This course aims to develop writing competence and to enhance analytic reading skills to the standard expected of students at Ryerson. The course focuses on clear and effective expression, developing the ability to write unified, orderly and coherent texts, and forceful and controlled prose. Where necessary, teaching of grammar will reinforce these skills. The course deals with strategies of argument, effective writing under time pressure, and construction of research essays. No transfer credits are granted.
Why are some stories sad, others tragic? Are our emotional responses contingent on story-lines, on characters, on choice of words? This course helps develop analytic tools for understanding responses to fundamental forms, through readings of early and contemporary drama, poetry, prose fiction and literary criticism. We begin with the bawdy sexual politics of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and move to new forms, from the heroism of Frankenstein to the ironies of Alice Munro.
This course considers the development of the short story as an artistic form in Canada and asks: What might be distinctly "Canadian" about the Canadian short story? To answer this question, our study may be organized by focusing on major themes, historical and cultural influences, literary movements and/or major Canadian literary figures. Students will also concentrate on developing close reading skills. On occasion, short stories from other internationally acclaimed authors may be considered comparatively.
Life without stories? Inconceivable. The moment we ask, "Who am I?" or "Where did I come from?" narrative steps in, giving shape to our identity and experience. This foundational course introduces students to fictional forms across a variety of historical periods and media in order to examine the underlying mechanisms of storytelling: narrative's goals, inner structures, strategies, and rhetorical effects. Texts may include stories, novels, poetry, and drama as well as cinematic and digital texts.
Lit. Horror stories, pop songs, love poetry, comics-this course introduces students to various types of writing that were popular at different times and in different cultures. Students will learn central concepts and terminology in the study of popular writing and culture, and they will analyze the impact that cultural and political issues have had not only on what works became popular but also on the very notion of "the popular" itself.
This course takes a rhetorical perspective to explore the historical and philosophical transformations of writing and written texts. In particular, it examines the changing role of writing on knowledge, belief, and social organization through a study of theory, literature, and rhetorical form. Topics of analysis include the invention of the phonetic alphabet, the shift from oral to manuscript and print culture, the role of scribes and writers in communities, and the implications of digital authorship.
Clichés like "it's just the same old story" show us there are patterns in life which keep reappearing in popular tales, comic books, detective stories and western romances, like Billy the Kid and the James Bond films. How do we recognize them? What do they tell us about values? About desires? We begin with Homer's Odyssey and move to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Students will be encouraged to view the various film versions of the texts.
How has colonialism impacted indigenous cultures, and how have indigenous people used texts to pose challenges to colonialism and to preserve and retell traditional stories? Reading contemporary literature by Aboriginal Australian, Maori, First Nations and other indigenous writers, students address these and other important socio-political questions, examine wider literary and theoretical issues, and consider questions regarding cultural identity raised in the writings of Native peoples.
Mainstream Canadian literature has always been a literature of immigration, but as Canada embarked on her second century, she began to redefine herself. Focusing on the last two decades, this course will explore the techniques immigrants and their heirs have used to make Canada their home, what their observations tell Canadians about themselves, and how their participation has changed the things we are.
Storytelling forms the narrative backbone of texts even in non-fictional modes of discourse like scientific essays, historical testimony, political speeches, documentaries, travel writing, and legal discourse. Focusing on non-fictional texts in a variety of genres, media and time periods, this course examines the role culture plays in the production and reception of meaning in even the most putatively factual and objective texts.
Using novels, short stories, films and other media, this course focuses on significant challenges faced by, and changes initiated in, a wide range of cultures. From the perspectives of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, mobility, and ongoing negotiations of identity within multicultural and im/migrant communities, course materials illuminate the complex nature of modern experience and draw attention to the important questions and concerns cultures have faced and continue to face.
Starting with the powerful images of folk tale, fairy tale, and legend, and following them through fantasies and animal tales, this course explores their evolution from oral stories for adults to literary versions for children. It will also examine the intellectual and historical influences of the periods. The material to be studied includes modern versions of the tales in print and visual media. Authors include the Grimm Brothers, Andersen, Wilde, Carroll, Milne, and Beatrix Potter.
This course will focus on novels written for older children. By studying such authors as Alcott, Montgomery, Burnett, Stevenson, Twain, Little, and Rowling, the course will explore the cultural values implicit in the texts, and their social and historical backgrounds. The course will also examine the relationship between children's texts and the construction of the child's idea of the self and society. Film versions will also be explored in relationship to the novels.
This course introduces students to one of the key areas of critical interest and debate in English studies, postcolonialism, and invites them to reflect upon and discuss the ways in which Empire - in its historical and present day manifestations - shapes "third world" or the "developing" world's relationship with the West. It also familiarizes students with some of the most exciting and politicized theoretical debates in the discipline.
In this class, students study some of the most prominent efforts of 20th Century American writers, public figures, and filmmakers to give voice and shape to the promises and perils of modern American experience. Topics may include mobility, migration, democracy, individualism, U.S. national identity, and the U.S. in a global context. Genres to be covered may include the novel, the short story, poetry, drama, public oratory, memoir, and film.
This course examines early modern literature and culture in the 16th century, by tracing the development of European humanist writings and literature that highlight the transition of Europe from a feudal to a modern society. Topics for discussion may include the concept of the 'Renaissance man,' the changing conception of the state, the discourse of Orientalism and imperialism, as reflected in both humanist writings and in genres such as travel-writing, poetry, romantic comedy, tragedy etc.
This course examines early modern British literature and culture in the 17th century, after England becomes the centre of the Renaissance. It traces the literary and cultural developments in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, to demonstrate how literature and culture not only provide a critique of early humanism, but also reflect the socio-political changes at the end of the early modern period by dealing with humanist writings, prose writings, love poetry, comedy, tragedy, epic, etc.
The mythology of our civilization is the story of things to come. The prophetic visions of writers such as Asimov, Brunner, Clarke, Gibson, Heinlein, Herbert, Hogan, LeGuin, Lem and Niven offer endless playgrounds for the imagination. Their second gift is a widening vista or real alternatives: our future may be what they let us choose to make it. If you want to play an informed part in that choice, this course will provide the menu. (Formerly ENG 301.)
The era between 1900 and 1945 experienced such a radical sense of its own difference from the past that it is still referred to as the Modern Age. It was an age of new thought, new fashion, and a new sense of the self. In literature, it was an age of experimentation. This course explores the literature and the cultural influences of the period. Such writers as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce will be studied.
This upper-level course offers students the opportunity both to study models of good writing and to develop their own creative abilities. Class discussions and workshop groups are designed to enhance the student's understanding of the creative process, to stimulate the imagination, and to develop individual abilities. Areas of discussion include style, prosody, conflict, character, dialogue, and revision.
This course deals with the impact of innovation in scientific theory on the themes and forms of literature. It considers in what ways contemporaneous literary texts reflected the implications for human identity and significance of these great shifts in understanding.
Invented over 200 years ago, the gothic has become one of the most popular genres in literature and film. This course will explore the gothic presence in popular culture during this time. Students will analyze ways in which the genre challenges not only other cultural conventions, but also claims in the realms of art, science, and medicine. Topics to be addressed include the relation of the gothic to gender, sexuality, class, orientalism, imperialism, and criminality.
This course examines a variety of life-writing genres including the diary, letter, autobiography, memoir, and biography. By sampling a range of texts (both print and electronic) throughout history, students will explore diverse ways in which writers express their private and public stories about life and self. Students will gain an understanding of life-writing theory which can be used to rethink the relationships between gender and genre; fact and fiction; and art and artlessness.
What makes a political speech "good"? Why are some advertisements more effective than others? This course focuses on the crucial role of rhetoric in cultural communication: the mysterious mechanisms by which language is mobilized to persuasive ends. Students will learn a critical vocabulary for discussing argument and will explore historical and contemporary examples from philosophy, art, science, film, and politics, in order to understand how language achieves its most powerful effects.
The first half of the eighteenth century in Britain can be understood as an age looking both backwards and forwards. The old patrician-plebeian order of the feudal period was still vibrant, yet the Enlightenment introduced modern ideas of social organization and individual subjectivity. This course considers tensions between tradition and modernity in the period by looking at visual and print texts. Topics may include Neo-Classicism; middle-class culture and the novel; Enlightenment discourse; plebeian culture.
Referred to often as the "Age of Reason," the second half of the eighteenth century was infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment and an enthusiasm for system. This course examines Enlightenment as a dominant discourse shaping British literature, art, and culture and investigates how ideas and modes of cultural expression from this period have shaped modern Western society. Topics may include childhood; feminism; slavery; antiquarianism; the gothic and sensibility; publishing practices; and revolution.
What does it mean to "write as a woman"? Is there such a thing as "women's writing" and if so, what are its characteristics? This course explores the ways in which women have contributed to literary traditions both by working within and by challenging mainstream movements. In examining women's use of literary forms as aesthetic, personal and political sites, we will consider how issues of identity and historical context inflect and inform their writing strategies.
Imaginative writing of the post-war period reflects the complexity of contemporary life. In themes as old as folk tales and as current as new visions of space, writers express the dreams and terrors of post-nuclear life. It is an era in which values and beliefs have been challenged and conventional distinctions - illusion and reality, fact and fiction, the sacred and the profane - have been called into question by writers as diverse as Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje.
Love, sex, and gender are fluid and complex. Looking at stories, novels, films, and other types of texts, students will analyse the impact of literature, popular culture, and aesthetics on the formation of new notions of gender, sexuality, and desire. Emphasis will be placed on a consideration of the cultural and sociopolitical influences that contributed to these changes and on the possibility of affections, sexualities, and genders that may not yet have names.
The lives of peoples from the English-speaking Caribbean are extensively explored in dramatic works, films, music, art, novels and stories produced in the region and by Caribbean expatriates in Canada, the US and the UK. By situating examples of such works within their cultural contexts, the course raises a number of questions about Caribbean identities and experience and uses these questions to illuminate the history, struggles, and triumphs of these peoples and to imagine future possibilities.
This course considers a range of texts whose central concern is the construction of gender and its relationship to other categories of identity such as culture, race, nation, age, class, and sexuality. The course material draws on some canonical, popular, and marginalized literary and cultural texts, and provides students with the opportunity to explore gender as a political and cultural category of analysis at different historical and political moments in various contexts globally.
The first half of the twentieth century can be characterized as a period that defined itself in reaction to the past. Across the Western world, aesthetic, political, and cultural movements led to innovations and experimentations in literature, art, film, fashion, architecture, and music. By focusing on a variety of verbal and visual texts, this course explores how these dramatic changes came about, and how they made the period self-consciously modern. Equivalent to the first half of ENG 50A/B.
The second half of the twentieth century is characterized as Postmodernist in that the self-reflexive literature and culture of the period are both an extension of, and a simultaneous critique of, modernist and earlier works. By focusing on a variety of verbal and visual texts in the context of the period's socio-political upheavals, this course explores such aesthetic and political discourses, movements, and developments as feminism, Postcolonialism, queer theory, cultural studies, and Internet technology. Equivalent to the second half of ENG 50A/B.
This course introduces students to a variety of Asian literatures and cultures. Literature written by people of Asian descent in Asia, Canada, and elsewhere has seen a notable increase in popularity and influence over the past few decades and has made us, as Canadians, more aware of the diversity of Asian languages and cultures. The design of this course offers students the opportunity to explore a range of Asian literatures through different approaches and themes.
What is the influence of gender, feminism, and postmodernism on traditional literary forms? Contemporary women writers reshape and re-signify traditional literary genres such as the quest, romance, fairy tale, fantasy, and science fiction in order to redefine female identity and to produce innovative and provocative literary works. The course also explores the representation of women in fiction and popular media.
Often described as the "Age of Revolutions," the first half of the nineteenth century is characterized by revolutionary new ways of understanding the individual and society. Focusing on the British context, this course examines how the period's visual and verbal texts expressed the dominant discourse of "romanticism" and helped shape modern Western culture. Topics may include childhood; nature and culture; science and the supernatural; medievalism; publishing practices; technology; war and revolt; and class, gender and race.
Modernism, the neogothic, the Decadent Movement, cinema, the telephone, the typewriter, sexology, psychology - the second half of the nineteenth century invented much that continues to influence us. Focussing on the British context, this course addresses ways in which this era used literature and other cultural works to shape and respond to changing social conditions, ideologies, and media. Possible topics include the women's movement, consumer culture, class conflicts, socialism, imperialism, and developments in visual culture and publishing.
How does a national literature reflect on its people? Works studied in this course may include various genres from colonial to contemporary times. Students examine critically Canada's national identity, as well as issues of language, gender, class, and ethnicity in the articulation of a national culture. This course considers how writers capture and captivate Canada (or not) in the imagination, and may examine literature in relation to film, music, and criticism.
Students will learn to recognize and identify different conventions defining genres of popular literature such as romance and sensation; gothic and horror; and melodrama. The course will explore the relationship between texts and audiences, and how readers assign meaning to and make use of what they read. Students will study the origins of today's popular genres in books and other media and the sociocultural values embodied in such works.
By exploring the ways images in photography, painting and film, as well as in literary and non-literary writing, are scripted and can be read as text, this course seeks to show how visuality organizes and shapes Western culture. Topics can include how such things as the invention of perspective and the visual technologies of photography and film have influenced philosophy and literature, and how the culture industries have used the visual as a tool to influence and entertain.
Shakespearean drama was an important medium for entertainment and for reflecting contemporary socio-political realities on stage. A mark of Shakespeare's continued relevance and popularity is the constant remaking of his plays in a variety of media. This course analyses the textual, thematic, historical, and theoretical readings of Shakespearean drama in relation to questions of performance and adaptation by dealing with folk, early-modern/contemporary theatre, television, film, Postcolonial, Postmodern, feminist and mainstream adaptations of his plays. In addition to the prerequisite of ENG 108, it is recommended that students also complete ENG 421 and/or ENG 422 prior to enrolling in this course.
A century ago, when asked whether there was a "Canadian" literature, many writers living in Canada proclaimed no. In recent years, however, Canadian literature has proven it can compete on a world stage. This course explores early and contemporary Canadian literature as world literature. Students can expect to read some of the best (and for contrast, worst) texts our nation has produced in order to critically examine their production and reception here and abroad.
Students will learn to recognize and identify different conventions defining genres of popular literature such as science and speculative fiction; adventure and detective fiction; and graphic literature and other experimental genres. The course explores the relationship between texts and audiences, and how readers assign meaning to and make use of what they read. Students will study the origins of today's popular genres in books and other media and the sociocultural values embodied in such works.
Love it or hate it, television stands alone as a medium in its ability to influence the way we live and view the world. What is it about the immediacy of television that invites us to engage with it? Students will draw from literary studies, sociology, and anthropology to explore how the "flow" of television structures our time and our relations to one another, and how the "televisual" evolves as new communications technologies develop.
The senior seminar provides ACS students following an English Option the opportunity to develop advanced independent research, presentation and writing skills in a discussion-based setting. Students are required to write a major research paper. Course content varies according to the instructor's expertise. In order to enroll in this course, students must have successfully completed ENG 108, and a minimum of five other ENG courses, at least one from Group 1. Students must have a minimum CGPA of 3.0 in their best four ENG courses.
This course explores how contemporary writers and artists have attempted to come to terms with the so-called post-print era - a historical moment characterized by the strategies of fragmentation and recombination that digital hyperspaces make possible. By analysing digital texts and the work of cultural theorists on the nature and impact of this new medium, students will address the implications of the rise of computing and the internet for the future of literary and other cultural practices.
Why do we assign critical and aesthetic value to some works of art and not to others? Why are some considered "classics," others "trash"? This course focuses on age-old distinctions between "high" and "low" art. By examining a variety of texts such as fiction, poetry, drama, music, television, and visual arts, students will explore how the divide between the "elite" and "popular" culture was erected and why it needs to be questioned.
Contrary to the assumption that theories are designed to obscure or complicate things, theories seek to interpret and explain sociocultural structures, and illuminate the practices of everyday life we might otherwise take for granted. This course introduces the core questions of literary and cultural theory. Students will learn what thinking "theoretically" means, and will study ways of understanding the interrelationship between author, reader, text, and world. In order to enrol in this course, students must have successfully completed a minimum of three ENG courses.
Diversity is embodied in the texts that surround us, from novels, movies, and other works that we consciously consume, to more subliminal pieces such as billboards and radio jingles. Indeed, literature and other arts with the greatest impact always have been those that challenge social and artistic norms. In this course, students will learn the ways in which literature and culture in general influence our views regarding various forms of diversity.
In this course, students will explore uses of language and rhetoric to communicate diverse models of gender and sexuality. Looking at verbal and visual texts, the class will gain a nuanced understanding of the ways in which changes in communication, literature, popular culture, and aesthetics foster the formation and re-formation of various notions of gender, sexuality, and desire. Emphasis will be placed on the cultural and sociopolitical influences that contributed to these changes.
The course considers the interconnections and ongoing dialogue between postcolonial and colonial discourses and literatures, and the socio-historical contexts from which the texts and theories have emerged. In giving comprehensive coverage to literatures and theories produced within former British colonies (including settler colonies) and the neo-colonial world, we shall examine key issues relating to the role that language, race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and subaltern identities play in shaping experience and producing knowledge.
This course for English as a Second Language students covers material focusing on how our use of language reflects our social identities. The course will also help students improve their English and express themselves in a university setting. Students will analyze, discuss, and write essays on the material. The online ESL/EAL Placement Test is required.
This writing-intensive course explores how language reflects and shapes society. The course also aims to further develop students' academic reading and writing skills by exploring methods of active reading, and strategies for structuring and supporting written arguments. The online ESL/EAL Placement Test is required.
This course for English as a Second Language students covers material focusing on how language is framed by institutional and cultural perspectives. The course will also help students improve their English and express themselves in a university setting. Besides discussion and analysis of the material, students will write essays. Antirequisite: ENC 197. The online ESL/EAL Placement Test is required.
As the third course in the series of Lower Level Liberal courses for students whose mother tongue is not English, this course introduces students to contemporary Western thinking about oral and written language and the social use of language. Students will explore several issues including the nature of language, first and second language learning, and style of speech. The course is designed to improve students' ability to communicate their ideas in speaking and writing. The online ESL/EAL Placement Test is required.
