Literature and Critical Theory Courses

LCT202Y1Y
Forms of Representation
Professor Jessica Copley
M 11-1

In this class students will explore the problem of representation across cultural boundaries. We will consider works from the western tradition and beyond, investigating how imaginative texts foster reflection on ourselves and our world. We will pay particular attention to the questions of what “form” is, and what “representation” is. In other words, we will investigate the ways that meaning is produced and understood by members of a culture, and we will examine the special roles that art can play in society and in politics.Topics for critical reflection include: genre, narrative, aesthetics, history, the self and the other, sexuality, and ecology. The texts we'll read might include Homer’s The Odyssey, excerpts from the Bible and the Koran, Aristotle’s Poetics, Sappho's poetry, Dante’s Inferno, Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, Mahasweta Devi's Imaginary Maps, portions of Auerbach’s Figura, and Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. Course activities may include a visit to the E.J. Pratt Library’s Special Collections, and/or sessions with invited scholars and writers. Assessment will be based on committed participation during tutorial and lecture, presentations, and a sequence of written assignments.

Exclusion: VIC202Y1
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

LCT203H1F
Empires I
Professor Mary Nyquist
T 11-1

LCT204H1S/REN241H1S
Canons and Canonicity 
Professor Paul Stevens
T 1-2, R 1-3 

LCT205H1S
Empires II
Professor Conrad James
T 11-1

LCT301H1F
Seminar in Critical Writing
Professor Lee Emrich
R 11-1

This course is a writing intensive class devoted to the practice and analysis of critical writing. We will explore the critical tradition, the public(s) for whom one writes, and the choice of voice, point of view, and writerly form. The class will be structured around workshop style discussion and writing exercises.

LCT302H1S
Pasts and Futures
Professor Shaun Ross
F 11-1

In 2024, after nearly 15 years of deliberation, the International Commission on Stratigraphy formally voted against officially recognizing the “Anthropocene” as a new geological epoch.  Nevertheless, the anthropogenic environmental crises that first prompted the creation of this term have only become more acute, demanding not only a radical re-conception of the relationship between human and geological history, but a reconsideration of the ways human culture, including literature, shape and respond to the non-human world. This course will introduce students to ecocriticism, a network of related approaches within literary studies explicitly concerned with the issues of the anthropocene. Ecocriticism analyzes literary representations of human beings’ relationship to their environment, seeking not only to understand the histories and ideologies that have produced our current ecological crises, but to discover within literature and criticism tools for responding positively to them.

This course will be particularly interested in the different ways  “nature” has been conceived: as an idealized but lost pastoral past, as an apocalyptic force of renewal, as a perpetual system of harmonious balance, and so on. We will organize our attention to this theme in relation to three periods or traditions of “nature” poetry—Romantic, Renaissance, and contemporary(ish) Canadian. This division will also allow us to consider how ecocriticism may shape future understandings of literary periodization.

Exclusion: VIC302H1
Recommended Preparation: LCT202Y1
Breadth Requirements: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

LCT306H1S
Culture and Media
Professor Sherry Lee
R 11-2

This year’s theme is: Image, Sound, Text in Print Culture (Mass Reproduction) In this course we consider how visual, aural, and textual media within the regime of print culture (preceded by manuscript culture, followed by digital culture) have had formative effects on the production, distribution, and reception of art works, through reading theoretical and literary works. Questions to be asked include: How do human bodies and natural and social environs interact with mechanical reproduction? How do artists operate through their opportunities and mediums provided by the system? How do viewers, listeners, and readers have access to and process works of art in or as reproduction (e.g., photography as a medium or an art form in itself)? How do the flux of non-art stimuli (e.g., sound of nature, noise) complicate the boundaries between nature and culture and between the everyday and art? How has manuscript culture persisted and infiltrated print culture? What potentials for experience (e.g., tactile) have been imagined as impossible/possible and materialized/denied through the analog media? How does the copying of image, sound, and text affect the human sense of temporality (e.g., duration, iterability, memory)? Theorists to be considered may include: Bal, Barthes, Batchen, Baudrillard, Benjamin, Berger, Bourdieu, Burgin, Derrida, Flusser, Grosz, Kittler, Lefebvre, Nancy, Silverman, Sontag, Szendy, Voegelin. Writers of literary sources to be read may include: Abe, Auster, Bernhard, Calvino, Cole, Cortazar, Kafka, Kanai, Ondaatje, Pamuk, Tanizaki, Vladislavic.

LCT307H1S
Periodization and Cultural History
Professor Molly Bronstein
F 11-1

LCT308H1S
Identities
Professor Andreas Motsch
W 11-1

Though “identity” might suggest sameness, it is historically unstable and has many components, including ability/disability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, health/illness, ‘race,’ sexuality, and religion. This course considers the complexities of identity-formation and identity-transformation as captured in literary texts and cultural artefacts over a wide range of historical and cultural contexts.

Recommended Preparation: LCT202Y1
Exclusion: VIC308H1
Breadth Requirements: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

LCT402H1S
Translation and Comparativity
Professor Eric Cazdyn
W 1-3

Prerequisite: LCT202Y1 and one of: LCT302H1, LCT303H1, LCT304H1, LCT305H1, LCT306H1, LCT307H1; or permission of instructor.
Exclusion: VIC402H1
Breadth Requirements: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)

Prerequisite: LCT202Y1 and one of: LCT302H1,  LCT303H1,  LCT304H1,  LCT305H1,  LCT306H1,  LCT307H1,  LCT308H1. Students who do not meet the prerequisites should contact the department.