My Courses

[rfmcdonald]

It turns out I'll be here until the 15th of June, which is a bit unexpected. Ah, student debt; I'll carry it like weight on a paterfamilias.

Anyway, my courses:

Fall Session

English 800: Introduction to Professional and Pedagogical Skills I - E. Hanson - Thurs. 11:30 - 1:30

This course is for M.A. candidates. It is designed to train beginning graduate students in the skills they will need as Teaching Assistants and to help them make the transition to advanced literary study. Areas to be covered include essay-marking, lecturing, academic counselling of undergraduate students, teaching to diversity, leading discussions, presenting work in seminar settings, time management, academic and non-academic careers, preparation of C.V.s, and applying for jobs and grants. The assignments will be a series of short tutorial exercises and will be graded as Pass/Fail.

English 814: Topics in Medieval Literature II: Pre- and Postmodern Subjectivities - S. Straker - Wed. 11:30 - 1:30

Many Early Modernists confidently assert that subjectivity as we now understand it came into being in their period. These scholars view the Middle Ages as unconducive to the formation of a unified selfhood: medieval people, it is claimed, viewed themselves as parts of a corporation (an estate, the body politic, Christendom) rather than as autonomous individuals. This class will question this consensus by analysing various forms of selfhood in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century literature. The purpose is not to provide an alternate teleology for the modern self but to create a context for discussions of premodern subjectivity, so that we can better understand precisely what did change in the so-called Renaissance. Texts studied may include works by the English and Scottish Chaucerians (Hoccleve, Lydgate, Douglas, Dunbar) The Book of Margery Kempe, Malory's Morte Darthur, Skelton, Elizabethan sonnet sequences, and discourse surrounding the Reformation. Various models for subject-formation available to modern literary and sociological theory will be compared and tested on these literary texts. Although there are no formal prerequisites, medieval texts will be read in Middle English, so prior acquaintance with Middle English would be an asset.

Requirements: one seminar presentation and one research paper (5000 words); marks will also be awarded for participation. There will be no final examination.

English 886: Topics in American Literature I: "New York, New York" - S. Söderlind - Tues. 9:00 - 11:00

This course will focus on the role of New York City in the American imaginary from the rapid expansion of the mid-nineteenth century through September 11, 2001. On the one hand we will examine the evolution of the city as a site of social and artistic experimentation against the backdrop of American literary and cultural history; on the other we will situate New York in a global framework of modernity, urbanization and globalization. The syllabus will focus on literature from and about New York by following major literary developments from the 19th-century realism of William Dean Howells to recent postmodernism, through the novel of manners of the "gilded age", modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. The focus will be on novels, but we will occasionally complement our study with other genres (poetry, essays) and media (film, visual art, and music). We will also read theoretical and critical essays relating to urbanization and modernity, as well as to American literary and cultural history. The reading list will include, among others, Howells, Edith Wharton, Henry James, John Dos Passos, Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, and Paul Auster.

Assignments and marking will be discussed in the first class, but participation will be vital.

English 891: Literary Theory I - M. Berg - Thurs. 9:00 - 11:00

This is an introductory level course for graduate students. We will examine a variety of post-humanist approaches to literature through representative theoretical and literary critical essays. We will take a single literary work as a "test case" for the various approaches. We will examine structuralism, deconstruction and poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, marxism and materialism, feminisms--including French feminism--post colonialism, cultural criticism, and queer theory.

Assessment will be based on class participation and a number of short assignments or "position papers."

Winter Session

English 813: Topics in Medieval Literature I: Drama and Devotion - M. Pappano - Tues. 11:30 - 1:30 (Offered in the Winter term)

This course is designed to survey a range of forms and production venues for dramatic representation in late medieval England. Drama did not constitute a distinct "genre" in the Middle Ages but functioned in relation to other spheres and modes of public organization. Therefore, we will consider extant plays within the specific dynamics of their performance contexts--i.e. monastery, city, religious gild, parish, court. We will also consider documentary evidence for plays that have not survived so that we can gain a broader understanding of dramatic traditions in England. Throughout the course we will be attentive to the material properties of dramatic performance props, staging, costumes, actors, sponsors, audiences, etc.

The course will cover the liturgical tradition, the civic-religious cycles, the East Anglian plays, and end with John Bale's use of theatre for the Protestant cause. Drama was often endowed with direct intercessory power, competing with the ecclesiastical organization of spiritual life. We will concentrate on the devotional tradition to interrogate how the theatrical and spiritual related to each other. We will consider how dramatic performances intersected with issues of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, particularly the regulation of public piety associated with the Lollard heresy in the fifteenth century and the national organization of religious life during the Reformation.

Requirements include a research paper and a seminar presentation.

English 825: Topics in Renaissance Non_Dramatic Literature II: Renaissance Cultural Capital - E. Hanson - Wed. 11:30 - 1:30

This course will examine educational practices in Renaissance England and their impact on the literature and culture of the time with reference to Pierre Bourdieu's idea of 'cultural capital.' According to this theory, what an individual knows how to do and the social alliances this knowledge permits (who your friends are) functions in a manner similar to economic capital, as a preliminary stock which if sufficient in amount and kind permits an individual to accumulate influence, power and even wealth. We will begin by examining humanist theories of education in the 16th century and the curriculums of grammar schools with particular attention to the associations they make between a fundamentally literary education and cultural authority. As we trace the development of this elite form of education into the early 17th century, we will simultaneously consider other forms of education, the training of merchants (which unlike the university curriculum began to stress mathematics) apprenticeship, autodidacticism, as well as the effect of emergent practices such as playgoing and book buying and reading on the dissemination of knowledge. In addition to literary texts such as More's Utopia, Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller, Jonson's The Alchemist, Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle , and Bacon's The New Atlantis we will read educational treatises such as those by Richard Mulcaster and John Ascham, and examine early math books, economic pamphlets and merchants handbooks, as well as reading relevant theoretical writing by Pierre Bourdieu, John Guillory and others. If we have time we will conclude the course with a couple of weeks devoted to the relationship between the humanities and other forms of knowledge in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Students will be required to make an in-class report on topics such as the curriculums of various institutions (grammar schools, universities, Inns of Court), the training of merchants, the education of women etc., and to write a final paper of 15-20 pages on a topic of their own choosing.

English 844: Topics in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature I: Laurence Sterne - C. Fanning - Wed 2:30 - 4:30

This course will engage with all of Sterne's works: Tristram Shandy, A Sentimental Journey, The Sermons and minor writings. Among issues to be considered are: Sterne as precursor to the postmodern, as radical or conservative satirist, sentimentalist, Anglican minister, literary celebrity, etc. Approaches from all angles are welcome: theoretical, rhetorical, historical, political, obstetrical, etc. (most of 'em ending, as these do, in ical).For the curious, last year's schedule of readings and seminar topics and a list of suggested further reading are available online at: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~cjf1/SterneSeminar.htm

Requirements: contributions to class, two seminars (one contextual, one interpretive) and a critical essay.

Spring Session

English 826: Topics in Renaissance Non-Dramatic Literature III: Toleration and Nationalism in the Age of Milton - E. Sauer - Tues. 2:00 - 4:00 and Thurs. 9:00 - 11:00

The emergence of nationhood is a subject of increasing interest and inquiry in scholarship on early modern England. Building on Benedict Anderson's influential concept of the imagined community, Richard Helgerson, Andrew Hadfield, Linda Gregerson, Jean Howard, Claire MacEachern, Paul Stevens, and Raymond D. Tumbleson have mapped out the forms of nationhood as they were discursively produced. The language of nationhood developed in conjunction with discourses of difference, domination, and, paradoxically, even toleration, which writers used to lend it the authorizing force of a sacred and moral foundation. In the configuration of nationhood, certain groups were pushed outside the Christian pale, while others were invited into the fold.

Though England achieved its literary embodiment in the imaginatively constructed nations of Spenser and Shakespeare, the nation's chief myth-maker was Milton. Miltonists, however, have been less attentive to Milton's nationalism than to his republicanism and even his imperialism, through which his identity as a nationalist tends to be read. Yet throughout his literary and political career, Milton exploited and invigorated the concept of nation, which he configured in religious, cultural, and political terms. His oeuvre as a whole maps out an irregular and yet consistent movement from his belief in a chosen England to his disillusion with the heirs of the kingdom.

The course will involve comparative studies of Milton's works in relation to seventeenth-century discourses and debates about elect nationhood and cultural, religious, and political difference. Among the different cultures studied here are the Irish, the Spanish, the French, Native Indians, Jews, Muslims, dissenters, and European and English Catholics. "Toleration and Nationalism" is designed to enhance our knowledge of the cultural/historical moment in which Milton's works were written. At the same time, the contemporary relevance of such an investigation is readily apparent as early notions of toleration and elect nationhood continue to define concepts of ethnic, racial, and religious "otherness" in our own day, and as the language of holy war and god-given national destiny shadows political pronouncements and practices.