English Honours Courses: 2013 - 2014

Honours Courses: 4000-Level

FALL 2013

TOPICS IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH CULTURE: State of the Nation 
ENGL 4294(3) – 050
Professor A. Burke
(F)     Monday     6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Reeling from the 2010 riots yet buoyed by the enthusiasms of Olympic success, contemporary Britain is a nation characterized by unevenness and uncertainty. These splits and antagonisms, between rich and poor, north and south, metropolitan and peripheral, find expression in a whole array of recent works that detail and diagnose the state of the nation. This seminar will look to a variety of cultural forms (fiction, non-fiction, film, theatre, television, and music) in an effort to come to grips with what and where Britain is now. We will begin with two works that explicitly assume a diagnostic mode, John Lanchester’s Capital and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, before moving on to others a variety of aspects of everyday life in today’s UK. A special focus of the course will be how individual relationships have become the means through which larger political questions of contemporary life can be posed and explored. From Andrew Haigh’s extraordinary film Weekend (2011), to Stefan Golaszewski’s painfully banal television sitcom Him and Her (BBC 3, 2010-2013), individual sexual relationships condense the central political questions of the present, from persistent questions of gender and sexual identity to the traditional conundrums of class that have long been the stuff and substance of British film, fiction, theatre, and television. Two theoretical works will guide us through the tricky terrain of race, class, and gender in the contemporary UK: Paul Gilroy’s Postcolonial Melancholia and Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman.

Evaluation will be based on a seminar presentation, a short essay, seminar participation, and a research essay. The readings/screenings will include material drawn, in part, from the list below.

John Lanchester. Capital.
Zadie Smith. NW.
Paul Gilroy. Postcolonial Melancholia.
Nina Power. One Dimensional Woman.
China Miéville. London’s Overthrow.
Duncan McMillan. Lungs.
Jez Butterworth. Jerusalem.
Stefan Golaszewski. Him and Her.
Andrew Haigh. Weekend.
Ben Wheatley. Sightseers.

INDIVIDUAL AUTHOR 1: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
ENGL-4341 (3) - 001
Professor M. Evans
(F)     Friday     8:30 – 11:15 a.m.

Many know Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) as the opium addict who wrote “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Yet both before and after his death, many recognized him as a pre-eminent nineteenth-century thinker, with profound reflections and influence in many fields. His analysis of Wordsworth’s poetry documents a watershed in our views of text and nature, and his literary theory anticipates much in our own time, including post-structuralism. In his writings in philosophy and psychology, he was a pioneer in adapting German philosophy and biblical scholarship to a philosophical system of self, community, and God, a system also based on his own acute psychological introspection. His journalism intervened in the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleon, and he advocated women’s rights against then current social trends. His vision of a “clerisy” or diverse intelligentsia to counterbalance the politics of expediency has haunted political/cultural thought to the present, and his close exchanges with the best scientists of his day have interesting resonances with the “new physics.” In short, it is pretty fair to say that Coleridge read, wrote and thought about everything.

In our course, we will begin with a prospectus of some of Coleridge’s key ideas. Then, through discussion, seminar presentations, and brief lectures, we will explore some of his major prose and verse works, such as the Biographia Literaria and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” But we will also sample, according to our individual interests and varied approaches to texts, other important work: his letters, journals, lectures (including the famous ones on Shakespeare), marginalia, and essays. So the course values individual students’ pursuits of their particular interests in some aspect of Coleridge’s work. Written term work will likely include an essay and a revision-extension of that essay.

TOPICS IN CANADIAN LITERATURE: Canadian Contemporary Poetry
ENGL-4710 (3) - 050
Professor N. Besner
(F)     Wednesday     6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

In this course we will inquire into the status of poetry in contemporary Canadian culture by considering  the work of a selection of Canadian poets.  We will consider questions such as, “What does ‘poetry’ mean now; and what does ‘Canadian’ poetry mean?”  How would we talk about, engage with, teach, write, or think about Canadian poetry in 2013? What kind of use or value is there in engaging in such activities?  We’ll ask these and similar questions, using several different kinds of texts – individual poems; collections of roughly 35 poems by individual authors; and at least the traditional anthology of Canadian poetry. 

FALL/WINTER 2013-2014

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
ENGL-4211 (6) – 001
Professor P. Melville
(F/W)     Tuesday     10:00 – 12:45 a.m.
*NB: This is a List B course

This course will pursue in-depth analyses of the literature and culture of the English Romantic period (1789-1832). The course will not only consider the Romantic movement as a complex and conflicted response to a shared set of literary and philosophical anxieties, but will also pay close attention to the interplay between the socio-political concerns of the Romantic period and the literature that the period produced. Students will engage works from a number of Romantic discourses, including: the poetry of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats; and the novels of William Godwin, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley.

CHAUCER
ENGL-4301 (6) – 001
Professor Z. Izydorczyk
(F/W)     Thursday     8:30 – 11:15 a.m.
*NB: This is a List A course

This course introduces students to the texts and contexts of Chaucer’s poetry. The texts will include some short poems, Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, Parliament of Fowls, Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde, and the Canterbury Tales. Interpretive readings of these texts will be enabled and assisted by studies of Chaucer’s English and by explorations of his social, religious, cultural, and literary contexts. Classroom activities will include lectures, in-class readings, translation/interpretation exercises, discussions, and seminars.

TOPICS IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: Graphic Lives
ENGL-4740 (6) - 001
Professor C. Rifkind
(F/W)     Friday     2:30 – 5:15 p.m.
*NB: non-Honours students need permission of the instructor to take this course

This course focuses on graphic life narratives published as “alternative” comic books (vs. serial, mass market, super hero, or web comics), including some in translation. Since this is a course on life writing in comic book form, the texts belong to what is normally considered non-fiction: diary, letters, auto/biography, individual and collective biographies, collaborative auto/biography, testimonials, confession, reportage, and travel writing. However, a number of the artists and the theorists we will read challenge the line between fiction and non-fiction in life writing.

The Fall term will introduce the “classics” of graphic life narratives, with a focus on autobiography. The Winter term will focus on recent books, with an emphasis on graphic biography and its relationship to fiction, photography, and film. Students should expect to study serious topics (war, genocide, trauma, family dysfunction) in a seemingly lightweight medium. We will investigate the tensions between such serious topics and the visual pleasures of the comics page. Other topics might include gender and comics, film adaptations of comics, collaborative practices in comics, comics and “high” art, comics and translation, and various national traditions in comics.

The course takes a cultural studies approach and will include critical and theoretical readings from both life writing studies and comics studies. Students need no prior experience in reading comics, and indeed ardent comics fans may find their precepts challenged by the readings for this course. As part of our work, we will develop a critical vocabulary and protocols for writing academic essays about comic books. This is a seminar course based in student participation and it both encourages and expects active student engagement.

TENTATIVE READING LIST (check back in July for final list)
Fall Term
Nakazawa, Keiji. Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima, Vol. 1. New York: Last Gasp, 2004.
Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon, 1996.
Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon, 2007.
Doucet, Julie. My New York Diary. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2011.
Barry, Lynda. One! Hundred! Demons! Seattle: Sasquatch, 2005.
Weaver, Lilia Quintero. Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White. Tuscaloosa, AL: U of Alabama P, 2011.
Sacco, Joe. Palestine Collection. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2001.

Winter Term
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007.
Talbot, Mary M. and Brian Talbot. Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse, 2012.
Van Sciver, Noah. The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2012.
Baker, Kyle. Nat Turner. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2008.
Diniz, André and Mauricio Hora. Picture a Favela. London: SelfMadeHero, 2012.
Patil, Amruta. Kari. Noida, UP: HarperCollins India, 2008.
Backdorf, Derf. My Friend Dahmer. New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2012.
Seth. George Sprott (1894-1975). Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2009.

TOPICS IN GENDER, LITERATURE, AND CULTURE: Bending Gender in Literature and Film
ENGL-4901 (6) - 001
Professor H. Milne
(F/W)     Monday     8:30 – 11:15 a.m.

This course examines literary texts and films that explore gender as an ambiguous, changeable, and unstable marker of identity. We will examine narratives about characters who miraculously and inexplicably transform from male to female, characters who consciously seek to change their gender from female to male and male to female, characters who seem to be neither male nor female and characters who seem to be both at once. In this respect, most of what we will read challenges aspects of our collective assumptions about so-called “normal” gender identities and problematizes the commonly-held assumption that gender follows naturally and necessarily from sex. We will consider the social pressures and marginalization that these characters experience in a world that likes to classify individuals neatly and simply according to gender, and we will also consider the extent to which some of these characters may or may not be read as liberatory and/or transgressive figures. We will explore texts that are written with a conscious awareness of terms like transgender and intersex, but we will also look at texts that were written prior to the invention of these labels. We will consider how terms like androgyny and inversion have been used in the past to describe manifestations of gender fluidity and instability. While some of the books and films we examine in this course might be read as direct attempts to draw attention to the marginalization of individuals whose gender identities fall outside of the norm, others will treat gender ambiguity as a metaphor, literary device or aesthetic device through which to explore other social and cultural issues; we will consider the political implications, possibilities and limitations of both of these approaches. Our readings will be supplemented with theoretical, critical and historical materials that will help us situate these books within the larger fields of gender studies, feminist theory, and queer theory.

NOVELS
Carter, Angela. The Passion of New Eve
Ebershoff, David. The Danish Girl
Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex
Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues
Foucault, Michel. Herculine Barbin
Smith, Ali. Girl Meets Boy
Stephens, Nathalie. Je Nathanael
Waters, Sara. Tipping the Velvet
Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando

FILMS
Boys Don’t Cry
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Orlando
Paris is Burning

WINTER 2014

ADVANCED STUDIES IN YOUNG PEOPLE’S CULTURAL AND LITERARY TEXTS
ENGL 4160(3) - 001
Professor D. Wolf
(W)     Wednesday     2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

Course description T.B.A.