Graduate Course Descriptions | College of Arts

Graduate Course Descriptions

School of English and Theatre Studies Tentative Graduate Course Offerings 2023*

For a list of all University of Guelph course offerings, please visit WebAdvisor Course Catalog

*Note: All courses are subject to change without notice. Official course outlines will be provided to students in the first week of classes. 

Fall 2023 Course Descriptions 

COURSE CODE COURSE TITLE DESCRIPTION INSTRUCTOR DAY/TIME
ENGL*6201 Canadian Literature

The course begins from the provocation that Canadian literature and Canadian literary culture is a decidedly humanist enterprise, one dedicated to not merely asserting a particular vision of national identity and culture but a particular conception of who gets to count as human. Canadian literature has pride of place within the expression of national identity as both the form and the forum for asserting who gets to count as human in Canada and for narrating the story of nation to accord with a particularly humanist ethos. We will begin by studying early settler and Indigenous texts in Canadian literature to investigate how they frame ideas of the subject, land, nation, culture, and race. We will also trace the emergence of ideas of national literature via concepts of Romantic nationalism to the allegedly post-national articulations of nation. We will then move to contemporary writers to understand how they articulate a ‘counter-humanism’ that challenges Canadian literature’s colonial origins and offer a new vision of community and writing in Canada.  

Paul Barrett

Monday 

2:30 PM – 5:20 PM 

 

 

ENGL*6209 Postcoloniality/
Decolonization
(0.5 credits)
Through a range of literatures and film, this seminar explores fiction and non-fiction accounts of terrorism from the French Revolution to after 11 September. Various trajectories include 1880s-1920s (Russian) anarchism and 1960s-80s left-wing (revolutionary and nationalist) terrorism, as well as post9/11 fiction that foregrounds global, historical and cultural context. The relationship between nationalism, colonialism and decolonizing insurgency will be foregrounded through discussion of such texts as Claire Messud’s “The Professor’s History,” Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa, Pierre Falardeau’s Octobre and Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy, amongst others. The course emphasizes and critiques (though not exclusively) Western readerly responses to terrorism in fiction and film. Sandra Singer

Wednesday

2:30 PM – 5:20 PM  

 

ENGL*6691  Interdisciplinary 
Studies
(0.5 credits)
Designed to provide the opportunity to explore alternative fields and modes of critical inquiry, this course tackles various topics emerging from bringing literary studies into dialogue with other forms of intellectual inquiry such as sociology, biology, psychology, history, environmental studies, computer science or geography. Daniel O'Quinn

Monday 

11:30 AM – 2:20 PM 

 

THST*6220 

 

Theatre Theory This graduate theatre course explores contemporary theatre and performance theories with relationships to both traditional and experimental practices including performance art, immersive theatre, multimedia performance, site-specific theatre, political performance, and cyber-spectacle. Students will participate in an array of experiential seminar work while also completing in-class presentations concerning contemporary performance theories and ideas. Major contributions to and reconsiderations of performance theory will be read and studied from both historical and conceptual perspectives.  Mark Fortier

Thursday 

2:30 PM – 5:20 PM 

 

 

THST*6150 

 

Theatre in the Past This graduate seminar explores 1) how theatre and performance contribute to different constructions and understandings of human history and 2) how one can understand and analyze performance in historical terms. Through discussions of playwrights, historical source material, revisionist practices, as well as performance aesthetics, students will encounter historical events, beliefs, characters/figures, audiences, and perceptions of the past. Examples from diverse global cultures, communities, and time periods will be used to engage with the mutability of supposedly stable historical events as compelling performance material. We will ask questions about who writes and/or performs different histories while learning to identify key features of the political/social conditions of performances as well as culturally accepted/challenged narratives. In this iteration of the course, we will likely be looking at different moments of in the representation of Islam, but the specific case studies have yet to be isolated. I'm currently considering case studies on Othello, Tamerlano, The Sultan/The Mogul Tale, multiple Aladdin/Ali Baba pantos, a taziya play, the Luminato staging of the Arabian Nights, and other productions.  I'm also considering a trip to see Brandon Jacob-Jenkins's Everybody.  Peter Kuling 

Tuesdays 

2:30 PM – 5:20 PM 

 

 

*Note: All courses are subject to change without notice. Official course outlines will be provided to students in the first week of classes.