MA Thesis
An extended research project which meets the conditions specified in the description for SCLA 5F91. The thesis involves a more substantial level of research and a fuller treatment of the selected subject. It will be examined by an external reader and will require a public defense.
Major Research Paper
A research project on a subject determined in consultation with the Graduate Program Director and faculty supervisor. The paper should give evidence of original thought as well as a command of primary and secondary sources. It is expected that the project will be comparative in scope, and therefore engage with both literary texts and works from at least one of the other arts.
Comparative Critical Theory in Literature and the Arts
Contemporary approaches to texts of various types, discursive and aesthetic traditions, possibilities and problems arising from comparative studies. Theories of translation and adaptation.
Comparative Methodologies
Applications of critical theory to the interdisciplinary study of theatre, visual arts and music.
Critical Theory and the Arts
An examination of the modes of production, reception and analysis of art from its inception to its cultural, institutional or ideological transformation. Workshop format.
Note: field trips may be required.
Crossover Literature
Contemporary fiction read by a dual audience of children and adults. Impact on literary systems, canons, concepts of readership, and the publishing industry. Role of other media, influence of the marketplace. Novels, short fiction, poetry, picture books, comic books from international sources.
The Birth of the Sentimental Self
(also offered as POLI 5P62)
Exploration of modern notions of selfhood and subjectivity, their impact on moral and political understanding. Topics include reverie, confession, hypocrisy, genius, romanticism.
Crossing Cultural Boundaries in the Novels of Umberto Eco
Eco's narrative fiction. Issues include novels as pastiche and palimpsest, open and closed works, intertextuality, high and pop culture, role of the reader, interpretation and overinterpretation, literary genres, translation, visual arts in textual settings.
Space and the Social Ecology of Art
How we construct and adapt to our human or natural environment, how we determine the cultural value or social production of space, and how art, environment and aesthetics interrelate. Topics include urban, suburban and exurban spaces; natural, "naturalized" and simulated environments; site specific, public and installation art.
Violence and Discourses of Otherness in Early Modern Europe
Early modern European literary engagements with discourses of colonial, ethnic, religious and sexual otherness, their cultural functions, and their violent imposition. Selected 16th and early 17th-century English, French and Spanish poetry, prose and drama. Contemporary theoretical examinations of otherness and violence.
Word Painting and Text Setting in Music from the 12th to the Early 17th Centuries
Methods used to highlight, exalt, and illustrate words in music from Biblical texts set in plainchant to secular poetry set by the 16th-century Italian madrigalists.
Note: Ability to read music a strong asset, but not absolutely essential.
Disability in Literature and the Arts: Sites of Resistance
Disability as a site of resistance and creativity in literature and the visual arts. Readings in disability studies. Texts and films from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
Merleau-Ponty: The Art of Perception
(also offered as HUMA 5P71 and PHIL 5P71)
Merleau-Ponty's treatments and analyses of the visual (painting and film) and literary arts, seen as products, explorations and distortions of human perception and embodied subjectivity, which shed light on our cultural and pre-cultural experiences of the world.
Witches, Vampires, and Virgins: The Monstrous Depiction of Women
The socio-historical depiction of women as monstrous in Latin-American, British and American art, literature and film. Marginalized, denied, silenced feminine sexuality versus the construction of an authentic feminine identity.
Performance and Performativity
Notions of performance and performativity from various sources in the fields of anthropology, theatre studies, cultural studies and philosophy. Modes of artistic and cultural expression in a world that is increasingly performative in nature.
Advanced Studies in Aesthetics
An in-depth examination of a specific aesthetic question explored by artists and thinkers of a specific time period. Questions may include: the function of art, art as representation, the role of theory in the production of art, the role of art in the development of theory.
Literary Translation: Theory and Experimentation
Definitions and purposes of translation from the past century. Readings by Benjamin, Jakobson, Nabokov, Ortega y Gasset, and Spivak.
Note: Students need not have a background in translation.
Self and Other in the Visual Field
(also offered as HIST 5P78)
Vision, visuality, techniques of visual presentation, and technologies of display in the study of human interaction in colonial, post-colonial, and neo-colonial situations. Commensurate domains for multi-disciplinary analysis of visual and written texts and interpretive frameworks and methodologies for the study of the dynamics of power.
The Depiction of the Caribbean and African Exotic
Examination of exoticism in French/Francophone literature and the arts. What makes a literary text or a work of art "exotic"? Critical readings in Alterity and Orientalism. Novels, short stories, poetry, paintings, and/or films from French/Francophone sources.
Transgression, Interdiction, and the Limits of Expression
Death, eroticism, and other limit-experiences in 20th century literature and the arts. Works that attempt to speak, write, and depict that which resists or forbids expression.
Special Topics in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts
Special topics and/or themes in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts.