SUMMER 2021
ENGL 5007S/ ENGL 4961A: Studies in Indigenous Literatures II
Prof. Susan Birkwood
“You Say You Want a Resolution”; or, “Weird-Ass Chats with Rabid Dogs”*
In Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, Daniel Heath Justice writes,
Indigenous wonderworks are neither strictly ‘fantasy’ nor ‘realism,’ but they may be both at once, or something else entirely. . . . They’re rooted in the specificity of peoples to their histories and embodied experiences. They make space for meaningful engagements and encounters that are . . . central to cultural resurgence and the recovery of other ways of knowing, being, and abiding. They insist on possibilities beyond cynicism and despair. (154)
Justice includes the example of Eden Robinson’s “classic Monkey Beach” in this discussion. Given the recent publication of Robinson’s Return of the Trickster—some thirty years after the short story “Traplines” first appeared in Prism International—this seems like a good time to engage in a study of a body of work that includes short stories published in the 1990s (among them, the narrative of a serial killer’s child and a tale of dystopian Vancouver), Monkey Beach (2000), and the Trickster trilogy (Son of a Trickster, 2017; Trickster Drift, 2018, and Return of the Trickster, 2021).
*Two of the chapter titles in Trickster Drift
ENGL 5303S/ ENGL 4301A: Studies in Early Modern Literature (cross-listed with HUMS 4902A)
Prof. Micheline White
Topic: Tudor Queens: Sex, Power, and Writing in the Lives of Katherine Parr, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots
Renaissance queens have long fascinated the reading public, but their political power and literary writings have only recently become the objects of academic study. In this seminar, students will develop an in-depth understanding of four Renaissance queens who made the most of their unusual social status and made lasting contributions to English culture. In this course, we will explore early modern attitudes towards the concepts of a “queen consort,” a “queen regent,” a “queen regnant” and a “dowager queen,” and we will focus on the four queens’ textual and visual productions including speeches, published prose works, diplomatic letters, poetry, translations, and portraits. Students will be introduced to early modern paleography and book history. Those who wish can also explore digital versions of manuscript writing. We will also consider the depictions of these queens in recent films and TV programs.
ENGL 5900S/ ENGL 4115A: Selected Topics in English Studies
Prof. Robin Norris
This is a student-centred capstone experience for advanced readers that takes a holistic view of the student as self. In Spring 2021, you the reader will become the text, and the culture in question is the changing environment in which you find yourself reading. There will be opportunities for creativity, collaboration, prioritization of process over content, application of learning beyond the classroom, and experiential approaches to reading and writing. We will discuss and apply several new interdisciplinary ideas about narrative, the purposes of reading, self-understanding, and human language and cognition. Sensory and kinetic experiences of text may include reading aloud, listening to text, writing by hand, memorizing a poem, and creating artifacts of self as reader in a variety of contexts. Students may also choose to (re)examine key texts such as: the first book you remember reading, the last novel you enjoyed, a book you’ve been meaning to read, representations of reading, two versions of a beloved text, the arts that have sustained you during the pandemic, a text that has stayed with you from your career as an English student. These conversations will be facilitated by the participants, Megan Strahl (through the Students as Partners Program), and Prof. Norris.
ENGL 5900X/ ENGL 4115B: Selected Topic in English Studies I
Prof. Patricia Whiting
Topic: The Have-Nots in Literature
Before the pandemic, events such as the Occupy Wall Street movement, anti-globalization protests around the world, and continual media references to “the 1%” had the effect of bringing to light the growing disparity between rich and poor, and now, in the pandemic, the disproportionate number of COVID deaths among the poor and unequal access to the vaccine continue to make the news. Although the poor may currently feature more prominently now than formerly in the news, poverty’s brutal narrative of hardship and deprivation on the page, on the screen, and in real life has not only been unremitting, but it has also co-existed alongside a less obvious but persistent myth that the poor are in some ways lucky because poverty saves people from the crushing anxiety and ambition that come with money.
Using fiction, memoirs, and poetry, this class will consider texts about people who are born poor, people who are made poor, and people who choose to be poor. We will examine the causes of poverty, but mostly we’ll examine its effects on those whose lives are shaped by it, with a view toward determining what representations of poverty in literature can contribute not only to our understanding of literature but also to our understanding of poverty in the real world.
Students will have to write on every text in the course, and active, productive participation in synchronous discussions will comprise a large part of the final mark. This is a blended online course.