Required Courses
ENGL 5001H – Colloquium
The Colloquium will bring together all students in the program with faculty, visiting scholars and experts (e.g. archivists, librarians, printers, publishers, editors, booksellers, book designers) for an intensive exploration of relevant historical, theoretical and practical issues. The Colloquium will be offered throughout the year, fortnightly, alternating with the Research & Professional Development Seminar.
Instructor: TBA
ENGL 5003H – Research & Professional Development Seminar
Topics will include research methods and resources; the nature and requirements of a research project, and its conception, development and completion; the presentation of the results of research in public forums, such as conferences and scholarly publications; career development, both academic and non-academic. At the end of the year, students will publicly present a proposal for their Thesis or Major Research Paper or Internship. The Seminar will be offered throughout the year, fortnightly, alternating with the Colloquium.
Instructor: TBA
ENGL 5005H - Public Texts (1)
Explores philosophies and theories of publics through political, affective, and radical public texts. We will focus on concepts of publics in multiple historical contexts in order to put pressure on our ideas of what publics have been, what they are, and what they can be in the future.
Instructor: Kelly McGuire
PREPARATORY READING
The following articles from David Finklestein and Alistair McLeery (eds.). Book History Reader. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006
- D.F. McKenzie. “The Sociology of a Text: Orality, Literacy and Print in Early New Zealand.”
- Walter Ong. “Orality and Literacy: Writing Restructures Consciousness.”
- Elizabeth Eisenstein. “Defining the Initial Shift: Some Features of Print Culture.”
- Pierre Bourdieu. “The Field of Cultural Production.”
- Robert Darnton. “What is the History of Books?”
- Michel Foucault. “What is an Author?”
- Roland Barthes. “The Death of the Author.”
- Roger Chartier. “Labourers and Voyages: From the Text to the Reader.”
- Janet Radway. “A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste and Middle-Class Desire.”
ENGL 5007H - Public Texts (2)
Explores the material and social production of texts and their circulation in relationship to publics, focussing on technological and social practices and the circulation of texts, from preliterate orality through the development of literacy and print to contemporary digital media. Prerequisite: ENGL 5005H.
Instructor: Hugh Hodges
PREPARATORY READING
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.
