91丝瓜视频

200-Level
Introductory Courses

Professor Maggie Kilgour
Fall 2026
Time TBA

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

Description: Why does anyone write literature? Even more importantly for us, why and how does anyone read it? Many people, some of whom you will know, will argue that studying literature, above all English literature, is irrelevant and useless today. Yet during the Covid pandemic, many others found literary works of all kinds essential, not just as a form of escape into another world from a reduced reality but also as creative and imaginative stimuli that kept us active and engaged humans.

This course considers these questions by looking at the development of major non-dramatic works in English from the Anglo-Saxon period to the mid-18^th century. It introduces students to the early history of English literature, while reflecting upon the meaning of tradition, literary history, the idea of a 鈥渃anon鈥�, and especially the concept of 鈥淓nglish.鈥� 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 explore the relation of literature to religion, politics, and culture broadly, to see why in different periods people read and write literature, and to follow the changing ideas of the writer and his/her role in society.

Foundational to further study of literature in the department of English, ENGL 202 prepares students for more advanced and specialized study in the department. Discussions in conferences and written assignments will help students develop skills of interpretation and communication.

Texts: (texts are available at 91丝瓜视频 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)

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

Format: lecture and conferences

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Professor Allan Hepburn
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Prerequisites: English 202 or permission of instructor. Limited to students in English programs.

Description: This course surveys poetry and fiction written in English between the late eighteenth century and the twentieth century. For the most part, texts are from Britain. The course begins with the premise that English literature models itself on traditions and perceived breaks with tradition. In this light, we will consider romantic, Victorian, modern, mid-century, and contemporary works in a roughly chronological order. Students are required to read speedily, thoroughly, critically, and astutely. Even if these poems and narratives are somewhat familiar from high school or CEGEP courses, students should read them again. This course is intended to provide a sampling of the English literary tradition as a gateway to future study. Attention will be paid to form, cultural conditions of production, genre, content, gender, visual culture, labour and leisure, death and grief, children, political engagement, aesthetics, and other topics.

Provisional Texts:

• Norton Anthology, 11th edition
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Norton)
• Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Norton)

Provisional evaluation: attendance and participation 15%; midterm 30%; assignment 20%; final exam 35%

Format:听lecture and conferences

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Professor Antje Chan
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: TBA

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: TBA

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Professor Fiona Ritchie
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Prerequisite: None; this course is designed for students outside the English Department 鈥� those pursuing a major or minor in English (Literature, Cultural Studies, or Drama and Theatre) should take ENGL 315.

Description:听This course provides an introduction to the drama of William Shakespeare by covering a selection of plays chosen from the various genres represented in his canon (comedy, history, tragedy, romance). The plays will be examined from a variety of critical perspectives. As well as the themes of the works, we will consider the historical, cultural, and political context in which Shakespeare wrote. Since Shakespeare鈥檚 drama was written to be performed, we will explore early modern stage practices and will also examine the subsequent performance history of the plays up to the present day on both stage and screen. Throughout the course, we will consider why Shakespeare still matters, as well as perhaps problematising his preeminent cultural status.

罢别虫迟蝉:听TBC but likely The Norton Shakespeare (third edition), ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al.

Evaluation (tentative):听journal (30%), midterm (30%), final exam (40%)

Format: lecture, discussion, group work

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"African American Literature and the Century of the Color Line"

Professor Camille Owens
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois forecast that the problem of the twentieth century would be 鈥渢he problem of the color line.鈥� With this pronouncement, Du Bois foreshadowed racism鈥檚 long endurance while asserting the role of writers like himself in diagnosing, deconstructing, and contesting it. This course surveys the writing of African American authors after Du Bois whose experiments with form, narrative, and style built a formidable black literary culture in America while working to dismantle white supremacy鈥檚 structure. From Harlem Renaissance modernisms, to mid-century social realism, to the postmodern Gothic and Afrofuturism, this course examines how patterns of black migration, urban social cultures, and diasporic liberation struggles propelled African American literature in new directions, while also discerning lineages connecting twentieth-century African American literature to the foundational work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors who wrote under slavery and toward abolition. Developing both formalist and historicist practices for reading novels, poems, short stories, and essays by such authors as Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler, students in this course will practice foundational skills of literary study, while building a broader toolkit for cultural analysis.

Texts (subject to minor change):

• Nella Larsen, Passing (1929)
• George Schuyler, Black No More (1931)
• Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (1935)
• Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Under Ground (1941)
• Ann Petry, The Street (1943)
• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
• James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)
• Toni Morrison, Sula (1973)
• Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada (1976)
• Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Evaluation: participation (10%), weekly discussion posts (10%), snapshot assignment (15%), short essay 2 (20%) midterm exam (20%), final exam (25%)

Format: lecture and discussion conferences

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Professor Robert Lecker
Fall 2026
Time TBA

(Note: For English Majors, this course qualifies for the required three credits from a course in Canadian literature)

Description: A survey of English Canadian poetry and fiction from the Second World War to the present. We will read a range of poetry and short stories 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 several concepts related to literary analysis.

Please note that in addition to weekly lectures there will be one mandatory conference meeting (50 minutes) each week. Conference times will be announced at the beginning of the term.

Required Texts: TBD

Evaluation: a series of short assignments (30%); two in-class exams (30%); final exam (30%); participation (10%).

Format:听lecture and conference

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Professor Katherine Zien
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: Theater is a tree with deep roots and many branches: not only does the history of world theatre stretch millennia long, but theatre studies encompasses both textual analysis and investigation of all the aspects of a staged production: lighting, sound, movement, vocalizations and uses of language, set design, and stage-audience interactions. Given the complexity and breadth of the field, this course provides a critical introduction to theatre studies, focusing on play texts, drama theory, and theatre history. We will cover both western and non-western theatrical events, examining a range of works from Ancient Greek tragedy through contemporary and postcolonial performance, and including the Department of English mainstage show. Through the plays, we will examine what 鈥渢heatre鈥� is and does in different periods and places. We will learn how theatre is constituted by the material and social conditions of performance, codified in dramatic genres, and conceptualised in dramatic theory.

Required Texts:

• The Norton Anthology of Drama, 4^th Edition () [other editions should be fine too]
• Additional play texts and production videos, where available, will be provided through MyCourses.

Evaluation: participation: 10%; in-class assignments: 10%; short essays: 20%; midterm exam: 30%; final exam: 30%

Format: lecture, discussion, and small group work.

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"The Novel: From Romance to Magic Realism"

Professor Yael Halevi-Wise
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: This course invites students to appreciate the novel鈥檚 historical development across eight centuries in several languages and cultures. Through close readings of masterpieces by influential novelists, we will identify the formal characteristics and narrative philosophy of this genre. We will ask ourselves how different 鈥渢ypes鈥� of novels (medieval romance, satire, picaresque, novel of manners, realism, naturalism, modernism, magic realism) address recurrent topics such as truth, love, desire and magic, and why at a particular time and place, a novelist is capable of treating the representation of inner life and of social conventions in a new and original manner.

Texts:

• Chr茅tien de Troyes鈥檚 Yvain ou Le Chevalier au Lion (The Knight with the Lion)
• Miguel de Cervantes鈥� Don Quixote (selections)
• Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d鈥橴rbervilles
• William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
• Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

Evaluation: seven quizzes (60% only top 6 will count); midterm 30%; final reflection 10%

Format: lecture, workshops, conferences

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Professor Erin Hurley鈥�
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: Learn about different types of theatrical performance of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries; explore the different artistic roles of theatre production; experience live (and/or streamed) performance; interpret plays. By surveying a range of contemporary theatre forms that draw crowds across difference and connect with new audiences in Canada and the United States, the Art of Theatre aims to increase students鈥� understanding and critical perceptions of theatre as a collaborative, creative, and critical art.

Texts: Larissa FastHorse, The Thanksgiving Play, Ravi Jain and Asha Jain, A Brimful of Asha, Paula Vogel, Indecent, Lin-Manuel Miranda Hamilton.

Evaluation:听participation; short paper; creative project; final exam.

Format:听濒别肠迟耻谤别蝉

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Professor Amber Rose Johnson
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Course Description:听This course is designed to support students in exploring the use of the body and voice as tools for communication and expression in the presence of an audience. While the course will introduce students to tools and techniques used in acting and improvisation, including vocal/physical warm-ups and improvisational games, we will primarily explore other, experimental modes of performance that exceed the frame of 鈥渁cting鈥�. Together we will attend to embodied modes of imagination, creativity, and spontaneity with the intention of stretching the meaning of 鈥減erformance鈥� to new dimensions. Throughout the course, you will be asked to commit fully to the group and the creative process, and you may be expected to work on your own, outside of class, rehearsing or preparing performance materials.

贰惫补濒耻补迟颈辞苍:听participation (15%), bi-weekly journal entries (15%), in-class performance experiments (20%), mid-term performance (25%), final performance and reflection (25%)

罢别虫迟蝉:听Select essays and videos will be made available through myCourses.

Format: group discussions, practical exercises, class presentations

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Professor Derek Nystrom
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: 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 (Marx, Freud, structuralism), we will survey such movements as the Frankfurt School, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, critical race studies, queer theory, affect theory, and various feminisms, 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?

Required Texts: Roland Barthes, Mythologies (either Hill and Wang editions)

Essays by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Richard Dyer, Dick Hebdige, Stuart Hall, John Fiske, Janice Radway, Constance Penley, Lisa Nakamura, Sara Ahmed, Eric Lott, and others.

Evaluation: quizzes, two short papers, final exam

Format: lecture; weekly, TA-led discussion sections

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Professor Trevor Ponech
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: This course is designed to prepare students for future film courses at 91丝瓜视频. It is therefore dedicated to three main goals: establishing a frame of reference for the history of film and film theory, introducing key analytical concepts and skills, and inspiring an ongoing interest in film.

The course will initially be restricted to Cultural Studies majors/minors and World Cinemas minors. Space permitting, students from other programs might be admitted.

Texts: a selection of readings drawn from cinema studies and aesthetic philosophy

Evaluation: quizzes, short written assignments, comprehensive final exam

Format: lectures, assigned movie viewing, conferences (pending TA availability)

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Professor Alanna Thain
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Expected Preparation: None. This is a required course for students in the World Cinemas minor.

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. This course aims to foster a critical understanding of cinema as an international, distributed and polycentric phenomenon.

Required texts: coursepack

Format: lectures, screenings and discussion

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滨苍蝉迟谤耻肠迟辞谤听TBA
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description. TBA

罢别虫迟蝉:听TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: TBA

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300-Level
Intermediate Courses

Professor David Hensley
Fall 2026
Time听罢叠础

Description:听This course will canvas some of the 鈥渙rigins鈥� of the English novel and trace its development (particularly as anti-romance satire and realism) up to the mid-eighteenth century. Our readings and discussion will refer to the European context of the evolution of this narrative form in England. We will consider the novel as responding to a network of interrelated problems 鈥� of the self and its imaginative politics 鈥� at the representational crossroads of medieval epic, courtly romance, spiritual autobiography, picaresque satire, colonialist adventure, gallant intrigue, baroque casuistry, bourgeois conduct book, sentimental love story, moral treatise, psychological realism, and mock-heroic 鈥渃omic epic in prose.鈥� As the emerging literary 鈥渇orm of forms,鈥� the early modern novel vibrantly juxtaposes and interweaves all these different generic strands. Our work together will aim at a critical analysis of the textual ideologies articulated in this experimental process of historical combination.

Texts: The required reading for this course will include most or all of the following books, which will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). (The list of texts and editions below is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in September 2026.)

• The Song of Roland (Hackett)
• Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose (Oxford)
• Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (Oxford)
• Abelard and Heloise, The Letters and Other Writings (Hackett)
• Lazarillo de Tormes (Norton)
• Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote (Norton)
• Madame de Lafayette, The Princess of Cl猫ves (Norton)
• Aphra Behn, Oronooko and Other Writings (Oxford)
• Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess (Broadview)
• Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (Norton)
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (Oxford)
• Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela (Oxford)

Evaluation:听paper (50%), tests (40%), participation (10%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies).

Format:听濒别肠迟耻谤别蝉 and discussion

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Professor Wes Folkerth
Winter 2026
Time TBA

Description:听In this course we will survey the impressive yield of English Renaissance drama written by writers other than William Shakespeare. We will read twelve plays from the period, about one a week, including The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd), Gallathea (John Lyly), The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe), Arden of Faversham (Anon), The Tragedy of Antony (Mary Sidney), The Shoemaker鈥檚 Holiday (Thomas Dekker), A Woman Killed with Kindness (Thomas Heywood), The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Francis Beaumont), Volpone (Ben Jonson), A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Thomas Middleton), The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster), and 鈥楾is Pity She鈥檚 a Whore (John Ford). We will study these plays as exemplars of swiftly-changing and varied theatrical tastes in the period. Many of these works provide purviews onto the cultural situation of early modern London that are rarely found in Shakespeare鈥檚 works.

Evaluation:听midterm (25%); final essay, 8-10 pages (35%); final exam (30%); participation (10%)

Text: (available at the Word on Milton): Kinney, Arthur F. and David A. Katz (eds). Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments. 3rd edition. Wiley/Blackwell, 2022. ISBN 978-1-118-82397-2.

Format: lecture and class discussion

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Fall 2026
Professors Wes Folkerth and Carmen Mathes
Time听TBA

Prerequisite or Corequisite: ENGL 202 or ENGL 200. This course is open only to English majors in the literature stream. This course is to be taken in the Fall semester of U1 or in the first Fall semester after the student鈥檚 selection of the Literature Major program.

Description:听This course introduces students to the formal and stylistic elements of poetry and prose fiction, provides them with a shared vocabulary for recognizing and analyzing different literary forms, and develops their reading, writing, and critical discussion skills. Although many critical methods can be applied to the works in this course, Poetics focuses on teaching students how to talk and write precisely about a wide range of formal and stylistic techniques in relation to literary meaning in poetry and prose fiction.

All the critical methodologies you will learn in your other English courses will benefit from your knowledge of the material of ENGL 311. You will read some works in Poetics that are also required in other courses, such as ENGL 202 and 203, the Departmental Surveys of English Literature. In Poetics, we study such works not primarily in historical context, or as engagements with literary, cultural or social history, but for the techniques of literary art that they exhibit. The course instructors assume that students enrolled as English majors will already have some facility explaining what given works of literature mean; we instead focus on understanding how literature creates meaning. Discussions and assignments will therefore involve the memorization, identification, and application of concepts and terms essential to the study of literary techniques. Thus, the English Literature program requires that ENGL 311 be taken in U1 so that all Literature students will be well prepared for their other studies with a shared terminology and training in critical writing.

Texts:

• Abrams, M.H. and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 11th ed., Boston: Wadsworth, 2015.
• Bausch, Richard, and R. V. Cassill, eds. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Shorter 8th ed., New York: Norton, 2015.
• Ferguson, Margaret, Tim Kendall and Mary Jo Salter, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 6th ed., New York: Norton, 2018.

Evaluation: essay 1 (15%); in-class midterm (15%); essay 2 (20%); final exam (30%); participation and informed discussion (10%); developmental assignments TBD (10%)

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"Theatre and Difference in Quebec"

Professor Erin Hurley鈥�
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Expected Preparation: Previous university courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies. Recommended to Studies in Quebec Studies and exchange students.

Description: This course will offer a selective survey of drama in Quebec from the 1950s to the present. With a focus on French-language theatre (to be read in English translation), we will trace the changing aesthetics and politics of this dynamic tradition, contextualising them in performance and social contexts, and alert to figurations of insiders and outsiders in the dramatic corpus. A secondary focus will be minority-language dramatic output and theatrical production in Quebec in the same period, with a particular emphasis on that produced in English.

This course also offers the opportunity to conduct primary-source research and analysis on under-documented, minority-language drama Quebec theatre. To this end, students will read and analyse largely unpublished plays by English-language Quebec playwrights.

Texts: Coursepack of critical and secondary readings

Plays will be selected to capitalize on the theatrical offerings in Montreal in Fall 2026. However, significant texts such as the following may feature on the reading list.

• Claude Gauvreau, The Charge of the Expormidable Moose (La charge de l鈥檕rignal 茅pormyable)
• Jovette Marchessault, Night Cows
• Michel Tremblay, Les belles-s艙urs
• Collective, La nef des sorci猫res
• David Fennario 鈥� Balconville.
• Larry Tremblay, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi.
• Omari Newton, Sal Capone, The Lamentable Tragedy of
• Wajdi Mouawad, Scorched
• Evelyne de la Cheneli猫re, Bashir Lazar
• Annabel Soutar, Seeds
• Alexis Diamond and Hubert Lemire, Faux amis

Evaluation: participation; posted class notes; corpus analysis; short paper

Format: discussions, discussions, discussions; lectures, small, medium-sized, long; presentations / performances and other pedagogical means which can be arrived at through an exchange about possibilities

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Professor Sean Carney
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: This course will examine European and North American drama of the twentieth century. We will begin by studying the realists of the late nineteenth century and the philosophy underlying their dramaturgy. This will lead us into a consideration of various positive and negative responses to the realist tradition. We will examine these plays in their original theatrical contexts, while at the same time positioning these dramas in relation to their individual social and political moments. A special emphasis throughout the course will be the representation of the family unit in modern drama, generational conflict, and the dialectical relationship between family members. The overall goal of the course is to impart to students a foundational understanding of a major trend in modern drama.

Required Texts (tentative):

• Ibsen, Henrik. The Wild Duck
• Strindberg, August. Miss Julie
• Chekhov, Anton. The Seagull
• Pirandello, Luigi. Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire
• O鈥橬eill, Eugene. Long Day鈥檚 Journey into Night
• Beckett, Samuel. Happy Days
• Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun
• Pinter, Harold. The Caretaker
• Tremblay, Michel. Forever Yours, Marie-Lou
• Pollock, Sharon. Blood Relations
• Wilson, August. Fences
• Letts, Tracy. August: Osage County

Evaluation (tentative):

• First essay (5 pages): 25%
• Class Attendance / Participation: 15%
• Major Essay (6 pages): 30%
• Final Exam: 30%

Instructional Method: lectures and conferences

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Professor Wes Folkerth
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: In this course we will focus only on the first half of Shakespeare鈥檚 career, the Elizabethan portion, which coincided with the rise of the professional theatre as the centerpiece of an emerging entertainment industry. We will begin with a number of very early plays, including The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, and Love鈥檚 Labor鈥檚 Lost. Before the midterm we will also read one of Shakespeare鈥檚 popular narrative poems, 鈥淰enus and Adonis.鈥� After the midterm we will focus on three plays 鈥� Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream (world classics of history, tragedy, and comedy) 鈥� which he wrote all within the space of about a single year. The Merchant of Venice, and Henry the Fourth, Part One round out the decade of the 1590s, and our course. The plan is to cover approximately one play per two weeks. Are you Shakespearienced? After this course you will be. The pace will be fast, with a view to giving students in the English major and minor programs a fuller appreciation of the scope of Shakespeare鈥檚 accomplishment in the first half of his career.

Texts: The Norton Shakespeare Volume I: Early Plays and Poems. 3rd edition.
ISBN 978-0-393-93857-9. Will be available at The Word Bookstore on Milton Street. Norton also makes an electronic of this text available.

Format: lecture and conference sections

Evaluation: midterm exam (30%); final essay (30%); final exam (30%); conference participation (10%)

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Professor Maggie Kilgour
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Expected Student Preparation: This is a challenging course. Previous university courses in English literature, especially ENGL 202, or some knowledge of Renaissance literature or culture is desirable. All students who wish to take this course must come to the first class.

Description: A study of the poetry and selected prose of one of England鈥檚 most important, influential, and still controversial writers. While to many people today Milton seems the epitome of literary and political orthodoxy, in his own time he was known as a radical thinker, an advocate of regicide and divorce. His writing is complex and challenging, demanding careful and active engagement from his readers. In the first few weeks of the term, we will look at Milton鈥檚 early poetry and some of his political writings, tracing his development as a poet in relation to his social, political, and literary context. The centre of the course will focus on a close reading of Paradise Lost. In conclusion, we will look briefly at his last works, Paradise Regain鈥檇 and Samson Agonistes, and discuss Milton鈥檚 later reputation and his place in the Western literary tradition.

Texts (required texts are available at 91丝瓜视频 Bookstore):

• Stella Revard ed, John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
• Barbara Lewalski, ed. John Milton: Paradise Lost (Blackwell, 2007).
• Selections from the prose: on MyCourses
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (recommended)
• King James Bible (recommended)

Evaluation: 20% in class mid-term; 40% 8 pp. term paper on Paradise Lost; 25% take-home exam; 15% class participation.

Format: lecture and discussion

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"Socio-Historical Approaches"

Professor David Hensley
Winter 2027
Time听罢叠础

Expected Preparation: Limited to students in English programs.

Description: This course will survey the evolution of theories and methodologies in scholarship, especially in literary criticism, both from ancient intellectual models and in modern thought since the seventeenth century. As a basis for understanding and evaluating the role of 鈥渟ocio-historical approaches鈥� in literary and cultural studies, we will contextualize the debate between formalism and historicism in the opposition between Kant鈥檚 philosophy and the alternative of dialectical thinking in Hegel, hermeneutics, and Marx. Our readings will reflect the far-reaching impact of this ideological opposition as a pattern of methodological assumptions and institutional practices. We will also review the formal and historical claim that one literary genre in particular 鈥� the novel 鈥� embodies or expresses the characteristic philosophical problems of modernity. Note: This course is not open to students who took ENGL 317 with Prof. Hensley.

Texts: Most of the books for this course will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). The textbooks listed below will be among those required. (Please note that Pluhar's translation of Kant鈥檚 Critique of Judgment is the only acceptable edition! The full list of texts and editions will be confirmed in January 2027.)

• Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, eds., Critical Theory Since Plato (edition to be discussed)
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Hackett)
• Georg Luk谩cs, The Theory of the Novel (MIT)

Evaluation:听papers (80%), test (10%), participation (10%). Regular attendance is required for a passing final grade (a maximum of two absences will be allowed except for documented medical or similar emergencies).

Format:听濒别肠迟耻谤别蝉 and discussion

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"Black Feminist Theories"

Professor Amber Rose Johnson
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description:听Reading across several genres, this course will trace the development of Black feminisms from the mid nineteenth-century to the present. We will focus especially on contemporary contributions from the 1970s to today. Central to our collective work will be exploring the relationship between theory and practice, and analyzing how race, gender, class, and sexuality interact with one another as structures of difference. Focusing primarily on Black women鈥檚 political struggles across North America we will consider: The significance of transatlantic slavery to contemporary Black experiences; The ways that Black women have been subject to and resisted racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic domination; How constructions of Black women become the foundation upon which other identities become visible; How Black expressive cultures鈥攙isual art, literature, poetry, film, etc.鈥攃hallenge dominant constructions of identity formations.

罢别虫迟蝉:听Select essays, videos and music will be made available through myCourses.

贰惫补濒耻补迟颈辞苍:听participation (15%), discussion posts (20%), mid-term collaborative paper (25%), short papers/projects (40%)

Format:听lecture and class discussion

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鈥淥pening Gambits & End Moves鈥�

Professor Yael Halevi-Wise
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: This course will investigate the opening and closing techniques of five English novels across the 19^th Century. We will focus on key works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Joseph Conrad to examine how their narrative beginnings and endings flirt with the social conventions and literary expectations of their era. In particular, we will discuss their endings in light of their opening gambits, considering as well the possibility and effect of an alternative ending. Selected works of literary theory will provide a framework for analyzing the development of long prose fiction. Assignments are designed to develop progressively from detailed textual analysis to comparisons of different texts. AI will play a role in one of the assignments.

Texts:

• Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen
• Persuasion (1818) by Jane Austen
• Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) by Charles Dickens
• Lord Jim (1899-1900) by Joseph Conrad

Evaluation: six preparatory short essays (each worth 7%); three integrative essays (each worth 15%); 13% participation

Format:听lecture and discussion

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鈥淟ove and Global Romanticism"

Professor Carmen Mathes
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: Romanticism is a philosophical and literary movement; the Romantic era is an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical period. The meanings, scope and timelines associated with both these statements have been oft debated and contested, particularly when it comes to Romantic-era Britain鈥檚 global reach.

This course situates British Romanticism in a global context, and it does so by thinking about love. At a time of imperial and colonial expansion, how did Romantic novelists and poets think about the potentials and pitfalls of love? What kinds of connections鈥攐r animosities, or fantasies, or projections鈥攎ight love bring to the surface or, alternatively, stifle, reject, or repress? We will read three novels (by Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and an anonymous author) and many poems by writers including Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Blake, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron.

罢别虫迟蝉:听Coursepack, to be purchased after the start of term

• Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814), edited by Claudia L. Johnson, Norton Critical Edition, ISBN: 978-0-393-96791-3
• Anonymous, The Woman of Colour, edited by Lyndon J. Dominique, Broadview, 2007, ISBN: 9781551111766
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Edition, edited by Nick Groom, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780198840824

Format:听lecture and discussion

Evaluation:听in-class essay (35%); in-class midterm (35%); final essay (20%); participaction and informed discussion (10%)

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Professor Robert Lecker
Fall 2026
Time TBA

(Note: For English Majors, this course qualifies for the required three credits from a course in Canadian literature)

Description: This is a course about really reading poetry, in this case, Canadian poetry. It focuses on a group of approximately ten Canadian poets who have formed and responded to the Canadian literary landscape since World War II. Most of the poets covered in the course are writers who confront modern and contemporary ideas about the nature of self, society, sexuality, gender, and art, but we also look at the ways in which these writers are trying to deal with the existential implications of new views about science, religion, and the poet鈥檚 place in a rapidly changing world. Since part of the reading involves thinking about aesthetic and theoretical issues, the course will deal with these issues, just as it will pay close attention to the meaning and resonance of particular poems. At the same time, it will consider the ways in which these poets (and us, as readers) construct the place called Canada as a metaphor that鈥檚 central to our daily lives. Students are encouraged to explore multi-media material related to each poet in question. The writing component of the course (a series of short assignments and a final paper) is designed to improve interpretive abilities and writing skills; the course encourages personal forms of critical expression. For this reason, this course will appeal to students who wish to broaden their understanding of poetry in general and will provide new ways of thinking about how poetry works. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to participate actively in class discussion.

Required texts: TBD

Evaluation:听a series of short assignments (40%); final paper (40%); participation (20%).

Format:听lecture and discussion

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Professor Antje Chan
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description:听罢叠础

Texts: TBA

Evaluation:听罢叠础

Format:听罢叠础

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"Materiality and Sociology of The Text"

Professor Camille Owens
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: This course will examine the systems of value (social, material, and financial) that have shaped the canon of African American literature, looking both at the situation of black literature鈥檚 historical production and at the contemporary systems of popular reception, academic discipline creation, and the world of rare books and art collecting that have decided what is valuable about the black literary past. We will read canonical works in historical context (such as Phillis Wheatley鈥檚 Poems on Various Subjects (1773), Frederick Douglass鈥檚 Narrative (1845), James Weldon Johnson鈥檚 Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), or Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), alongside contemporary works of black literary criticism, theory, and social analysis that respond to questions of canon-making, commodity markets, and notions of cultural property. Authors include: Hazel Carby, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Darryl Pinckney, Namwali Serpell, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Dionne Brand, Joe Rezek, Jacqueline Goldsby, Meredith 91丝瓜视频, Elizabeth McHenry, Robin Coste Lewis, and others.

Selected Texts (subject to changes):

• Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects (1773)
• Frederick Douglass鈥檚 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
• James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
• Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
• Toni Morrison, The Black Book (1974)
• Elizabeth McHenry, To Make Negro Literature (2021)
• Saidiya Hartman, 鈥淐row Jane Makes a Modest Proposal鈥� (2024)
• Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (2015)
• Hazel Carby, 鈥淭he Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk鈥� (1996)
• Alice Walker, 鈥淚n Search of Zora Neale Hurston鈥� (1975)
• Jacquelyn Goldsby and Meredith 91丝瓜视频, 鈥淲hat is Black about Black Bibliography?鈥�
• Laura Helton, Scattered and Fugitive Things (2024)
• Namwali Serpell, On Morrison (2026)

Evaluation (tentative): participation 15%; weekly discussion posts 15%; short textual analysis 15%; short essay (20%); final essay (35%)

Format:听lecture and discussion

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"Virgil and Ovid"

Professor Maggie Kilgour
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Expected Student Preparation: Previous university courses in English or classical literature. A basic knowledge of Homeric epic will be assumed in lectures. Students therefore should read the Iliad and the Odyssey before taking this course. Previous work on poetry is also strongly advised.

Description: This course will focus on the writings of Virgil and Ovid, their relationship to the Augustan period, and their enormous influence on later Western literature. The two Roman poets seem to present contrasting models for the poet鈥檚 relation to society broadly and to political power specifically. For Virgil, poetry appears to be a means of binding society together; for Ovid, it is a means of taking it apart critically. While we will spend most time looking at their epics, The Aeneid and Metamorphoses, we will also study the development of both authors through their different works, and discuss the significance of their decisions to explore the specific genres of pastoral, georgic, elegy, and epic. The writers鈥� antithetical career paths leading to distinct epic visions offer alternative images for later writers of what it means to be a poet. By looking at the two writers together, however, we will also consider the complex intertextual dynamics between their two positions, noting especially how Ovid intensifies as well as rewrites Virgil鈥檚 exploration of desire, exile and alienation, and of the function of poetry itself.

Evaluation: in class mid-term, 20%; 10 pp. term paper, 40%; final exam, 30%; class participation, 10%.

Texts: (required texts are available at the 91丝瓜视频 Bookstore):

• Virgil, Eclogues (Penguin); Georgics (Penguin); Aeneid (Vintage)
• Ovid, The Erotic Poems (Penguin); Heroides (selections); Metamorphoses (edition TBA)
• Augustus, Res Gestae, and other secondary materials will be posted on MyCourses

Format: lecture and discussion

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"Arthurian Origins"

Professor Michael Van Dussen
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Note: Students who have taken ENGL 348 under a different course topic are free to take this version of the course. Although the course number is the same, the content is entirely different; therefore, these will count as two different courses toward university and program requirements. For English Literature majors, this course counts toward the 鈥淏ackgrounds鈥� requirement.

Description: The Arthurian legends grew to become an extremely rich and diverse body of literature by the later Middle Ages, and the idea of Arthur continues to fascinate today. Having emerged in the fifth and sixth centuries, tales about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have since spread across six continents and dozens of languages. They have inspired fictional stories, blockbuster movies, and historical study internationally. Further, they touch upon many fields of study including literature, history, and archaeology. Our goal in this course is to examine this phenomenon as it developed in the medieval period (to ca. 1500) and explore some of the reasons why the Arthurian legends have become so integral to multi-cultural and interdisciplinary pursuits.

Over the course of the semester, we will engage the Arthurian legends by investigating how their central themes, figures, and literary situations change across different linguistic and cultural traditions and periods, as well as how they became central to Welsh, English, and French identities. Where is the line between fact and fiction in Arthurian legends? What constitutes an Arthurian legend? Why do the legends occupy such an important place in the literary and cultural imaginations of medieval writers and readers? How and why are medieval notions of 鈥渃ourtly love鈥� and 鈥渃hivalry,鈥� as exhibited in the Arthurian legends, important to readers in later social and historical contexts? How are Arthurian stories rewritten or adapted by various authors, and how do these different texts represent the concerns or preoccupations of different historical moments?

We will read most texts in modern English translation, though some will be read in the original Middle English. Prior experience with Middle English is not mandatory or expected, and regular practice with the language will be included in many class sessions.

Texts (provisional):

• The Mabinogion (selections)
• Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (selections)
• Gildas, On the Ruin of Britain (selections)
• Ps-Nennius, History of the Britons (selections)
• Chr茅tien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (selections)
• Robert de Boron, Joseph of Arimathea; Merlin; Percival
• The Quest of the Holy Grail
• Marie de France, Lais
• Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love
• Contextual readings and short romances from other traditions

Evaluation (provisional):

a) close reading exercises: 40%
b) short analytical essays: 40%
c) 鈥淒ifficult client鈥� defense: 10%
d) participation and attendance: 10%

Format: lectures and discussions

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Professor Sean Carney
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Pre- or Co-requisite: ENGL 230

Limited to students in the English Major Concentration, Drama and Theatre Option

Description: This course examines how meaning and significance emerge in theatrical art. Beginning from the assumption that theatre, like all art, is a form of communication, our study examines the qualities unique to theatrical communication in all its forms. The course is a combination of practical analysis of play scripts and theatre, and consideration of theoretical texts.

Commencing with Aristotle, we interrogate the premises of his Poetics and the marginalization of opsis (spectacle) in his study.

The rest of the course is composed of a series of units: our first unit examines theatrical communication with an emphasis on the dramatic text and how the text may be broken down into minimal communicative units of action.

Our second unit moves from the practical study of a script to the analysis of live theatre with an emphasis on how meaning emerges in the spectable. We will consider both theoretical ideas about theatrical signs and theatre semiotics, andalso practical tools for analyzing theatre.

Our third unit examines the function of the actor on stage and how the actor鈥檚 performance creates meaning and significance in theatrical communication. We also consider the dynamic relationship between humans and objects in the theatre, such as puppets or stage props, and what these elements tell us about the experience of theatre as a whole.

Finally, our fourth unit opens us to broader questions about communication in the theatre: the implications of theatre as storytelling, the importance of the spectator鈥檚 experience of the theatre as the locus of meaning, and the function of stage and theatre spaces in theatre art. As a case study we will consider the contemporary example of Verbatim theatre. The overall goal of the course is to give you a foundational understanding of key theories of the poetics of performance, so that you may build upon this knowledge through your later studies as Theatre and Drama majors.

Texts (Critical Readings and Plays): a course kit of critical readings

Evaluation:
Two critical analysis essays (30% x 2)
Written Script Analysis (15%)
Class Presentation (15%)
Attendance and Participation in class discussions (10%)

Instructional Method: lecture and class discussion

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"The Poems of the Pearl-Manuscript: Authority, Rupture, Healing, Form"

Professor Michael Van Dussen
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Note: For English Literature majors, this course counts toward the Middle English/medieval requirement.

Description: Two of the most famous poems from late-medieval England survive in a single manuscript: London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x/2, also known as the Pearl-Manuscript (sometimes the Gawain-Manuscript), produced in the late fourteenth century. The author (or authors) of its contents are unknown, and in fact it includes four alliterative poems, none of them found in any other manuscript witness: Pearl, a profound story of a man who grieves for a girl who has died too young and then speaks with her in a troubling but stirring dream vision; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an expertly wrought Arthurian romance that presents a clash of faerie, Christian, courtly, and chivalric codes in a sensitive examination of moral, ethical, and personal conflict; Cleanness, a poetic exploration of the raw fear and outrage the prophet Jonah faced as he grappled with inscrutible divine authority; and Patience, a moving poetic excursus of one of the most fraught virtues. This course will take a 鈥渟low-reading鈥� approach to these four poems; we鈥檒l patiently read them in their textual, linguistic, historical, and material contexts. Our readings will regard the poems individually, but we鈥檒l also discuss them as a group. On what grounds should (or shouldn鈥檛) we consider them as the product of a single author? How do they work with mainstream literary and intellectual forms of the time, and how do they work to challenge them? More specifically, what was the horizon of possibility in the later Middle Ages for examining problems of death, gender, belief, authority, and many other categories that are central to these poems? How does poetic form contribute to the exploration of all of these things and more? Among our considerations, we鈥檒l discuss how these poems explore the foundations of authority in the face of crisis.

All primary texts will be read in the original Middle English, though no previous knowledge of the language is required. Portions of several classes will be spent developing proficiency in Middle English.

Texts (provisional):

• Pearl
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Cleanness
• Patience
• Supplementary readings

Evaluation (provisional):

a) Close reading exercises, 40%
b) Analytical essays, 40%
c) Translation exercises, 10%
d) Participation and attendance, 10%

Format: lectures and discussions

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Professor Antje Chan
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description:TBA

Texts: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

Format: TBA

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"Poetics of the Image"

Professor Ara Osterweil
Winter 2026
Class Meeting: TBA
Mandatory Screening: TBA

Description: This course is designed to teach students how to meaningfully close read image-based cultural texts. Using multiple strategies of visual analysis, students will learn how to perform perceptive, informed, and medium-specific interpretations of both still and moving images. Focusing our critical lens on some of the most innovative photography and film texts of the last century, we will study the nuances of composition, color, 尘颈蝉别-别苍-蝉肠猫苍别, framing, camera movement, editing and sound. Paying close attention to the ways in which visual language and style creates meaning, students will learn to look beyond narrative and dialogue to understand both the semiotics and poetics of the image. In addition to numerous close-reading exercises, we will be supplementing our investigation of images by reading several classical texts on photography and film by theorists such as John Berger, Roland Barthes, Andr茅 Bazin, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Laura Marks, Christina Sharpe, Linda Williams and others. Students must come to class prepared with the assigned reading and are expected to participate verbally in class on a weekly basis.

Evaluation:鈥� participation (10%); attendance (10%); 2-page diagnostic essay (20 %); 4-5 page sequence analysis (25%): 4-5 page sequence analysis (25%)

Films:听

• (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, US, 1971, 38 min.)
• La Jetee (Chris Marker, France, 1962, 28 min.)
• The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925, 74 min.)
• Persona (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1966, 85 min.)
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928, France, 82 min.)
• Vivre Sa Vie (Jean Luc Godard, 1962, France, 83 min.)
• Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959, US, 13 min.)
• Fly (Yoko Ono, 1970, 25 min.)

Books:

• Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
• John Berger, Ways of Seeing
• Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes

Evaluation: Students must come to class prepared with all the assigned reading and will be expected to participate verbally in class on a weekly basis.

participation: 15%
conference participation: 10%
two page diagnostic essay (close reading of a photograph): 20%
2 four-five page sequence analysis: 25% + 30%

Format: Lecture/ discussion + mandatory weekly, in-person screening. Students who cannot attend the screening should not register for the course this term. Students are expected to complete the assigned reading before the class meeting. There are also mandatory conference sections that will meet throughout the term, but not weekly. Please note that this is a discussion-based class.

Lectures will be illustrated by copious examples. In addition to lectures, there is a mandatory screening every week as well as several discussion sessions led by a Teaching Assistant throughout the semester.

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"Theory"

Carmen Faye Mathes
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Course Description: This course will explore several topics that are central to literary criticism and critical theory. These include among others: representation, narrative, interpretation; ideology; class, race, and gender; signification; discourse; post/colonialism. We will read excerpts from key texts from a range of critical thinkers, schools and practices to help us articulate and interrogate some of the most fundamental questions pertaining to the practice of literary studies: What constitutes literature? Who determines what texts mean, and how? How do texts relate to broader social structures? Considering these questions and texts will necessitate careful and patient reading as well as sustained engagement with lecture and discussion during class. Some of the readings for this course will be difficult and dense. Thorough preparation for each class meeting is essential.

Texts:

• Anne H. Stevens鈥檚 Literary Theory and Criticism, Broadview Press, 2015.
• , edited by Vincent B. Leitch.

Evaluation: TBD

Format:听lecture and discussion

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"American Film of the 1960s"

Professor Ara Osterweil
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Expected Student Preparation: Familiarity with concepts and terminology from film studies and cultural studies will be useful. Background in history is helpful but not required.

Description: This course examines the development of cinema during the most radical decade of political resistance and artistic innovation in American history. Juxtaposing an analysis of mainstream films alongside the study of experimental and independent cinema, this course situates the revolution in cinematic form and content in the larger context of the social and political transformations of the 1960s. By putting Hollywood in dialogue with its alternatives, this course examines how cinema of this period approached complex issues such as: the decline of the Hollywood studio system and the Production Code Administration, the Cold War, political paranoia and assassination, the student protest movement, racial politics and the struggle for civil rights, the sexual revolution, the emergence of gay rights, the Vietnam war, the legacy of earlier progressive movements such as the Popular Front, hippie culture, and the increasing role of the media, or what theorist Guy Debord termed 鈥渢he society of the spectacle.鈥� We will study some of the most important films of the decade, including works by Hollywood directors such as John Huston, Robert Aldrich, John Schlesinger, Stanley Kubrick, and Arthur Penn, independent mavericks such as John Cassavetes, Michael Roemer, and George Romero, as well as experimental filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, Carolee Schneemann, and Stan Brakhage. Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; readings are copious.

Required Films:

• Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1960)
• The Misfits (John Huston, 1960)
• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)
• The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
• Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1963)
• Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
• Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer and Robert Young, 1964)
• Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, 1965)
• My Hustler (Andy Warhol, 1965)
• Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
• Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke, 1967)
• Flesh (Paul Morrissey, 1968)
• Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
• Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968)
• Columbia Revolt (1968)
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (William Greaves, 1968)
• Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969)
• Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)

Readings include:

• Martin Luther, 鈥淟etter from Birmingham Jail鈥�
• Clement Greenberg, 鈥淎vant-Garde and Kitsch鈥�
• Susan Sontag, 鈥淣otes on Camp鈥�
• Stan Brakhage, 鈥淢etaphors on Vision鈥�
• Richard Dyer, 鈥淢onroe and Sexuality鈥�
• 鈥淭he Black Panther Manifesto鈥�
• as well as excerpts from:
• Allan Kaprow, Essays from The Blurring of Art and Life
• Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
• Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
• J. Hoberman, Everything is Now: The 1960s Avant-Garde--Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop
• J. Hoberman, The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties
• David James, Allegories of Cinema
• When the Movies Mattered: The New Hollywood Revisited, ed. Jonathan Kirshner & Jon Lewis
• Mark Harris, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
• Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Evaluation:

class participation 10%
midterm exam 20%
final exam 30%
final paper 40%

Format: lecture, discussion, mandatory weekly screenings

听

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Instructor Catherine Bradley
Fall 2026
TR 10:05-11:25

Description: This class mixes costume theory and practice through lecture, discussion, demonstrations, and hands-on costume making. It is taken by permission of the instructor only 鈥� to be arranged by email. The course focuses on the Department of English Moyse Hall production of costumes for a play. The Costuming class works in tandem with two other classes: one in Stage Scenery and Lighting, and one encompassing the actors.

罢别虫迟蝉:听Playscript TBD

Evaluation (tentative): hand sewing sample (10%); project (20%); production project (30%); production block (25%); backstage costume crew (15%)

Format:听Discussion, demonstration, and practice. Studio time in addition to class.

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"The Long Eighteenth听Century"

Professor Fiona Ritchie
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Expected Preparation:听Ideally students enrolled in this course will have already taken ENGL 230 Introduction to Theatre Studies.

Description:听An overview of dramatic forms and theatrical practice in Britain from the Restoration through the eighteenth century to the Romantic period (c. 1660-1843). Note that this term we will study the period in reverse chronological order (Romantic to Restoration). The course is divided into four chronological units encompassing the development of stage spectacle, the age of Garrick and the professionalisation of theatre, the rise of morality and sentiment in drama, and the reopening of the professional theatre and the advent of the professional actress. Each unit will cover the theatrical conditions of the period and will examine a representative play staged at the time. Emphasis is placed on the plays as theatrical works rather than literary texts. Students will be asked to conceptualise performances of the plays as they might have taken place in the long eighteenth century and how these performances might have been received. We will also analyse historical documents to explore themes such as genre, acting style, audience experience, theatre architecture, financial practices, regulation of the stage, and company management. We will work with 91丝瓜视频 Library鈥檚 Rare Books and Special Collections to complete a series of hands-on workshops and assignments with a collection of playbills from the period. This will allow us to deepen our understanding of theatre in the long eighteenth century through the study of print culture.

Texts:

• Textbook: Peter Thomson, The Cambridge Introduction to English Theatre, 1660-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
• Coursepack containing the following plays (tentative): Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677); Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722); David Garrick and George Colman the Elder, The Clandestine Marriage (1766); Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Pizarro (1799), plus a selection of historical documents for context.

Evaluation听(tentative): participation 10%; journal 30%; playbill assignment 20%; take home final exam 40%

Format:听lecture, discussion, group work, work with Rare Books and Special Collections

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"American Film and Television of the 1950鈥檚"

Professor Ned Schantz
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: No decade in American history attracts a stranger combination of nostalgia and disgust. Indeed, no decade in American history is more peculiarly American鈥攎ore attached to the prevailing stereotypes of naive affluence, cynical arrogance, and reckless enthusiasm, not to say hula hoops, malted milks, and Elvis Presley. In this course we will dive headlong into the maw of the fifties beast, with all the suburbs, commercialism, and Cold War paranoia that entails. But our method of comparative media and genre studies will also seek out gaps in that old fifties picture. As an aging and blacklist-ravaged film industry confronts an upstart television culture in search of definition鈥攁s film noir rots, the Western peaks, and science fiction surges鈥攚e will increasingly seek not just the sleek surfaces of the fifties clich茅, but the churning history of our own present.

Possible films include: Sunset Boulevard, Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar, Glen or Glenda? Invasion of the Body Snatchers, A Face in the Crowd, and Shadows.

Possible shows include: I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone.

Evaluation:听罢叠础

Format: lecture and discussion

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"Live Game Design"

Professor Ned Schantz
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: This is a course for people who like to play. It is also, importantly, for people who like to think鈥攁nd for reliable students prepared to make the course a priority. I will arrive in class next January with an initial framework for a strange new parlor game called Situations. Keeping key principles in mind, we will experiment with this framework together, playtesting a range of scenarios and mechanics. Each week will consist of one day of playtesting and one day discussing the results, the readings, and ideas for the next week. We may also play some other games to see what can be learned for Situations. Students can expect to learn about the theory and philosophy of games as well as the nature of situational thinking.

Applications of no more than 300-words should be sent to ned.schantz [at] mcgill.ca indicating your interest, your possibly relevant experience with games or theatre, and why you will be in a good position to commit fully to the class. Both actors and non-actors are welcome.

Texts: practical and theoretical readings by Brian Upton, C. Thi Nguyen, Tracey Fullerton, Patrick Jagoda, Viola Spolins, Richard Schechner, and others.

Evaluation: game participation 40%, discussion participation 30%, game planning 10%, reflective essay 20%

Format: discussion and playtesting

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滨苍蝉迟谤耻肠迟辞谤听TBA
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: This class mixes costume theory and practice through lecture, discussion, demonstrations, and hands-on costume making. It is taken by permission of the instructor only 鈥� to be arranged by email. The Winter semester focuses on skill development and more advanced topics in costuming.

Texts: Playscript TBD

Evaluation: (subject to change) Initial sewing project (10%); Project 1 (25%); Project 2 (25%); Production Block (25%); Skills development (15%).

Format:听discussion, demonstration, and practice. Studio time in addition to class

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"FKA Film"

Professor Trevor Ponech
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: This course is for people who are interested in the critical appreciation of cinema and are curious about how cinema could be a distinctive kind of art and form of cultural expression.

Given the many ways people use the word, it is unlikely that everyone has the same idea about what 鈥渃inema鈥� is. One way to understand this term is as referring to an artform and as synonymous with 鈥渇ilm.鈥� It would be odd to the point of paradoxicality to suppose that we don鈥檛 know what we鈥檙e thinking and talking about when we think and talk about films, filmmaking, filmmakers, film criticism, film studies, film aesthetics, and so forth. But from a semantic point of view, 鈥渇ilm鈥� and its cognates have never been very good descriptors for the ever-expanding range of items and activities associated with them. They are even less apposite now, given the Jurassic die-off of the once familiar materials of movie production--and the subsequent dominance of digital technologies and advent of artificial intelligence within the spheres formerly known as film.

A better way to understand the concept of 鈥渃inema鈥� is as referring to a single category of otherwise diverse works in a particular medium. Our first goal will be to try to outline that medium--without confusing it with film, motion pictures, and the various production practices, formal features, modes of reception, and effects on audiences that theorists thus far have proposed as historically if not essentially cinematic. How the cinematic medium helps identify and establish a distinctive artform will be our overarching topic. Associating cinema with a unique category of artworks suggests a further thought worth considering: Cinema is also a cultural form, understood as an expansive body of undertakings, artefacts, and achievements that can play causal roles in the mass transmission of artistic and other human proclivities and values. That we study culture whenever we study cinema is, perhaps, truistic. Less obvious is that everyone shares the same idea of what 鈥渃ulture鈥� is. One of our objectives will be to clarify this central concept, especially as it pertains to cinema culture.

Texts: mostly works of contemporary analytic philosophy, especially philosophical aesthetics

Evaluation: brief written assignments, term paper

Format: lectures, discussions, in-class screenings and assigned movie viewing

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"Todd Haynes"

Professor Derek Nystrom
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Expected Preparation: There are no prerequisites for this course, but familiarity with concepts and terminology from film studies and cultural studies is expected.

Description: First emerging as one of the key filmmakers of what B. Ruby Rich called the New Queer Cinema of the early 1990s, Todd Haynes has produced a body of work that interrogates gender, sexuality, illness, stardom, and the notion of authorship itself. We will explore Haynes鈥檚 films through the category of pastiche: his films critically deploy the visual and narrative tropes of various cinematic genres and modes (from melodrama to documentary) as part of their inquiry into the highly mediated nature of experience in postmodern life. And while Fredric Jameson has denounced the postmodern use of pastiche as apolitical 鈥渂lank parody,鈥� we will examine how Haynes鈥檚 films deploy their cinematic devices so as to de-familiarize and de-nature them, encouraging a mode of spectatorship that we might characterize, following Laura Mulvey, as 鈥減assionate detachment.鈥� This course will survey Haynes鈥檚 oeuvre, from his initial student shorts (including the famously banned film The Karen Carpenter Story) to his most recent film, May December. We will also screen a few other films and related media materials that his films rework and re-imagine, in order to examine critically the category of authorship, cinematic and otherwise.

Required Texts: The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven Allows, ed. James Morrison

Other critical essays posted on myCourses

Required Films:

• All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
• Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1988)
• Longtime Companion (Norman Ren茅, 1989)
• Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991)
• Dottie Gets Spanked (Todd Haynes, 1993)
• Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
• Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)
• Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)
• I鈥檓 Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)
• Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, 2011)
• Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)
• Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes, 2017)
• Dark Waters (Todd Haynes, 2019)
• The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, 2021)
• May December (Todd Haynes, 2023)

Evaluation:听group presentation, short scene analysis papers, longer final paper

Format: lecture, discussion, screenings

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Professor Alanna Thain
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: Our topic for Fall 2026 is 鈥�21^st Century Global Horror鈥�. Today, the horror film鈥檚 popularity continues to grow鈥攈orror films more than quadrupled their box office share in the last ten years (Chimiellewski 2025). What can horror鈥檚 ongoing resurgence tell us about life in the 21^st century? In this class, we will watch horror films from the last 25 years and from all around the world, with a particular focus on minoritarian horror. We will look at how horror not only reflects on, but also acts as an imaginative and actual survival resource for those on the margins of hegemonic society, underscoring creative tactics for inventing novel forms of political subjectivity and collective existence. We will consider how horror creates felt experiences鈥攕ensorial knowledge outside of normative frameworks鈥攄enied or marginalized, or that challenges the limits of epistemological models. Our themes will include ecohorror, social nightmares, technology and horror, the weird, the afro-gothic, capitalist and colonialist violence and resistance, queer and feminist approaches to horror, and more. Central to our class is the question: why horror鈥攁 genre, affect and form that has often been thematized as a 鈥渂reak鈥� in the everyday鈥攈as increasingly become the chosen mode of expression for artists and audiences seeking to articulate the low-key, high-intensity horror of what is so often normalized in daily experience of minoritarian life: horror every day.

Texts:听TBA

Evaluation:听罢叠础

Format: lecture, discussion, workshop

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"Hitchcock"

Professor Ned Schantz
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: This course will introduce students to the film and television produced and distributed under the name of Alfred Hitchcock. Not content to rediscover the man鈥檚 genius, we will instead seek to understand his success in cultural terms, including his importance for feminist and queer film theory. The premise will be that Hitchcock鈥檚 cinema of suspense probes fault lines of modernity, testing for prospects of hospitality. Likely films include The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, and Psycho.

Evaluation:听罢叠础

Format: lecture and discussion

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"Spy Fiction"

Professor Allan Hepburn
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Prerequisite: at least 9 prior credits in ENGL courses are expected, such as Survey (ENGL 202 and 203), Poetics (ENGL 311), or other courses at the 200 and 300 level

Description: This course offers a selection of literary and commercial novels about spies and traitors from different national origins. The course will pay particular attention to the political ambiguities of spy plots. The course will ask questions about the aesthetic uses of fear, as well as the narrative uses of codes, abduction, disguise, torture, defection, language, accent, and decoding. Narrative technique鈥攏arrators, implied narrators, coincidence, focalization鈥攚ill be addressed during discussions. Distinctions between 鈥渉igh鈥� and 鈥減opular鈥� culture will be examined through styles of espionage, such as melodrama, realism, and adventure.

Texts听(provisional):

• John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
• Graham Greene, The Third Man
• Ian Fleming, Casino Royale
• John le Carr茅, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Joan Didion, Democracy
• John Banville, The Untouchable

Evaluation: mid-term test, assignment, participation, final exam

Format: lecture and discussion

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Professor Sean Carney
Fall 2026
Time: Weekday evenings throughout the Fall 2025 term, some Friday and/or Saturday afternoons (depending on rehearsal schedule)
Locations: Rehearsal Hall and Moyse Hall Theatre

Prerequisite: this course is restricted to students who have been cast in the Fall 2026 Department of English mainstage production and is by permission of the instructor only. Students should request to enroll in the course before the end of add/drop.

Students may take this course more than once.

Please contact Sean Carney at sean.carney [at] mcgill.ca for more information.

Description:听This three-credit course provides students with credit towards their Drama and Theatre majors, minors, or honors degrees. Students who are cast in the English Department鈥檚 Fall 2026 theatre production may ask for permission to enroll in ENGL 396. This is a graded course (see 鈥淓valuation鈥� below).

The course may satisfy the 鈥�3 credits from a list of performance-oriented courses鈥� requirement for Drama and Theatre Majors or the 鈥渁dditional credits from the Drama and Theatre option鈥檚 offerings鈥� requirement for Drama and Theatre Majors and Minors.

The content of the course involves attending all required rehearsals and performances for the production, required meetings with costume designers, participating in the strike on closing night, and showing dedicated commitment to the process and to the overall production.

There is also a written component required, most likely a reflection essay at the end of the process.

Evaluation: TBA

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400-Level
Advanced Courses

"Don McKay and Canadian Ecopoetry"

Professor Eli MacLaren
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: Ecocriticism and the politics of climate change鈥痟ave renewed interest in the nature lyric. A genre with a鈥痳ich history in English and Canadian literature, the nature lyric has become a key site of critical examinations of the self in relation to the environment.鈥疘n the framework of changing assumptions about modern industry, economic development, and daily life, poetry has a key role to play: everything depends on our ability to change our mind. In鈥痶his course鈥痺e will study contemporary Canadian ecopoetry through the work of one of its most accomplished practitioners 鈥� Don McKay. McKay, winner of the 2007 Griffin Prize, stands out as a major voice in ecopoetics for a number of reasons, from an extensive knowledge of the traditions of poetry, to impressive experience as an ecologist and a back-country camper, to his co-founding of a small press and involvement in literary magazines. With his theory of wilderness, McKay is at the forefront of a movement that has devised ways to write nature poetry afresh 鈥� poetry that responds to the natural world in keeping with developments in twentieth-century philosophy, especially phenomenology and ethics. Through selections from across McKay鈥檚 oeuvre, we will consider the contribution that poetry makes to environmentalism today. We will situate his writing in the wider literary field through concentration on other important contemporary poets while considering key terms of genre and theme such as the poetics of place and bioregionalism. Secondary readings will help place our chosen ecopoets in context. Students will write essays, participate in discussions, and undertake additional assignments 鈥� writing a poem, responding to a news story, hiking 鈥� all designed to affirm poetry as an environmentalist way of living. What is environmental poetry, and how does it work? Interpreting the nature poems of Don McKay in context will yield an understanding of the evolution and diversity of ecopoetics in Canada today.

Required Books:

• Garrard, Greg, Ecocriticism, 3rd ed. (2023)
• McKay, Don, Angular Unconformity: Collected Poems 1970-2014 (2014)

Evaluation: short essay (25%), comparative essay (35%), short assignments (25%), participation (15%)

Format: active participation in the discussion of readings is expected in every class

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"The Modern Canadian Short Story"

Professor Robert Lecker
Winter 2027
Time TBA

(Note: For English Majors, this course qualifies for the required three credits from a course in Canadian literature)

Description: This course is concerned with the practice of close reading as it applies to short fiction, with particular emphasis on the modern Canadian short story. It approaches the form as one that registers experience with unusual intensity and economy, while engaging a range of contemporary concerns including gender, sexuality, race, immigration, ritual, diaspora, regional experience, and cultural encounter. Although the course is devoted to writers whose perspectives may be Canadian, the issues and techniques explored here connect these authors to ideas and issues that extend well beyond Canada.

Rather than surveying entire collections, the course will focus on individual stories, allowing for sustained, close engagement with the formal and conceptual demands of each work. We will read fiction by Andr茅 Alexis, Austin Clarke, Leonard Cohen, Barbara Gowdy, Alistair MacLeod, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Madeleine Thien, and Joshua Whitehead. In some cases, we will spend more than one class with a single writer in order to trace recurring structures of perception, memory, and motif across multiple stories.

At the level of form, the course will examine how stories generate meaning through omission as much as through statement鈥攖hrough shifts in voice and narrative perspective, temporal disjunction, and the careful placement of detail. We will ask what it means for a story to end without resolution, to disclose without explanation, and to produce awareness that remains provisional.

Students are encouraged to explore multi-media material related to each writer where appropriate. The writing component of the course (a series of short assignments and a final paper) is designed to improve interpretive abilities and writing skills; the course encourages personal forms of critical expression grounded in close reading. This course will appeal to students interested in how fiction works鈥攈ow it registers experience at the level of sentence, image, and structure. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to participate actively in class discussion.

Required texts:听individual short stories by Alexis, Clarke, Cohen, Gowdy, MacLeod, Mistry, Munro, Thammavongsa, Thien, and Whitehead (final list TBA)

Evaluation:听a series of weekly assignments (40%); final paper (40%); participation (20%).

Format:听lecture and discussion.

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"Elizabeth Bowen"

Professor Allan Hepburn
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Prerequisite: This course is for advanced students. Expected preparation is 3 or 4 prior courses in English literature.

Description: Anglo-Irish by birth, Bowen moved constantly between Ireland and Britain, Britain and the US, and on occasion to Italy, France, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Canada. Her fiction reflects experiments in modernist technique as well as her cosmopolitan disposition. Mobility is a central preoccupation in her fiction. With examples drawn from both her novels and short fiction, this course will examine Bowen鈥檚 thoughts on war, women, land ownership, hospitality, aristocratic privilege, Irish history, civic responsibility, friendship, hotel culture, motherhood, interior decoration, atmosphere, extramarital affairs, and other topics. In her essays, Bowen frequently comments on her contemporaries and their writing: Virginia Woolf, Ivy Compton-Burnett, D.H. Lawrence, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant. Essays about style, short stories, the state of the novel will therefore be threaded into the course to widen the parameters of discussion. Part of the course will be devoted to archival materials鈥攍etters in particular鈥攖hat develop understanding about Bowen鈥檚 aesthetic and public engagements.

Texts:听Elizabeth Bowen: a selection of short stories; a selection of essays; Friends and Relations; To the North; The Death of the Heart; The Heat of the Day; The Little Girls

Evaluation: mid-term, essay, attendance and participation, final exam

Format: lecture and discussion

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"Short Fiction Forms and the Long Nineteenth Century"

Professor Camille Owens
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Expected Student Preparation: Previous coursework in American Literature before 1900, or in 19th-century British fiction, or permission of instructor.

Description: A study of short prose fiction by American authors over the course of the long nineteenth century. This course will combine formalist, literary-historical, and social-historical approaches to American short stories and novellas, and their development. Together we will examine the emergence of distinctive American short fiction voices, styles, narrative techniques, and genres in relation to nineteenth-century histories of American slavery and abolition, Reconstruction, colonial expansion, Indigenous Removal, industrialization, and urbanization. Key authors will include Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Francis Bret Harte, Mark Twain, George Washington Cable, Charles Chesnutt, Stephen Crane, Zitk谩la-艩谩, E. Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake, Kate Chopin, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.

Selected Texts听(tentative):听

• Washington Irving, 鈥淩ip Van Winkle,鈥� 鈥淭he Legend of Sleepy Hollow,鈥�
• Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold-Bug,鈥� 鈥淭he Tell-tale Heart鈥�
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, 鈥淭he Birth-Mark鈥�
• Herman Melville, 鈥淏enito Cereno,鈥� 鈥淏artleby the Scrivener,鈥�
• Mark Twain, 鈥淭he Stolen White Elephant鈥�
• Henry James, 鈥淭he Author of Beltraffio鈥�
• Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
• Stephen Crane, 鈥淭he Bride Comes to Yellow Sky鈥�
• Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman
• Kate Chopin, 鈥淒茅sir茅e鈥檚 Baby鈥�
• E. Pauline Johnson, 鈥淐atharine of Crow鈥檚 Nest鈥�

Evaluation (tentative): participation 15%; weekly discussion posts 15%; short textual analysis 15%, short essay (20%), final essay (35%)

Format:听lecture and discussion

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"British Literature of the Victorian Fin de Si猫cle"

Professor听Miranda Hickman
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: This course spotlights literature of the British 1890s鈥攖he Victorian 鈥�fin de si猫cle,鈥� meaning 鈥渆nd of the century鈥�鈥�testing received ideas about the decade鈥檚 signature ideas, cultural anxieties, and projects against a range of fiction, poetry, and drama. The years between 1890 and 1900 are those of Stoker鈥檚 Dracula, Conan Doyle鈥檚 Sherlock Holmes, the feminist fiction of Mona Caird and George Egerton, H.G. Wells鈥檚 War of the Worlds, controversy about the 鈥淣ew Woman,鈥� the 鈥渄andy,鈥� the cultural movements of Aestheticism and Decadence, concerns about what George Gissing called 鈥渟exual anarchy,鈥� the late work of Thomas Hardy, the controversial journal The Yellow Book, Aubrey Beardsley and Art Nouveau, and both the meteoric success and the trials of Oscar Wilde.

The decade was widely understood as deriving character from its 鈥�蹿颈苍-诲别-蝉颈猫肠濒别鈥� position. Public discourse of the time suggested that as the nineteenth century drew to a close, the moment was ripe for speculation about what the new century might bring: commentators such as Holbrook Jackson read the era鈥檚 emphasis on iconoclasm, artifice, style, and adventure as promising new beginnings. Yet others construed the times as characterized by a foreboding 鈥渟ense of an ending鈥� suggesting a culture in decline: in Degeneration (1892), Max Nordau diagnosed what he read as a diseased society through the 鈥渟ymptoms鈥� of aberrant behavior, bizarre art, and a taste for what critic Walter Pater called 鈥渟trange鈥� and transgressive sensations. As we both explore the diversity and common threads among the literature we investigate, we will consider the nature of the decade鈥檚 rejoinders鈥攐ften critical, mischievous, defiant, exploratory鈥攖o earlier Victorian literature, as well as ways in which its cultural work paves the way for the innovations of modernism.

Texts (provisional):

• Egerton, George (Mary Chavelita Dunne), Keynotes and Discords (1893-94)
• Gissing, George, The Odd Women (1893)
• Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure (1896)
• James, Henry, stories (鈥淐ollaboration,鈥� 鈥淭he Real Thing鈥�)
• Shaw, G.B., Mrs. Warren鈥檚 Profession (1894)
• Stoker, Bram, Dracula (1897)
• Wells, H.G. War of the Worlds (1898)
• Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
• Wilde, Oscar, plays: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), 厂补濒辞尘茅 (1893)

We will also read short fiction (including the work of Henry James, as well as 鈥淣ew Women鈥� writers such as Mona Caird and Sarah Grand); excerpts from Gilbert & Sullivan; and poetry by Ernest Dowson, Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper), Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats. Contextual material will treat the work of Max Nordau, Aubrey Beardsley and The Yellow Book, Walter Pater, Charles Baudelaire, and Algernon Swinburne.

Evaluation: two brief essays (5 pp.), Keywords project (3-4 pp.), longer essay (7-8 pp.), participation

Format: lecture and discussion

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"Feminist Media in Montreal"

Professor Alanna Thain
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Expected Preparation: Previous experience in film and media studies, cultural studies and/ or gender, sexuality and feminist studies. Admission to this research-creation course is by application.

Description: This course takes a research-creation approach to feminist film and video praxis in Montreal since the 1970s.One stream of the class takes up the rich histories of feminist film production, distribution, programming and institutionality in Montreal dedicated to the convergence of feminist practices with moving image media. This includes the tradition of the artist-run centre in Quebec, as artist centered, non-commercial and critically engaged counterpublics that developed practices of accessible media production skills, democratic and collaborative forms of organization, and the production and dissemination of documentary, experimental and contemporary video art. We will look at the legacy of the National Film Board of Canada鈥檚 Studio D, the world鈥檚 first publicly funded 鈥減roduction unit dedicated to making films by and for women鈥� (1974-1996). Beyond these institutional frameworks, we will also look at more guerilla, minoritarian, contingent and 鈥渙ne-off鈥� forms of feminist praxis that saw moving image media as a site of activist encounter. Between access, activism and art, how have makers, audiences and institutions defined and developed feminist practices in the last 50 years? This stream will include visiting speakers from the community, site visits and archival investigations. The other stream of the class will support students in developing a hands-on, research creation approach to feminist film practices in Montreal today. Building on this legacy, how might students design and execute their own interventions around 鈥渨hat is a feminist film praxis鈥�? This might involve making media, producing podcasts, curating film programs, developing an archival project and other opportunities.

Required texts: coursepack

Format: discussion, lecture, screenings, site visits and studios.

Evaluation: TBD

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"History in the First Person"

Professor Ara Osterweil
Winter 2027
Time TBA
Class Meetings: TBA
Mandatory Screening: TBA

Expected Student Preparation: Students must come prepared to read and write extensively.

Description: In this seminar, students will read a selection of experimental memoirs, autobiographies, essays and semi-autobiographical novels written in the first person to come to understand what it felt like to be alive at different, intensely politically charged moments over the course of the 20^th century. Selected texts will correspond to significant moments of transformation, political resistance, and upheaval--primarily in North America and Europe. These events include the labor struggle, the rise of fascism, the Beat Generation, the Civil Rights movement, countercultural resistance (as well as counter-revolutionary government action) in the 1960s and 70s, and the AIDS epidemic. Priority will be given to texts that center the lives of artist-activists, as well as those that experiment with embodied forms of writing to convey the distinct and idiosyncratic subjectivities of their marginalized authors. Readings will be paired with weekly screenings of experimental, documentary, and semi-autobiographical cinema by filmmakers such as Jonas Mekas, Chantal Akerman, Barbara Hammer, Marlon Riggs, Michelle Citron, Su Friedrich, Gregg Bordowitz, Chris Marker, Jafar Panahi, Abbas Kiarastomi, and Peter Whitehead. Students will be encouraged to experiment with writing as well as work in other media in to convey what it feels like to be alive in our contemporary moment.

Selected Texts May Include:

• Emma Goldman, Living My Life: An Autobiography of Emma Goldman
• Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks
• Carlo Ginzburg, The Mouse and the Cheese
• Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon
• Joe Lesueur, Some Digressions on the Poems of Frank O鈥橦ara
• Diane DiPrima, Memoirs of a Beatnik
• Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
• James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
• Jenny Diski, The Sixties
• Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company, The World, The Flesh, and L.A.
• Audre Lorde, Zami
• David Wojnarowicz, Between the Knives
• Eileen Myles, Inferno
• Annie Ernaux, Happening
• Francine Prose, 1974
• Douglas Crimp, The Pictures Generation
• Charlie Porter, Nova Scotia House

Selected Films (list in progress):

• Night and Fog (Chris Marker, 1956)
• Lost Lost Lost (Jonas Mekas, 1976)
• I am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck, 2016)
• The Fall (Peter Whitehead, 1969)
• Fast Trip, Long Drop (Gregg Bordowitz, 1993)
• How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012)
• This is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi, 2011)

Evaluation:

class participation 15%
first person art reflection 15%
journal entries 30%
final paper 40%

Format: seminar style discussion, class crits, and mandatory weekly screenings

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"Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Late-Medieval English Literature"

Professor Michael Van Dussen
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Note: For English Literature Majors, this course counts toward the Middle English/medieval requirement; for MDST minors, this course counts toward the capstone MDST 400 requirement.

Description: Sustained representations of Jews and Muslims appear frequently in Middle English drama, romance, travel writing, and other genres after 1350, though few Jews or Muslims could be found living in England in the later Middle Ages (ca. 1350-1500). In fact, the Jews had been expelled from England in 1290. Later literary representations would seem, then, to stem from knowledge of continued international religious politics or textual influences that included older characterizations from England, the European continent, Asia, and Africa. English chivalric romances often ranged geographically over the regions like the Iberian Peninsula, with its sizeable Muslim population, or took place in an imagined Roman Empire that aligned pre-Christian Roman rulers with 鈥淪aracen鈥� (Muslim) forces, pitting them both against Christians and drawing on the fraught memory of the medieval crusades. Muslim soldiers, leaders, and women (who sometimes fight) seem to participate with Christians in a shared chivalric value system and are often praised. In these contexts, the language of what we might call 鈥渞ace鈥� is bound up with questions of religious belief and conversion. Christianity in late-medieval England was also a strange beast. In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we witness the rise of a vibrant lay piety, the first complete translation of the Bible into English, and an academic heresy that spilled over the walls of the university and into the streets. Some of these developments were in turn met by a severe response that was not always consistent with attitudes on the continent. Accusations of heresy sometimes drew on the language of interfaith polemic, and the lines that were drawn between heresy and non-Christian religions were not always clear.

Students in this course will study English literary representations of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity from the later Middle Ages (ca. 1350-1500). Some sessions will be spent working with original medieval manuscripts from 91丝瓜视频鈥檚 Rare Books and Special Collections, as well as the Osler Library of the History of Medicine. Most texts will be read in the original Middle English. Prior experience with Middle English is not mandatory or expected, and regular practice with the language will be included in many seminar sessions.

Texts (provisional):

• The Chester Passion Play (excerpts)
• Miracles of the Virgin
• Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: The Prioress鈥� Tale; The Man of Law鈥檚 Tale
• The Croxton Play of the Sacrament
• The Siege of Jerusalem
• The Book of John Mandeville
• The Sultan of Babylon
• The King of Tars
• Floris and Blancheflour
• Historical source readings

Evaluation (provisional):

a) analytical reading journal: 35%
b) research proposal: 10%
c) final research project: 40%
d) participation: 15%

Format: seminar and workshop

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"Documentary Forms in Theatre and Film"

Professor Katherine Zien
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Description: This course will take a novel route by examining documentary/verbatim theatre and film together, to investigate how documentary forms across aesthetic realms aim to inform, instill ideas about 鈥榯ruthfulness,鈥� change over time, and subvert their own documentary drives. Finally, students will create short documentary plays and films to experiment with and apply the techniques about which we learn to their environments, communities, and sociohistorical contexts.

In theatre, the 鈥榙ocumentary turn鈥� has been underway for several decades, as documentary and verbatim theatre have become extremely popular across many geographic landscapes. Film has a longer history of documentary use, for purposes of social justice as well as to deconstruct the filmic medium itself.

Documentary forms promise both 鈥榯ruthfulness鈥� and the subversion of facticity though aesthetic forms and techniques. In the interstices of these conveyances lie profound lessons for how we can see things differently. The hope is that by juxtaposing documentary theatre and film, we can better understand how these media and artforms interpret questions such as 鈥渨hat is reality?鈥� 鈥渨ho gets to tell their stories?鈥� and 鈥渨hat does it mean to listen?鈥�

Required Texts: We will watch documentary films, read verbatim theater, and support our investigation with secondary sources by Jenn Stephenson, Ryan Claycomb, and other scholars. Most if not all of our materials will be provided through MyCourses and the e-catalogue of the 91丝瓜视频 Library.

Films may include:

• Albert and David Maysles, Grey Gardens (1975)
• Claude Lanzmann, Shoah (1985)
• Marlon Riggs, Tongues Untied (1989)
• Jennie Livingston, Paris is Burning (1990)
• Alanis Obomsawin, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993)
• Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine (2002)
• Errol Morris, Fog of War (2003)
• Ava du Vernay, 13th (2016)
• Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor, No Other Land (2024)
• Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing (2012)
• Patricio Guzm谩n, Nostalgia for the Light (2010)

Documentary/verbatim plays and performances may include:

• Emily Mann, Execution of Justice (1986)
• Anna Deveare Smith, Fires in the Mirror (1992); Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (1994)
• Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre, The Laramie Project (2000); Here There Are Blueberries (2018)
• Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife (2003)
• Mike Daisey, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (2010)
• Theatre Porte-Parole: Seeds (2012); The Watershed (2015); and other works
• Lola Arias, Mi vida despu茅s (My Life After) (2009), The Year I Was Born (2012), and other works
• Mar铆a Jos茅 Contreras Lorenzini, Pajarito Nuevo la Lleva: Sounds of the Coup (ca. 2014)

Evaluation: participation: 10%; in-class assignments: 10%; short essays: 20%; midterm project: 30%; final project: 30%

Format: lecture, discussion, and group work

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"Theatre and Feeling"

Professor Erin Hurley鈥�
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Expected Preparation: Previous university-level courses in drama and theatre, literature, or cultural studies. Restricted to U2 and U3 students.

Description: We will read some of the major dramatic theories concerned with the production, management, or solicitation of feeling in the theatre from the Neoclassical period through the recent turn to neuro-cognitive approaches. The actor and the craft of acting will often be our locus of inquiry, but we will also investigate scenography, dramaturgy, and sound. We鈥檒l ask the following questions, among others: What are the mechanisms by which the stage picture thrills or surprises an audience? What is the relation between an actor鈥檚 emotions and those of the character she portrays? Between emotional expression on stage and emotional response in the audience? How is the mind-body relation conceptualised in different historical periods? How is the science of emotion deployed (or not) in theatrical performance? Do different dramatic genres elicit different kinds of feelings in audiences? In each unit of study, we鈥檒l also read a play to which we might connect the theories. Students will conduct research into topics of special interest and present their findings to the class. Each unit will culminate in a student-led creative praxis session, which puts the theory into practice.

Units may include:

• Bharata, Natyashastra
• Zeami, Fushikaden (Teachings on Style and the Flower)
• Descartes, Passions of the Soul
• Diderot, Paradox of the Actor
• Sturm und drang
• Romanticism
• Melodrama
• Gertrude Stein, 鈥淧lays鈥�
• Musical theatre
• Stanislavski technique: feeling and identification
• Feminist feeling
• Cognitive science approaches to feeling and acting

Texts:听Custom course reader composed of selections from acting theory, reception theory and performance theory; plus Erin Hurley Theatre & Feeling.

Format: lecture, discussion, debates, concept mapping, and practical exercises/explorations

Evaluation: reading journal; group praxis session; discussion prompts; research paper

Format: lectures, conference sections, performance attendance where / if possible, visiting artists

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"Eros, Confession, and Self-Construction in Autobiography and the Novel"听

Professor David Hensley
Fall 2026
Time TBA

Expected Preparation:鈥� Although there are no strict prerequisites for enrolling in this seminar, some prior university-level study of literature is recommended.

顿别蝉肠谤颈辫迟颈辞苍:鈥� This course will approach the form of autobiography in the Enlightenment through a brief survey of the European tradition of autobiographical texts from antiquity to the Renaissance. Classic models such as Plato鈥檚鈥�Apology, Marcus Aurelius鈥檚鈥�Meditations, and Saint Augustine鈥檚鈥�颁辞苍蹿别蝉蝉颈辞苍蝉鈥�will help us appreciate the motivation and methods of later writing in autobiographical form. Our readings will include not only 鈥渞eal鈥� autobiographies but also first-person narratives in philosophy and literature that provide a background for understanding the emergence of the novel in the 鈥渓ong鈥� eighteenth century (1650-1850). A basic assumption of this course is that the modern novel absorbs and adapts conventions of spiritual autobiography and the presuppositions of selfhood in other forms of first-person storytelling such as dramatic monologue, letter writing, and the diary. We will analyze autobiographical narratives to develop a critical vocabulary that should enable us to conceptualize key problems in the evolving relationship between truth and fiction in the history of first-person narrative. Our study of these problems in the representation of inner experience and the sociohistorical conditions of subjectivity will focus on claims to truth or authenticity in relation to the logic of eros, confession, and self-construction.

Texts: All the books below contain required reading for the course. The books will be available at The Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street, 514-845-5640). (The list of texts and editions is tentative and incomplete, to be confirmed in September 2026.)

• 笔濒补迟辞,鈥�The Trials of Socrates (Hackett)
• 笔濒补迟辞,鈥�Plato on Love鈥�(Hackett)
• Marcus Aurelius,鈥�The Meditations鈥�(Oxford, Penguin, or Hackett)
• Saint Augustine,鈥�Confessions鈥�(Hackett or Oxford)
• Dante Alighieri,鈥疺ita Nuova鈥�(Oxford or Penguin)
• Benvenuto Cellini,鈥疢y Life (Oxford)
• Michel de Montaigne,鈥�Essays鈥�(贬补肠办别迟迟)
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Broadview)
• Denis Diderot,鈥疶he Nun (Oxford or Penguin)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,鈥疶he Sufferings of Young Werther鈥�(Norton or Penguin)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau,鈥�颁辞苍蹿别蝉蝉颈辞苍蝉鈥�(Oxford or Penguin)
• Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Broadview or Norton)

Evaluation: 鈥疨resentations (40%), participation (10%), and a final term paper (50%). The 鈥減resentations鈥� will consist of the submission of questions for seminar discussion. 鈥淧articipation鈥� refers to contributions to discussion and consultation about the paper topic. Insofar as possible, regular attendance is expected except when medical problems or other personal emergencies arise.

贵辞谤尘补迟:鈥� seminar

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"Philosophy of Documentary Cinema"

Professor Trevor Ponech
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Description: ENGL 479 is an opportunity to think in depth about the art of nonfictional cinema. We鈥檒l investigate the ways in which and the reasons why nonfictional movies differ from fictional ones. The distinctions between these two mega-categories mainly have to do with the particular ends and effects that makers design their movies to achieve. Fictional and nonfictional movies can be very similar to one another in many interesting respects. Both categories are, of course, full of works manifesting virtuoso and imaginative uses of the cinematic medium鈥檚 characteristic tools and practices. And both contain many examples of makers presenting stories in ways apt to arouse viewers鈥� emotions and challenge them intellectually. Yet beyond such similarities are myriad differences between fiction- and nonfiction-makers鈥� expressive, cognitive, and artistic projects.

Readings: mostly works of contemporary analytic philosophy, especially philosophical aesthetics

Evaluation: brief written assignments, term paper

Format: lectures, discussions, in-class screenings and assigned movie viewing

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"Screening Immaterial Labour"

Professor Derek Nystrom
Winter 2027
Time TBA

Expected Preparation: There are no formal prerequisites for this course, but familiarity with concepts and terminology from film studies and cultural studies is necessary.

Description: This course will examine a series of late 20th and 21st century cinematic and televisual depictions of immaterial labour鈥攖hat is, labour that produces not a physical commodity but an immaterial good, such as information or emotions/feelings. In other words, immaterial labour refers to both the wide range of professions dealing with information processing/analysis and virtually all service jobs. As many scholars working in the feminist and/or Marxist traditions have argued, this form of work has not only become increasingly central to the operations of globalized capitalism, but it can also induce new and more profound experiences of alienation for workers, who find more of their private, 鈥渙ff-the-clock鈥� selves drawn into the wage-labour process. Drawing from this body of scholarship, we will analyze films and television episodes that foreground the dynamics of immaterial labour; we will also treat these works as immaterial labour, as they seek to inform while also inducing affect in their audiences.

Required texts: Critical essays by such authors as Maurizio Lazzarato, Silvia Federici, Arlie Hochschild, 厂补濒辞尘茅 Aguilera Skvirsky, Mark Andrejevic, Harry Braverman, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Tiziana Terranova, Kathi Weeks, Sianne Ngai, Laurent Berlant, Angela Mitropoulos, Allison Pugh, and others.

Required films and television shows (this is a partial and provisional list):

• All the President鈥檚 Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976)
• Working Girls (Lizzie Borden, 1986)
• The Larry Sanders Show (various episodes, 1992-1998)
• The Office (U.S., version, various episodes, 2005-2013)
• Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, 2009)
• Enlightened (Seasons 1-3, 2011-2015)
• Her (Spike Jones, 2013)
• UNReal (Seasons 1-2, 2015-2016)
• Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, 2018)
• She Said (Maria Shrader, 2022)

Format: lecture, discussion, screenings

Evaluation:听short scene analysis papers, longer final paper听

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/听

Fall 2026/Winter 2027

Prerequisites: By arrangement with individual instructor. Permission must be obtained from the Department before registration.

Description: This course is normally not available to students who are not Majors or Honours students in the Department.听Intended for advanced and/or specialized work based on an extensive background in Departmental studies.听

Application Deadline:

• Fall 2026听Term: September 10
• Winter 2027听Term: January 15

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