film W Lec. R 2:30 - 5:20 3606 Dr. U. Lischke

Scr. R 7:00 - 9:50 3607

One of the characteristics of literary and filmic forms is the pervasive interest in the individual "self." This course

will introduce students to the literary and filmic issues of "personal identity" by ways of exploring several examples

of autobiographical narratives both as text and film. In particular, we will consider how the process of self-definition

often seems to occur when the author places himself or herself in relationship to some kind of "other," in relationship

to another individual or a landscape, perhaps a cultural tendency (geographical mobility, illiteracy, complacency,

slavery) or a state of mind/body. Autobiographical memory is composed of endlessly shifting viewpoints and

parameters; it is simultaneously emotional and analytical, a child's vision and an adult's understanding. Film is unique

in the possibilities it offers for creating these direct, multiple, and even conflicting, visions. Our goal will be to

develop a broad familiarity with this powerful genre and to develop careful reading, analytical, and writing skills.

Required Text:

Sidonie Smith & Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: U

of Minn P, 2001.

Other Texts may include:

Hamilton, Hugo, The Speckled People. A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood, Hong Kingston, Maxine, The Woman

Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Choy, Wayson, Paper Shadows

Erdrich, Louise, The Blue Jays Dance, A Birth Year

Films may include:

Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore, 1988), Chocolat (Denis, 1988), Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)

The Nasty Girl (Verhoeven, 1990), Europa, Europa (Holland, 1991), An Angel at my Table (Campion, 1990), Au

revoir les enfants (Malle, 1987)

[Cross-listed with FS443c]

NOTE: This course counts in Category 4 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

420n Canadian Short Stories: Films and Texts

W MWF 10:30 - 11:20 2677 Dr. E. Jewinski

This course studies the adaptations of Canadian stories into film. The central aim is to explore why, at times,

characters are added or deleted, plots changed, settings altered. Each film version will be used to explore the details

of the printed text. The language, imagery and specificity of the story in the printed medium will be analyzed through

a study of the films. The variations and alternations for the film medium will assist us in discussing what the original

text achieved in their printed forms.

Tentative list of films and stories to be studied (depending on availability): “To Set Our House in Order” (Margaret

Laurence), “Cages,” “The Cap” (Morley Callaghan), “Mortimor Griffin & Shalinsky” (M. Richler), “One’s a Heifer”

(S. Ross), “The Painted Door” (S. Ross), “Uncle ‘T’” (Brian Moore), “The Concert Stages of Europe” (Hodgkins),

“Boys and Girls” (Alice Munro).

NOTE: This course counts in Category 3 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

420s The Writing of Jazz F M 7:00 - 9:50 3886 Dr. T. Dobozy

This course will examine canonical works of or relating to the distinctly American art form, Jazz. Students will be

expected to develop an historical awareness of the development of the music from its earliest roots in the communal

music making of West African slaves, to the significance of the American Civil War and the Emancipation

Proclamation, to Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Swing, Be-Bop and Free Jazz eras, including concurrent

movements in segregation/de-segregation, civil rights, and the Black Power and Black Arts movements. Students will

also be expected to think about how different artistic genres can be bridged or mixed, and what this entails culturally,

politically and aesthetically. Finally, students will be expected to contribute the bulk of material vocally to the

seminar and to participate fully in the life of the class.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 3 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

440e The Romantic Art of Walking W TR 8:30 - 9:50 3608 Dr. M. Poetzsch

Building on Leslie Stephen’s striking claim that “[t]he literary movement at the end of the eighteenth century was

obviously due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice of walking,” this course will offer a pedestrian’s

view of the Romantic period (c.1770-1850). Exploring both the physical act and the written transcription of Romantic

pedestrianism, we will consider the ways in which the socio-cultural and ideological meanings of walking were

contested and refined in this period, to the extent that a new “age of pedestrianism” was inaugurated. From the great

diversity of texts and contexts in which Romantic pedestrianism unfolds, we will focus in particular on walking as

an aesthetic practice in both rural and urban settings, on walking as a political and potentially transgressive act of selfauthorization

and, finally, on walking as a mode of nostalgic recollection and consolation. Insofar as the discourse

of pedestrianism is inextricably bound up with such creative activities as philosophic contemplation, painting, writing

and reading, we will also consider its role as a (perhaps vital) catalyst and conduit for the human imagination—a

study that necessarily takes us beyond the Romantic period and into our own and compels us to practice pedestrianism

even as we read about it.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 2 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

440f Writing of the Early Middle Ages W T 4:00 - 6:50 3609 Dr. R. Waugh

This course examines key works of the early Middle Ages such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

with a view to understanding their relationships with their manuscript, mythological, intellectual, and historical

contexts. Behind and within many early medieval works are myths of extraordinary power and resonance. We shall

examine these, as well as early medieval ideals such as the heroic ideal, the monastic ideal, and the earliest medieval

examples of the courtly love ideal.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 1 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

450a Staging Politics: Drama, Theatre, and Society

W MW 2:30 - 3:50 3600 Dr. M. DiCenzo

The course involves the study of major tendencies and achievements in the drama and theatre of the late 20th century,

drawing from an international context. Areas to be covered will include: issues and themes related to race/ethnicity,

gender, sexuality, and nationality as they have been explored by modern playwrights; experiments in dramatic form

and language; and the role of the theatre in contemporary society. The course will include plays by Caryl Churchill,

Tony Kushner, Anna Deavere Smith, Brian Friel, and Tomson Highway.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 4 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

450f Caribbean Literatures: Cross-Cultural Encounters

W TR 2:30 - 3:50 3610 Dr. M. Pirbhai

This course provides a survey of Caribbean literature from the English-speaking Caribbean, including Jamaica,

Trinidad, and St Lucia, as well as from the Caribbean diaspora in North America and Europe. Students will

familiarize themselves with the development of Caribbean literature in terms of its uniquely “cross-cultural” aesthetic,

its various linguistic and formal innovations, and its critical engagement with the history of slavery and indenture.

Students will be exposed to the major canonical figures of Caribbean literature, including poet, playwright and

essayist Derek Walcott and novelists such as Samuel Selvon, Caryl Phillips and Jamaica Kincaid.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 3 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

450n The Victorian City F MW 2:30 - 3:50 3889 Dr. L. Shakinovsky

Industrialisation, increased mobility, and migration to cities ushered in enormous changes throughout the nineteenth

century. Through a survey of selected fiction, prose, and, poetry of the Victorian era, by writers such as Dickens,

Wilde, Mayhew, and de Quincey, this course will examine representations of the city and urban life, and the ways

in which the changing Victorian city shaped the writing of the period. In exploring the Victorian city, we will

consider the development of capitalism and the new science of economics, and investigate issues surrounding sex,

crime, the law, disease, and class unrest, as well as travel, migration, and empire.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 2 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.

460f Girls, Women, and Popular Culture F MW 2:30 - 3:50 3888 Dr. A. Austin

Popular culture has been theorized as a feminine and feminizing construct; Andreas Huyssen, for example, in After

the Great Divide, suggests that the division between “high” and “low” art was always in fact a gendered one, with

popular forms enacting an equation between femininity, mass production, and “cheap and easy pleasure.” At the

same time, the material conditions of popular cultural production have meant that women have been both

inadequately and under-represented, with popular culture itself serving as an especially effective tool for the

continuing oppression of women. This course will explore such popular culture forms as pulp fiction, film,

advertising and “mall culture,” music videos, cyberculture, and toys for girls. While established feminist critiques

of popular culture texts and practice will provide our theoretical groundwork, we will also be engaged with emergent

studies which propose sites of resistance within popular culture.

NOTE: This course counts in Category 4 of the Honours and Combined Honours English Programs.