Graduate Courses 2026-2027
This is a current list of graduate courses on offer in 2026-2027
2026-2027 Graduate Courses
Instructor: Jim Ellis
Description
Queer ecology is a recent approach that brings together queer theory and environmental studies, along with posthumanist and materialist theories, to challenge normative conceptions of nature (e.g. Morton, Haraway, Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson). This is a fruitful approach to bring to early modern texts, where the nature of nature is frequently in question and often surprisingly queer. Older conceptions of nature are being challenged in the period not just by the new science, but by materialist conceptions of the universe most associated with the newly rediscovered ideas of Lucretius, which are themselves often associated with Epicureanism and atheism. While early modern literature has been scrutinized for some time now using both ecological and queer lenses, only in the last couple of years have we seen new queer ecological approaches emerging (e.g. Swarbick, Nardizzi). While posthumanist approaches to the early modern period have yielded valuable insights about the strangeness or the queerness of the past, they have also helped to open up new questions about the constructedness of the present. By exploring alternative ways of being and knowing the past, queer ecology in particular promises to open up new avenues of thought in our current environment crisis.
This course will explore representations and theorizations of queer nature (including plants, animals, humans, natural and garden spaces) in four key examples of early modern English writing: Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, with its perverse and seductive garden spaces, and its demonized hybrid characters; Amelia Lanyer’s all-female, ‘Adam-less Eden’ in The Description of Cooke-ham; Andrew Marvell’s queer garden spaces and vegetal sexuality in “Upon Appleton House” and the Mower poems; and Milton’s Paradise Lost, where critics have devoted significant attention lately to the wound to earth caused by original sin. One through-line in these works is the way that each of them uses Eden, the paradigmatic perfect place in the Christian tradition, to explore our relations with non-human others and ideal ways of being.
Students in the graduate course will contribute a 15-20 minute presentation on a theoretical text or approach; a 20-30 minute presentation that explores course concerns in conjunction with a literary text; a 5 minute response to another student’s presentation; and submit a 20-25 page final essay.
Proposed Readings:
[Early modern texts by Spenser, Lanyer, Marvell and Milton referenced above]
Timothy Morton, Being Ecological (MIT, 2018).
Timothy Morton, “Queer Ecologies,” PMLA 125.2 (2010): 273-282.
Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (Indiana, 2010).
Dugan, Holly. “Early Modern Tranimals:57312*.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19.4 (2019): 178-205.
Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism (Minnesota, 2018)
Steven Swarbick, The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota P, 2023)
Lettow, Susanne and Sabine Nessel, eds. Ecologies of Gender: Contemporary Nature Relations and the Nonhuman Turn. New York: Routledge, 2022.
Vin Nardizzi, Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance (University of Toronto Press, 2025)
Instructor: Suzette Mayr
Description TBA
Instructor: Anthony Camara
Description
In the fields of critical theory and philosophy, the past decade saw a profusion of interest in speculative modes of thought. This new turn in theory reached its crescendo with the movement known as “Speculative Realism,” which has since dissipated as a coherent school in philosophy but left an indelible mark on contemporary thought that extends into literary criticism, especially work on popular genres such as horror and science fiction. The objective of this class is to familiarize students with these resurgent speculative philosophies and to interrogate how they inform, and are informed by, contemporary popular genre literature. The class will trace the speculative impulse more widely through the return to metaphysics and ontology seen in Feminist New Materialisms (Jane Bennett on vibrant materiality; Karen Barad on quantum ontology; Rosi Braidotti’s “nomadic” thought, etc.) and contemporary speculative posthumanisms. Of particular importance to the course will be comprehending the utility of these speculative theories in understanding speculative fictions, but also the recognition that such theories, by virtue of their speculative natures, are also fundamentally fictions themselves that turn on the creative dynamics of literature, hence the prevalence of hybrid theory-fictions amongst the work of Speculative Realists and associated thinkers. Upon completion of this course, students will not only be able to deploy current speculative philosophy as a literary-critical tool but also understand how literature affords a crucial creative impetus to the construction of disciplinary philosophies in the continental tradition.
Instructor: Jacqueline Jenkins
Description
In the introduction to Public Scholarship in Literary Studies, Rachel Arteaga observes that “Public scholarship can be best understood as an ambitious and capacious approach to academic research, writing and teaching. It indicates an expansive view of the impact that scholarly work in the humanities can have on society” (4). This hybrid critical / experiential learning seminar will be divided into two parts: critical reading in a range of issues relating to public scholarship in the humanities, and hands-on workshopping of individual public scholarship projects. For instance, through a selection of recent work in the field, students will have the opportunity to think through the questions of what makes scholarship ‘public;’ what the benefits for both critical scholars and public audiences may be; how we might understand notions of ‘public good,’ especially in the current social and political contexts; what the urgent implications are for graduate programs, especially those in the humanities. We will also address the very real risks of doing public scholarship in an increasingly politically fraught environment, with special attention to the threats of online harassment and racism, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny. Alongside this theoretical framing, students will develop a public scholarship project from their own recent or ongoing research, and will use the seminar environment to identify questions, refine their approach, and engage in peer-review in order to complete a work of public scholarship (writing, podcast, literary journalism, presentation, video, etc) as their final assignment in the course. Assignments will include reflections on the critical readings, collaborative work in the seminar towards the public scholarship project, and the completed project.
Instructor: Bart Beaty
Description
This course draws on the work undertaken for the twice SSHRC-funded What Were Comics? Projects by asking students to pay close attention to the formal elements that have shaped the aesthetics of the American comic book since the mid-1930s. By addressing the historical evolution of items often conceived by scholars as of little consequence (panel shape, word density, and so on) we will be able to chart the development of aesthetics over a relatively timespan. While all literary forms change (often over centuries), the relatively brief lifespan of the American comic book (ninety years) magnifies the scope of change because of its rapidity and its attention to the demands of the market. From this standpoint, the study of the American comic book throws the study of other forms into stark relief, allowing shifts in other forms to be highlighted in contrast.
This course will be built around a series of hands-on exercises. Drawing on the work of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, exercises will be practical and include such skills as pencilling, inking, and lettering comics pages, as well as workshopping story structure, characterization, page layout/design and comics production. The major project for the term will be the production of a full-length comic book and the presentation of that material to the class as a whole.
Readings for the class will include excerpts from some of the major textbooks in the field (Abel and Madden; McCloud; Barry; Brunetti), theoretical texts in comics studies (Groensteen; Karasik and Newgarden; Pedri; Postema), and works on the history of American comic book (Williams; Chute; Gabilliet). Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, will be read in its entirety as the touchstone illustrative series, and each week will introduce short works or excerpts of major comics that will be discussed for their formal elements.
Instructor: Derritt Mason
Description
This course will introduce students to a range of theoretical and practical approaches to teaching and learning, and is structured to help them develop a first-year undergraduate English course. This class will be organized around seven modules:
- Teaching Values & Philosophies
- How Learning Works
- Universal Design for Learning, EDIA, and Decolonial Approaches to Teaching
- Teaching English Classes: Signature Pedagogies and Learning Goals
- Assignment Design in the Age of AI
- Assessment: Principles & Practice
- Class Facilitation & Lecturing
Students will also conduct independent research into tools, theories, and practices that will guide their own, authentic approaches to teaching and learning; and collaboratively create a course toolkit/resource guide. By the end of the class, students will have compiled a portfolio that will constitute the course capstone. This portfolio will include:
- A statement of teaching philosophy
- A course outline and reading schedule for a first-year undergraduate English course on a theme of their choice
- Assignment descriptions
- A short essay, podcast, or video that provides an overview of the course and a pedagogical rationale, with reference to course material
Instructor: Anna Veprinska
Description
Responding to the question, Is listening to audiobooks really reading? this critical-creative, multi-genre course explores audiobooks as companion to, at odds with, and alternative form of reading. Listening to contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry audiobooks, we will consider such topics as intermedial translation, close listening, listening practices, performance, voice, eco-audiobooks, born-audio books, podiobooks, audiobook guilt, and the rising trend of AI-narrated audiobooks. We will also discuss the equitable possibilities of audiobooks, including accessibility and reading preferences. As we listen, we will critically think about the medium of audiobooks and their potential to reshape our literary and cultural reading practices.
The course will include workshops, an audio recording session at the library, a critical presentation, and the creation of our own mini audiobooks.
Instructor: Clara A.B. Joseph
Description:
This graduate seminar, The Lyric Mind: Thought and the Short Form, explores how poetry and creative nonfiction (CNF) transform thinking into art. Through lyric essays, prose poems, and other short-form experiments, students examine the relationship between emotion, intellect, and expression. Readings (tentative) include works by Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Mary Ruefle, Anne Carson, Bhanu Kapil, and Ocean Vuong—writers whose pieces blur the boundaries of poetry, essay, and philosophy. Students will produce a portfolio of short-form writing and a reflective artist’s statement situating their creative research. The course welcomes writers and scholars from across disciplines interested in exploring the intersections of poetry, CNF, and thought.
Instructor: Michael Ullyot
Description:
Examines Shakespeare's representation of travel, geography, and distant places across multiple genres. Students explore how Shakespeare's plays create imagined landscapes through language and theatrical convention, with attention to early modern travel writing, literary cartography, and the relationship between geographic setting and genre expectations. Topics may include textual analysis of place-making techniques, historical contexts of geographic knowledge, and adaptation of geographic material from classical and contemporary sources.