Cross-Listed Courses are courses taught by Graduate English Faculty with other Graduate Units (TBA). Courses will be added as the information becomes available.
BOOK HISTORY AND PRINT CULTURE: Cross Listed Courses with English https://bhpctoronto.com/
2024–2025 seminar:
BKS2000HS: Advanced Seminar in Book History and Print Culture: https://bhpctoronto.com/program/core-courses/
An advanced seminar required for all doctoral students in the BHPC Collaborative Specialization, this course will vary in content from year to year depending upon the expertise of the faculty member appointed to lead it. The term-paper research project will be open to work in all disciplines, periods, and languages in consultation with the instructor. Prerequisite or corequisite for BHPC students: BKS1001H. May be available without prerequisite to students outside the program by permission of instructor.
Making Critical-Creative Editions
Professor Claire Battershill (Faculty of Information/Department of English), Winter 2025, Thursdays, 12:00 – 3:00 pm, Colin Friesen Room, Massey College.
In this hands-on, project-based seminar, students will apply their knowledge of historical book forms to the making of a new conceptual edition or adaptation of a work of their choosing. The course will begin with sessions in in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and the Robertson Davies Library, where we examine a variety of examples of creative-critical editions produced by book artists and scholars (including a knitted copy of Finnegans Wake by Ximena Perez Grobet; an artists’ book edition of Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the Wall” by Ane Thon Knutsen; and some of the many, many versions of Alice in Wonderland housed at the Fisher, among others). We’ll consider these case studies alongside critical issues in edition making (including copyright; theories of editing and adaptation; creative, feminist, queer, digital, and decolonial approaches to editing).
The students’ project work will begin with an exercise in choosing a text to recreate (in any genre, language, or style corresponding to each student’s area of research) and identifying the affective, critical, and conceptual elements of the text that matter most to them through a series of creative close reading exercises. Once each student has selected and analysed their text, they will be invited to assess the existing editions of the work available through the U of T library system (including all manner of publications from affordable reprint editions marketed to students to first and fine editions). Finally, the student will plan and execute a new edition of the work. This might take the form of an artists’ book, a zine, a scholarly or critical edition, a digital edition, a performance, or any other mode of engagement that a student might imagine. No creative experience or familiarity with book arts is required for this course: students will be provided with direct instruction and support in the “making” techniques needed to execute their editions (techniques might include but are not limited to letterpress printing in the Massey College Bibliography Room, papermaking, ink making, relief printing, illustration, digital drawing, performance practice, scholarly editing).
CENTRE FOR COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: https://complit.utoronto.ca/courses/
COL5153H LYRIC: POLITICS AND POETIC FORM (not offered in 24-25) https://complit.utoronto.ca/course-descriptions-2024-2025/#COL5153H
Most Comparative Literature courses are taught at the Centre for Comparative Literature, Isabel Bader Theatre, 3rd floor, Linda Hutcheon Seminar Room (BT319) unless indicated otherwise below. Please click on the course code to see its description.
COL5153HS Lyric: Politics and Poetic Form (New course) /M. Nyquist, Spring, Wednesday, from 3-5.
Instructor: Professor Mary Nyquist
Time: Spring term, Wednesdays, 3-5
Of the three large literary genres (epic, drama, lyric), lyric poetry tends to be the least studied; it also often triggers anxiety. In this course, students will learn to identify a variety of lyric poetry’s sub-genres and formal features. We will explore questions such as, what are some of the ways in which historical and political contexts matter? How do poetry’s rhythmical and musical elements manifest themselves, if at all? What social positions or ideological formations are associated with specific sub-genres or forms? In what ways have poets from marginalized communities eschewed or appropriated conventional sub-genres or poetic forms? How have new forms of media contributed to debates about “formalist” and “anti-formalist” positions? To make this manageable, we will focus on (1) early modern and contemporary poetry (2) pastoral poetry, the sonnet, and elegy (3) Euro-colonial and post-colonial contexts. Students will be selecting many of the poems to be studied in class; if they were written in languages other than English, they will be accompanied by translations.
For students of literature, lyric poetry is often radically under-studied, leaving prospective instructors and writers without the knowledge needed to understand, interpret, teach, or write lyric poetry. This course provides an excellent introduction to central formal features and literary debates. Students with advanced expertise will find many new contexts in which to experiment and learn.
Course Objectives
•Learn to reflect on a wide variety of issues relating to the writing and study of lyric poetry
•Acquire the ability to identify a variety of poetic sub-forms and features
•Develop a sense of the historically and culturally specific features of a given set of poems
•Develop ability to analyze innovative appropriations of existing sub-genres, forms or poetic features
Method of Evaluation
Two co-facilitations (25%)
Participation (25%)
Two exercises (10%)
Short essay of 1000 words (15%)
Final essay of approximately 3000 words (25%)
CENTRE FOR DRAMA, THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES - No cross-listed courses in 2024-2025
https://www.cdtps.utoronto.ca/curriculum-course-information/current-grad...
CENTRE FOR MEDIEVAL STUDIES: https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/graduate/curriculum-course-information/...
Fall or F-Term 2024:
MST1117HF (LI 310) Medieval English Handwriting 1300-1500 (S. Sobecki) - Monday 9:00 am to 11:00 am
The study of handwriting in late-medieval medieval England is a complex and dynamic field. Since the publication in 1969 of M.B. Parkes’ foundational English Cursive Book Hands, 1250-1500, English palaeography has diverged significantly from continental practice in terminology and approach. The specificity of the main scripts used in England – Anglicana and Secretary – has developed into a highly specialised field, often at the expense of acknowledging points of contact with continental and, especially, French handwriting.
This course will introduce students to the study of handwriting in late medieval England (1300-1500), with a focus on literary and administrative writing in English, though French and Latin will also be considered. We will study the main scripts used in England (Anglicana, Secretary, and Textura) in their administrative and literary guises, and we will explore the different systems to classify scripts as used by English and continental European scholars. Our approach will be both specialist and comparative, taking account of developments in France and elsewhere in Europe. In addition, we will examine in detail existing controversies in English palaeography, in particular the cases of Adam Pinkhurst and Thomas Hoccleve.
MST1104HF (PIMS) Latin Paleography I (W. Robins) - Tuesday 11:00 am to 1:00 pm
Prerequisite: successful completion of MST1000 OR Level I Latin exam pass
An introduction to early medieval scripts. The course is designed as a practicum in the transcription of scripts from the late Roman Empire to the 12th century.
MST1003HF (LI 310) Professional Development (K. Gaston) - Friday 11:00 am to 1:00 pm This course is intended to prepare PhD students in Medieval Studies for the job market. It will provide for them an overview of the non-scholarly skills they will need to acquire for the academic job search and for their professional lives beyond the job search, as well as give them information about non-academic options. The course will meet for 12 two-hour sessions over the course of three academic years and will include presentations from a range of faculty and guest speakers, with special attention given to the unusual challenges faced by students in our unit. Individual sessions will include coverage of the following topics:
Funding, Grants, Bursaries, Fellowships
Planning for the PhD with an Eye on the Future
Coping with Academic Stress; iv. Gender Equity in Medieval Studies
Alternatives to Academia
The Medievalist and the Department
The Teaching Portfolio
The Conference Circuit
Publishing Research as a PhD Student
CVs, Cover Letters, and How to Prepare for Them
Postdocs
The Academic Job Search in North America and Beyond
Spring or S-Term 2025:
MST1003HS (LI 310) Professional Development (K. Gaston) - Friday 11:00 am to 1:00 pm This course is intended to prepare PhD students in Medieval Studies for the job market. It will provide for them an overview of the non-scholarly skills they will need to acquire for the academic job search and for their professional lives beyond the job search, as well as give them information about non-academic options. The course will meet for 12 two-hour sessions over the course of three academic years and will include presentations from a range of faculty and guest speakers, with special attention given to the unusual challenges faced by students in our unit. Individual sessions will include coverage of the following topics:
Funding, Grants, Bursaries, Fellowships
Planning for the PhD with an Eye on the Future
Coping with Academic Stress; iv. Gender Equity in Medieval Studies
Alternatives to Academia
The Medievalist and the Department
The Teaching Portfolio
The Conference Circuit
Publishing Research as a PhD Student
CVs, Cover Letters, and How to Prepare for Them
Postdocs
The Academic Job Search in North America and Beyond
MST5003HS Medieval Storyworlds: Topics in Medieval Languages and Literatures (W. Robins) - Tuesday 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Course description TBA: https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/graduate/curriculum-course-information/...
MST1388HS The Junius Manuscript: Old Testament Narratives (R. Trilling) - Wednesday 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
The late-tenth-century Junius Manuscript is an illustrated collection of Old English biblical verse, containing four poems that chart the course of salvation history from the Creation to the Last Judgment: Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. It serves as an important witness to the dissemination of theological doctrine to lay and unlearned audiences at the height of the Benedictine Reform, and it offers various examples of how early medieval English authors adapted Christian content to suit the needs of those audiences through the form of heroic poetry. Its availability in high-quality online images from Oxford University will allow students in this seminar to work equally with the texts of the poems, the illustrations that accompany them, and the codicological development and history of the manuscript.
The primary text for the course will be the ASPR edition of The Junius Manuscript, and the primary goal of the course will be to work through all four poems in the original language, which will give students an opportunity to practice extremely close reading in the translation of some very difficult, complex, and rewarding literature. Readings will also include an extensive array of secondary literature, and students will develop their own critical readings of the text in a variety of venues, including less formal in-class discussion, prepared presentations to the rest of the seminar, and a formal seminar paper at the end of the term. A reading knowledge of Old English is required for this course; students who have taken ENG1001 “Old English,” ENG240 “Old English Language and Literature,” or the equivalent will be adequately prepared.