Summer 2023 Timetable

ENG100H1F -  Effective Writing   

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Mondays and Wednesdays 10 am - 1 pm In Person

Instructor(s): Natalie Leduc

Brief Description of Course: Our goal in this course is to become better readers so that we may become better writers. Therefore, during this course, we will explore various kinds of writing styles — be it academic, commercial, or personal — in print and digital, by both reading and writing in these styles. We will analyze the writing patterns, rhetorical moves, and styles of other writers so that we may hone our own skills of generating ideas, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, and revision. This course will stress that writing is a process and a skill, and as such, can be learned and refined. However, this course will also stress the importance of finding one’s rhetorical style and discuss the various ways one’s voice can be utilized in different prose styles, disciplines, and industries.

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ENG100H1F -  Effective Writing   

Section Number: LEC0201                           

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 11 am - 2 pm In Person

Instructor(s): Morgan Moore

Brief Description of Course: This course will prepare students to approach future writing with confidence, by improving skills in composition, research, and revision. Emphasizing writing as a process, as well as the need to distinguish between modes of creating and editing, this course will walk students through the recursive, generative process of drafting, constructing an argument, incorporating research, deploying the conventions of English grammar and syntax, and revision.

Required Reading: Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, 4th ed. or later

First Three Authors and Texts: Irina Dumitrescu, “Will ChatGPT kill the student essay?”, Ann Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts,” Steven Lessner and Collin Craig, “Finding Your Way In”: Invention as Inquiry Based Learning

Method of Evaluation: 

Syllabus quiz – 1%
Participation – 19%
Weekly assignments (5 of 6 possible free writing prompts / reading responses) – 20%
Review project – 20%
Portfolio of revised pieces (review + 2 selected responses, cover letter) – 30%
Mid-term reflection – 5%
End of class reflection – 5%

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ENG100H1F -  Effective Writing   

Section Number: LEC5101                                

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 6-9 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Brandon Taylor

Brief Description of Course: This course has three key components. It introduces practices of analysis by examining a variety of writing genres, including textual analysis, argument, profiles, memoirs, evaluations, and literacy narratives. Significant time and attention will be given to developing successful and sophisticated university-level writing and argumentation, skills that will be an asset to you for your entire university career. Emphasis will also be placed upon developing an understanding of theory and methods useful for the process of writing and composition.

Method of Evaluation: Textual Analysis Essay (20%), Argument Essay (20%), Profile Essay (20%), Weekly Reading Journal Discussions (20%), Active Class Participation (20%). 

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ENG100H1S -  Effective Writing   

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 1-4 pm In Person

Instructor(s): Michael Reid

Brief Description of Course: This intensive six-week course is designed to teach students the elements of powerful and persuasive writing. It is structured around the fundamental idea that effective writing is not a unilateral stream from thought to word, but a two-way, mutually sustaining process – writing itself as a form of thinking, and vice versa. Each week we will cover a different stage of the writing process, beginning with the basics of sentence and paragraph construction, moving through argumentation and rhetorical technique, and concluding with the more complex effects of voice and style. Alongside this process, students will be made aware of the common rhetorical pitfalls, errors, and clichés to which every writer is susceptible, and develop lasting writing habits that will serve them throughout their degree program and beyond.
  
The course syllabus exposes students to model pieces of writing across a range of genres: academic essays, personal or confessional essays, memoirs, op-eds, journal articles, and other examples of creative non-fiction. These will be paired with helpful readings from the free peer-reviewed web resource Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. The genre of the essay – in spite of grumblings from students (and even faculty!) – is still the core genre of academic discussion and intellectual inquiry, and together we will explore its possibilities, its limits, and its enduring presence in public discourse.

Required Reading: 

Gita DasBender, “Critical Thinking in College Writing: From the Personal to the Academic” 
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”

Method of Evaluation: TBD

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ENG100H1S -  Effective Writing   

Section Number: LEC5101                                

Time(s): Mondays and Wednesdays 6-9 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Katheryne Morrissette

Brief Description of Course: In this course, we will consider both aspects of “good” writing—namely, writing that is of high quality, and writing that is honest and responsible. In essence, the work we will be doing in this course rests on the assumption that those two aspects are, in fact, intimately connected. We will be dealing particularly with the context of academic writing, but the principles we learn here are applicable to non-academic writing as well. Throughout the course, we will also be covering the more technical aspects of writing, acknowledging how grammar and the mechanics of language interact with and influence those broader, more structural elements. We will put the principles learned from the effective examples (good faith argumentation, clarity of expression, and honesty or openness) into practice in the final writing assignment. In doing so, we will see how it is possible to write persuasively in a way that brings ideas and thinkers together rather than being pitted against one another.

Required Reading: Graff & Birkenstein, They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (ebook)

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ENG102H1F -  Literature and the Sciences   

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 pm - 3  pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Professor Thom Dancer

Office Location: JHB 713

E-mail: thom.dancer@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: Like science fiction? Argue with your friends about the depiction of future and fictional worlds and people? Want to learn how to talk with more sophistication about what you like and dislike about art, fiction, and film? Ever wonder what science fiction novels, stories, and movies tell us about ourselves, our future as a species, the trajectory of technology? This class aims to develop a critical appreciation of popular science fiction, popular culture, and film from the perspective of literary analysis. Central to critical appreciation is the recognition of literature as carefully crafted art form, which basically means coming up with a cogent account of - what a piece of literature “means,” - what it is trying to do to/for the reader, - what technical, verbal, and structural choices the author has made and how they contribute to the overall experience of reading, and so on.

This course introduces students without a background in literary analysis or writing to basics of analysis, interpretation, and study of literature. It is a course that emphasizes the development of reading and thinking and communication skills.

Required Reading:The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin; Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer; Stories by Ursual Le Guin, Geoffrey Landis, Cixin Liu; Movies: Rogue One, Mad Max: Fury Road, Television Episodes from Futurama and Doctor Who.

First Three Authors/Texts: Liu, Le Guin, Landis

Method of Evaluation: Group Work, Quizzes, Test, Project/Presentation, Participation.

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ENG110Y1 - Narrative

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 pm - 3  pm In Person

Instructor(s): Professor Andrew Lesk 

Office Location: JHB 814 

E-mail: andrew.lesk@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: Stories and storytelling are integral to our perceptions of and interaction with the world around us. This course examines the way that narrative functions in a variety of traditional and non-traditional forms such as the novel, fairy tales, the short story, the essay, autobiography, travel writing, journalism, film, video, and the graphic novel. 

Required Reading: Full reading list, TBA. 

First Three Authors/Texts: Milton, Shelley, Conrad. 

Method of Evaluation: Short essay, longer essay, test, quiz.

ENG202H1F - British Literature I

Section Number: LEC0101                            

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 10 am – 1 pm In person

Instructor(s): Carroll Balot 

Office Location: JHB 734 

E-mail: carroll.balot@utoronto.ca 

Brief Description of Course: A survey of English literature, from its beginnings in the Anglo-Saxon period through the late seventeenth century, emphasizing major authors, movements and periods, and formal analysis.  Central themes will include the relationship between the ancient heroic code and Christian values; the movement from a providential to a modern scientific cosmology; the many forms of love, sacred and secular; community, individualism, and alienation in the transition to modernity; and sin, shame, and forgiveness. We will employ a variety of approaches to literary analysis, including historicism, psychoanalysis, New Criticism, and modes of political and affective reading. 

Required Reading: Norton Anthology of English Literature, vols. A&B and Chris Baldick, Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms  

Website address (if applicable): Quercus 

First Three Authors/Texts: Dream of the Rood; Beowulf; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 

Method of Evaluation: short paper; midterm; final; participation

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ENG215H1F - The Canadian Short Story

Section Number: L0101                                

Time(s): Monday and Wednesday 10 am - 1 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Dr. Sarah Caskey     

Office Location: Room 802, Jackman Humanities Building 

E-mail: sarah.caskey@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: The short story is a demanding and exhilarating art form. As the Canadian literary critic W. H. New observes, it “calls upon its readers to perceive the breadth of vision that is condensed into a small compass.” Canadian writers have made outstanding contributions to the genre and this course examines Canadian short fiction written in English since the beginning of the twentieth century to the present.  The short stories selected for analysis reflect a variety of authors, as well as diverse periods, regions, literary styles, thematic interests, and experimentation within the genre.  Together, the stories attest to the vitality of the genre in this country and the important role Canadians writers have played in shaping the form. 

We will focus on reading individual stories closely, with attention to form and structure, and to relating seemingly disparate stories to one another, synthesizing ideas that connect them into a larger short-story literary tradition.  Teaching the stories close to chronological order means we can grasp much of the history of literary influence and the growth and development of the genre in Canada within the boundaries of the syllabus. Throughout the term, we will explore the place of the short story in Canadian literary culture and its intersection with issues including identity, storytelling, and art. The stories are exciting, often challenging, and demonstrate the sheer variety of voices and spectrum of possibilities within the genre.

Required Reading: All course readings are available on Quercus through the Library Reading List. 

First Three Authors/Texts: Michael Crummey, Harry Robinson, Thomas King. 

Method of Evaluation: Passage Analysis (25%); Essay (40%); Final Assignment (25%); Participation (10%). 

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ENG220H1S - Introduction to Shakespeare

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 10 am -1 pm In person

Instructor(s): Carroll Balot 

Office Location: JHB 734 

E-mail: carroll.balot@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: An introduction to Shakespeare's work through a selection of representative plays.

Required Reading: Henry VI Part 1; As You Like It; King Lear; Winter’s Tale; The Tempest 

Website address (if applicable): Quercus 

First Three Authors/Texts: Henry VI Part 1; As You Like It; King Lear 

Method of Evaluation: short paper, term tests, participation 

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ENG235H1F - The Graphic Novel - CANCELLED

Section Number: 0101                                

Time(s): Monday and Wednesdays 1 pm - 3 pm In person

Instructor(s): Professor Andrew Lesk 

Office Location: JHB 814 

E-mail: andrew.lesk@utoronto.ca 

Brief Description of Course: In ENG235, an introductory course, we will examine the rhetorical uses of comics in order to think through the course theme Youth. Concomitantly, we will explore the following questions: To what rhetorical purposes are comics used? How is "truth" represented/constructed through visual and textual rhetoric? What is the relationship between the novel and its social context, and how is that represented by the visual codes of these texts? 

Required Reading: Full reading list, TBA. 

First Three Authors/Texts: Clowes, Laboucane, Barry. 

Method of Evaluation: Essay, tests, quiz.

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ENG2501F - Introduction to American Literature

Section Number: LEC0101

Time(s): May-June, Monday, Wednesday 2 pm - 5 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Scott Rayter

Office Location: UC A303 

E-mail: scott.rayter@utoronto.ca 

Brief Description of Course: This course will introduce students to a variety of genres, including fiction, poetry, essays, and slave narratives, by a number of writers seen as key figures in American literature but also some who are less well-known, and we will examine how their works reflect national and individual concerns with freedom and identity, particularly in relation to race, gender and sexuality. 

Required Reading: We will be using the shorter 10th edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature (2 vols, published July 2022), with works by writers such as Irving, Hawthorne, Jacobs, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson, Bierce, Gilman, James, Frost, Hemingway, Faulkner, O’Hara, Welty, Far, Morrison, Lahiri, Carver and others. 

Web Site Address (if applicable): Quercus 

First Few Authors/Texts: Irving, Hawthorne, Jacobs, Melville 

Method of Instruction: Lecture 

Method of Evaluation: Take-home Mid-term Test (20%); Essay (35%); Participation (15%); Take-home Exam (30%)

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ENG252H1F - Introduction to Canadian Literature

Section Number: LEC0101

Time(s): Tues and Thurs 1-3 pm In person

Instructor(s): Dr. Vikki Visvis

Office Location: JHB 802

E-mail: vvisvis@chass.utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: This course offers an introductory study of English-Canadian prose and poetry from the eighteenth century to the present day by identifying landmarks in the Canadian literary tradition and by examining the historical, cultural, and political forces that have both shaped and challenged these CanLit milestones. The course will begin by analyzing the writings of Canada’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pioneers and settlers, and will, then, revisit Canada’s settler-colonial history from Indigenous literary perspectives. We will continue by discussing the confluence of Romantic and nationalist influences in Confederation poetry during the late nineteenth century; the evolution of realist fiction during the twentieth century; the formal experimentation that modernized Canadian poetry in the mid-twentieth century; and diversity in women’s writing during the late twentieth century. The course will close by exploring contemporary multicultural narratives—within contexts such as postmodernism, Black writing, and Asian-Canadian fiction—and queer literature in Canada.

Required Reading:

1. Course Reader
2. Thomas King: Green Grass, Running Water (Harper-Collins)
3. Michael Ondaatje: In the Skin of a Lion (Vintage)
Excerpts by Samuel Hearne, David Thompson, Frances Brooke, Catharine Parr Traill, Susanna Moodie. Poetry by Charles Sangster, Archibald Lampman, Duncan Campbell Scott, A. J. M. Smith, P. K. Page, Irving Layton. Short stories by Sinclair Ross, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Eden Robinson, Austin Clarke, Dionne Brand, Madeleine Thien, Shyam Selvadurai, Beth Brant in Course Reader

Course Reader will be posted on Quercus. Please purchase novels by King and Ondaatje online from the University of Toronto Bookstore, Amazon, or Chapters Indigo online. Feel free to use eBooks for this course.

Web Site Address (if applicable):

First Few Authors/Texts: Hearne, Thompson, Brooke

Method of Evaluation: Short essay: 4–5 pages (25%); Long essay: 8–10 pages (40%); Final examination: 2 hours (25%); Online participation (10%).   

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ENG270H1S - Introduction to Colonial and Postcolonial Writing

Section Number: 0101                                

Time(s): Monday and Wednesdays 11 am - 2 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Geoffrey Macdonald

Brief Description of Course: In this course, we analyze the aesthetic and political modes of resisting colonial power around the world. We study anglophone African, Caribbean, and South Asian literature in relation to race, gender, sexuality, and capital accumulation. Because these literatures comprise an immense and diverse expanse of cultures, voices, styles, geographical locations, and kinds of writing, no single course can possibly represent the fullness of their literary expression.  Together, we work on a representative selection of poems, novels, and a play by examining key ideas and modes of expression that have been crucial to the development of rich literary cultures. This course also facilitates the development of skills necessary for literary study. Assignments enhance students’ ability to read actively, focus their research, develop critical arguments, and present ideas verbally.

Required reading:
Anusree Roy, Brothel #9
Bessie Head, Maru
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Imperialism, History, Writing, and Theory.”
Merle Hodge, Crick Crack Monkey
Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable
Okot p’Bitek, Song of Lawino
Patricia Powell, A Small Gathering of Bones

First Three Authors: Smith, p’Bitek, Head

Method of Evaluation: Participation (10%), Reading Responses (10%), Presentation Question (5%), Midterm Close Reading Test (20%), Comparative Essay and Proposal (35%), Term Test (20%)

ENG311H1F - Medieval Literature - CANCELLED

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 2-5 pm 

Instructor(s): Carroll Balot 

Office Location: JHB 734 

E-mail: carroll.balot@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: an introduction to non-Chaucerian medieval literature for advanced undergraduates. Our survey of medieval English literature will include a variety of genres, including romance, elegy, and hagiography, and forms, including lai, prose, stanzaic poetry, and drama. Historically, the course is framed by Marie de France’s late 12th c. Old French romances and the fifteenth century oral autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe. Although we will discuss some of the historical events that are important to understanding the literature of this period, our emphasis will be on close reading rather than a linear literary historical narrative. Our goal will be to formulate and enact a reading practice for each work that grows out of the unique demands of the text itself, considering the way these works have particular visions of the world and our place in it.

Required Reading: Marie de France, Marie de France: Poetry. Translated and edited by Dorothy Gilbert. Norton Critical Edition. Norton, 2015. 

Malory, Thomas, et al. Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript. Edited by Helen Cooper. Oxford UP, 2008. 

Pearl: Text and Translation. Translated and edited by Jane Beal. Broadview Press, 2020. 

Mandeville, John, and Anthony Paul Bale. The Book of Marvels and Travels. Oxford University Press, 2012. 

Kempe, Margery, and Lynn Staley. The Book of Margery Kempe : a New Translation, Contexts, Criticism. Norton, 2001. 

Website address (if applicable): Quercus 

First Three Authors/Texts: Marie de France, Guigemar, Equitain, Bisclavret. 

Method of Evaluation: Short paper, term tests, participation

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ENG323H1F -  Austen and Her Contemporaries

Time(s): Tuesday, Thursday 10 am -1 pm 

Instructor(s): Alex Hernandez 

Office Location: JHB 608 

E-mail: alex.hernandez@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: A stone slab tucked away in Winchester’s cathedral church marks Jane Austen’s grave, noting that: “the extraordinary endowments of her mind / obtained the regard of all who knew her and / the warmest love of her intimate connections.” This course explores that extraordinary mind and the culture that it brought about, placing Austen in the context of her times in several senses.  

We’ll look to situate her work in a dialogue with that of contemporaries in literature, philosophy, and aesthetics, to read closely as she traces the complex family dynamics of the late Georgian home, and to understand her work as part of a moment of global political upheaval with profound consequences even to this day. To do so, we’ll read a number of her novels, for the most part moving chronologically, making the occasional detour into the work of fellow authors while also tracing parallel secondary critical accounts. Students will learn to read her work more critically and develop some facility with the era’s literature, to demystify Austen’s body of work and return it to its larger context, as well as gain an understanding of some of the classic accounts through which scholars have understood this period. 

Required Reading: Several—but not all—of Austen’s novels (Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Persuasion), a number of relatively short supplemental works for context, and some poetry. 

First Three Authors/Texts: Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution, excerpts from gothic novels

Method of Evaluation: Robust Participation, a Short Paper, Term Tests

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ENG331H1F - Drama 1485-1603 - CANCELLED

Section Number: LEC0101

Time(s): Monday, Wednesday 2 pm - 5 pm

Instructor(s): Matt Sergi

Office Location: JHB 812   

E-mail: sergi.utoronto@gmail.com

Brief Description of Course: 

English drama before 1485 looks and feels very, very different from English drama after 1603.  Drama historians generally agree that, at some point during the Tudors’ rule over Britain from 1485 to 1603, early modern English drama emerged and medieval English drama faded away; we agree on little more than that.  ENG 331 will jump right into the tougher, unsettled questions that underlie that broadly conceived cultural transition (questions to which the professor himself can only offer contingent, unsure, debatable answers): in what year was the “some point”?  Where did it happen and why?  During the transition, what was the set of characteristics shared by those plays that now seem more continuous with future trends than with past ones?  What is “modernity” in terms of live drama?  What is gained when drama becomes modern, and what is the cost of that gain, even now?

The Tudors employed a range of strategies to consolidate prestige in the Crown, and thus in London.  By 1603, London-based styles and conventions, particularly in dramatic performances, had largely eclipsed a diversity of other regional performance traditions, some of which faded out of fashion, and others of which were forcibly prohibited. But throughout the sixteenth century, even as the first commercial theaters began to pop up around London, marking an apparent renaissance of classical forms, other regions in England were performing old and new plays in ways that might strike us as more medieval.

So ENG 331 will cover a selection of performance texts and traditions across a variegated Britain between 1485 and 1603 — with frequent reference to the Records of Early English Drama, our readings will be organized by geography rather than chronology, taking us not only to Tudor-era London but also through sixteenth-century Cheshire, Yorkshire, East Anglia, Cambridgeshire, and Central Scotland.

Active, real-time participation is required, but built into our class is an array of inclusive alternative avenues for participation that make room for all learning styles and needs; presence at class meetings will be crucial, too, with a minimum attendance requirement. Be prepared to engage actively during every class meeting.

Required Reading: 

Fitzgerald and Sebastian, eds., The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama; Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (McDonald edition); Marlowe, Edward II (Martin edition); Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis (edition TBA); students will also be assigned a number of secondary readings electronically.

First Three Authors/Texts:  

Robin Hood and the Friar/Robin Hood and the Potter (anonymous); Coventry Shearmen and Tailors’ Pageant (anonymous), Fulgens and Lucres (Medwall)

Method of Evaluation:

Engagement and Participation in class discussion sessions, 15%;
Real-Time Comprehension Questions (CQs), asked at the midpoint and end of each class session, 17.5%; 
Actual Attendance during at least 9 of our 11 class sessions, 10%;
Close Analysis Essay (close reading), 20%;
Week 3 Quiz (Terminology and Geography), 15%;
Archival Research Essay, 22.5%

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ENG340H1F - Modern Drama - CANCELLED

Section Number: LEC0101H1                                

Time(s): Tuesday and Thursday 10 am - 1 pm 

Instructor(s): Dr. Philippa Sheppard      

Office Location: JHB 814 

E-mail: philippa.sheppard@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: This course explores twelve major plays of the first half of the twentieth century -- an era of rapid social and political change – in the light of new intellectual and artistic movements such as Naturalism, Surrealism, Feminism and Socialism. Using clips from filmed productions, we will delve into performance history to arrive at a better sense of what makes these seminal dramas as important today as in their own time. 

Required Reading: Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Strindberg’s Miss Julie; Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya; Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest; Yeats’ On Baile’s Strand (online); Synge’s Playboy of the Western World; Glaspell’s Trifles; Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author; Shaw’s Saint Joan; Brecht’s Galileo; O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. 

First Three Authors/Texts: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov. 

Method of Evaluation: Two in-class essays (40%, 20% each); one essay outline (5%); one take-home essay (40%); participation (15%). I will take attendance each class, and make note of oral contributions, to arrive at the participation mark. Attendance is important.  

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ENG357H1S - New Writing in Canada

Section Number: LEC0101

Time(s): Tues and Thursday 1-4 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Dr. Vikki Visvis

Office Location: JHB 802

E-mail: vvisvis@chass.utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: A study of fiction published in Canada in the twenty-first century by emerging writers. Focusing on both the novel and the short story collection, we will consider how contemporary fiction in Canada moves in new directions in its treatment of genre and in its reconceptualization of canonical preoccupations. We will begin with an analysis of speculative fiction, both Indigenous “wonderworks” and Afrofuturism, to explore the traumas of settler-colonialism, Indigenous resurgence, cross-cultural solidarity, and environmental sustainability. We will continue with a critique of the Canadian wilderness to examine how women, madness, and criminality complicate gendered constructions of the North and the adventure narrative. The course will close with a discussion of postmodernism in Canada, specifically its evolving relationship with God, humanism, and history.

Required Reading:

Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (DCB); Wayde Compton, The Outer Harbour (Arsenal); Elizabeth Hay, Late Nights on Air (McClelland&Stewart); Gil Adamson, The Outlander (Anansi); Yann Martel, The Life of Pi (Vintage); Chester Brown, Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography (Drawn&Quarterly).

Fiction available at the University of Toronto Bookstore (214 College Street, 416-640-7900).

Web Site Address (if applicable):

First Few Authors/Texts: Dimaline, Compton, Hay

Method of Evaluation: Take-home test (25%); Essay—8 pages (40%); Final exam—2 hours (25%); Participation (10%).

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ENG365H1S - Contermporary American Fiction

Section Number: L0101

Time(s): Monday, Wednesday 2 pm - 5 pm, July-August, ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Scott Rayter

Office Location: UC A303 

E-mail: scott.rayter@utoronto.ca 

Brief Description of Course: How do contemporary American fiction writers deal with the politics of representation in their works, particularly in relation to identity—be it national, sexual, gender, ethnic, or racial—and within a larger postmodern context of questioning subjectivity itself? 

Required Reading: Works will include only recent 21st-century novels and short stories by writers such as George Saunders, Lorrie Moore, Carmen Maria Machado, Alison Bechdel, Colson Whitehead, Ha Jin, Nathan Englander, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Tommy Orange.

Web Site Address (if applicable): Quercus 

First Three Authors/Texts: Saunders, Moore, Machado 

Method of Instruction: Lecture and Discussion  

Method of Evaluation: Take-home Passage Analysis (20%); Essay (35%); Take-home Exam (30%); Participation (15%)

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ENG371H1S - Topics in Indigenous, Postcolonial, Transnational Literatures

Subtitle for special topics and 400-series courses (if applicable): Voices from the Global South: Dialogues between Postcolonial theory, Decoloniality and Indigenous Studies.

Section Number: LEC0101                            

Time(s): Mondays and Wednesdays 1-4 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Barbara Simoes 

Office Location: JHB 619

E-mail: b.simoes@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: This course focuses on recent theorizations of Postcolonialism, Decoloniality and Indigenous Studies through readings of non-fictional and fictional texts. It is divided into three main sections: 
01 - A study of the current theoretical discussion on Postcolonialism, Decoloniality and Indigenous Studies.
02 - Global South dialogues:  A comparative study of African and Caribbean literature, with focus on: postcolonialism, decolonization, representation, race, gender, and sexuality. 
03 - A comparative study of works by Indigenous writers from North America and Latin America, with focus on: Race, Hybridity, Mestizage. 

Required Reading: Postcolonial Responses to Decolonial Interventions (Gianmaria Colpani); Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe);  Purple Hibiscus (Chimamanda Adichie); In the Castle of My Skin (George Lamming); Green Grass, Running Water (Thomas King). 

First Three Authors/Texts: Postcolonial Responses to Decolonial Interventions (Gianmaria Colpani); Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe); Purple Hibiscus (Chimamanda Adichie)

Method of Evaluation: The first 60% of your grade will be made up of essays and in-class presentations, The remaining 40% is comprised of Engagement and Participation, Attendance (at all sessions) and Informal reading responses.    

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ENG373H1F - Topics in Pre-1800 Literature

Subtitle for special topics and 400-series courses (if applicable): Medieval Romance 

Section Number: LEC0101                            

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 2 pm - 5 pm In person

Instructor(s): Carroll Balot 

Office Location: JHB 734 

E-mail: carroll.balot@utoronto.ca 

Brief Description of Course: A selection of medieval Arthurian romances, from the earliest story of Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain to Malory’s fifteenth-century synthesis, The Morte Darthur.

Required Reading: Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain; Chretien de Troyes, Erec and Enide; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory, Le Morte Darthur.  

Website address (if applicable): Quercus 

First Three Authors/Texts: Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain; Chretien de Troyes, Erec and Enide; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 

Method of Evaluation: Term tests, seminar paper, participation. 

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ENG376H1F - Topics in Theory, Language, Critical Methods

Subtitle for special topics and 400-series courses (if applicable): Narrative Theory

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Mondays and Wednesdays 10 am - 1 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Daniel Aureliano Newman

Office Location: by appointment (virtual or in person) 

E-mail: daniel.newman@utoronto.ca 

Brief Description of Course: This course offers an introduction to narrative theory, or narratology. Through readings of mainly short fiction but also film, comics, music videos and other media, we will cover the basic building blocks of narrative and some of its key techniques, focusing on character, event, plot, narration (including unreliable and weird narrators), time (including impossible temporalities) and more. In addition to gaining a better understanding of how stories “work,” students will learn how narrative theory can be used in concert with other analytical and theoretical approaches, as well as for creative writing.

Required Reading: all readings, including theory, are available free online, either through the University of Toronto Libraries or elsewhere. Theory readings will be mainly from H. Porter Abbott’s Cambridge Introduction to Narrative and Suzanne Keen’s Narrative Form. The narratives we read will be mainly 20/21-century short fiction by authors including Margaret Atwood, Teju Cole, James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Thomas King, Hanif Kureishi, Sarah Polley, Claudia Rankine, Zadie Smith, Bill Watterson, Virginia Woolf and Charles Yu.

Website address (if applicable): n/a 

First Three Authors/Texts: Abbott, Chapters 1 and 2 of Cambridge Introduction to Narrative; Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”; Raymond Carver, “So Much Water So Close to Home”

Method of Evaluation: Short textual analyses (15% X 3 = 45%); creative narrative translation or adaptation (20%); final take-home exam (20%); participation (15%).

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ENG378H1F - Special Topics

Subtitle for special topics and 400-series courses (if applicable): Oscar Wilde

Section Number: LEC0101

Time(s): Monday, Wednesday 1 pm - 4 pm In person

Instructor(s): Daniel Wright     

Office Location: JHB 631     

E-mail: daniel.wright@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: Oscar Wilde was a poet, an essayist, a lifestyle guru, a novelist, a fabulist, a playwright, an aesthete, and a celebrity whose public persona helped to shape the modern conception of gay identity. In this course, we’ll immerse ourselves in Wilde’s wide-ranging work in order to understand how and why he intervened so boldly and definitively in the history of literature, culture, and sexual identity. Wilde’s career spans the period we call the fin-de-siècle (roughly 1880-1900), the late-Victorian moment dominated by the rebellious Aesthetic Movement and its credo of “art for art’s sake.” We’ll situate Wilde’s work and public image in relation to this vibrant epoch and its shifting aesthetic and cultural values. While Wilde is a product of his own historical moment, his work also continues to be immensely popular today, and so our discussion of Wilde will attend also to those aspects of his work and life that make him endlessly relevant: his epigrammatic wit; his critique of superficial norms and conventions; his avant-garde experimentalism; and his lasting position as an icon of gay history. 

Required Reading: 

Wilde: Selected poems and essays, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Salomé, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest, De Profundis, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” 

Other reading: Plato, Symposium (excerpt); essays by Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and William Morris; poems by Amy Levy and Alfred Douglas; Moisés Kaufman, Gross Indecency 

Website address (if applicable): N/A 

First Three Authors/Texts:  

Walter Pater, excerpts from The Renaissance 

Wilde, “Hélas!” and “Impression du Matin”     

Method of Evaluation:

Writing assignments, participation, take-home final exam

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ENG385H1F - History of the English Language

Section Number: LEC0101

Time(s): Monday, Wednesday 10 am -1 pm. ENG385H1F will meet in-person for every session, but Prof. Sergi will also allow students to be able to attend any (or all) sessions online if they wish: see premodernity.net/eng-385 for more information or email sergi.utoronto@gmail.com

Instructor(s): Matt Sergi

Office Location: JHB 812   

E-mail: sergi.utoronto@gmail.com

Brief Description of Course: Speakers and writers of English, across the millennia and miles through which our strange dialect of West Germanic has spread and changed, diverge so widely that we often cannot understand each other. Indeed, there are many different varieties of English (“Englishes”) spoken and written in Toronto, each connected in a different way to the language’s complex and fascinating history. Our lecture-based (but discussion-friendly) course will explore the linguistic, practical, socio-economic, and cultural history of the language itself.  By the end of term, students will learn to recognize and study (and in some cases read and understand) a range of multiple Englishes, extending across time and around the globe. They will begin to perceive, embedded in any given English word or phrase, centuries of history, politics, tradition, and struggle. They will learn and apply the laws, rules, theories, and terms by which scholars have come to understand the development of the English language.  Students will be expected to treat their own Englishes — and each other’s — as subjects of study, allowing us to better understand by the end of the semester not only how English ended up looking and sounding the way it does, but also what English actually did, and does, look and sound like.

We will begin by surveying as many present-day global and virtual Englishes as we can manage (of which Standard Written English is only one). From there, we will work backward into the richly troubled and turbulent history of English: tracing the now-Global Englishes (1800–present) back to Early Modern English (1500–1800), then Middle English (1100–1500), then Old English (c. 449–1100).  We will discuss changes in English’s core systems of phonology (sound structure), morphology (word structure), and syntax (sentence structure); in its lexicon (vocabulary and all other meaningful units in a language) and semantics (the shifting meaning of those units); and in its graphics (how the language is represented in writing).  Meanwhile, we will approach the “outer histories” of English — that is, the series of historical events that influenced the development of the language — as stories of fragmentation, conflict, creativity, and power.

ENG 385 will hone students’ mastery of present-day language standards by examining key moments in the historical development of those language standards: how they have been controlled, preserved, described, prescribed, proscribed, or rejected. Who has the authority over the rules of the language in which we write and speak? Who makes the judgment about what is standard, proper, established, important, or significant? Does good English always facilitate communication, or can it sometimes muffle it? Can bad English do the opposite? And perhaps most urgently, how have new media technologies (not only internet, television, and radio, but also and most importantly, printing and writing) shaped language standards and practices? Consider: the way we articulate ideas verbally is linked to, even synonymous with, the way we think. 

While we will often draw on literature for examples of the language in development, this is not a course about literature; rather, we will focus primarily on the language itself.  There will be a quiz and a test, and presentations of original student-driven research, but little writing (only about 1000 words) assigned in this course. This is an intensive course, condensing the usual 12 weeks of course content into 6 weeks.  Be prepared to work and read intensively.

For fuller information about this course, including assignment prompts and grading, see premodernity.net/eng-385  

Required Reading: 

Smith and Kim, This Language, A River, textbook and workbook; students will also be assigned a number of secondary readings through the U of T Library, most of them from the academic journal World Englishes.

First Three Authors/Texts:  

Usually: Seargeant and Tagg, “English on the Internet and a ‘Post‐Varieties’ Approach to Language”; Smith and Kim, “Introduction to Phonetics”; Drake, “Nice For What”    

Method of Evaluation:

Case Study Presentation, 15%; 
Engagement and Participation in class discussion sessions, 15%; 
Actual Attendance during at least 9 of our 11 class sessions, 10%; 
Real-Time Comprehension Questions (CQs), asked at the midpoint and end of each class session, 15%; 
Final Essay (about 1000 words), 15%; 
Week 2 Quiz (Mostly Phonology), 10%;  
Week 7 Test, 20%.
 

ENG480H1S - Advanced Studies Seminar - CANCELLED

Subtitle for special topics and 400-series courses (if applicable): The Ethnic American Literary Anthology: Dispelling a Canon?

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Tuesdays and Thursdays 1-3 pm In Person

Instructor(s): Lilika Ioki Kukiela

E-mail: lilika.kukiela@mail.utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: What is the American literary canon and who is it for? What is “American” about the American literary canon and how have American writers of colour, their allies, and supporters sought to disrupt the meaning of the canon from the early twentieth century to the present day? This course seeks to answer these questions by examining a variety of literary anthologies featuring works by ethnic American writers, artists, and activists who question and speak to the power of the literary canon. These anthologies are now seminal to specific fields of interest: Asian American Studies, African American Studies, Indigenous Studies, Latinx Studies, Feminist Theory, and Critical Race Theory. By engaging with the form and content of key ethnic literary anthologies collected by editors throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century, as well as single-author literary anthologies, students will not only be introduced to the literary anthology as a genre—and its potentials and problematics—but also gain insight into Critical Ethnic Studies, multi-ethnic literature in the U.S., and the study of comparative racialization. 

Required Reading: Selections from The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke (1925); Aiiieeeee!, edited by Frank Chin, Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong (1974); This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (1981); But Some of Us Are Brave, edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (1982); Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde (1984); Borderlands/La Frontera, by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987); The Displaced, edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2018); Shapes of Native Nonfiction, edited by Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton (2019); and other scholarly articles. 

First Three Authors/Texts: Introductions to The Norton Anthology of American Literature (tenth editions), edited by Robert S. Levine, et al.; selections from The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke; Aiiieeeee!, edited by Frank Chin, Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong. 

Method of Evaluation: class participation (20%); annotated bibliography for introduction assignment (15%); dream anthology introduction (25%); research paper abstract (10%); final research paper (30%). 

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ENG480H1S - Advanced Studies Seminar: Haunted Victorians

Section Number: LEC5101     

Time(s): Mondays and Wednesdays 6-8 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Colleen McDonnell

E-mail: c.mcdonell@mail.utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: Victorians were haunted: literature of the period is saturated with spirits. This course thinks through the ways in which Victorian ghost fiction speaks to gender, race, and class; to capitalism and labour; to new developments in science and technology; and to conceptions of the self and others. With a focus on the nineteenth-century British ghost story alongside the realist novel and Gothic and horror fiction, we will examine conventions and innovations of the genre and explore ideas of the supernatural and the uncanny. We will also analyze our works within their historical print and publishing contexts. Primary texts include those by well-known authors such as Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, and Henry James, as well those by authors less known today, such as Bithia Mary Croker, Jerome K. Jerome, and Barry Pain. Through its focus on ghosts, this course aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the landscape of Victorian fiction.

Required Reading: Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843); Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847); Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898); The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert (1991) 
All other required texts will be made available on Quercus.

First Three Authors/Texts: Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), Elizabeth Gaskell, “The Old Nurse’s Story” (1852); Julia Briggs, “The Ghost Story” in A New Companion to the Gothic (2012)

Method of Evaluation:

Active Participation: 20%       

“Adopt-a-Ghost-Story” Report: 10%

Seminar Presentation & Close Reading: 20%

Annotated Bibliography & Essay Proposal: 15%

Final Research Essay: 35%

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ENG481H1F - Advanced Studies Seminar - CANCELLED

Subtitle for special topics and 400-series courses (if applicable): Shakespeare’s Political Drama. The English History Plays: The Second Tetralogy 

Section Number: LEC0101                                

Time(s): Monday and Wenesday 10 am - 12 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Dr. Philippa Sheppard     

Office Location: JHB 814     

E-mail: philippa.sheppard@utoronto.ca

Brief Description of Course: More than a third of Shakespeare’s dramatic works are based on historical accounts, ten on English history. In this course, we explore the four finest examples of this history play genre, which Shakespeare helped to invent. While these four plays are closely interlinked, they display a variety of modes. Richard II is highly literary, aesthetic, and tragic, reminiscent in style of Shakespeare’s earlier history play, King John. Yet, this play was also very topical, so much so that one of its performances was viewed as an igniting incident in a rebellion against Elizabeth I which resulted in her favourite, the Earl of Essex’s execution. Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 incorporate much comedy and fascinate us with glimpses of London at the time of composition. Henry V divides its audience into those who believe it glorifies war and the monarchy, and those who think the opposite is true. In all four plays, the fate of England as a kingdom looms larger than the fate of individual protagonists. Using a variety of theoretical lenses such as new historicism, masculinity studies, and performance history, we will investigate what these plays suggest about the human being as a political animal. 

Required Reading: Oxford editions of Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V; some excerpts from primary source material such as Holinshed’s Chronicles, The Mirror for Magistrates, The Homilies (against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion), and Machiavelli’s The Prince, and some contemporary scholarly articles. 

First Three Authors/Texts: Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. 

Method of Evaluation: The research essay will be broken down into several components: one essay proposal (10%); one annotated bibliography (10%); one seminar presentation (20%); final essay (45%), participation (15%). I will take attendance each class, and make note of oral contributions, to arrive at the participation mark. Engaged attendance is important. 

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ENG481H1F - Advanced Studies Seminar: Climate Fiction - CANCELLED

Section Number: L0201

Time(s):  Tuesdays/Thursdays 10 am - 12 pm ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Instructor(s): Stanka Radovic     

Office Location: JHB815 

E-mail: stanka.radovic@utoronto.ca 

Brief Description of Course: This course will explore environmental criticism through climate change fiction, popularly known as "cli-fi." In recent years, the polarizing political debate about the extent of human-driven climate change has resulted in an increased awareness of the importance and fragility of our environment. Scientific, technological, economic, and political concerns that fuel this discussion have also been reflected in climate fiction. More often than not, climate fiction takes a dystopian and speculative perspective on the relationship between humans and their physical environment. In this course, we will examine the ways in which climate fiction (re)imagines environmental crisis and what it contributes to the larger debate about the environment. Scholarly texts and works of fiction will help us engage climate change and environmental degradation as central to the ways we envision our future and reconsider our past on this planet. 

Required Reading: Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable; Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Environment (“Introduction: The Challenge”); Tony Eggleton, A Short Introduction to Climate Change (excerpts); Short stories from Guernica Magazine: Special Issue on Climate Fiction; J.G. Ballard, The Drought (aka The Burning World); Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower; China Miéville, Un Lun Dun. 

Website address (if applicable): N/A 

First Three Authors/Texts: Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable; J.G. Ballard, The Drought (aka The Burning World); Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Environment (“Introduction: The Challenge”).                 

Method of Evaluation: Class participation (10%), Class Presentation (15%), Essay 1 (15%), Essay 2 (25%), Essay 3 (35%).