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Courses
Regularly Taught
English 1006:
An Introduction to Literature
This course aims to provide students with a broad introduction to world
literature written in English. Female and male writers from many different
ethnic and cultural backgrounds will be discussed, as will language
and genre, both in a modernist context. Because this is an introductory
English course, student writing is also a focus of the learning. Through
both terms, the course will work its way to addressing a central question:
namely, what is the value of literature in the late twentieth century?
6 credit hours.
English 2006:
The Study of Literature
This course takes a predominantly modernist approach to the study of
fiction and poetry written in English. Explorations of British, American,
and Canadian modernist expressions will form the locus of our study,
as will the evolution of modernism into a fin-de-siecle postmodernism.
(These terms are defined throughout the course of the year.) Because
the movement from modernism to postmodernism informs so much of our
contemporary culture, I have chosen to build this more advanced "study
of literature" around that fundamental shift; the course remains, however,
a survey-based extension of English 1-200. 6 credit hours.
English 2383:
Reading Popular Culture
This course will study the mythic and narrative elements of the following
popular texts: computers, cartoons, gender, wrestling, soaps, tabloid
journalism, trash talk shows, sports, fashion, reality tv, fairy tales,
rock videos, slasher films, policing, and other texts that students
choose. Our cultural analyses will be aided by close readings of literary
and cultural theories, including myth criticism and psychoanalytic theory,
as well as the theories of Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Michel Foucault,
Louis Althusser, Laura Mulvey, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Lacan, John
Fiske, Judith Williamson, and others. The purpose of this course is
to equip students with the language and theories necessary for informed
cultural literacy.
Method of Instruction:
Collaborative, meaning short lectures, frequent discussions, music and
video, group work, and student presentations. This course, unlike some
others, requires the active participation of students in the learning
endeavour. You will be expected to participate in discussions, and to
work toward a major small-group presentation. You will be evaluated
on the frequency and quality of your participation in class and during
your group presentation.
Composition of Grade:
Group Presentation:
15%
Class Participation: 15%
Reading Quizzes: 20%
Short Paper: 15%
Final Exam: 35%
**** Students are
strongly encouraged to visit my Web Page <www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/tremblay.index.htm>
for more detailed information about class work, expectations, and requirements.
Category:
Cultural Studies and Literary Theory and Method
English 2473:
The Maritimes in Literature, Film, and Art
This course approaches the cultural mosaic of Eastern 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-Confederation writers, the particular emphasis
in the course is on the literature, film, and visual/musical art of
the twentieth century. Some of the artists we study include Buckler,
Bruce, Maillet, Richards, Colville, Pratt, Currie, Kerslake, Nowlan,
and Domanski. 3 credit hours.
Texts Required:
Readings (first two weeks & later--see syllabus) on reserve in the
Harriet Irving Library (HIL). Books: Ernest Buckler, The Mountain and
the Valley (M&S); Antonine Maillet, La Sagouine (UofT); Alistair
MacLeod, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (M&S); David Adams Richards,
Nights Below Station Street (M&S); Alden Nowlan, Selected Poems
(Anansi).
Method of Instruction: A collaborative mix of lectures, discussions,
and student presentations. Because of the size of the class, I will
have to lecture; however, students will be responsible for making group
presentations at the beginning of most classes. I will lecture on the
literature assigned, and the groups will make presentations on related
aspects of the culture, art, or history of our region. As in my other
classes, active and regular student participation will form the basis
of the learning. The course is designed and built around the participation
of students in the learning endeavour. You will be called on for your
opinion, and you will be expected to contribute meaningfully to the
learning of your peers. You will be evaluated on the frequency and quality
of your participation in class and during your group presentation.
Composition of Grade:
Class Participation:
10 or 20% (you choose)
Reading Quizzes (unannounced): 20%
Class Presentation & Handout (Peer Evaluated): 10%
Formal Essay: 20%
Final Exam: 30 or 40% (you choose)
**** Students are strongly encouraged to visit my Web Page <www.stthomasu.ca/Faculty/tremblay.index.htm>
for more detailed information about class work, expectations, and requirements.
Category:
National or Regional
English 3403:
Canadian Poetry
One of the challenges
faced by Canadian poets in the last hundred years has been to find what
Ralph Gustafson has called "the Canadian accent." To explore
"accent," this course broadly surveys 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 are explored, as is
the mid-century split between the pan-Canadianism of Purdy and Atwood,
and the anti-nationalism of the TISH group. Students are encouraged
to assess the literature in terms of the various definitions of what
it means to be Canadian. 3 credit hours.
English 3433:
The Literature of Africa and the West Indies
This course introduces students to the range of literary expressions
of writers from Third World and Emerging Black cultures (i.e., the West
Indies and Africa). The two major genres studied are the novel and drama,
though some poetry and a few essays are also examined. The focus of
the course will be to study the voices, themes, and concerns of the
colonized, those who were swept up by British expansionism in the 18th
and 19th centuries. 3 credit hours.
English 3453:
The Literature of the Settler Colonies, Canada & South Pacific
This course introduces students to the range of literary expressions
of European settlers in the first-world British colonies, mostly the
colonies of the South Pacific. As well, the course examines the constructions
of indigeneity and hybridity of both diasporic whites and native peoples.
The course will focus on how non-canonical literary histories have been
constructed to create cultural identities independent of the British
centre, and how Aboriginal movements such as Jindyworobak and Maori
rivinui have been instrumental in redefining centres. 3 credit hours.
English 4556:
Cultural and Media Studies Honours Seminar
This
seminar moves from a historio-theoretical footing--the work of culturalists
such as Matthew Arnold, F.R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams,
E.P. Thompson, and Stuart Hall--to address the ideas of contemporary
thinkers on populism, advertising, media, and technology. Various forms
of cultural imperialism--including the perennial frictions between high
and low culture; the ideologies of text, canon, and literacy; and the
mediation of information by corporations and the state--are examined.
The seminar deals with the myriad ways that English is practiced, learned,
and taught in the 21st century, and equips students with the language
and theories required for informed media and cultural literacy. 6 credit
hours.
English 4946:
Canadian Fiction and Film Seminar
I. Canadian Studies:
GeneralCanadian
Studies has continued to gain both momentum and popularity in recent
years. With few exceptions, Canadian universities with graduate programmes
offer a range of courses in Canadian Studies that reflect the special
interests of their faculty. The programmes across the country are wide-ranging
and innovative, most informed by the related disciplines of cultural,
post-colonial, and post-structural studies. It is, in fact, becoming
increasingly rare that Canadian literature is taught independently of
the social, historical, archival, indigenous, and multicultural elements
that are at its core. Rather, there continues to emerge a vast range
of hybrid programmes that match Canadian literature with other aspects
of culture, theory, textuality, or ethnicity. It seems only logical
that to be informed about and responsive to what is happening across
the country, a course in Canadian Fiction should reflect the notion
of complementarity. The course below, Canadian Fiction and Film, will
do so by putting visual and written text into interrogative counterpoise.
II. Course Description:
(ENGLISH 4946: Canadian Fiction and Film)
Description/Calendar
Copy: This course will provide students with an opportunity to explore
the wide range and various dimensions of Canadian story. Using the primary
genres of the novel and film, the course will make its way across the
country, stopping region by region to examine, through written and visual
text, what writers and film-makers are saying about the uniqueness of
their place. From that, we will construct a more informed sense of our
nationhood than most of us already have. Because this is an honours
seminar, Canadian theorists of "place" and "nation"
such as Northrop Frye, George Grant, Linda Hutcheon, John Ralston Saul,
Laurence Ricou, Doug Jones, Marshall McLuhan, and others will also come
within our purview.
Required
Reading for Students Entering My Courses
Instruction
& Evaluation Overview
Research
Interests
Sample
Publications
Anthony
Tremblay / English
/ Faculty / STU
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