Preliminary Web Course Description
*Please note: This is a preliminary web course description only. The department reserves the right to change without notice any information in this description. The final, binding course outline will be distributed in the first class of the semester.

School of English and Theatre Studies

Course Code:
ENGL*3960*01`	
 Course Title:
 Seminar: Literature in History
 Topic for Sec. 02: Southwestern Ontario  
 Literature and Culture	
Date of Offering:   W 20

Course Instructor: Dr. J.R. (Tim) Struthers	
Course Format:  Seminar/Discussion	

Brief Course Synopsis:
ENGL*3960 has been designated a writing- and presentation-intensive course, and for each section of this core English seminar the choices of focus and texts and approach are made by the particular instructor. In my view, such a course provides a notable opportunity for seminar members and their instructor to grow both as individuals and as a collectivity, to intensify and to broaden our perspectives. 
     Drawing on Alice Munro’s career-spanning companion volumes of selected stories A Wilderness Station and Family Furnishings and on texts from other genres including James Reaney’s dramatic trilogy The Donnellys, this course will explore ways in which Southwestern Ontario writing from the past fifty years succeeds, as Dennis Duffy observed of Munro's story “Meneseteung,” in being “at once historical and contemporary”:  portraying subject matter that is historical, reaching back to the first half of the 20th century, to the mid-19th century, and still further to the region's earliest geographical and historical origins, yet employing forms, techniques, styles that are wholly contemporary.
     The particular style of this course and the particular nature of its topic offer a chance to develop and indeed to alter our understanding of the different literary forms and the different histories/herstories discussed. As one important aspect of this objective, members of our seminar should consider themselves encouraged to reflect on and to explore the potential offered by class discussion and by the various oral and written work as means of enhancing our thinking and writing to give more scope, depth, and personality to the individual imagination.	

	Methods of Evaluation and Weights: 
Please Note: Assignments for this section of ENGL*3960 will include an Out-of-Class Take-Home Final Exam due during the final exam period at the time and the room assigned by the Registrar’s Office. 

10% >	First Seminar (15 minutes, including intervals for discussion; to be accompanied by a 1½- to 2-page outline)
10% >	Second Seminar (15 minutes, including intervals for discussion; to be accompanied by a 1½- to 2-page outline)
10%> 	Reading Journal in 10 parts of approx. 100 words apiece (that is, totalling approx. 1,000 words) consisting of double-spaced typed commentaries on assorted theoretical works identified by the instructor
30%>  2,500-word (creative / critical / research) special project
10% >	Third Seminar (15 to maybe 20 minutes, including intervals for discussion; to be accompanied by a 1½- to 2-page outline) 
20% >	Out-of-Class Take-Home Final 
       (likely in 2 parts, each of 600 to 750 
       words, with each part worth 10%)
10% >	Overall Effort, Participation, Improvement (including work on Take-Home Final Exam) 
TOTAL NUMBER OF WORDS OF FORMAL PROSE REQUIRED:
approx. 5,000 words (incl. approx. 1,200 to 1,500 words in total for the Out-of-Class Take-Home Final Exam) 	

Texts and/or Resources Required (e.g. Internet access, specific textbook title, lab kit, etc.)
GERVAIS, C.H. (Marty). My Town: Faces of Windsor. Biblioasis.
JOHNSTON, Basil H. Honour Earth Mother. Kegedonce.
MUNRO, Alice. A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994. Penguin.
MUNRO, Alice. Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014. Penguin.
REANEY, James. The Donnellys. Dundurn.
ROSS, Catherine Sheldrick. Alice Munro: A Double Life. ECW.
	
This course counts towards the following distribution requirement(s) for students who registered at the University prior to the Fall of 2018:      20th/21st century and Canadian	
*Students who registered at the University of Guelph after Fall 2018 must fulfill the “new” major and minor requirements. Students who registered at the University of Guelph prior to Fall 2018 must fulfill the requirements of the Calendar in effect when they first enrolled unless they have filed a Schedule of Studies Change Request to change to the 2018-2019 calendar. For more information, please consult the major and minor checklists at https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/sets/undergraduate/english/current-student-information.