91黑料网

Description: The Middle Ages is a period of literary history which is often considered as having relatively few writings by women. However, medieval understandings of literature, authorship, textual circulation, and processes of writing do not fit neatly into later periods鈥� conceptions. For example, modern notions of authorship have often been reductive when considering women鈥檚 writings in the Middle Ages. Women鈥檚 voices permeated medieval literary culture, not only as writers and collaborators through amanuenses, translators, or adaptors, but also as patrons, manuscript owners, readers, and subjects of texts. By asking questions such as 鈥淲hat is an author?鈥�, 鈥淲hat qualifies as literature?鈥�, 鈥淲ho decides what goes in 鈥榯he canon鈥�?鈥�, we will explore what it means to look at the late medieval period (c.1300-1550) and more accurately assess the contributions of women to this foundational era of English literature. The purpose of this course is to show how reading medieval women鈥檚 writing can make us think in new, exciting ways about how literature works in any period.

From Marie de France, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena, to Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Christine de Pizan and the Paston women, this course considers a wide range of women鈥檚 writings, unveiling a multifaceted and collaborative literary culture where women鈥檚 influential views formed and transformed ideas of writing, reading, and gender.

Texts (provisional):

• Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, six plays
• Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias
• Marie de France, Lais (selection)
• Marguerite Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls
• Bridget of Sweden, Liber Caelestis (selection)
• Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue
• Julian of Norwich, Revelations
• Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies
• Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
• The Paston Letters (selection)

Evaluation:
book reviews (30%); research paper (50%); presentation (10%); participation (10%)

Format: seminar and workshop

Description: Under Elizabeth I, England began to imagine itself as a political and cultural rival to the ancient empires of Athens and Greece. It therefore needed a great national poet to represent its power to the world, and the ambitious and brilliant Edmund Spenser stepped in. The poetry he wrote is deliberately archaic and difficult; it is highly indebted to classical writings as well as those of contemporary France and Italy, takes place in fantastical worlds of shepherds, knights, and faeries, and yet engages deeply with late 16th-century English concerns and created the foundation for a modern poetic voice that would then be further developed by Milton and the Romantics. In this course, we will read some of Spenser鈥檚 early works, especially The Shepheardes Calendar and Muiopotmos, but concentrate on his great unfinished epic, The Faerie Queene. A new kind of protean epic, the Faerie Queene seems to change in essence in each book, so that the reader of Book 1 might well wonder how book 6 could be part of the same work. We will consider how and why Spenser鈥檚 mutable text uses his convoluted stanza and range of genres including pastoral and romance to represent Elizabethan politics and religion, and address questions such as the nature of tradition, meaning of gender, the ethics of colonialism, and the meaning of change itself. Spenser creates a complex world in which the Queen鈥檚 virginity is both celebrated and a national disaster; in which English domination of Ireland unleashes a brutality that disrupts the fantasy world of faerie; and in which historical change is a source of both hope and despair.

Texts: Complete Works of Spenser (editions TBA)

Evaluation: short paper (close reading) 20%; class participation 30%; final paper (research and interpretive) 50%

Format: class participation may include short in-class assignments

Description: Some narratives are designed around the central problem of seduction. Other narratives explain the consequences of seduction鈥攁s a justification or a recrimination. In certain cases, seduction occurs from motives of revenge, misogyny, aggression, and, of course, passion. Why is seduction linked to narrative? What happens when seduction occurs across class lines? Does homosexual seduction differ from heterosexual seduction, and if so, how? What transpires when an older woman falls in love with a younger man, or an older man and a younger woman? What ethics are implicit within narratives of seduction? To some degree, psychoanalysis, narrative theory, and queer theory will frame our inquiries into the narrative representation of seduction. Although novels might be defined by pervasive 鈥渓ove interest,鈥� it is possible to imagine a character entirely unmoved by desire and therefore free from the ensnarements of seduction, which raises a question about the conjunction of seduction and sexuality, as well as the conjunction of seduction and love. Beginning with Freud鈥檚 theory that children attempt to seduce their parents (a theory that Freud himself subsequently renounced), we will examine a range of texts that investigate the lexicon of seduction. In the novels under consideration in this course, we will encounter instances of insincere seduction, foiled seduction, adultery, cheating, pregnancy, sapphism, inversion, virginity, celibacy, compulsive Don Juanism, indifference, sadism, obsession, intimacy, transitory crushes, flirtation, and the unshakeable template that first love sets for subsequent case histories of love. Theoretical readings will include pieces by Adam Phillips, Mladan Dolar, Georg Simmel, Jane Gallup, Janice Radway, Peter Brooks, and others.

Texts: (this list offers some possibilities of what will appear on the syllabus; a final list will be available in July 2026)

• Alain de Botton, Essays in Love
• Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved
• Sigmund Freud, Dora
• D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love
• Colette, 颁丑茅谤颈
• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
• James Baldwin, Giovanni鈥檚 Room
• Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
• Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance
• Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You
• Sally Rooney, Normal People
• Katie Kitamura, Intimacies

贰惫补濒耻补迟颈辞苍:听short paper or research project 30%;聽long paper 50%;聽attendance and participation 20%

Description: The 1930s marked a period of massive change for both the U.S. as a whole and its film industry. The Great Depression that ravaged the nation鈥檚 economy also threatened to destroy the Hollywood studios, forcing them to re-organize themselves less as family businesses and more as modern corporations. The labour radicalism ignited by the Depression sparked union drives within Hollywood as well. Concern over the influence of films on America鈥檚 youth prompted the expansion and stricter enforcement of the industry鈥檚 Production Code, which imposed multiple constraints on both film form and content. In addition, Hollywood鈥檚 transition to synchronized sound necessitated a series of changes, both technological and aesthetic, that transformed the vocabulary of cinema. Operating from an understanding of these multiple social, industrial, and aesthetic contexts, this course will examine several different film genres and cycles that attempted to address鈥攄irectly and indirectly鈥攖he Great Depression as it was underway. Of key interest will be questions of narrative form: how did classical Hollywood narration鈥攚hose causal structure is driven by the agency of its individual protagonists鈥攔epresent a social world that dramatized the ineffectual nature of personal agency in the face of economic collapse? The course will pay special attention to genres and cycles that treated forms of life whose position in the social order was precarious鈥攖he gangster film, the fallen woman cycle, the social problem film鈥攚hile also examining film styles whose relationship to the Depression may seem more tenuous, such as screwball comedy and the musical.

Required films:

• Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, First National/Warner Bros., 1931)
• Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, Paramount, 1932)
• American Madness (Frank Capra, Columbia, 1932)
• Prosperity (Sam Wood, MGM, 1932)
• I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, Warner Bros., 1932)
• Wild Boys of the Road (William A. Wellman, First National/Warner Bros., 1933)
• Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, Warner Bros., 1933)
• 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, Warner Bros., 1933)
• Gabriel Over the White House (Gregory La Cava, MGM, 1933)
• Stand Up and Cheer! (Hamilton MacFadden, Fox Film, 1934)
• It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, Columbia, 1934)
• Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, King W. Vidor Productions/United Artists, 1934)
• Black Fury (Michael Curtiz, First National/Warner Bros., 1935)
• My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, Universal, 1936)
• Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, Charles Chaplin Productions/United Artists, 1936)
• Fury (Fritz Lang, Loew鈥檚/MGM, 1936)
• Marked Woman (Lloyd Bacon/Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros./First National, 1937)
• Black Legion (Archie Mayo, Warner Bros., 1937)
• Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, Paramount, 1937)
• The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1940)
• Sullivan鈥檚 Travels (Preston Sturges, Paramount, 1941)

Required readings:

Eric Rauchway, The Great Depression & The New Deal: A Very Short Introduction
Essays by Robert Sklar, Richard Maltby, Lawrence Levine, Victoria Sturtevant, Danae Clark, Martin Rubin, Henry Jenkins, Thomas Schatz, Michael Denning, Michae Rogin, Amy Louise Wood, Rita Barnard, and others.

Format: seminar, weekly screenings (usually, 2 films a week)

Description: One word for diary, now sadly obsolete, is 鈥渆phemeris.鈥澛營ts usages include both keeping a record of daily life and predicting how that life will be. (Another obsolete usage: 鈥淎 book in which the places of the heavenly bodies and other astronomical matters are tabulated in advance for each day of a certain period; an astronomical almanac.鈥� [OED]). This course takes ephemeris as a conceptual framework for encountering and responding to Romantic poetry. Each class we will read a poem or poems that we have not seen before鈥攑oems that were not assigned prior class鈥攚ithout any contextual materials. That is, we will initially meet poems as 鈥渨ords on a page鈥� that wholly contain the conditions of possibility for their interpretation. Of course, our interpretations will also be animated by what we already know as individuals and as a class about poetry鈥攁bout literary allusions, formal dynamics, canonical authors, and the like. As a return to something like I.A. Richards鈥檚 Practical Criticism (1929), this approach will emphasize close reading as the primary mode of engagement, encouraging us to explore and clarify our readerly responses, cognitive and affective, to works of art. After class, readings will be retroactively provided and students will be tasked with writing weekly responses to the poems both 鈥渋n and of themselves鈥� and in context. In this way, the course asks us to record, in order to examine, ephemeral forms of recording and prediction. What do we gain and what do we lose by the attempt to preserve literary interpretations that will inevitably be reshaped, or even supplanted, by author biography, material history, etc.? What can we discover about Romanticism, as a literary and intellectual movement, from readings that begin with poetry rather than history? What would it mean to embrace 鈥済uesswork鈥� in literary analysis, as a means of engagement without recourse to online fact-checking? In this way, the course asks us to examine what we think we know, what we can guess, and what we do know, about poems as aesthetic objects and objects of criticism.

In addition to attending regularly scheduled classes, students will be required to attend, in person, at least two extra-curricular writing sessions held at different times during the semester (exact dates and times TBD)

Texts: coursepack

Evaluation: in-class engagement (may include activities such as participation in discussions, writing prompts, and mini-presentations) (30%); 鈥渆phemeris鈥� critical responses (30%); final research essay (includes precis and annotated bibliography) (40%)

Format: seminar discussion

Description: What is an archive? And what is the place of 鈥渢he archive鈥� in literary studies? Or in literature? In this seminar, we will approach these questions in theory and method. We will trace the historical and institutional formation of archives, examining the power dynamics they reproduce and the issues of provenance that trouble them. We will investigate methods for the keeping and transmission of knowledge that have existed outside of traditional archives, and the possibilities and perils of impermanency. And we will examine where archives appear in, inform, or form contemporary literary works. Throughout our readings, we will ask the question: what are the formal boundaries of an/the archive? What can, and cannot, be housed in an archive? Readings will include works by: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Brent Edwards, Saidiya Hartman, Ann Cvetkovich, Natalie Diaz, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Arlette Farge, Diana Taylor, Robin Coste Lewis, Ocean Vuong, Valeria Luiselli, Namwali Serpell, Laura Helton, and Eunsong Kim.

Selected texts (subject to change):

• Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past (1995)
• Saidiya Hartman, 鈥淰enus in Two Acts,鈥� (2008)
• Michel Foucault, 鈥淭he Lives of Infamous Men,鈥� (1977)
• Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (1995)
• Robin Coste Lewis, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (2022)
• Namwali Serpell, The Furrows (2021)
• Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive (2019)
• Eunsong Kim, The Politics of Collecting (2024)
• Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire (2003)
• Laura Helton, Scattered and Fugitive Things (2024)

Evaluation: seminar presentation (15%), short essay (25%), annotated bibliography (10%), research paper (35%), active participation in every class meeting (15%)

Format: seminar

Expected preparation: Previous university courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies. Interest in theories of performance and in dramatic structure (or narrative); willingness to experiment with praxis work that puts the theory 鈥榦n its feet鈥�.

Description: How does contemporary theatre make itself up? With what kinds of questions and materials and research processes does contemporary theatre practice begin? What logics drive its organisation?

鈥淭heatre鈥� has commonly been understood as the realization of a pre-existing drama (or play which tells a story) through re-enactment. This is what French theorist, Joseph Danan, calls the 鈥渁rt in two steps鈥� paradigm of 20^th-century theatre (Danan 2014) where (1) a pre-existing play is (2) staged or 鈥減ut up鈥�. However, since at least the late 19^th century and the rise of the avant-garde, theatre-makers and theorists have investigated the formal elements of theatre, including the text, but often privileging the performance elements (or 鈥渟pectacle鈥�) of the theatre arts 鈥� space, time, the body, the image, and sound.

Our focus will be on what Hans-Thies Lehmann influentially called 鈥減ostdramatic theatre鈥� -- that is, theatre that eschews the structuring of time through linear plot as well as the notion of theatre as a representation of a fictive cosmos. Instead, as theatre assumes a more 鈥榓ware鈥� stance of what lies outside of its fictions, other logics of arrangement take centre stage. Profoundly interartistic and intermedial, postdramatic theatre weaves together the various components of a performance in more open and playful forms, often suspending 鈥榤eaning鈥� and highlighting sensory perception. Leaving behind the 鈥渢he traditional coherent and cohesive representation or presentation of a fictional world鈥� (Kaynar, 391), postdramatic theatre highlights the moment of performance itself.

The appellation 鈥減ostdramatic鈥� englobes a range of creative forms from body-based devising to multimedia meditating. Our collective study is organised around two logics of arrangement that recur in contemporary performance: imitation / repetition and mediation (where one thing passes through another). Through a series of case-studies of recent production, our seminar will examine and analyse the philosophies behind such approaches, their aesthetic outcomes, and how the alternate logic of arrangement affects 鈥渟tory鈥� and meaning in the piece.

Readings will define dramatic and postdramatic theatre and investigate the conditions of their emergence; Lehman positions postdramatic theatre, for instance, as 鈥渢heatre鈥檚 response to changed social communication under the conditions of generalized information technologies鈥� (23). Another set of readings and viewings will take us into the shows and creative processes of major contemporary theatre groups including but not limited to: Elevator Repair Service (NYC), the Wooster Group (NYC), Theatre Replacement (Vancouver), and Punchdrunk (London, UK). Finally, we鈥檒l experiment with putting into practice their principles and creative processes on small-scale workshop projects.

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: This hybrid seminar/workshop is designed to:

1) to teach students to respond critically and creatively to experimental art, film, and literature.
2) enable students to create experimental forms of writing and visual media that responds to the texts we study.

Calling all creative misfits who long to engage in forms of critical thinking that expand beyond the traditional scholarly essay! By focusing on multi-media artworks that interrogate and undermine conventional forms of representation through their contrapuntal use of image, sound, and text, we shall explore how meaning in contemporary art is often generated across multiple registers. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to important examples of experimental film and video, poetry, and 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 to create their own self-directed artistic, literary, critical, or curatorial projects. In other words, students will not only be expected to discuss, think, and write about the works we study, but to design and execute creative projects that respond meaningfully 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 to participate in screenings, exhibitions, and performances.

Films and artworks:

• Puce Moment (Kenneth Anger, US, 1949)
• Blonde Cobra (Ken Jacobs, US, 1963)
• 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)
• Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, France, 1983)
• The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Nan Goldin, US, 1985)
• Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, US, 1989)
• Blue (Derek Jarman, UK, 1993)
• As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Jonas Mekas, US, 2000)
• Notes on Blue (Moyra Davey, US, 2015)
• Love is the Message, The Message is Death (Arthur Jafa, US, 2016)
• Bird Calls (David Baumflek, Canada, 2018)
• Altiplano (Malena Szlam, Canada, 2018)
• earthearthearth (Daichi Saito, Canada, 2021)
• Selected films by Sky Hopinka, including Lore (2019), When You鈥檙e Lost in the Rain (2018) and I鈥檒l Remember You as You Were Not as What You鈥檒l Become (2016)

Evaluation:

participation: 15%
short form writing: 15 %
experimental slideshow (text + image): 20 %
video portrait: 20%
final project 30 %
(can be scholarly essay, experimental film or video, or other critical, creative or curatorial project)

Format: seminar, workshop, student 鈥渃rit,鈥� and mandatory weekly screening

Description: William Langland鈥檚 vast, protean Piers Plowman, written and revised over the last quarter of the fourteenth century, would come to inspire protesting laborers in 1381 and any number of religious reformists who found the plowman 鈥淧iers鈥� to be a fitting mouthpiece for their critiques of institutional ills throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This embryonic allegorical poem begins in a 鈥渇air field full of folk鈥� and quickly explodes into a troubling examination of the causes of injustice, societal division, and a quest to learn鈥攖hrough a process of intense questioning鈥攖he best way to live. In the process, Langland explores the workings of the English legal system, theories of consent, contemporary educational systems, corrupt and incorrupt authority, the just treatment of the poor, faculty psychology, natural philosophy, and virtually every branch and level of medieval society. Though the poem does envision the betterment of society, its outlook remains grim. Utopian vision emerges momentarily, only to be undermined in an enormously complex and disquieting series of visions that refuse to 鈥渁rrive鈥� at a solution or static program for living. Its protagonists experience and reflect on suffering and injustice, even as they imagine alternatives. The series of dreams and waking moments that make up Piers Plowman thus present visions 鈥渇or鈥�, but not necessarily 鈥渙f鈥�, a just society, drawing on sophisticated traditions of theological, political, philosophical, and scientific learning.

Topics to be explored include, but are not limited to, the just treatment of the poor; labor conditions; excess and material possessions; authority and corruption; education and literacy; law and justice; tyranny and revolt; debt and salvation; sin and mercy; and the faculties of the soul. Students in this seminar will read Piers Plowman and a series of poems in the 鈥淧lowman Tradition鈥� in the original Middle English. No prior experience with the language is necessary or assumed; portions of several classes will be spent developing proficiency in Middle English.

罢别虫迟蝉听(provisional):

• William Langland, Piers Plowman (emphasis on the B-Text, with passages from the A, C, and Z texts)
• Pierce the Ploughman鈥檚 Crede
• The Ploughman鈥檚 Tale
• The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe
• Mum and the Sothsegger
• Jack Upland, Friar Daw鈥檚 Reply, and Upland鈥檚 Rejoinder

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

Format: seminar

Description: How did Shakespeare come to occupy his preeminent place in English literature, culture and society? Shakespeare鈥檚 fame waned after his death and in 1660 he was a little-known dramatist, but by 1814 a character in Jane Austen鈥檚 Mansfield Park could declare Shakespeare 鈥減art of an Englishman鈥檚 constitution鈥� and the idea of Shakespeare鈥檚 cultural capital remains strong today. This course will explore how Shakespeare achieved this reputation. It will therefore be relevant to students with interests in the eighteenth century, Shakespeare and the early modern period, drama and theatre studies, celebrity culture, reception studies, memorialisation, and iconicity.

The roots of Bardolatry can be traced to the eighteenth century, a period in which society became fascinated both by the man and his works and in which Shakespeare was deliberately constructed as a national hero, the archetype of theatrical and literary culture, and the arbiter of all things English. We will examine the phenomenon of Bardolatry in the period 1660-1769 by analysing a variety of texts, including some of the following:

• Adaptations of Shakespeare鈥檚 plays which sought to make the works conform to new cultural and aesthetic standards (such as Nahum Tate鈥檚 鈥渉appy ending鈥� King Lear).
• Editing and criticism of the works which often advanced a separate agenda (including Elizabeth Montagu鈥檚 Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear, which mobilised the Bard against the French in the service of English nationalism).
• Discoveries and forgeries of Shakespeare plays (such as Lewis Theobald鈥檚 Double Falshood, an adaptation of the lost Shakespeare play, Cardenio).
• Performances of Shakespearean drama which portrayed his characters in line with eighteenth-century behavioural norms (such as David Garrick鈥檚 sentimentalised portrayal of Leontes in The Winter鈥檚 Tale as a 鈥渕an of feeling鈥�).
• Representations of Shakespeare in visual culture (including paintings, sculptures, and souvenirs of the man, his works and the actors who performed his characters).
• Social groups who promoted appreciation of Shakespeare (such as the Shakespeare Ladies Club, a group of women who petitioned theatre managers to stage more Shakespeare plays).
• Cultural events which popularised the Bard (including the most (in)famous event of eighteenth-century Bardolatry, David Garrick鈥檚 Shakespeare Jubilee).

罢别虫迟蝉听(provisional):

• The texts studied will be made available on myCourses.
• We will also be studying several of Shakespeare鈥檚 plays, therefore a good edition of the complete works (e.g. Oxford, Norton, Riverside) or of the individual plays (e.g. Arden, Cambridge, Oxford, Penguin) is recommended.
• We will make good use of the essays and resources in Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Fiona Ritchie and Peter Sabor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) (available as an ebook through the 91黑料网 library catalogue).

Evaluation:
participation and weekly writing (20%);
research presentation (20%);
paper proposal and annotated bibliography (10%);
paper (50%)

Format: discussion seminar

Description: As a field, Modernist literary studies, focused on early twentieth-century anglophone experimental writing, has changed shape significantly over the past thirty years, in large part through a major wave of archival work of these decades鈥攁 kind of 鈥渁rchive fever鈥濃�攚hich defined the 鈥淣ew Modernist Studies鈥� and expanded and diversified understandings of what was associated with literary modernism. As Ron Schuchard suggested at the turn of the twenty-first century, there was no more exciting time to be working in the area鈥攁s new concepts of modernism emerged from the archives: a wealth of hitherto unpublished material became more widely accessible, destabilizing received conceptions of both what counted as modernist and what 鈥渕odernism鈥� came to represent.

This new availability took various forms: as a moment of heightened canon debates, these years were marked by a nexus of intentional efforts to recover from the cultural archives many writers and texts once integrally part of early twentieth-century modernist culture, yet generally subordinated or erased by the later academic consensus about the range and definition of 鈥渕odernism.鈥� Moreover, surfacing from the archives was a trove of material from what are sometimes called 鈥済rey canons鈥濃�� contextual and paratextual material such as relevant manuscripts, letters, and historical records, which contributed considerably to revising (as Adrienne Rich puts this, 鈥渞e-visioning鈥�) how commentators were interpreting the inherited texts associated with modernism.

With this first wave of modernist archival work recently past, how might it be used to reassess what 鈥渕odernist literature鈥� entails鈥攁nd approach it newly? How might we draw upon material from the cultural archive to intervene in received narratives about both modernist literature and the early twentieth-century modernist cultures from which it emerged? How might the idea of the 鈥渃ultural archive鈥� be used more broadly, in a Benjaminian sense, to read modernist novels and poems themselves as 鈥渁rchives鈥� of thought and feeling? This course reflects on what Robert Spoo calls 鈥渘ew riches鈥� from the modernist archives, considering now these might help to extend and renovate our ideas of modernism鈥攁nd read experimental modernist texts with fresh eyes.

Texts (provisional): Readings will include work by Patrick Anderson, T.S. Eliot, H.D., Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Marianne Moore, P.K. Page, Ezra Pound, Muriel Rukeyser, and Virginia Woolf.

Evaluation听(辫谤辞惫颈蝉颈辞苍补濒): brief essay (20%); book review (15%) oral presentation (20%); longer essay (30%); participation (15%)

Format: seminar

Description: Sleep is an experience, and a form of intimacy, that we often don鈥檛 trust. Our own testimony of sleep is undercut by a lack of conscious access to the experience itself--we can only report back from the margins of experience, impacting credibility and expertise even when it comes to our own bodies. Sleep confounds normative epistemologies and forms of control. A recently identified sleep disorder--鈥漮rthosomnia鈥� (Abbott et al 2017), or 鈥渟traight sleep鈥� 鈥搉ames how 鈥減oor鈥� sleepers attempt to conform to the biometric data of sleep monitors in order to measure up to social norms; poor sleep is an antisocial state. We are both experts of our somatic experience of sleep, and yet access to our sleeping selves often relies on the perceptions of human and technological 鈥渙thers.鈥� In sleep, we are our own intimate stranger: our autonomy is dispossessed and redistributed, and we become radically vulnerable in a way that requires social forms of care and collective concern for sleep鈥檚 tender thresholds. Looking at sleep, exhaustion and fatigue, this seminar examines how the sleeper鈥檚 relation to the social since the 1970s, as medicalization, metrics, media and monitoring have experimented with the ability to make sleep 鈥渁ctionable鈥� in the service of something other than rest. Especially attentive to how sleep has increasingly become a site of work, we will also look at the critiques and resistances of attempts to exploit our off hours. We will read recent works exploring the rise of 24/7 cultures, the history of sleep medicine, and aesthetic and political mobilizations around sleep equity, or the uneven distributions of rest and recuperation in society. We will explore how artists, scientists and technologies have sought to make sleep representable, shareable, exploitable and protected. Through late 20th and 21st century theorists and media/performance artists exploring multimedia and intersectional approaches to sleep as a sociable form across minoritarian lifeworlds, we will trace the somatics, politics and aesthetics of sleep鈥檚 intimate opacity.

Texts:聽Possible readings and screenings may include:

• Jonathan Sterne, Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment,
• Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die
• Emily Di Carlo, ed. We Imitate Sleep to Dream of Dissent
• Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
• Jean-Luc Nancy, The Fall of Sleep
• Marcos Gonsalez , Revolting Indolence: The Politics of Slacking, Lounging, and Daydreaming in Queer and Trans Latinx Culture
• Matthew Fuller, How to Sleep
• Franny Nudelman, Fighting Sleep: The War for the Mind and the US Military
• Cressida Heyes, Anaesthetics of Existence: Essays on Experience at the Edge
• Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, Somniloquies
• Tsai Ming Liang, I don鈥檛 want to sleep alone
• Apitchatpong Weerasthekul, Cemetery of Splendour
• Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
• Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalisms and the Ends of Sleep
• Andrea Knezovi膰 and Agata Bar, Nocturnalities: Bargaining Beyond Rest
• Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance

Evaluation: TBA

Description:

This seminar examines a range of experimental Canadian writing from the mid-twentieth century to the present, focusing on how authors challenge conventional narrative form, structure, and genre. Our work will include innovative novels, hybrid prose texts, book-length poems, and contemporary poetic and narrative experiments that test the limits of voice, representation, and textual architecture. We will also consider how these literary innovations resonate across media through a single film鈥擥uy Maddin鈥檚 My Winnipeg (2007)鈥攚hich extends the concerns of experimental writing into visual and cinematic practice. Throughout the term, we will ask how formal disruption shapes questions of identity, embodiment, memory, and the politics of representation. Students should be prepared to engage closely with demanding, often non-linear works that reward patient, attentive reading. Weekly discussions and written assignments will emphasize interpretive depth, theoretical framing, and sustained attention to stylistic and conceptual experimentation.

We begin with Elizabeth Smart鈥檚 By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945), whose lyrical prose unsettles the boundaries between novel and poem, followed by Michael Ondaatje鈥檚 Coming Through Slaughter (1976), a postmodern reimagining of biography and jazz-informed narrative structure. We then turn to George Elliott Clarke鈥檚 Whylah Falls (2000), a hybrid Black Canadian text blending poetry, drama, and storytelling. The course continues with Anne Carson鈥檚 Autobiography of Red (1998), a genre-defying verse novel that reimagines classical myth through formal innovation; Joshua Whitehead鈥檚 Full-Metal Indigiqueer (2017), which fuses Indigeneity, queer theory, and cyber aesthetics; David Bradford鈥檚 Dream of No One But Myself (2021), a fragmented poetic autobiography; Pik-Shuen Fung鈥檚 Ghost Forest (2022), a minimalist novel-in-vignettes exploring grief and diaspora; and Cory Doctorow鈥檚 The Bezzle (2024), which extends Canadian experimentalism into speculative, structurally adventurous prose. We conclude with My Winnipeg, examining how its dream-documentary mode interfaces with the technical and conceptual provocations animating the works studied throughout the term.

Texts (tentative):

• Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945)
• Michael Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter (1976)
• Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red (1998)
• George Elliott Clarke, Whylah Falls (2000)
• Joshua Whitehead, Full-Metal Indigiqueer (2017)
• David Bradford, Dream of No One But Myself (2021)
• Pik-Shuen Fung, Ghost Forest (2022)
• Cory Doctorow, The Bezzle (2024)

Films:

• Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg (2007)

Evaluation: TBA

Format: seminar (presentations and discussion)

顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:听This mandatory course for incoming MA students considers the motives and methods of studying English at the graduate level. It offers an opportunity to reflect on the value of the humanities, to define a clear object of academic study, and to appreciate the diverse ways others engage in scholarship. Weekly sessions, supported by brief assignments and selected readings, will address personal, practical, and intellectual approaches to graduate work.

First-year PhD students in English will join four class sessions for shared learning on research methods and resources.

Texts: Course readings and resources will be made available through myCourses.

Evaluation: participation (40%), academic journal assignment presentations (25%), mentor interview (15%), reading response and discussion questions (20%)

Format: seminar

Description: This course will focus theoretical questioning on Samuel Richardson鈥檚 million-word-long Clarissa, which many readers since the eighteenth century have regarded as the greatest European novel. From week to week, our readings will canvas various approaches to different parts of this gigantic text. Insofar as possible, the syllabus will orient our discussion toward an analysis of the terms in which Clarissa articulates a theory that some of Richardson鈥檚 contemporaries viewed as an encyclopedic 鈥渟ystem鈥� of thought. We will be concerned with interactions or disjunctions between large conceptual areas such as Richardson鈥檚 celebrated 鈥渘ew鈥� psychology, his account of moral judgment, and his critique of aesthetics. Clarissa is a self-consciously intertextual work. To relate our understanding of the novel鈥檚 argument to Richardson鈥檚 literary-cultural and intellectual context, we will read a wide range of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts drawn from the traditions of the emblem book, libertine poetry, the Restoration stage, sentimental romance, erotic narrative, theological controversy, British moral philosophy, and early feminist criticism. (To supplement seminar discussion we will also view performances of operas by Lully, Purcell, 贬盲苍诲别濒, and Mozart as well as films by Dreyer, Rohmer, Breillat, and Almod贸var.) The logic of this course, as of Richardson鈥檚 novel, gives particular attention to the conflicting ideological and representational claims of allegory and theatricality. It is hoped that such textual and conceptual analysis will enable (1) a theorization of problems in Clarissa and (2) an understanding of Clarissa鈥檚 contribution to the 鈥渉istory of problems鈥� 鈥� problems not only of literary form but also of gender, psychology, ethics, law, politics, and religion 鈥� that constitute the theory of the novel.

Texts: The recommended version of Clarissa is the one-volume Penguin paperback (ISBN 0140432159 or 9780140432152) edited by Angus Ross. The books for this course will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). One or more photocopy packets may supplement the books on order. A full schedule of assignments will be available at the first meeting of the seminar. Our readings, in addition to Clarissa, will probably include assignments in the following texts.

• Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17/18), Metamorphoses
• Emblems of Francis Quarles and George Wither (seventeenth century)
• John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester (1647-80), poems
• Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv鈥檇 (1682)
• John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690)
• Eliza Haywood, Idalia (1723) and Fantomina (1725)
• William Law, An Appeal to all that Doubt the Gospel (1740)
• Sophia, Woman鈥檚 Superior Excellence over Man (1740)
• Samuel Johnson, Rambler No. 4 (1750)
• Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
• Denis Diderot, 脡loge de Richardson (1762)
• Vivant Denon, 鈥淣o Tomorrow鈥� (1777)

Films: A screening session will usually be scheduled every 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 tentative. The choice of films will depend partly on the prior viewing experience, interests, and preferences of the seminar participants.)

• Lully, Atys (1676) and Armide (1686)
• Purcell, Dido and Aeneas (1689?)
• 贬盲苍诲别濒, Agrippina (1709), Semele (1744), and Theodora (1750)
• Peter Watkins, Culloden (1964)
• Catherine Breillat, Fat Girl (2001)
• Mozart and da Ponte, Cos矛 fan tutte (1790)
• Krzysztof Kielsowski, Dekalog 6 and A Short Film about Love (1988)
• Carl Theodor Dreyer, Gertrud (1964)
• Eric Rohmer, The Marquise of O... (1976)
• Pedro Almod贸var, Talk to Her (2002)

Evaluation:聽A substantial amount of careful reading, class presentations, participation in discussion, and a 20-page paper will comprise the work in the course. The evaluation of this work will be weighted as follows: paper (50%), two presentations (40%), and general participation (10%). Regular attendance is mandatory.

Format: seminar

Note on Enrollment: Permission of the instructor is required. As a rule of thumb, enrollment is limited to 15 MA and PhD students. 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.)

Description: This course will explore film theory through and against the tradition and current practice of meta-cinema, broadly construed. It is designed to appeal to students of widely ranging film backgrounds鈥攃ertainly it can provide a substantial introduction to film studies for literary specialists; for more experienced cinema students, it can perhaps defamiliarize typical viewing habits and critical moves. Our themes will be loosely divided into three clusters鈥擯art I (visibility), Part II (time and death) and Part III (production and performance)鈥攖hough expect and be prepared to seek out connections throughout the course.

Possible films include:

• Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
• Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder 1950)
• 8 陆 (Fellini, 1963)
• Samuel Beckett鈥檚 Film (Alan Schneider, 1965)
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Take One (William Greaves, 1968)
• The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971)
• Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
• Daughter Rite (Michelle Citron, 1980)
• Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
• After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda 1998)
• Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
• The Gleaners and I (Agn猫s Varda, 2000)
• Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003)
• Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003)
• 颁补肠丑茅 (Haneke, 2005)
• Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2010)
• The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
• The Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
• Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, 2012)
• Long Day鈥檚 Journey into Night (Bi Gan, 2018)
• We鈥檙e All Going to the World鈥檚 Fair (Jane Shoenbrun, 2021)

Evaluation: viewing journals 55%, participation 30%, presentation 15%

Format: seminar (presentations and discussion)

Description: How do you 鈥渞ead鈥� a graphic novel? Does one 鈥渞ead鈥� pictures, and if so, what does this mean?

This course examines the unique formal and aesthetic qualities of the contemporary adult graphic novel, with particular emphasis on visual analysis. Considerable attention will therefore be paid to close study and to the analysis of stylistic elements that distinguish comics as a unique artistic phenomenon. The course does not provide an historical survey of comics, nor does it examine popular genres such as superhero comics. The emphasis of the course leans towards recent graphic novels by single author/artists and narratives oriented at the adult reader.

The texts will be chosen based not only on historical impact, verifiable influence or general popularity with readers but also with an eye to comics that experiment with and expand the boundaries of the medium.

The course will be organized into approximately four thematic groupings: revisionist narratives within the mainstream, memoirs and confessionals, new journalism, and auteur comix.

Writers and artists to be chosen from may include:

Kate Beaton, Ebony Flowers, Thi Bui, Nick聽Drnaso, Ben Passmore, Sarah Glidden, Nora Krug, Adrian Tomine, Guy Delisle, David聽Mazzuchelli, Debbie Dreschler, James Sturm, Lynda Barry, Ivan Brunetti, Howard Cruse, Eddie聽Campbell, Art Spiegelman, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Alison聽Bechdel, David Collier, Ben Katchor, Marjane Satrapi, Rutu Modan, Jason Lutes, Jeff Smith, Joe聽Sacco, Carla Speed McNeil, David B., Chris Ware, Los Bros. Hernandez, Nick Abadzis, Rick聽Veitch, Phoebe Gloeckner, Harvey Pekar, R. Crumb, Jack Jackson, Craig Thompson, James聽Kochalka, Tom Gauld, Ed Piskor, Jeff Lemire, Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki, Gene Luen Yang, Faryl Dalrymple, Matt Kindt, Stephen Collins, Will Eisner, Alex Robinson, and Scott McCloud.

Evaluation:
seminar presentation with accompanying written component, 20%;
two 10-page essays, 30% each;
class participation, 20%

Format: group discussions

Description:聽Adaptation--the practice of making a movie out of an anterior literary or other kind of source work--is seemingly essential to cinema, understood as both popular entertainment and artform. This seminar offers a philosophical perspective on attempts to explicate adaptation. Discussion will circulate around four main topics central to various ongoing debates within adaptation studies. The first is the idea that adaptation involves a mimetic relationship consisting of the modelling of a new work after some features of a pre-existing one. Adaptation would thus be a special kind of cognitive project in which adapters adapt their own mental and outward actions to imitate other agents鈥� prior goals and achievements. The mimetic thesis implies a fidelity thesis. Our second topic is the idea that an adapted work must in some respect, to some discernible degree be faithful to its source. We will pay special attention to this idea鈥檚 apparent evaluative implications, namely, that an adaptation鈥檚 artistic merits depend on its fidelity or infidelity to its source. Claims to the effect that fidelity is undesirable if not impossible usually stem from premises about our third topic, medium specificity and its relation to the autonomy of artforms. Concepts of medium specificity are themselves highly controvertible because it is by no means obvious what a medium is and what it has to do with artistic or any other sort of value. A weak thesis on medium specificity might claim no more than that distinct media exist and are best not ignored when we assess artists鈥� achievements. We will examine this thesis when we turn to our fourth topic, the idea that cinematic adaptation can occasion particular artistic achievements, including but not limited to the imaginative, skillful resolution of problems posed by shifts of medium. At the horizon of all of our discussions is the further idea that adaptation studies can be an avenue toward understanding the nature of artistic achievement and value.

Texts:聽A selection of readings drawn mostly from contemporary analytic philosophy, especially philosophical aesthetics; microdoses of film theory.

Evaluation:聽seminar presentation in conjunction with a brief written assignment, 30%; term paper, 70%

Format: seminar