ENGL 501 Methodologies: Critical Theory | Dr. Melissa Jacques
This course is a survey of critical theory. In the first week, students will get a crash course on the field we call critical theory. The goal is to understand the origins of the field before we enter into the debates that attend particular themes, movements, and applications of theory from the early twentieth century to the present. The syllabus covers what have become “canonical” theoretical paradigms, such as structuralism, Marxism, feminism, deconstruction and postcolonial theory. What we will find, as we move through the course, is that theorists rarely contain their thinking to discrete themes, positions, movements, and influences.
ENGL 503 Practices in the Profession and Teaching of Literary Studies and Related Disciplines | Dr. Aisha Ravindran
The first half of this course is designed to provide learners with core skills in teaching. In coordination with the Centre for Teaching and Learning and FCCS faculty members, sessions will address equity practices, class design, discussion strategies, writing and critiquing exercises, and grading. Students will be given the opportunity to design and deliver short lessons in their field of expertise and will receive constructive feedback on their teaching. At the end of the first five weeks, students who have attended and participated in the sessions will receive the Foundations Certificate for Graduate Teaching Assistants. The second half of the course will familiarize scholars in Literary Studies with the profession’s expectations, practices, and responsibilities. Topics will include the teaching dossier, conference presentations, research strategies, the proposal and thesis/ research project, publication, and employment. The course will also offer information on and encourage attendance at workshops on applying for funding. Class discussions are intended to provide a forum for reflection on the professional opportunities and challenges that exist within graduate studies.
ENGL 521A Posthumanism and Critical Animal Studies | Dr. Jodey Castricano
This course begins from the philosophical position that animals are worthy of serious intellectual and ethical consideration and, thus, a further aim is to attend to how animality and the question of the animal(s) similarly intersect with questions of gender, race, class and ethnicity by introducing students to the necessary intersection of posthumanism and critical animal studies. To this end, we will begin by developing an understanding of the field of posthumanism in relation to critical animal studies, postcolonial and cultural studies and eco-feminist theory. We will then move into the question of the animal and discuss how the relations of hierarchy, domination, and exploitation between humans and animals are systematically reproduced in relations of class, race and ethnicity among humans themselves while keeping before us the plight of actual animals as they are subject to systems of biopower. In addition to materials dealing with posthumanism and critical animal studies, we may be reading literary works which frame the question of the animal in its representational complexity.
ENGL 521B Feminist Forerunners: Early Modern Women’s Literature and Contemporary Theory | Dr. Alison Conway
This course examines foundational feminist writing from two historical periods, taking a comparative approach to writing during the early modern period (from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century) in relation to a selection of work of late twentieth and early twenty-first century theory.
ENGL 521E Topics in Historical Periods and Movements| Dr. Margaret Reeves
This course examines advanced topics in seventeenth-century literature and culture. In this section of “Approaches to 17th-Century Literature: Special Topics” we will examine the gendering of political thought in fictional, historical, and philosophical narratives of the early modern period (1500-1700) with a focus on the seventeenth century (1600-1700). We will study how gender inflects some of the core concepts in political thought of this period, such as patriarchalism and royalism, analogies between the family and the commonwealth, republicanism and masculinity, the sexual contract embedded within social contract theory, and the gendering of early modern utopias (including those by Thomas More and Margaret Cavendish). By invoking conventional tools of literary analysis as well as the critical historiographical methods of Hayden White, we will consider the relationship between various forms of political narratives–fictional, poetic, historical, and philosophical–as modes of representation.
ENGL 525K Postcolonial Studies – Humanitarian Life Narratives | Dr. David Jefferess
This course examines the construction of the humanitarian in life narratives, understood broadly to include memoir, documentary biographical film, NGO marketing appeals, fiction, etc. Drawing upon scholarship in life writing, celebrity culture, media discourse, moral philosophy, postcolonial theory, critical race studies, and gender studies, the course focuses on the ongoing legacy of the “white saviour complex”. As a 400 level/graduate course, the course will be participatory, focusing on student-driven analysis, and will provide opportunities to develop skills in collaboration, oral presentation, and discussion facilitation, with options for both scholarly and creative research and communication.
ENGL 532A Culture & Location: Shakespeare and Place | Dr. Sean Lawrence
This seminar will examine the role of place and location in the works of William Shakespeare and the stage and society in which they were presented. The discussion will be framed by a dialogue between the respectively ethical and ontological phenomenologies of Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger. The course will be divided into three sub-themes, each examining three plays in three weeks: the English popular stage; representations of the world beyond Europe; the erotic landscape. The course has a philosophical focus, but seeks to find points of integration with other critical concerns.