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Course descriptions
English 1006A Introduction to Literature
Kathleen McConnell
Forty years ago,
Captain Kirk's communicator was a wonder and a marvel; now, cell phones
proliferate even in first year classes. Almost 200 years ago, Mary Shelley
asked herself "what if a human created another human in a laboratory?";
now, reproductive technologies are doing just that. Changes like these
lead to the central question for this course: "Where does science/technology
end and fiction begin?".
English 1006H
will explore the imaginative intersection between literature and science/technology,
through examination of contemporary and historical prose, poetry and
dramas. During the course, students will be instructed in elements of
critical reading and analytical writing in order to improve their abilities
to both express themselves and comprehend the expressions of others.
Texts
Full Year
Hacker, Diana. A Canadian Writer's Reference.
Photocopied course materials.
First Term
Eliot, George. "The Lifted Veil" and "Brother Jacob"
Robinson, Spider. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.
Zindel, Paul. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.
Second Term
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
A good desk dictionary
is highly recommended (i.e. Websters or Oxford)
English 1006B
Introduction to Literature
Andrea Schutz
The focus of this
section will be on literary explorations of the human condition. In
lectures and discussions we will investigate how ideas about humanity
have changed and how they haven't. What has it meant to be human? What
does it mean now? How has humanity been defined? Where is our place
in the scheme of things? Are we social or political animals, or are
we solitary ones? How are these questions addressed in literary texts
and how can literature contribute to such a philosophical discussion?
To some extent
the answer to the last question is simple: all literature is interested
in relationships between people, and we will encounter and explore the
themes of society, individualism, alienation; ideology, creativity,
technology; otherness, liminality, marginality; inclusion, exclusion;
exile, return; loneliness and solitude. We will occasionally be taking
an interdisciplinary approach because these questions necessarily address
what it means to be a student of the Humanities. We will trace these
questions and themes through a variety of genres, cultures and historical
periods.
Texts
Sophocles, The
Three Theban Plays (Penguin)
Ovid, Metamorphoses (Penguin)
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Oxford World Classics)
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Penguin)
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (Penguin)
English 1006C
Introduction to Literature
Alan Bourassa
The ability to
read literature is nothing other than the ability to respond. In this
course you will begin your university careers (and hopefully your lifelong
pursuit) as readers. We will examine a range of styles and historical
periods, drama, poetry, short stories and novels, from Sumerian poetry
to the modern day novel. And the question we will pursue relentlessly
will be the question of response. What do you think about the play,
the story, the characters, the aesthetic decisions of the writer? What
new possibilities for response does literature open up? Literature assumes
that people are worth thinking about, that their lives are interesting
and complex, that art can reveal truths beyond mere fact, that an understanding
of the human is far more valuable than any amount of raw information.
We will examine many of the questions central to literature: beauty,
ethics, desire, fantasy, metaphysics. In the long run, our goal will
be to cultivate a sensibility, an openness to the new and the strange,
a talent for making insights and following them wherever they may lead,
and an eye for how human experience is shaped and created by the mystery
of language.
Reading List
Fall
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Still Life With Woodpecker, Tom Robbins
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
Poetry (class pack)
Winter
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell/Songs of Innocence and Experience, William
Blake (class handout)
A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare
The Romance of Tristan Beroul
Genesis (class handout)
The Epic of Gilgamesh, Anonymous (editor, N.K. Sandars)
English 1006D
Introduction to Literature
Brenda Foley
English 1006E
Introduction to Literature
Dennis DesRoches
English 1006F
Introduction to Literature
Dawn Morgan
English 1006G
Introduction to Literature
Linda McNutt
English 1006H
Introduction to Literature
Garry Hansen
This course will
provide a general introduction to the conventions, forms, and methods
of literature. Through class discussions, informal exercises, and essay
workshops, this course will help you to develop critical reading skills
and to express your own responses to literary texts. By the end of the
course you will have a solid understanding of current critical concepts
and be able to produce a sustained, organized critical essay.
Texts
Beaty, Jerome et
al, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 8th ed. New
York:Norton, 2002.
Laurence, Margaret. A Jest of God. Toronto: McClelland, 1988.
Any essay guide outlining the current MLA format. Form and Format is
one inexpensive example.
English 1006I
Introduction to Literature
Trevor Sawler
English 1006J
Introduction to Literature
David Ingham
English 1006K
Introduction to Literature
David Ingham
English 1006L
Introduction to Literature
David Ingham
English 1006M
Introduction to Literature
John Muise
English 2006A
The Study of Literature
Alan Bourassa
In this course we will see what it means to be a member of an intellectual
community. The books we read have been read and commented on extensively,
and we will learn how to integrate these other ideas into our own. No
one thinks in isolation. We become better thinkers and readers when
we open ourselves up to what others have said and thought. Our first
step will be to read a text and see what we think of it, what our first
response is. We will then explore some of the techniques and theories
available to us that will help us focus on specific problems and issues
in the text. Finally, we will learn how to do efficient research that
will allow us to integrate our ideas about a text with the ideas of
others, to expand, to disagree, to analyze, to question. By the end
of the year you will have learned how to add your own voice and insights
to the ongoing debates and discussions on important literary texts.
Texts
James Joyce "The
Dead" (publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's)
James Joyce, Dubliners: Text, Criticism and Notes
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Class Pack (Theory Intro)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (text to be announced)
Voltaire, Candide
English 2006B The Study of Literature
Dennis DesRoches
English 2006C
The Study of Literature
Dawn Morgan
English 2006D
The Study of Literature
Sister Ella Allen
This is a survey
course in which close attention is paid to a limited number of texts.
The course is designed to give students familiarity with several literary
genres and to enable students to appreciate the works examined in relation
to the historical, social and philosophical milieu which informs each.
Attention will be given to the use of genre and to various literary
devices. The overall aim is to give students ease in literary analysis,
in the critical evaluation of texts.
Authors to be considered
include Blake, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Conrad, Hardy, Hopkins, Joyce,
Lawrence, Eliot, Pinter and Findley.
Texts
Abrams, M.H. and
Stephen Greenblatt (eds), The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
Major Authors, Volume B
Findley, Timothy, Headhunter, Harper Perennial
English 2006E
The Study of Literature
David Ingham
English 2103
Creative Writing I (Sem 1)
Linda McNutt
A course for students interested in the writing of poetry, short stories,
novels, and plays. By examining important literary models and by attempting
their own creations, students will be exposed to the major genres. They
will then focus on the genre of their choice. Students’ work will
be read, discussed, and criticized in class. One of the goals of the
course will be to develop, in each student, effective self-criticism.
The enrollment will be restricted.
If you wish to
register for this course, please submit a maximum of five pages of your
creative work and a cover letter outlining your background in English
and the reasons you want to take the course to Dr. Elizabeth McKim,
Chair, English Department (Mailbox in EC302). Please include your email
address.
Deadline: Monday,
14 March.
You will be notified
of your status by the end of March. If your application is successful,
we will take care of your registration.
Categories: Genres,
Creative and Performative
English 2123
Creative Writing II (Sem 2)
Linda McNutt
A course for students
interested in the writing of poetry, short stories, novels, and plays.
Students will produce and explore a major project in a supportive workshop
environment in order to develop skills in writing and editing in the
genre of their choice. Enrolment is restricted to those who have successfully
completed ENGL 2103.
If you wish to register for this course, please submit a maximum of
five pages of your creative work and a cover letter outlining your background
in English and the reasons you want to take the course to Dr. Elizabeth
McKim, Chair, English Department (Mailbox in EC302). Please include
your email address.
Deadline: Friday,
09 December.
You will be notified
of your status by 1 January. If your application is successful, we will
take care of your registration.
Categories: Genres,
Creative and Performative
English 2216
Drama Production
Brenda Foley
First Semester
Theatre Games: These help stimulate the senses and develop concentration.
They also improve co-ordination, movement and speech.
Improvisation:
Working as individuals and in groups, students begin to work creatively.
The process is far more important than the product. After each presentation,
students are asked to comment and offer constructive criticism about
each other's work. It is at this point that the improvisations are refined
and shaped. By doing this, students begin to learn about directing and
taking direction and that every idea has creative potential.
Character Study
and Monologues: Each student is required to present a monologue to the
rest of class after a three week period. This is the beginning of scripted
work. The objective is to be able to memorize and tell a story.
Text and Scene
Study: Each student has to present at least two scenes at the end of
the first semester. This work involves script analysis, interpretation
and characterization.
Second Semester
All the work in the First Semester is preparation for the mounting of
a full length production at the end of the year. Every member of the
class is involved. This production is presented to the public. This
process involves some set building (if necessary), lighting, sound,
costumes and properties and stage management work. Because of the amount
of work required to mount a production, a considerable amount of time
is spent rehearsing outside of class time (including weekends).
Because of the
practical and collaborative nature of this course and the skills that
need to be acquired, this course is graded by attendance, contribution
and participation. Students are required to participate in all aspects
of the class.
Enrolment in this
course will be limited to 25 students with priority given to those who
have indicated their interest to Ilkay Silk before registration and
have received her approval.
Category: Creative
and Performative
English 2223
From the Page to the Stage (Sem 2)
Russ Hunt
Using as focal
texts scripts actually produced locally -- by Theatre New Brunswick,
Theatre St. Thomas, UNB Theatre, and other local companies and facilities
-- participants in this course will explore the experience of theatre.
For each of the productions selected for attention, participants will
read the script, explore the social, intellectual, and artistic contexts
in which it was written, prepare a "playgoers' guide" designed
to be distributed with the program at performances to help audiences
better engage with and appreciate the text, and attend at least one
performance of each. Where appropriate, and possible, participants in
the productions will be invited to attend class meetings. Also where
possible, the "Playgoers' Guides" will be edited, printed,
published and distributed at performances of the play concerned. While
details of the course organization cannot be decided in advance of the
local companies' decisions about their repertoires, or in advance of
knowing the actual enrolment in the course, it can be said that each
participant in the course will have the opportunity to learn about how
scripts relate to the contexts in which they were created and are performed,
about reading plays and imagining productions, about research techniques,
about writing for public purposes, and about understanding and appreciating
the theatre.
There is no textbook,
but students will be expected to purchase tickets for theatre productions.
This course will require students to use the St. Thomas computer network.
Preexisting skill in the use of computers is, however, not a prerequisite.
For a full description
of the course, covering such matters as organization, methods, evaluation,
and so forth, contact Professor Hunt (Casey Hall 308; phone 452-0424;
email hunt@stu.ca), or visit the course website at [http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/22230304
].
Prerequisite: English
1006 or equivalent
Categories: Genres,
Creative & Performative
English 2463
Irish Literature (Sem 1)
Stewart Donovan
This course is
a survey of Modern Irish Literature. The beginning of the modern period
in Ireland coincides with both the Irish revolution and the Irish Literary
Renaissance. Students will be introduced to the works of the central
figures of the renaissance including W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and J.M.
Synge. Following in the wake of both the revolution and the renaissance
are major writers such as Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien and Patrick
Kavanagh. These artists, along with Sean O'Faolain, Frank O'Connor,
Elizabeth Bowen and Louis MacNeice soon came to regard the new Republic
as a dreary Eden and it was not until the end of President de Valera's
long tenure that Ireland began to open its borders to the wider world.
The writers who form the contemporary corner of modern Irish literature
include the Nobel laureate Seamus Heany and award winning novelists
and poets such as Roddie Doyle, Evan Boland and Paul Durcan. Finally,
the critical approach in this course will be both post-colonial and
deconstructionist.
Texts
Ben Forkner - Modern
Irish Short Stories
James Joyce - The Portrait of the Artist
John McGahern - Amongst Women
Paul Durcan - A Snail in My Prime
Flann O'Brien - The Poor Mouth
Flann O'Brien - At Swim Two Birds
Seamus Heaney - Open Ground
William Trevor - Collected Stories
Evan Boland - Outside History
Method: Mainly
lecture, question and answer.
Categories: Authors
and Authorship, National or Regional
English 2473
Maritime Literature (Sem 1)
Anthony
Tremblay
This course approaches
the cultural mosaic of Atlantic Canada from many angles, focussing mostly
on the fiction and poetry of our region, but also on the film and visual
representations of Maritime artists. After a brief examination of pre-
and post-Confederation writers, the particular emphasis in the course
is on the literature, film, and visual/musical art of the twentieth
century.
Texts
Ernest Buckler, The Mountain and the Valley (M&S)
Antoinine Maillet, La Sagouine (UofT)
Sheldon Currie, The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum (Breton)
Alistair MacLeod, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (M&S)
David Adams Richards, Nights Below Station Street (M&S)
Alden Nowlan, Selected Poems
**Students are
strongly encouraged to visit my Web Page:
http://www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/tremblay/index.htm for more detailed
information about courses, class work, and requirements.
Category: National or Regional Literature
English 2523
The Study of Drama: An Introduction (Sem 1)
Brenda Foley
An introduction
to the genre of drama and its realization in the theatre. We will study
play scripts not primarily as literary creations but as works destined
for production on stage. The course will offer an introduction to basic
dramatic and theatrical concepts, functions and terminology, and a historical
overview of theatres and modes of drama, from Greek drama to Roman,
medieval, Renaissance, domestic, romantic, realistic, naturalist, political,
and absurd drama with a short survey of contemporary dramatic expressions.
Categories: Genres,
Creative and Performative
English 2533
Comedy (Sem 1)
Dawn Morgan
An investigation
of the various types of comedy in drama and prose fiction. Attention
will also be paid to comic technique in poetry and film.
Category: Genres
English 2553
Tragedy (Sem 2)
Dawn Morgan
In this course,
students will study various tragedies. The aim is to acquaint the student
with the theory and elements of tragedy and its expression in drama
and fiction.
Category: Genres
English 2583
Women Writers I (Sem 1)
Kathleen McConnell
In 1974, a UN-sponsored
conference in Mexico celebrating the International Year of the Woman
recognized and strove to celebrate the plurality of women's lives. This
class will celebrate that aspiration, by examining contemporary women's
poetry, long and short fiction, and theory. We will begin locally, with
poets living in the Fredericton area, and then move outward until we
have encompassed texts from places all over the globe, looking for significant
differences and commonalities as we go. The course will be evaluated
on peer-based learning activities as well as an essay and exam, so be
prepared to contribute to discussions.
Texts:
Theory course pack
Lynes (ed.), Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada
Otto, How to Make an American Quilt
Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night
Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero
A good desk dictionary
is highly recommended (i.e. Websters or Oxford)
Categories: Authors
& Authorship, Cultural Studies
English 2593
Women Writers II (Sem 2)
Kathleen McConnell
“In the past,
the virtue of women's writing often lay in its divine spontaneity, like
that of the blackbird's song, or the thrush's. It was untaught; it was
from the heart. But it was also, and much more often, chattering and
garrulous-mere talk split over paper and left to dry in pools and blots.
In future, granted time and books and a little space in the house for
herself, literature will become for women, as for men, an art to be
studied.” -Virginia Woolf "Women and Fiction" 1929
Texts:
Radcliffe, Anne.
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey
Eliot, George. The Lifted Veil
Jenkins, Catherine. Swimming in the Ocean
Photocopied Course Pack and handouts
A good desk dictionary is highly recommended (i.e. Websters or Oxford)
Categories: Authors & Authorship, Cultural Studies
English 2603
Survey of Children’s Literature (Sem 1)
Louise Fraser
In this course
we shall be reintroducing ourselves to the wonderful world of children’s
literature with a selection of children’s classics. The emphasis
will be on fiction, but a consideration of other genres will be achieved
by means of a portfolio project which will be discussed in class.
Texts:
Folk and Fairy
Tales. Ed. Martin Hallet and Barbara Karasek. 3rd ed. Broadview.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. L. Frank Baum. Puffin.
The Railway Children. E. Nesbit. Puffin.
The House at Pooh Corner. A.A. Milne / E. H. Shepard. Penguin.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. J. K. Rowling. Bloomsbury/
Raincoast.
Category: Genres
English 2613
History of Children’s Literature (Sem 2)
Louise Fraser
During this course
we shall consider the development of children’s literature from
its earliest days to the modern day by looking at a variety of texts
in their historical context.
Texts:
Demers, Patricia,
and Moyles, Gordon, eds. From Instruction to Delight: An Anthology of
Children’s Literature to 1850. Toronto: OUP, 1982.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1865. Puffin.
Alcott, Louisa M. Little Women. 1868. Puffin.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. 1881, 1883. Puffin.
Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 1950. Harper.
Fitzhugh, Louise. Harriet the Spy. 1964. Yearling.
Category: Genres
English 2643
Medieval Drama
Andrea Schutz
This course will
introduce students to the most important examples of Medieval English
Drama: Liturgical drama, Cycle drama, the Morality play, and secular
drama. Students will have the opportunity to become acquainted with
the origins and development of English drama prior to the sixteenth
century. We will explore the various methods of staging early drama,
both in its historical context and in modern practice. Since this is
a half-course, texts will be studied in translation; familiarity with
Middle English is therefore not essential. Course format will be lecture/seminar.
We will perform the Quem Quaeritis and the Easter episodes from the
Cycle dramas.
English 2673
Literature and Catholicism 1 (Sem 1)
Sister Ella Allen
This course will
explore literature from the early Middle Ages to the later Renaissance
that reflects Catholic teachings, traditions, and attitudes, that gives
flesh to belief. The exploration will be set within the context of the
Word–the Word of Genesis that creates and the Word become incarnate–and
will consider the notion of literature as sacramental, as revelatory.
The format is primarily
lecture, although class discussion is encouraged and some group work
is incorporated.
Texts:
St. Augustine,
from On Christian Doctrine and from Confessions
The Dream of the Rood
The Chester Play of Noah’s Flood
Everyman
Medieval poetry: Chaucer (from the Canterbury Tales), Langland, Skelton
and others
Medieval mysticism: Julian of Norwich, Richard Rolle, Teresa of Avila
Poetry of Southwell and Crashaw
Category: Cultural
Studies
English 2683
Literature and Catholicism 2 (Sem 2)
Sister Ella Allen
This course will
explore literature since 1800 which reflects Catholic beliefs, traditions,
and perspectives in various ways. This exploration will be set within
the context of the Word–the word of Genesis that creates, and the
Word become incarnate. We will examine literary works as syllables of
the Word, and literature itself as sacramental, as potentially revelatory.
The course posits imagination as a means of cognition, the religious
imagination in particular as a rich and fertile vehicle for understanding
and experiencing the relationship between the human and the divine.
Readings will include works from a variety of genres: poetry, novels,
short stories, letters, essays and spiritual autobiography.
The format is primarily
lecture, although class discussion is encouraged and some group work
is incorporated.
Texts:
Francis Thompson,
“The Hound of Heaven”
Newman (John Henry Cardinal), from Apologia
Gerard Manley Hopkins, poetry and letters
T. S. Eliot, from Four Quartets
Flannery O’Connor, short stories
Thomas Merton, from The Seven Story Mountain
Thomas Keneally, The Office of Innocence
Teilhard de Chardin, from Hymn of the Universe
Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
David Lodge, Therapy
Category: Cultural
Studies
English 2773
Journalism of John McPhee: Reporting the Environment (Sem 1)
Russ Hunt
By collaboratively
investigating the environmental journalism of one writer, and the contexts
in which he has worked, this course will attempt to address questions
of the rhetoric and ethics of journalism in general and particularly
of the challenges of reporting on issues which are both immediately
and practically important, and also complex and contentious. There is
no uniform textbook, but students will be expected to purchase at least
one book chosen in consultation with the instructor and the rest of
the class. This course will require students to use the St. Thomas computer
network. Preexisting skill with computers is, however, not a prerequisite.
For a full description
of the course, covering such matters as organization, methods, evaluation,
and so forth, contact Professor Hunt (Edmund Casey Hall 308; phone 452-0424;
email hunt@stu.ca), or visit the course website at:
[http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/27730304 ].
Prerequisites:
English 1006 or equivalent
Categories: Genres,
Authors & Authorship
English 3103
Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry (Sem 1)
Kathleen McConnell
Along with advanced
lecture/discussions (“lectorials”) on various aspects of the
craft, history, and aesthetics of poetry in contemporary Western culture,
this course will provide the opportunity for students to rewrite past
poems, as well as generate new ones and then rework them as well. By
the end of the course each student will have produced a chapbook length
manuscript (about 48 pages) of publishable poems, some of which will
also be ready for public reading.
The class will
meet once a week for a three-hour session. Each week’s class will
be broken into three sections: 1. an introductory lectorial, 2. reading/
performance preparation, and 3. the heart of the course, the workshop.
Workshopping entails each student bringing multiple copies of one or
two poems to class to distribute to the other students. The author will
read the poem out loud; the rest of us will then discuss its strengths,
and suggest ways in which it might be changed to better convey its message.
For the first couple of weeks we will do this as a whole; once students
become familiar with the process, the class will be divided into three
or four permanent groups, so that more poems can be workshopped in a
night. Students will be required to attend and report on three public
poetry readings during the semester.
Required text
Anne Lamott. Bird
by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Additional readings
Barrett-Browning,
Elizabeth. Aurora Leigh.
Bartlett, Brian. The Afterlife of Trees.
Clarke, George Elliot. Beatrice Chancy.
Davies, Lynn. The Bridge that Carries the Road.
Goyette, Susan. The True Names of Birds.
Lilburn, Tim. Kill-site.
McKay, Don. Apparatus.
Ondaatje, Michael. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.
Simpson, Ann. Loop.
Tynes, Maxine. Woman Talking Woman.
Warland, Betsy. Proper Deafinitions.
Wordsworth, William and ST Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads.
Zwicky, Jan. Songs for Relinquishing the Earth.
Category: Creative
and Performative
English 3203
Sound & Performance of Poetry (Sem 1)
Elizabeth McKim
Sound, it has been
said, is the poem’s heartbeat. It’s an apt metaphor. The sound
of poetry gives it life, and transforms it from mere symbols on a page
to music that touches the human emotions in ways that we can barely
understand. It’s so powerful, in fact, that poets and scholars
have spent centuries, through both art and analysis, trying to unravel
its mysteries. We’re going to join them. Through lecture and discussion
and much reading aloud, we’ll learn how to scan English verse–how
to uncover the heartbeat at the core of each poem. We’ll also attend
to the various ways people have attempted to solve the mystery. Along
the way, we’ll discover that every reading of a poem, whether silent
or spoken, is a performance.
Texts: TBA
Categories: Creative
and Performative, Literary Theory and Method
English 3216
Advanced Drama Production
Ilkay Silk
This course will
focus on learning to read a play as a script for performance rather
than solely as written literature. Examples of the work of major dramatists
from various historical periods and geographic areas will be studied
to understand the differing themes, natures of production and performance
demands of the various forms. The focus will be on the text as a performance
vehicle written not only for readers but more immediately for actors,
directors, and designers. The study of the history of staging and performance
will be an integral part of the course.
The course will
focus on studying the various styles of acting, place of performance
and audience, costumes and manners using scenes from the following:
• Greek Theatre
• Medieval and Early Tudor Theatre
• Elizabethan and Jacobean Theatre
• Restoration and Georgian Theatre
• Victorian and Edwardian Theatre
• Twentieth Century Theatre
• Present Day / World Theatre
• Playwrights and Themes
This course will
be a combination of lectures and workshops. Students will be introduced
to the various topics and will then choose an area of specialization
and a project in consultation with the professor and others in the course.
Because theatre is a collaborative study and makes special demands of
the participants, there will be a great emphasis on rehearsing outside
of class scheduling and attending plays and workshops. Attendance will
be mandatory.
Students will be
evaluated on attendance, participation and their written work. There
will be no final exam. There will be a production at the end of year
of scenes from plays by major dramatists from various areas covered
in class.
Required Texts
Actor’s Book
of Classical Scenes, Collected by Stefan Rudnicki (Penguin)
Theater: Choice in Action, Arden Fingerhut (Harper Collins College Publishers)
Playing Period Plays, Lyn Oxenford (J. Garnet Miller Ltd. & Coach
House Press)
Style for Actors, Robert Baron (Mayfield Publishing Company)
Category: Creative
and Performative
English 3336
Restoration and 18th Century Prose and Poetry
Russ Hunt
A collaborative
investigation of poetry, prose fiction, and nonfiction between 1660
and the french revolution, and the intellectual and social context of
the important writers and their work.
Categories: Genres,
Literary Theory and Method
English 3316
Shakespeare and the Drama of His Age
Linda McNutt
This course offers
students the opportunity to read and discuss an array of Shakespeare’s
plays in the context of other drama of the period. We will study history
plays, comedies, tragedies, and tragicomedies by Shakespeare and other
playwrights including Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Elizabeth
Cary. Students should be prepared to participate in readings of scenes
and in class discussion.
Categories: Genres,
Authors and Authorship
English 3363
The Transcendent Romantics (Sem 1)
Elizabeth McKim
With their collaboratively
written Lyrical Ballads in 1789, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge inaugurated a new way of writing poetry–and writing about
poetry–that continues to influence poets and scholars. In this
course, through lecture and discussion, we will examine the work of
these poets and some of their contemporaries. Our focus will be their
exploration of the transcendent imagination, and its role in the creation
of both the poet and poetry.
Readings
Wordsworth and
Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800, 1802), selected poems
and letters, Preface to Poems (1815), The Prelude (1799, 1805, 1850)
Dorothy Wordsworth, Journals and selected letters
Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, and selected poems, essays, and letters
Thomas DeQuincey, Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, Confessions
of an English Opium Eater
Robert Southey, selected poems, reviews, and letters
Categories: Genres, Authors and Authorship
English 3373
The Visionary Romantics (Sem 2)
Kathleen McConnell
William Blake's
profoundly iconoclastic visions are revered now, but they made his contemporaries
profoundly uncomfortable. This is also true of the freedom of speech
and action of Mary Wollstonecraft, the other literary godparent (if
not actual parent), of the writers whose visionary works will make up
the balance of this course: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, Lord Byron, Clare Clairmont, and Caroline Lamb. The course
will focus on the iconography of vision, examining the presentation
of the author's self as perceiver and perceived, or--in the cases of
Clairmont and Lamb especially--deceiver and deceived.
Readings
William Blake,
There is no Natural Religion / All Religions are One, Songs of Innocence
and Experience, Proverbs of Hell, The Book of Thel
Mary Wollstonecraft, excerpts from "Thoughts on the Education of
Daughters,” "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," and
"Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark."
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mont Blanc,” Prometheus Unbound, A
Defense of Poetry, and “On Love”
Mary Shelley, Letters from History of a Six Week's Tour, The Mortal
Immortal, and (possibly) The Last Man or Valperga
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Manfred, A Dramatic Poem, “She Walks
in Beauty,” and Don Juan
Clare Clairmont, Journal excerpt
Lady Caroline Lamb, “If thou couldst know what 'tis to weep,”
"Sing not for others but for me,” and excerpts from Fugitive
Pieces and Reminicences of Lord Byron
Categories: Genres,
Authors and Authorship
English 3403
Canadian Poetry (Sem 2)
Anthony Tremblay
One of the challenges
faced by Canadian poets in the last hundred years has been the attempt
to find what Ralph Gustafson has called “the Canadian accent.”
To discover what Gustafson meant by “accent,” this course
will broadly survey the major movements, traditions, periods, and figures
in Canadian poetry since its beginnings – from the eighteenth century
origins of Canadian poetry, through the Confederation and early modernist
periods, to its flowering in Montreal in the 1950s and the west coast
in the 1960s. Questions of nationalism, identity, region, landscape,
ethnicity, and biculturalism will be explored, as will the mid-twentieth
century split between the pan-Canadianism of Purdy and Atwood, and the
anti-nationalism of the TISH group. Students will be encouraged to assess
the literature in terms of the various definitions of what it means
to be Canadian. Prerequisite: English 2006.
Texts:
Atwood, Margaret.
Ed. The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. Toronto: Oxford.
Daymond, Douglas & Leslie Monkman, eds. Literature in Canada.
Vols. 1 and 2. Toronto:Gage.
**Students are
strongly encouraged to visit my Web Page:
http://www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/tremblay/index.htm for more detailed
information about courses, class work, and requirements.
Categories: National
or Regional, Cultural Studies
English 3416
American Literature
Alan Bourassa
Passionate desires
that explode and passionate desires that are restrained: the story of
American literature. The questions will be these: What happens when
desires explode? What is destroyed? What is created? And how are desires
restrained? What rules restrain them? And how does desire find its way
around what tries to contain it? In this course we will see a variety
of American literature -- poetry, drama, short stories and novels from
two centuries. We will talk about history, memory, sexuality, social
rules, obsession, racial violence, comedy, good and evil. By the end
of the course we will be able to form our own conclusions about what
makes American literatue special. Does it really have a common theme?
Is it characterized by its variety? At the end of this course I will
ask you what conclusions you have come to about American literature.
I trust that you will have some interesting answers.
Texts:
Eudora Welty, Selected
Stories (class pack)
Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
Robert Frose, Selected Poetry (class pack)
Edith Wharton,
The House of Mirth
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
Categories: Authors
and Authorship, National or Regional
English 3433
World Literature 1: West Indies/Africa (Sem 1)
Anthony Tremblay
This course will
introduce students to the range of literary expressions of writers from
Third World and Emerging Black cultures (i.e., the West Indies and Africa).
The focus of the course will be to study the voices, themes, and ideological
concerns of the colonized, those whose cultures were forever altered
by European, expecially British, expansionism. Some of the writers we
will read are E.K. Brathwaite, Fred D’Aguiar, Lorna Goodison, Claire
Harris, Gabriel Okara, M. Nourbese Philip, Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe,
Louise Bennett, Dionne Brand, Nadine Gordimer, Wilson Harris, Bessie
Head, Jamaica Kincaid, V.S. Naipaul, Njabulo S. Ndebele, Ngugi wa Thiong’o,
Jean Rhys, and Salman Rushdie.
Texts:
Victor J. Ramraj,
Editor, Concern of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English
Gabriel Okara, The Voice
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Nadine Gordimer, July’s People
**Students are
strongly encouraged to visit my Web Page:
http://www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/tremblay/index.htm for more detailed
information about courses, class work, and
requirements.
Categories: National
or Regional, Cultural Studies
English 3443
World Literature 2: India (Sem 2)
Anthony Tremblay
This course will
introduce students to the range of literary expressions of writers from
the Indian Subcontinent – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.
The major foci of the course are two: first, to study the Hindu voice
in East Indian culture; and, second, to continue our investigation of
colonialism, this time of an internal colonialism wrought by thousands
of years of Hind orthodoxy. This course does not require English 3433
(African and West Indian Literature) as a pre-requisite, though a knowledge
of that literature will help.
Texts:
Victor J. Ramraj,
Editor, Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English
Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable
Kamala Markandaya, Nectar in a Sieve
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
**Students are
strongly encouraged to visit my Web Page:
http://www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/tremblay/index.htm for more detailed
information about courses, class work, and requirements.
Categories: National
or Regional, Cultural Studies
English 3483
Irish Film (Sem 2)
Stewart Donovan
This course is an introduction both to native Irish culture and the
culture of the Irish diaspora via the medium of film. Students will
study, among other things, the impact that Hollywood has had on the
image of the Irish in the popular imagination. Directors and producers
such as John Ford, Walt Disney, David Lean and Robert O'Flaherty helped
to create an image of Ireland that was often romanticized and unintentionally
comic. Students will also view and deconstruct the films of high realist
auteurs such as Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan, and Joel and Ethan Coen.
The image of the Irish, both at home and abroad, conveyed by these auteurs
breaks free of decades of racial stereotyping. Finally, students will
examine the art of adaptation of novels, short stories and plays to
the big screen. Among the writers considered will be James Joyce, Frank
O'Connor, Liam O'Flaherty, Eugene O'Neil, William Trevor, John B. Keane,
Jennifer Johnston, John McGahern, Irving Welsh, Brian Friel and Roddie
Doyle. This section of the course is designed to study native Irish
culture and the culture of the Irish diaspora through the medium of
film. The critical approach is primarily deconstructionist and post-colonial.
Texts:
Cassell Film Guide:
The Companion to British and Irish Cinema
Long Days Journey Into Night by Eugene O”Neill
Cal by Bernard McLaverty
“Guest of the Nation” by Frank O’Connor
“The Dead” by James Joyce
“Korea” by John McGahern
Methodology
Mostly lecture, question and answer. Students will view films in and
out of class time. In-class viewing will focus primarily on DVD scene
to scene and shot to shot analysis of montage, mise en scene, script/dialogue,
and audience response.
Categories: National
or Regional, Cultural Studies
English 3503
The Classical Epic (Sem 1)
Andrea Schutz
Atlas Van Lines,
Trojan Security Systems, Hermes Communications; The Poseidon Adventure,
Medusa’s Child, 2001 Space Odyssey; the planets in our solar system
and that guy on the FTD logo. What’s with all these names? Where
do they come from? What are they talking about? And just what is that
story Captain Picard tells at the end of that episode of StarTrek:TNG?
Here’s where you find out.
This course is
designed to familiarize students with the foundations of western literature,
the conventions of the epic and with classical mythology. The materials
to be covered underlie English literature well into the modern period
and inform many of the metaphors we use today.
Texts:
Epic of Gilgamesh
Homer’s Iliad
Vergil’s Aeneid (selections)
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
All texts will
be in translation.
Categories: Genres,
Cultural Studies
English 3563
Fiction, Drama, and Film: A Study of Narrative 1 (Sem 1)
Stewart Donovan
This course is
designed to study film as narrative. Students will be introduced to
the history of cinema including its cultural, political and artistic
contexts.
Required Texts:
The History of
Film, by Jack Ellis and Virginia Wexman
Methodology:
Mostly lecture, question and answer
Categories: Genres,
Cultural Studies
English 3573
Fiction, Drama and Film: A Study of Narrative 2 (Sem 2)
Stewart Donovan
This course concentrates
on the nature of narrative in fiction, drama and film, but there is
a more specific consideration of the art of adaptation: its thematic,
technical and aesthetic triumphs and pitfalls.
Texts:
Those students
who have not taken English 3563 should buy, beg, borrow (but not steal)
a copy of either a history of narrative film or an introduction to film.
Sheldon Currie
The Glace Bay Miner's Museum
William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing
Tennessee Williams Cat On a Hot Tin Roof
Methodology: Mostly
lecture, question and answer
Categories: Genres,
Cultural Studies
English 3633
Literature and Medicine (Sem 1)
Elizabeth McKim
Literature and
Medicine is a well-established interdisciplinary field of study that
has been carried out both in medical school and liberal arts settings
since the 1960s. More than just a combination of the literary and the
medical, the field explores the complementarity and the conflicts between
the disciplines. Like literature, medicine is concerned with stories
that derive from the mythologies, values, assumptions, and ideologies
of their tellers, and the kinds of analyses that scholars of literature
apply to other texts can be productively applied to patients’ and
physicians’ accounts of illness and healing. Unlike literature,
however, medicine must always remain grounded in the often painful factuality
of the body, and herein lies the primary tension explored in the study
of literature and medicine: illness as construct versus illness as concrete
reality.
Through a combination
of lecture and discussion, this course will examine the writings of
patients and physicians to discover the narrative modes they use, the
explicit and implicit functions their narratives serve, and the role
of narrative in developing or maintaining their identities. Students
will also be introduced to the large body of theoretical writing that
has been produced in the area of literature and medicine.
This course will
be of interest to students majoring or honouring in English as a study
of the communicative and therapeutic functions of literature, the latter
an important aspect rarely addressed in English curricula. It will also
be of interest to students planning to pursue medicine, or any of the
helping professions, given its focus on the reading and understanding
of different authorial perspectives.
Texts: TBA
Categories: Authors
and Authorship, Cultural Studies
English 3806
Literary Theory
Dennis DesRoches
An investigation
of the classical foundations, historical development, and contemporary
situation of literary theory.
Honours Students
Please Note:
This course may be substituted for 3833 Contemporary Literary Theory.
Category: Literary
Theory and Method
English 4213
Seminar in Performance and Production (Sem 2)
Brenda Foley
This course will
be organized as a series of working meetings among a group of students
engaged in study of production or performance of literary texts or different
aspects of production and performance. Students may choose among study
of the history or contemporary practice of drama production, active
involvement in such activities, or organization and conduct of readings.
The term will begin with selection of activities to be pursued and establishment
of learning objectives, and end with oral presentations on (and substantial
written reports of) the learning entailed in each student's activities.
Students will be
asked to engage in ongoing reading and research on the activities they
are engaged in, and regular discussions of such issues will be conducted.
Students will be evaluated primarily on their active participation in
the meetings and other ongoing work of the course (interim progress
reports, etc.), and on the learning demonstrated in the final presentation
and report.
Students not pursuing
the Major with a Concentration in Drama will be admitted only with permission
of the instructor. English 3216 Advanced Drama Production and fourth-year
standing are pre- or co-requisite.
Category: Creative
and Performative
English 4926
Honours Seminar: Shakespeare and Politics
Christine Cornell
This course will
offer students the opportunity to read and discuss the plays in the
context of early modern discussions of politics and political life,
particularly in light of ideas contested between the ancients and the
moderns, a contextualizing called for by current work in new historicism
and post-colonial criticism. Through a combination of lecture and discussion,
we shall explore history plays such as Richard II and Henry IV, Part
One, tragedies such as Othello and Macbeth, comedies such as Measure
for Measure and tragicomedies such as The Tempest. We will also consider
texts such as North’s Plutarch, the Hoby translation of Castiglione’s
The Book of the Courtier, the works of James I, and the Mirror for Magistrates,
Bacon’s Essays.
Required Texts
Hoby translation
of Castiglione: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/courtier/courtier.html
Shakespeare, The Norton Shakespeare (Norton, 1997)
James I: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/james/
North’s translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/JC/plutarch.north.html
Please Note: This course is open only to students enrolled in the Honours
Programme.
Categories: Genres,
Authors and Authorship
English 4976
Honours Seminar: Modern Literature
Stewart Donovan
This course will
examine the major themes and forms of responses to the modern movement.
Topics covered will include: the advent of free verse as the dominant
form in Modern Poetry, the role of myth and history in the central works
of the great moderns, the impact of the electronic age on the novel,
the First World War and its aftermath, the advent of the post-colonial
and the post-modern.
Primary Texts:
The Norton Anthology
of Modern Poetry (3rd ed., Vols 1 and 2)
Martin Amis, Night Train
Milan Kundera, Ignorance
Andrew O’Hagan, Our Fathers
Selected stories and prose passages from: James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence,
Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Flannery
O’Connor, Jorge Luis Borges, Alice Munro, Garcia Marquez, Margaret
Atwood, William Trevor, Raymond Carver,
Angela Carter, Chinua Achebe, and Louise Erdrich.
Secondary Texts:
Selected essays
by T, S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Walter Benjamin, George
Orwell, Edmund Wilson, Alexander
Astruc, Louis Dudek, Hugh Kenner, Linda Nochlin, Adrienne Rich, David
Thomson, Gore Vidal, Philip Larkin, Clive
James, Terry Eagleton, Robert Hughes, Neil Postman, Bruce Chatwin, Tony
Morrison, Christopher Hitchens, Edward
Said, Germaine Greer, and Denis Donoghue.
Please Note: This
course is open only to students enrolled in the Honours Programme.
Categories: Authors
and Authorship, Cultural Studies
English 4986
Honours Seminar: Arthurian Literature
Andrea Schutz
This course will allow students to consider the evolution of Arthurian
stories, their adaptation for different genres, indeed the creation
of the genre of Arthurian Literature. Our objectives are to trace changes
in the content and form of the Arthurian legend, to examine some of
the external influences upon the legend, and to suggest and investigate
some of the uses to which the Arthurian material has been and continues
to be put. (We will also try to figure out what turns this legend into
a feeding ground for the silly.)
We will also consider
the following questions (among many others): what happens to the stories
as their context shifts from heroic tale, to chivalric tale, to (modern)
poem or novel? What remains the same, independent of generic difference?
What changes as a result of national (or gendered) appropriation: a
recent series of critical texts have focussed on the Arthur of the Welsh,
the English, the German; Arthurnet has an ongoing interest in the American
Arthur. Popular fiction has also been busy rewriting the legends with
an interest in different characters, such that one might almost speak
of the Arthur of the Women, or with a particular audience in mind, such
that one must speak of the Arthur of the Child. There is also the question
of Arthurian film to be considered, and this genre consists of much
more than either Monty Python’s Holy Grail or Boorman’s Excalibur.
In short, students will find that this course tests and reinforces everything
they have learned in any other course throughout their degree.
Given the cross-cultural
inquiry, most of our texts will be taught in translation; the exception
will be Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, since 15th century English
is not so difficult as to require more than normalised spelling (and
a student’s flexible attitude towards syntax!).
Textbooks
Le Morte D’Arthur,
ed. Helen Cooper (Oxford World’s Classics, 1998)
Le Morte D’Arthur, ed. Stephen H. A. Shepherd (Norton Critical
Edition, 2004)
NB. I am requiring two editions because they each perform very different
functions: Cooper’s is a normalised and slightly abridged edition
of the Winchester MS, but is far and away more easily read than Shepherd’scritical
edition; however, his edition is in early modern English and gives the
student the sense of reading a MS, as opposed to a novel. Both kinds
of reading are going to be important for this class.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (Penguin, 1988)
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King (Signet, 2003)
Other texts will be made available as class interests dictate.
Please Note: This
course is open only to students enrolled in the Honours Programme.
Categories: Genres,
Cultural Studies
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