Elective Courses
ENGL-5107: Print and Visual Culture
Dr. Suzanne Bailey
Winter 2021
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.
ENGL-5207H: Imagining Immunity
Dr. Kelly McGuire
Fall 2020
This course explores the role of immunity (in both its interlocking legal and biological senses) in shaping a sense of collectivity and community both in literary and political discourse. Of particular interest will be the medical rhetoric informing contemporary debates on vaccination and other public health interventions.
ENGL-5209H: Materiality and the Text in the Digital Age
Professor TBA
Fall 2020
What happens to the study of the materiality of texts when a screen replaces the paper or parchment, and the stability of the written or printed signs is no longer guaranteed? Topics include: paratexts and metadata, archival theory, the Digital Humanities, hypertexts, technology, and the book as fetish.
ENGL-5307H: Aging, Disability, and Care in Literature and Culture
Dr. Sally Chvers
Winter 2021
This course will explore depictions of care for older adults in literary, film, public policy, and popular culture texts to show how care is not just economic nor merely medical. Students will reconceive care as cultural and articulate the publics created through the different media.
ENGL-5310H: Photography in Postmodern Literature
Dr. Rob Winger
Winter 2021
An overview of theoretical and literary representations of pre-digital photography in postmodern literature, this course investigates intersections between visual culture, subjective interpretation, personal and formal memory, artistic production, and objectivity. Theoretical and postmodern literary texts will be examined alongside historic photographs, photographic.
ENGL-5311H: Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racism in 2020
Dr. Charmaine Eddy
Fall 2020
The video of George Floyd being suffocated by police officers on May 25, 2020, while begging for his right to breathe, is the latest incident in a 400-year history of white violence against blacks in the US. Floyd’s death has sparked nation-wide protests and international outrage which show the US to be a failed state. The suffocation of Floyd is an apt image for what has been happening to blacks institutionally since the end of the Civil War. Today, we witness huge racial disparity in incarceration and sentencing of Black Americans in US prisons. Black Americans are dying at three times the rate of whites with Covid 19. Black Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police officers than whites, and about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys can expect to die at the hands of police in the US. And yet, although white institutions are squeezing the life out of Black Americans, too often, white people turn their focus to protests as “rioting” and “destruction of property” rather than the systemic and institutionalized violence that protects white self-interests.
This course examines the current forms of racial social protest against state-sanctioned racial violence as well as the institutional problems that face Black Americans today.
ENGL-5312H: Reading Toronto
Dr. Joel Baetz
Winter 2021
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
ENGL-5901H: Gender, Monstrosity and the Other in Middle English Literature
Dr. Joanne Findon
Winter 2021
This course examines a number of medieval English texts that portray monstrosity and otherness, including tales of magical transformation (the ‘Loathly Lady’ tales), stories of Otherworld visitations, tales featuring anomalous bodies or characters who tread the boundary between human and animal, and texts in which versions of masculinity or femininity are constructed as ‘monstrous.’ Using contemporary theoretical approaches, we will explore the social, cultural and historical contexts in which these literary works were produced
Reading Course
An individual course designed to provide opportunities for intensive study in a particular field of the program. Please see the Academic Administrative Assistant for more information.
Electives Offered by Other Departments
The following courses are available to students without the need for prior approval from the Program. Please see the Academic Administrative Assistant for more information.
ENGL-5306H: Culture, Heritage & the Arts
Dr. Margaret Steffler
Fall 2020
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.