Graduate Course Listing

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, researchers in various aspects of theories of publics) for an exploration of relevant historical, theoretical and practical issues. The Colloquium will be offered in fall semester.

Topics include research methods and resources; the nature and requirements of a research project; the presentation of the results of research in public forums; career development, academic and non-academic. At the end of the year, students will publicly present a paper; in most cases this will be a proposal for their Thesis or Major Research Paper or Internship. The Seminar will be offered in winter semester.

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.

This course traces the impact of making prints, from early associations with the printing press (letterpress) to the development of commercial book illustration. Topics may include science and illustration, the rise of illustrated children's books, modernist prints and artists' books, the woodblock and Civil War reporting, printmaking techniques and theory.

Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Scribes, Audiences This course explores medieval texts produced from the 12th century to the 15th century, particularly the 14th century manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The course considers basic issues in medieval manuscript studies, including an introduction to scripts and abbreviations and the practice of glossing, and some hands-on work with quill pens and parchment.

This course considers the many ways in which written correspondence plays a significant role in other literary genres, most notably, the novel, and also occupies an enduring position as a genre on its own contributing substantially, in its adaptability and flexibility, to human communication.

This course examines theories of subjectivity that have informed work in cultural studies, media studies, and related disciplines. What is the relation between the desiring function of subjectivity and the forces of construction and production variously attributed to power, discourse, or society? How do we conceive of the limits of determination and of the possibility of freedom and agency?

Cross-listed: CUST-5504H

This course will critically explore selected theoretical, empirical, and creative constructions, contestations and celebrations of Canadian culture(s). Course content ranges from the national to the local, examining cultural communities and identities, intellectual traditions, cultural policies, museums and galleries, and cultural expression in film, theatre and literature.

Cross-listed: CSID-5202H, CAST-6102H

A city - and Toronto is no different - isn't just built; it's imagined into existence. In this course, we will discover the many Torontos that are mapped by the imaginations of authors and readers who are eager to build, amplify, and revise the meanings of Canada's largest urban region.

Cross-listed: CUST-5312H

This course will explore practical and theoretical conflicts between public violence and its cultural artifacts, including literature, film, murals, sculpture and parades. Our focus will be on twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts, images and public displays from Ireland, usually relating to the Irish Republican Army. We will question why modern cultural formations and political structures condemn violence even as they rely on it; and we will ask what place public violence has in a modern culture defined by its faith in the possibility of reasoning and debating all conflicts away. (Excludes CUST-4512H.)

Cross-listed: CUST-5315H

Approximately 50 pages, modeled on a scholarly journal article. It is supervised and assessed by a member of the English graduate faculty. The grade will be assigned by the supervisor and a second reader from the English graduate faculty.

The course directly addresses a wave of identity politics and its controversial place even within seemingly identity-based movements. Readings on gender, queer theory and politics, disability, aging, and race will come from sociology and political science as well as cultural, literary and film studies.

Cross-listed: CSID-5501H, CAST-6401H

Courses may be offered in a variety of areas as a way of introducing students to new subject matter, research techniques or methodologies. After one year, these courses will be reviewed for inclusion in the regular program curriculum.