麻豆AV

Description: This course will familiarize students with the development of English poetry, drama and prose from the medieval period to the 18C. We will strike a balance between studying a series of major works, including Beowulf, Chaucer鈥檚 Canterbury Tales, Spenser鈥檚 Faerie Queen, Shakespeare鈥檚 Twelfth Night, Milton鈥檚 Paradise Lost, and Swift鈥檚 Gulliver鈥檚 Travels, and attending to influential examples of shorter poetic and prose forms.

ENGL 200 is the Non-Departmental Survey, intended for students who are not enrolled in the English department鈥檚 Literature stream programs.

Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, 7th or later edition.

Evaluation Midterm exam 25%; Essay 35%; Final exam 30%; Conference participation 10%.

Format: Lecture and discussion sections.

Average Enrollment: 100 students.

Prerequisites: Open only to English Majors and Minors, or by special written permission of instructor.

Description: Required for English Majors and Minors, ENGL 202 is foundational to further study of literature in the department of English. Through readings of and lectures/discussions on a range of major non-dramatic works from the Anglo Saxon period to the mid 18^th century, it introduces students to English literary history, while reflecting upon the meaning of tradition, the idea of a canon and of literary history, the concept of 鈥淓nglishness,鈥� and the significance and purpose of literature. We will trace the development through time of specific literary forms and genres, including lyric, elegy, epic, satire, sonnet, romance, and pastoral. At the same time, we will consider the relation between literature and religion, politics, and culture broadly, asking why people read and write literature, and following the changing ideas of the writer and his/her role in society. This course gives students a knowledge of early literature in English that prepares them for more advanced and specialized study in the department. Class discussions (especially in conferences) and written assignments will help students develop skills of interpretation and communication.

罢别虫迟蝉听(texts are available at 麻豆AV Bookstore):

• Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol 1. 9^th Edition.
• Edmund Spenser鈥檚 Poetry. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Anne Lake Prescott and Andrew D. Hadfield. (Included with the Anthology if purchased at the Bookstore)
• The Canadian Writer鈥檚 Handbook. 6^th Edition. Ed. William E. Messenger et al. Toronto: Oxford, 2015. (RECOMMENDED)

Evaluation:聽20% mid-term; 40% 5-6 page term paper; 30% formal final exam;10% conference participation.

Format: Lecture and conferences.

Description: This is a survey of British literature from the late 18th century to the present. We will consider the main periods and literary directions鈥擱omantic, Victorian, modern, postmodern and postcolonial鈥攚hile simultaneously asking questions about the principles of periodization. As this timeframe covers a rich range of texts and authors from various backgrounds, we will discuss both established authors as well as writers who, until a few decades ago, were seldom considered to be part of the canon: women, writers of color, outsiders (Mary Wollstonecraft, Olaudah Equiano, Hanif Kureishi, Angela Carter, Linton Kwesi Johnson). In the case of the well-established writers (William Blake, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot) we will draw on texts that showcase the plight of the working classes, distant imaginary or real landscapes, gender and sexuality, and less explored themes. We will study the characteristics of various literary genres, identify the cultural concerns specific to each period, and read the themes and formal elements of poetry, fiction and essays against the social and political background of each era. Finally, the class will assess how authors view literary tradition as well as perceived breaks with tradition to understand how the literary canon comes to be formed and how it changes from one historical moment to another.

Required Texts:

• The Norton Anthology of Literature, Major Authors, Volume 2, 10th edition
• Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
• Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
• Sam Selvon: The Lonely Londoners
• Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day

Electronic coursepack

Format: Lectures and conferences.

Prerequisites: None.

Description: A representative sampling of Shakespeare鈥檚 plays will provide an introduction to the scope and variety of his drama as it relates to his cultural context and to most of the main genres of his writing. Shakespeare began creating plays around 1589, and the plays addressed in this course represent the development of his art from somewhat after its beginnings, up to its final phase, around 1612. They will be dealt with in chronological order, as in the following list of the course readings. The course will thus provide a strong foundation for appreciating and understanding Shakespeare鈥檚 drama.

Texts will be available in paperback for purchase at the Word bookstore, 469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640.

Since this course will have conferences, one class per week (either Mondays or Fridays) will be cancelled after the first week or two (TBA) of term, and conferences will instead be provided at various times on that day instead. You will choose the conference time that suits your other commitments.

Texts:

• A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream
• As You Like It
• Twelfth Night
• Hamlet
• King Lear
• The Winter鈥檚 Tale
• The Tempest

Evaluation:聽Term paper, 45%; take-home final exam, 35%; course attendance and participation, 20%.

Format:聽Lectures and weekly conferences.

Prerequisites:听狈辞苍别.

Description: A survey of American literature from its beginnings to the Civil War (1860). While we may begin with early writing鈥擭ative Americans, explorers, Puritans, or 18^th-century figures such as Benjamin Franklin, for example鈥攖he main emphasis will be on literature from the first half of the 19^th century: authors such as Irving, Douglass, and Stowe, with a special focus on the major writers of the 鈥淎merican Renaissance鈥�--Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman, and Dickinson. Particular attention will be paid to representative American themes, forms, and literary techniques. No attempt will be made to cover all major writers or writings.

Texts:

• Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings
• The Norton Anthology of American Literature: 9^th edition, Vol. B (1820-1865).

Evaluation (Tentative): 20% mid-term exam; 25% essay; 15% conference participation; 40% final exam. (All evaluation鈥攐n exams as well as essays鈥攖ests abilities in literary-critical writing and analysis; none involves short-answer or multiple-choice exams graded by computer.)

Format: Lectures and required discussion sections.

Average Enrollment: 140 to 160 students.

Description: This course will provide students with a broad survey of American fiction from the mid-twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first. Through the close study of a diverse group of American writers, we will work to identify the evolving aesthetics of several distinct literary periods: from social realism and late modernism at mid-century, to the postmodern play of the 1960s and 1970s, to the varieties of contemporary experience at century鈥檚 end. We will encounter outlaws, scoundrels, detectives, veterans, fugitive slaves, and municipal elevator inspectors. Moreover, we will consider the literary history of the twentieth century alongside cultural and historical phenomena such as World War II, the atom bomb, suburbia, the civil rights movement, and the rise of TV. The reading list includes works by Petry, Nabokov, O鈥機onnor, Vonnegut, Silko, Robinson, Morrison, DeLillo, Whitehead, and a final novel or short story collection selected by student vote.

Texts:

• Ann Petry, selected short stories
• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
• Flannery O鈥機onnor, selected short stories
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
• Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
• Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
• Don DeLillo, White Noise
• Toni Morrison, Beloved
• Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist

Final Text TBD by Student Vote

贰惫补濒耻补迟颈辞苍:听Lecture and Conference Participation (10%); Midterm (30%); Essay (30%); Final Exam (30%).

贵辞谤尘补迟:听Lecture and conferences.

Description: An introduction to Canadian literature in English from its beginnings through the Second World War. Early Canadian literature in English represents a diverse country changing with successive waves of colonization and modernization. The representation is at once vivid and imperfect, showing us Canadian beliefs and experiences as they were filtered through the English language, the book trade, literary movements, and broader ideological trends. The principal goal of this course is literary-historical. We will strive to understand why early English-Canadian writers wrote what they did, how their writing was published and received, what political and aesthetic motives drove them, and what ideals structured their different visions of the nation. The problem of representing the First Nations in the colonial language, English, will be one theme of the course. Another will be the various ideals of religion, spirituality, and morality that writers brought to their work. A third theme will be poetics. Concepts of meter, rhyme, rhetoric, figurative language, and genre are fundamental to literary creativity, and learning about their historical application allows us to see the purpose of literature evolving. These and other themes will be traced across four main units: (1) contact with the First Nations, exploration of the land, and settlement from the 17th to the 19th century; (2) the romantic movement known as Confederation Poetry, which flourished from 1880 to 1900 and enjoyed a long popularity afterward; (3) major early Canadian novels in English, representing sensibility, romanticism, and realism; and (4) modernism. Students will become familiar with the major genres that writers in this country adopted to give expression to their experience of Canada, such as exploration travel narrative, satire, sketch, romance, nature lyric, narrative long poem, short story, long poem, free verse, and novel. Assessment will be based on reading quizzes designed to encourage diligent and thoughtful engagement with the assigned texts, essays aimed at improving students鈥� formal academic writing, participation in class discussions of the literature, and a final exam.

Required Books: (tentative list)

• Graham, Gwethalyn. Earth and High Heaven (Cormorant)
• Johnson, E. Pauline. Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson鈥檚 Writings on Native North America (Broadview)
• Moodie, Susanna. Roughing It in the Bush; or, Life in Canada (惭肠骋颈濒濒-蚕耻别别苍鈥檚)
• Thompson, David. The Writings of David Thompson (惭肠骋颈濒濒-蚕耻别别苍鈥檚)

Evaluation:
Essay 1 (20%): 4 pp.
Essay 2 (20%): 4 pp.
Short Assignments (20%)
Participation (10%)
Final Exam (30%)

Format: Lectures and conference sections.

Prerequisites:听狈辞苍别.

Description: A survey of English Canadian poetry and prose from the Second World War to the present. We will read a range of poetry and short fiction by many of Canada鈥檚 most accomplished writers in order to explore ideas about the nature of Canada and the literary representation of race, identity, politics, and indigenous experience in Canada. In addition to looking at the work of major authors from 1945 to the present, the lectures will also cover such topics as Canadian literary nationalism, realism, postmodernism, and different forms of experimentation. We will also look at the idea of the north as a central metaphor in Canadian writing and will discuss the economic and cultural forces accounting for the construction of a national literature. Students will be introduced to a number of concepts related to literary analysis. Please note that in addition to weekly lectures there will be one conference meeting each week.

罢别虫迟蝉:听Lecker, Robert, ed. Open Country: Canadian Literature in English. Toronto: Nelson, 2007.

Evaluation:听罢叠础

Format: Lecture and conference.

Average Enrollment: 85 students.

Description: This course provides a critical introduction to theatre studies, in its branches of dramatic literature, dramatic theory, and theatre history. Our point of departure for this introduction to the field will be plays drawn from the major episodes of western theatre history, beginning with Ancient Greek tragedy through contemporary Canadian and postcolonial performance, and including the Department of English mainstage show. Through the plays, we will examine what 鈥渢heatre鈥� is in different periods and places, how it is constituted by the material conditions of performance, codified in dramatic genres, and conceptualised in dramatic theory.

Texts (tentative):

• J. Ellen Gainor, Stanton B. Garner, Jr. and Martin Puchner (eds),聽The Norton Anthology of Drama, Shorter Third Edition.

贰惫补濒耻补迟颈辞苍听(tentative): Participation in conference sections (20%);聽midterm essay or exam (20%);聽production analysis (20%);聽final exam (40%).

Format: Lecture and聽conferences.

Prerequisites: This class is restricted to declared Majors in Drama and Theatre who have completed or are completing ENGL 230 and ENGL 355. Admission is by permission of the instructor only: sean.carney [at] mcgill.ca

Course Description: This course will introduce you to basic tools and techniques used in acting, improvisation, and dramatic analysis. You will develop vocal and physical warm-ups, learn about breath support and a free and placed voice, explore the performance of Shakespeare monologues, participate in improvisation exercises, explore spontaneity, imagination and creativity, learn about the analysis of a contemporary dramatic script and the use of that analysis in the actor鈥檚 work. Throughout the course you will be asked to commit fully to the class, the group and the process, and you will be expected to work on your own, outside of class, rehearsing your monologues and scenes.

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: A combination of class participation (various exercises and presentations totaling approximately 50% of the evaluation) and various types of written assignments (approximately 50% of the evaluation).

Format: Group discussions, practical exercises, class presentations.

顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听This course, a required course for Cultural Studies majors and minors, will introduce various critical efforts to theorize the aesthetics, semiotics, and politics of popular culture over the past century. Beginning with a few crucial theoretical touchstones (Barthes, Foucault, Barthes), we will survey such movements as the Frankfurt School, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, critical race studies, postmodernism, queer theory, and affect theory, as they each formulate critical frameworks to explain how popular culture works. Along the way, we will consider the following questions: What does the 鈥減opular鈥� in 鈥減opular culture鈥� mean? Does the distinction between 鈥渉igh鈥� and 鈥渓ow鈥� culture have a political dimension? Furthermore, when we do cultural studies, whose culture should be investigated? What is the role of the critic? Finally, how can we grasp the meanings of popular culture: by examining the texts themselves, or by studying the audiences鈥� interpretations and uses of these texts?

Texts:

• Stuart Hall,聽Representation
• Roland Barthes,聽Mythologies
• Judith Butler,聽Gender Trouble
• Edward Said,聽Orientalism
• Toni Morrison,聽Playing in the Dark

Evaluation:听罢叠础

Format: Lecture, weekly TA-led conferences.

Prerequisites: The course is limited to students in the Cultural Studies and World Cinemas programs.

Description: This course is designed to prepare students in the Cultural Studies and World Cinemas programs for future film courses at 麻豆AV. The course will introduce the student to central concepts in film form and aesthetics, as well as key theories of film production and reception. The main goal of the course is to familiarize the student with analytical tools to investigate and explain how a film generates its multiple effects鈥攊n short, to articulate how a film works.

Required Texts:
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction
Course pack with essays by Walter Benjamin, Elizabeth Cowie, Andr茅 Bazin, Michel Chion, Linda Williams, Richard Maltby, Thomas Schatz, Annette Michelson, Laura Mulvey, Richard Dyer, and others.

Required Films:

• Man With A Movie Camera (U.S.S.R., Dziga Vertov, 1929)
• Exotica (Canada, Atom Egoyan, 1994)
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Germany, Robert Wiene, 1920)
• Taxi Driver (U.S.A., Martin Scorsese, 1976)
• Breathless (France, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
• The Conversation (U.S.A., Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (U.S.A., John Ford, 1962)
• Stella Dallas (U.S.A., King Vidor, 1937)
• The Hole (Taiwan, Tsai Ming-Liang, 1998)
• The Thin Blue Line (U.S.A., Errol Morris, 1988)
• Dog Man Star: Prelude (1961), Mothlight (1963), The Wold Shadow (1972), Rage Net (1988),听Black Ice (1994) (all U.S.A., Stan Brakhage)
• Scorpio Rising (U.S.A., Kenneth Anger, 1964)
• Meshes of the Afternoon (U.S.A., Maya Deren, 1945)
• Vertigo (U.S.A., Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Evaluation:聽Short scene analysis paper, longer paper on genre analysis, quizzes, final exam.

Format:聽Lectures, weekly TA-led conferences, weekly screenings.

Prerequisites:听狈辞苍别.

Description: Designed as one of the two core courses for World Cinemas Minors, this course introduces key historical moments, cinematic movements, formal styles, as well as historiographical and theoretical debates in the history of world cinema. The course maps out diverging trajectories and merging paths of exemplary filmmakers and filmmaking collectives in various nations and geo-political regions against the backdrop of the changing technological media environments. While we distinguish chronology from history, the course follows the transformation of cinema from its emergent era to the present. Students will read both historical and contemporary texts to gain a broad sense of the seminal debates in film studies, reception and criticism.聽聽This course aims to foster a critical understanding of cinema as an international, distributed and polycentric phenomenon. Note: This course also counts as one of the History requirements for the Cultural Studies major.

Required Films:

• Early shorts by the Lumiere brothers, D.W. Griffith et. al.
• Battleship Potemkin聽(Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, USSR, 75 min),聽
• M聽(Fritz Lang, Germany,1931)
• The Goddess聽(Wu Yonggang, China, 1934)
• The Rules of the Game聽(Jean Renoir, France, 1939)
• Rome Open City聽(Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1945)
• Rashomon聽(Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1950)
• Daisies聽(V臎ra Chytilov谩, Czechoslovakia, 1966)
• Macunaima聽(Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Brazil, 1969)
• Xala聽(Ousmane Sembene, 1975, Senegal)
• Dust in the Wind聽(Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan, 1986)
• Chungking Express聽(Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, 1994)
• The Host聽(Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2006)

Evaluation:听罢叠础

Format:聽Lecture + weekly screening.

Description:聽This course provides a critical introduction to one of the most dynamic fields of literary studies 鈥� postcolonial and world literature 鈥� by engaging with the rich corpus of literary and filmic texts from South Asia. At the same time, it provides a critical introduction to modern South Asia by drawing on a range of novels, poems, short stories, travelogues, and films produced in that region during the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The course examines how these texts speak about ideas of community, history and space; how it articulates notions of belonging and oppression; how social categories such as gender, caste and class inflect these works. In sum, it considers how these texts conceive of, and represent, the lives and life-worlds of the South Asian region while situating them in relation to the critical and theoretical preoccupations of postcolonial and world literature studies. In addition, the course interrogates the (often contested) meanings of the term postcolonial and asks how it relates to categories such as anti-colonial and colonial besides familiarizing students with some of the key issues and contemporary debates in the field. In so doing, the course prepares students for further study in postcolonial and world literature.

Note 1: Attendance to TA conferences and film screenings is mandatory. No exceptions.

Note 2: This is one of the required courses for the South Asian Studies minor (Stream 1: Culture and Civilization).

Texts:

Novels:

• Mulk Raj Anand 鈥� Untouchable (1935)
• Anita Desai 鈥� In Custody (1984)
• Salman Rushdie 鈥� Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
• Mohammed Hanif 鈥� The Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008)
• Varun Thomas 鈥� The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay (2019)

Travelogues:

• Vikram Seth 鈥� From Heaven Lake (1983)

Short Stories:

• Selections from Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, Sadaat Hasan Manto, Manik Banerjee

Poetry:

• Selections from Rabindranath Tagore; Arun Kolatkar

Films:

• Shatranj ke Khiladi [The Chess Players] (Dir: Satyajit Ray, 1977)
• Peepli, Live! (Dir: Anusha Rizvi, 2010)

This is an indicative list and course texts will be finalized in August 2020.

Evaluation: TBA

Format:聽Lectures and TA conferences.