Graduate Courses - Calendar Course Descriptions

Calendar Descriptions for All MA Courses 

ENGL-7103.3  Research Methods and Practice
This course aims to equip students with advanced bibliographical and research skills that will support their graduate study.  Resources considered include archival, library, web-based, and informational technologies; the course incorporates theoretical and applied methodologies.  Each year course material will be integrated with other graduate courses being offered, and might include a practicum in local cultural projects and communities.

ENGL-7112.3 and ENGL-7113.6 Topics in Cultural Theory
These courses focus on such questions as: What constitutes a text? How do some texts come to be valued over others? How do questions of value relate to the distribution of power and authority? How do social differences such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender shape and unsettle cultural production and consumption over time? How may "cultural theory" and "critical theory" be situated in relation to one another?

ENGL-7122.3 and ENGL-7131.6 Special Studies in Cultural Theories and Practices
These courses encourage students to consult with interested faculty members from English and cognate departments to develop reading courses related to particular areas of cultural theories and practices. Individualized programs for completing the required course work as well as independent study projects are submitted to be approved by the English Graduate Program Committee. Cognate departments may include the following, among others: Anthropology; Politics; Sociology; Philosophy; History; Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications; and Women's and Gender Studies.

ENGL-7160.3 and ENGL-7161.6 Topics in Cultures of Childhood
These courses focus on such questions as: How has the subject category of "the child," different in different times and places, been used to secure definitions of class, nation, history, and the modern individual? How do digital, filmic, and television texts, texts of material culture such as toys and video games, and oral texts such as family stories and schoolyard games take up and reframe these debates? How does studying texts designed for young readers allow for theoretical investigations into the manufacture of consent in liberal democratic cultures?

ENGL-7901.3 and ENGL-7902.6 Topics in Genders, Sexualities, and Cultures
These courses focus on such issues as: the relationship between feminist theory, queer theory and literary and cultural production; the impact of queer theory on historical considerations and contemporary understandings of sex, gender and sexuality; the continued relevance of feminism and feminist theory to questions of gender and sexuality; and the development and circulation of terms such as "homosexual" and "heterosexual" and concepts such as "masculine" and "feminine," categories that have a fundamental impact on how we organize and understand cultures, subjectivities, and knowledges.

ENGL-7740.3 and ENGL-7741.6 Topics in Local, National, and Global Cultures
These courses focus on such topics as: the implications of globalization for Canadian and Aboriginal texts and identities; the potential for dialogue and collaboration across nations and cultures; the ways in which local histories and contexts engender different relations to the global; and the language of human rights.

ENGL-7811.3 and ENGL-7812.6 Topics in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Cultures
These courses will focus on such topics as: historical and contemporary theoretical debates over aesthetics and culture, archiving and public memory, orality and writing, popular cultures and reading publics; copyright and censorship; manual, industrial, and digital publishing; book production, distribution and consumption; and media institutions.

ENGL-7820.3 and ENGL-7821.6 Topics in Visual Cultures
These courses focus on visual images, the circumstances of their production, and the variety of cultural and social functions they serve.  The study of visual culture includes artefacts from all historical periods and cultures, as well as media such as film, television, and the internet.  The discourses around seeing and the cultural construction of the visual are taken into account