Discipline of English,
National University of Ireland,
Galway
3BA/4BA
Course Outline
Booklet
2014 – 2015
Semester 2
Head of Third Year:
Dr. Elizabeth Tilley, Room 508, Floor 3, Tower 1
Third & Fourth Year Semester 2, 2014-2015
Students are required to choose between:
EN385 or ENG302
And
EN387 or ENG303
EN399 may be chosen instead of a lecture course in Semester 2
Plus ONE seminar course
EN385 DRAMA AND THEATRE STUDIES
This course is an introduction to some of the key elements of dramatic writing, dramaturgy and theatre
history from the late nineteenth century to the present. We pay special attention to the ways in which
meanings are produced by theatre, through acting and directional practice, and to the various ways in which
the theatre functions as a social institution. Naturalistic, modernist, postmodernist and globalized forms of
theatre are considered in relation to a number of case studies. The course will also involve attendance at
Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, which is playing at the Town Hall Theatre from 19-28 February.
Venue:
Tuesday 5-6 AM250 Colm O’hEocha Theatre and Wednesday 9-10 IT250 IT Building
Lecturers:
Prof. Lionel Pilkington and Prof. Patrick Lonergan
Texts:
Students must read the following ten plays:
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (Nick Hern)
Anton Chekhov, The Seagull (Drama Online)
Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (Samuel French)
GB Shaw, Major Barbara (Drama Online)
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (Faber and Faber)
Bertolt Brecht Life of Galileo (Methuen/Drama Online)
Harold Pinter, The Homecoming (Faber and Faber/Drama Online)
Caryl Churchill, Serious Money (Drama Online)
Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman (Faber)
Lucy Prebble Enron (Drama Online)
Assessment
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
ENG302 MODERNISM/POSTMODERNISM
This course will introduce and explore two major cultural periodisations of the twentieth century: modernism
and postmodernism. While emphasis will be on readings of literature in English, the wider geographical and
cultural contexts will be discussed and parallel developments in other arts (including visual arts and
architecture) will be explored.
Venue:
Tuesday 5-6 ENG-G018 Lecture Theatre 1, Engineering Building and
Wednesday 9-10 Kirwan Theatre
Lecturer:
Prof. Sean Ryder and Dr. Justin Tonra
Texts:
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Oxford paperback)
Muriel Spark, The Driver’s Seat (Penguin)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (Penguin)
A Course Reader is available from Print That, and other texts will be made available on
Blackboard.
Assessment:
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN387 SPECIALIST STUDIES: TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE
Irish Poetry and Fiction: Yeats, Joyce and After
This course focuses on two of the Irish giants of twentieth-century literature and on the impact of their work
on subsequent poets and fiction writers, both within and beyond their own country. Yeats and his influence
will be under discussion for the first six weeks of the course; Joyce, and views and uses of his work by more
recent Irish writers, will be the concentration for the second six weeks.
Venue:
Wednesday 2-3 IT250 IT Building and Friday 9-10 AM250 Colm O’hEocha Theatre
Lecturers:
Dr. John Kenny and Dr. Walt Hunter
Texts:
Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose, ed. James Pethica (Norton, 2000)
James Merrill, Divine Comedies (1976)
Adrienne Rich, Poetry and Prose (Norton, 1993)
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)
James Joyce, Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses
(1922) [extracts]
Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
John McGahern, The Dark (1965)
Patrick McCabe, The Dead School (1995)
Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (2013)
Assessment
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
ENG303 NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
This course focuses upon poetry, fiction and non-fiction from the mid-nineteenth century with an emphasis
on the way in which American writers are constructing a national literature and a national history, engaging
with contemporary reform movements, such as abolitionism and women's rights, and investigating religious
belief. Texts include selections from Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Dickinson, Douglass.
Venue:
Monday 4-5 O’Flaherty Theatre and Friday 1-2 Cairnes Theatre
Lecturers:
Dr. Julia Carlson and Prof. Sean Ryder
Texts:
Norton Anthology of American Literature: Eighth Edition, Volume B
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Penguin edition)
Assessment:
Mid-term Assessment (40%)
End-of-Semester Examination (60%)
EN399 EXTENDED ESSAY
The option of writing an extended essay is available to all third-year students of English whose grade average
in second year was 60% or higher, though it may be necessary to restrict the number of students accepted on
to the course. Acceptance will be based on a combination of grade average and strength of proposal.
The 4,000 to 5,000 word essay is submitted in place of a third-year semester two lecture course.
Venue:
Monday 11-1 TB306 Tower 2 (2 hour slot)
Supervisor:
Dr. Elizabeth Tilley
Assessment
End-of-Semester Essay
LIST OF 3BA SEMINARS (SEMESTERS 1 and 2)
Choose ONE each semester
N.B. Seminars, Times and Venues are subject to change in both Semesters
STUDENTS MUST TAKE A DIFFERENT SEMINAR COURSE EACH SEMESTER.
STUDENTS MAY NOT TAKE TWO SEMINARS WITH THE SAME COURSE TITLE
EVEN IF THE COURSE CODE IS DIFFERENT.
Code
EN334
Seminar Title
AMERICANS ABROAD
Dr. Julia Carlson
Venue
Tuesday 11-1
Room 306 Tower 1
This course looks at the United States in a global context, focusing on
the figure of the American abroad in fiction and film. We study
American travellers and expatriates in the broader context of travel
writing, looking at how texts construct both America and the
"foreign" country, and focus on the way in which the personal,
national and sexual identity of American characters is represented by
individual authors. Texts: Mark Twain, Selections from Innocents
Abroad; Henry James, Daisy Miller; An American in Paris, directed
by Vincente Minnelli; Mavis Gallant, ‘The Other Paris’; James
Baldwin, Giovanni's Room; Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis
Ford Copolla; Alice Greenway, White Ghost Girls. Assessment:
Presentation and weekly writing exercises 30% and two essays at
35% each.
EN336
BECKETT ON PAGE & STAGE: PROSE, POETRY, DRAMA
Dr. David Clare
Tuesday 3-5
Room 302 Tower 1
Samuel Beckett’s work is often described as ‘ahistorical’ and as
being set ‘nowhere’. In keeping with a recent shift in Beckett
criticism, however, this module seeks to place Beckett’s work in
socio-historical context. Close analysis of the works is employed to
reveal the depth of Beckett’s lifelong engagement with the landscape
and culture of his native Ireland. Students will discover the degree to
which Beckett’s early work is critical of Free State Ireland and
narrow definitions of Irishness. They will learn that Beckett’s later
work is often set in a ‘liminal space’, with Beckett superimposing the
countries where he lived in later life (England and France) over the
Ireland of his youth; Beckett does this in order to subtly explore the
psychological effects of exile, which is itself a very ‘Irish’
preoccupation. Other topics covered in discussions include narrative
and dramatic experiment, Beckett’s play with genres, and the
developments in his style between the early 1930s and the 1980s.
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (class participation, one
oral presentation and one, brief written assignment); 70% final essay.
EN402
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Dr. Frances McCormack
We speak English fluently, but how often do we think about its
origins, its evolution and its peculiarities? We rarely question why
‘cleave’ means ‘to join together’ and to ‘split’. Why don’t ‘enough’,
‘trough’ and ‘through’ rhyme? During the course of this seminar
Wednesday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
we’ll attempt to unravel (or ravel) some of these problems. We’ll
examine the development of the English language through its rich
and complex history, from its earliest origins to the kinds of English
written and spoken today, and we’ll speculate on its future. We’ll
also pay attention to English as it is spoken worldwide. Text: Stephan
Gramley, The History of English. Assessment: Exercises 30% (5
assigned, best 3 will count at 10% each). Essays 70% (2 short essays
worth 35% each).
EN404
CONTEMPORARY IRISH POETRY
Dr. Walt Hunter
Thursday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
This course follows the complex developments of Irish poetry from
the mid-twentieth century to the present. From Montague and
Kinsella to Muldoon and McGuckian, our effort will be to examine
how modern Irish poetry thinks of itself as a global form: that is, as a
literary art that is shaped by cross-cultural and international
exchanges of many kinds. Irish poets have long taken the lead in
seeking a global perspective on the local, regional, and national,
using poetry to construct and make visible the changing social and
literary relations brought on by modernization, emigration,
translation, new technologies, and collisions between old authorities
and new aspirations. As a class, our emphasis will be on closereading poems, usually one or two a day, in order to build a shared
toolkit of poetic terms and to immerse ourselves in the extraordinary
vitality of contemporary Irish writing.
Texts: An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry (ed. Wes Davis; Harvard
UP, 2013)
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment, including class
participation and brief close-reading assignments; 70% final essay.
EN3111
POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Ms. Kirry O’Brien
Monday 11-1
Room 306 Tower 1
This seminar engages with the poetry of World War 1, a poetry
written by men and women, combatants and non-combatants, at
home and at the front. It examines how literature helped prepare
people for war and sustained them through it. It also looks at the
production of mythologies which still inform our understanding of
the Great War. Assessment: 15% class presentation write up, 15% for
mid-term review/close reading of a poem or poster from the period
and 70% final essay.
EN3112
POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Ms. Kirry O’Brien
Wednesday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
This seminar engages with the poetry of World War 1, a poetry
written by men and women, combatants and non-combatants, at
home and at the front. It examines how literature helped prepare
people for war and sustained them through it. It also looks at the
production of mythologies which still inform our understanding of
the Great War. Assessment: 15% class presentation write up, 15% for
mid-term review/close reading of a poem or poster from the period
and 70% final essay.
EN410
JANE AUSTEN
Dr. Val Nolan
Tuesday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
This seminar centres on the contextual study of four of Jane Austen’s
novels. Students will explore the circulation and reception of
Austen’s fiction within its original literary and publishing contexts.
Discussion will consider the relationship of her writing to its sociocultural milieu with particular focus on contemporaneous issues of
class, gender roles, and societal conventions. Additionally, the
writer’s legacy and her continuing popularity today will be explored
via investigation of Janeite fandom culture.
Texts: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813),
Emma (1816), and Northanger Abbey (1818).
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (short commentary: 10%;
oral presentation: 20%) and 70% final essay.
EN426
AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH
Prof. Daniel Carey
Wednesday 5-7
Room 302 Tower 1
The seminar focuses on factual and fictionalised accounts of murder
in America, asking why violence is a central part of American culture
and the literary imagination. Texts include Truman Capote, In Cold
Blood, Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song, Mikal Gilmore, Shot
in the Heart, William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow.
Assessment: One presentation and commentary (30%) and 70%: two
essays at 35% each.
EN434
STUDIES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FICTION
James Joyce's Early Fiction
Dr. Irina Ruppo
Friday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
This course will examine James Joyce’s first novel, A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, and some of his short stories. We shall
consider various conflicting approaches to the texts and develop new
interpretations through class discussions and debates. Texts: James
Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; ‘Araby’; ‘The Dead’;
‘An Encounter’. Assessment: 30% two short assignments; 70% final
paper.
EN439
CINEMA/MEDIA STUDIES
Introduction to Film Studies
Dr. Fiona Bateman
Thursday 10-12
Q2,
Huston School of
Film & Media
This seminar is an introduction to studying film in an academic
context. During the semester students will develop new ways of
watching and thinking about films; they will learn how to ‘read’ a
film. Issues including genre, intertextuality, narrative and narration
will be discussed in class. The films (texts) which students will view
and analyse for the course are all Irish, chosen because they share
certain thematic characteristics but differ in significant ways. The
films are: Flight of the Doves (1971), Into the West (1992), Mickybo
and Me (2006) and Kisses (2008). As we will be focussing on Irish
films, this seminar will also address representations of Ireland and
Irishness on screen.
Assessment: 3 short assignments (10% each) and 1 essay (70%).
EN442
VICTORIAN LITERATURE
Dr. Muireann O’Cinneide
This seminar will consider the extent to which Victorian literature
(1832-1901) can be considered as ‘imperial literature’, shaped by the
Tuesday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
power relations of the British Empire. It will discuss the processes of
representation and dynamics of colonial power and authority that
underlay encounters with ‘foreignness’ (in and out of England) in
novels, poetry and travel writing. Main Texts: Elleke Boehmer, ed.
Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature 1870-1918;
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone; Rudyard Kipling, Kim. Assessment:
30% continuous assessment (15% class presentation; 10% written
assignment; 5% participation); 70% final essay.
EN448
STORIES TOLD AND RE-TOLD
Dr. Irina Ruppo
Tuesday 1-3
Room 306 Tower 1
The course examines authors’ use and adaptation of folkloric and
mythological material in their works. The course examines a variety
of early modernist and contemporary texts alongside earlier materials
alluded in or explored by those texts. Straddling the perceived divide
between popular fiction and classic literary works, the course
considers the writing of W. B. Yeats, minor authors of the Irish
Revival, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Joyce, John Updike, and Douglas
Adams. The course enables students to query the nature of literary
production and reception across different time periods. It allows them
to explore why authors choose to underpin their works by references
to well known narratives, and, conversely, why authors choose to
revive forgotten legends. Assessment: 30%: two short assignments;
70%: final paper (2500 words).
EN459
CONTEMPORARY IRISH WRITING
The Fantastic in Irish Writing
Dr. Irina Ruppo
Friday 11-1
Room 302 Tower 1
The course will consider the use of the fantastic mode in Irish writing
across a variety of genres. It will explore the novels of John Banville
and Clare Boylan, the drama of Marina Carr, and the short fiction of
Neil Jordan and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and ask the questions how these
writers use the fantastic mode to explore contemporary social issues
and to engage with and challenge the Irish literary tradition. Texts: A
number of short stories by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and poems by Matthew
Sweeney, Pat Boran, and others will be distributed in class. Longer
texts are Clare Boylan, Black Baby (1988), Marina Carr, By the Bog
of Cats (1998), John Banville, The Sea (2005) and Neil Jordan,
Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994). Assessment: 30% two short
assignments; 70% final paper.
EN464
NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES
Dr. Leo Keohane and Ms. Aingeal Ní Chualáin
This course provides an introduction to twentieth-century Irish
writing and considers how writers in Irish and in English have
participated in the negotiation of modern and contemporary Irish
identities. Through a close critical reading of key selected texts in
Irish and in English, it will investigate the ways in which writers have
imagined and re-imagined Ireland and Irishness from the literary and
cultural revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
through to the new millennium. Issues to be addressed will include
Ireland’s transition from a traditional to a modern society, language,
gender, and the connections between literary production and the
imagined ‘nation’. A knowledge of Irish is not necessary for this
course. Assessment: 30% continuous assessment: class participation,
Friday 11-1
Seminar Room,
Centre for Irish
Studies
oral presentation and abstract for final essay. 70% for 2 essays; one
(25%) and the final essay (45%).
EN470
OLD ENGLISH I – INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE AND
READING
Dr. Frances McCormack
Monday 1-3
TB306 Tower 2
Old English is an exciting and beautiful language. Apart from being
an invaluable object of study to those with an interest in etymology, it
is the vehicle for some of the most challenging and captivating
literature you will ever read. This course will provide you with a
thorough introduction to learning to read Old English without painful
memorisation! We’ll think about many important theoretical issues
related to engagement with the language and its texts, and we’ll
explore the culture of the Anglo-Saxon people. Texts: Robert
Hasenfratz and Thomas Jambeck’s Reading Old English.
Assessment: Weekly assignments 30% (five assigned, best three
chosen); Essays 70% (two short essays assigned, worth 35% each).
EN3102
ALLUSION, ADAPTATION AND APPROPRIATION
Dr. Lindsay Reid
Thursday 3-5
Room 302 Tower 1
Works of literature are always in dialogue with texts that came
before; they inevitably recall and comment on the past even when
presenting something ‘new’. Using case studies from world literature
alongside critical secondary readings, this module focuses on the
intertextual relationships that exist between and inform our
understandings of literary works. Drawing on a wide variety of short
texts, we will examine such topics as: how later literary pieces like
‘The Story of Sindbad the Sailor’ from the Arabian Nights or Julio
Cortázar’s ‘Circe’ build on famed episodes from Homer’s Odyssey;
how contemporary short stories by feminist authors such as Angela
Carter or Margaret Atwood revise and critique classic fairy tales;
how subsequent poets have responded to the sentiments and form of
Shakespeare’s sonnets; and how particular characters from GrecoRoman mythology (e.g. Pygmalion or Orpheus) have been variously
reinterpreted by authors from the Middle Ages to today. Assessment:
30% continuous assessment (15% class participation, 15% short
presentations); 70% essay proposal and final essay (c. 2500 words).
EN599
LITERARY COMPOSITION
Dr. Val Nolan
Please note: This seminar is not available to students of the BA
with Creative Writing
This module introduces non-academic professional writing modes
and genres. Focus is on the composition, presentation, and critique of
student short stories via the workshop format. The course is designed
to help sharpen participants’ skills in terms of narrative structure,
characterization, description, and style with the aim of creating
publishable work. Students will further interrogate how the critical
and creative dispositions can cooperate in the production of fiction,
with the concept and practice of style being extensively examined.
Participants will emerge with a working knowledge of the processes
of self- and group-editing, as well as of the combined imperatives of
information and entertainment in the kinds of writing aimed at a wide
audience.
Assessment: 20% participation; 10% minor writing projects; 70%
major writing project.
Friday 11-1
TB305 Tower 2
ENG230
NINETEENTH CENTURY DETECTIVE FICTION
Dr. Coralline Dupuy
Wednesday 1-3
TB306 Tower 2
The focus of this course is a selection of the Sherlock Holmes stories
by Arthur Conan Doyle. The critical tools used in class features
structuralism, psychoanalysis, colonial and gender studies.
Reading list: Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet 1887 (Oxford
UP); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1891
(Oxford UP); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
1901 (Oxford UP); Arthur Conan Doyle, The Final Problem 1893
(Oxford UP).
Assessment: At-home assignment 15%, in-class presentation 15%,
two essays at 35% each (70%).
EN3107
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHILDREN’S FICTION
Dr. Coralline Dupuy
Wednesday 11-1
TB306 Tower 2
The focus of this course is an in-depth analysis of modern novels for
children written in the last three decades. The proposed method of
study is comparative analysis. The critical theories used in this
purpose are Jungian psychoanalysis, structuralism and gender
studies. Through this course, the students will be asked to appraise
each text individually and also to look at the general issues pervading
the genre. These include family politics, the role of imagination,
ethics, and mentors. Reading list: Roald Dahl, The Witches (1983,
Puffin Books). Louis Sachar, Holes (1998, Bloomsbury). Neil
Gaiman, Stardust (1998, Headline). S. F. Said, Varjak Paw (2003,
Corgi). Assessment: At-home assignment 15%, in-class presentation
15%, mid-term essay (35%) and a final essay (35%).
EN3108
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHILDREN’S FICTION
Dr. Coralline Dupuy
The focus of this course is an in-depth analysis of modern novels for
children written in the last three decades. The proposed method of
study is comparative analysis. The critical theories used in this
purpose are Jungian psychoanalysis, structuralism and gender
studies. Through this course, the students will be asked to appraise
each text individually and also to look at the general issues pervading
the genre. These include family politics, the role of imagination,
ethics, and mentors. Reading list: Roald Dahl, The Witches (1983,
Puffin Books). Louis Sachar, Holes (1998, Bloomsbury). Neil
Gaiman, Stardust (1998, Headline). S. F. Said, Varjak Paw (2003,
Corgi). Assessment: At-home assignment 15%, in-class presentation
15%, mid-term essay (35%) and a final essay (35%).
Friday 11-1
Room 306 Tower 1
ENG232
AFRICAN FICTION
Dr. Fiona Bateman
Friday 9-11
Room 302 Tower 1
This seminar will focus on writing from and about Africa. We will
read and discuss novels as well as other texts from Nigeria,
Zimbabwe and Kenya. Issues to be considered will include language
and the oral tradition, postcoloniality, tradition and modernity,
gender, landscape and politics. Reference to texts by both African
and non-African writers will enable analysis of contrasting narrative
styles and representations. Texts: Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart
(1958); Ngugi wa Thiongo The River Between (1965); Buchi
Emecheta The Slave Girl (1977); Tsitsi Dangarembga Nervous
Conditions (1988). Assessment: 30% for continuous assessment (one
short piece of written work and one presentation, 15% each) and 70%
for the final essay.
ENG233
ARTHURIAN LITERATURE
Dr. Dermot Burns
Monday 1-3
Room 302 Tower 1
The main text under consideration on this course is Sir Thomas
Malory's Morte d'Arthur, the first major prose narrative in English
literature, which attempts to tell the complete story of the rise and fall
of the legendary King Arthur. Our study will include the perusal of a
broad range of secondary texts concerning medieval chivalry,
including chivalric treatises, religious texts, other medieval romances
and pseudo-historical chronicles, in order to place Malory's work
within the context of a range of medieval views on knightly virtue
and behaviour. Major themes including religion, love, honour and
courage will be considered in light of the striking events described in
Malry’s rendition of the Arthurian legend. Assessment: 30%
Continuous Assessment (1 mid-term essay) and 70% Final In-class
Essay.
ENG240
LITERARY HISTORIES
Dr. Victoria Brownlee
Tuesday 9-11
Room 306 Tower 2
This course assesses the shaping influence of particular historical
junctures on four early modern plays, Thomas Dekker’s Whore of
Babylon, Shakespeare’s Henry V and The Merchant of Venice, and
Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. By engaging with extracts
from a variety of contemporaneous documents, we will locate the
issues raised in these plays amid broader discussions of Catholicism,
kingship and nationhood, Jewishness, and femininity in early modern
England. Through this comparative scrutiny of the intricate
interactions of text and context, seminars will elucidate how literary
writings reinforce and undermine dominant political and social
attitudes, and assess the difficulties inherent in reading history.
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (one oral presentation
(10%), and one written assignment (20%)); 70% final essay.
ENG241
LOOSE BAGGY MONSTERS
Victorian Serial Fiction
Dr. Richard Pearson
Unique to their period, but founding a cultural format of serial
consumption still present in soap operas and serial dramas today, the
20-month part-issue novel challenges modern assumptions about the
neat and well-made text. Henry James referred to such novels as
‘loose, baggy monsters’. This seminar will focus on a close weekby-week reading of Charles Dickens’ novel, Bleak House (1852-53).
We will explore the issues raised by an unfamiliar form of writing
and reading, and exmaine the essential elements of serial narrative
and the central figure of the narrator. We will also study how these
novels shape themselves as commodity-texts and encode the politics
of economic exchange and consumption in areas such as gender and
class relations. Finally, the seminar will explore how the disturbing
‘monstrosity’ of these texts – their excess, loss of control, and
engagement with what lies beneath the veneer of Victorian
respectability – is expressed. Set text: Charles Dickens, Bleak House
(penguin).
Monday 11-1
IT206 IT Building
Assessment: portfolio (30%), final essay (70%)
EN3113
MODERNIST FICTION
Dr. Walt Hunter
Tuesday 3-5
TB306 Tower 2
This course will explore major works of global modernist fiction
from about 1900 to 1940. As we read, we will cast a critical eye on
accounts of modernism that present it as a retreat into aesthetic
experimentation or an elitist cultural sphere. Instead, we will seek to
understand literary modernism as a movement that embraces and
insists upon the world, and that is formed by means of global
encounters and exchanges. As we examine how modernist writers
construct cosmopolitan identities through their short stories and
novels, the formal and aesthetic innovations of modernism will
provide invaluable maps of the global. Ultimately, our goal will be to
understand modernism not only as a set of aesthetic and political
responses to empire, colonialism, and war, but also as a series of
related ways of imagining global community.
Texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902); Lu Xun, “Diary of
a Madman” (1918); Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party”
(1922); Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927); Mulk Raj Anand,
Untouchable (1935). Assessment: 30% continuous assessment,
including class participation and shorter written work; 70% final
essay.
EN3114
MODERNIST FICTION
Graham Greene
Dr. Frances McCormack
Tuesday 2-4
AM122 Arts
Millennium
Building
William Golding described Graham Greene as “the ultimate
chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety."
With a writing career that spanned just over six decades of the
twentieth century, Greene’s work ranges from comic to melancholic,
from political to theological, from satirical to earnest. This course
will allow students to sample some of Greene’s finest works. We
shall explore four of Greene’s most acclaimed novels (his so-called
Catholic novels) and selections from some of his other writings to
examine how Greene understood such themes as betrayal, despair,
pity, guilt, and love. Dr McCormack will be the Director of the 2014
Graham Greene International Festival. Texts: Brighton Rock (1938),
The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948),
The End of the Affair (1951). Selections from other texts will be
provided. Assessment: 30% continuous assessment and 70% final
essay.
ENG243
SPECIAL TOPIC
Technological change and the media
Dr. Andrew Ó Baoill
Does technology shape society, or do our social structures drive how
technology develops? What do we mean by 'new media' and how
does it differ from 'old' media forms? There are numerous schools of
thought on how to properly understand the interplay of technology
and culture, from McLuhan's claim that "the medium is the message"
to various forms of social constructivism. In this class, we will
explore these issues drawing on contemporary case studies and the
work of a range of influential thinkers, including McLuhan, Nancy
Baym, Manuel Castells, and Henry Jenkins.
Monday 3-5
Room 302 Tower 1
Assessment: 30% continuous assessment (20% presentation/profject,
10% short written work); 35% each for two essays.
ENG244
TEXTUAL HISTORIES
Materiality and Meaning
Dr. Justin Tonra
Tuesday 9-11
THB-G004
The book communicates to its reader through the text that it bears,
but it also communicates evidence of its own physical construction.
Throughout history, the varying means of books' manufacture have
had a direct and tangible impact on their texts. This course examines
how the materiality of the book influences its meaning, and what the
consequences are for authors, readers, scholars, and editors. Through
a mixture of lecture, demonstration, and discussion, the group will
examine the codex, the digital book, and other text-bearing objects.
We will combine historical survey and hands-on examination of
books in order to understand the importance of the textual medium
when studying literature. Reading will include Finkelstein &
McCleery, eds. An Introduction to Book History (2nd ed.) and
Blayney, The First Folio of Shakespeare.” Assessment: 30%
continuous assessment; 70% final essay.
EN3104
LITERATURE OF THE INTERNET
Dr. Justin Tonra
This seminar examines the ways in which the internet has influenced
the structures, themes, and contents of recent literature. A survey of
the history and development of the internet and the world wide web
will form the basis from which students will examine two distinct but
related ways in which the internet has influenced literature. First, the
class will consider the structural influence of the internet on literary
narratives and poetics by reading born-digital hypertext poetry and
fiction and their print antecendents. Second, students will study
recent works of literature with a thematic focus on the internet, and
analyse authors’ descriptions of how the internet has shaped and
changed human behaviour and communication. Students will
ultimately synthesise the perspectives from these two strands to form
a greater understanding of how a new technology has influenced the
age-old practice of literature. Authors featuring in this course will
include Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Queneau, Michael Joyce, Ara
Shirinyan, and Dave Eggers. Assessment: 30% continuous
assessment; 70% final assignment.
Thursday 1-3
AMB-GO43
Arts Millennium
Extension