Current Graduate courses

The systematic study of effective composition, argument, and persuasion-€”the art of rhetoric-€”dates back at least to the epics of Homer and flourishes today in countless academic disciplines and spheres of social life. In fact, the historical “empire” of rhetoric is so vast that it “digests regimes, religions, and civilizations” (Roland Barthes). This seminar seeks to introduce students to some of the essential concepts, issues, and controversies in the history and theory of rhetoric by analyzing selections from key texts from antiquity and the twentieth century. In addition to demonstrating the relevance of rhetorical theory and criticism to a variety of social, intellectual, and cultural fields (politics, feminism, critical race theory, etc.), the seminar also explores emerging forms of rhetorical practice made possible by new media technologies, such as digital advertising and information warfare. Ideally, students will leave the seminar with a firm grasp of basic concepts of rhetorical theory and a deeper appreciation for rhetoric as an inventive, critical, and multidisciplinary enterprise.

In this course we will explore the production of public space in light of some of the issues raised by Black Lives Matter. We will look at two related questions. First, how do monuments, street names, and other markers segment time and produce public space, and what is at stake in the debates that ask for the removal of statues and the changing of names, or alternatively for the public contextualization of their racist legacies? And second, how do Black literary texts and works of art seek to produce different kinds of public geographies, and counter the dominant parceling out of time and space that results from imperial and colonial histories? 

We will begin by examining focal points in a number of cities, including North American examples and cities crucial for the European slave trade such as Bristol and Liverpool in England and Bordeaux and Nantes in France. We will then concentrate on spaces closer to home and look at related issues in cities including Toronto (Baby Point, Russell Street), Montreal (Old Montreal, Saint Henri), and Vancouver (Hogan’s Alley). In the second part of the course, we will explore a number of Black Canadian writings that can help us to reflect on the production of (Black) Canadian space and the city. The course lends itself to LIT, RCD, and XDM perspectives, and students are invited to propose additional works and spaces for examination in their final project.

One of the remarkable things to happen in the global cultural scene, especially beginning from the mid-twentieth Century, has been the explosion of literary and cultural productivity from the former colonies of European empires in Africa, the West Indies, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and settler colonies such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other such places touched by imperial conquests. These growing constellations of writing have now come to be known globally as postcolonial literatures. This literature, often politically inclined, re-examines and problematizes the history of European colonization as it also reflects on its spiraling aftermath. The primary agenda of Postcolonial literatures, Ato Quayson (2000) argues, involves ‘‘the representation of experiences of various kinds including those of slavery, migration, oppression and resistance, difference, race, gender, space and place, and the responses to the discourse of imperial Europe’’(Cambridge History of Postcolonial Lit. 06). This course thus examines the history, poetics, and politics of this genre of world literature in English from the postcolonies by examining the key writers, thinkers, texts, aesthetic trends, and discourses associated with postcolonialism, both as an intellectual project and activist cultural endeavor. More specifically, the seminar seeks to interrogate how the writers within this global literary tradition challenge and unmask the asymmetries of power in the theatre of cruelty now called globalization, thus inaugurating a global literary and cultural movement marked by what Auritro Majumder calls “insurgent imaginations.”

This course will introduce students to theoretical frames and primary texts shaping the field of critical race studies from its inception to the present.

This course is designed to provide graduate students with an introduction to critical digital research methods with a focus on critical internet and social media studies. In order to do good research one must 
first have a solid understanding of what kind of research is even possible to do This course aims to provide a foundational understanding of how to critically study “born digital” and online phenomena. 
Seminar readings on specific research methods will contribute to the formulation of a research project proposal to be carried out during the semester. Recent literature on the theoretical and ethical aspects of these methods will also be considered in the
context of these projects.

This course will explore how contemporary Black memoirs and works of Black Studies exist in tension, where texts in each genre make use of elements of the other. That is, works of Black Studies often depend on moments of memoir and Black memoirs produce deeply theoretical insights. Furthermore, the course will consider the pre-history of this contemporary phenomenon by examining the same tension in 19th Century slave narratives. Our exploration of this twinning of memoir and theory will be done through two clusters of three texts. The first will bring together Frederick Douglass’s Narrative (1845), Kiese Laymon’s recent memoir Heavy (2018), and Rinaldo Walcott’s The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom (2021). The second cluster will consider Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick and Other Essays (2019) alongside Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016). 

This local and experiential course combines three elements: practical skill-building in creative writing techniques in poetry and prose in various genres; the supervision of a student-driven creative writing project and an accompanying methodological essay; and discussion of the ways in which creative writing can function both as a mode of research and as a pedagogy in today’s academy. Students will consider how creative writing can communicate the results of historical research, function as philosophical thought experiment, engage in autofiction or life-writing related to critical practice and scholarly identity, and create disruptive objects-to-think-with. Three contemporary creative writers from Kitchener-Waterloo, each with an academic or journalistic background, will be available to consult in this course on their books, which will be on the reading list. These will include one among four possible books in different genres written by the instructor, Sarah Tolmie, plus Tanis MacDonald’s memoir Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female (2020) and Emily Urquhart’s creative non-fiction collection Ordinary Wonder Tales (2022). English department members Aimee Morrison and Marcel O’Gorman will share expertise in scholarly autofiction and graphical thinking and in research-creation, respectively, and object texts will be supported by a variety of other critical readings.

“I love the wild not less than the good,” wrote Thoreau, distinguishing, and conjoining, two important values. In this course we will read, excepting one detour into Canadiana, American literature in several genres (poetry, fiction, essay, children’s literature, memoir) tracing an essential dialectic between the wild and the moral good, where the wild appears sometimes in opposition (the wild is bad, or indifferent), sometimes in a complementary role (“the wild not less than the good”), sometimes as a more fundamental “good” (the received moral good is bad, or untrue). Along the way we will grapple with some questions about how and when moral thinking intereacts with relevant cultural theory, and test our thinking against writings in moral philosophy, including recent work on “moral abolitionism.”

Linguistic justice has had a long but marginal history within composition theory and writing studies, beginning around the 1970’s with the STROL position statement - Students Rights to Their Own Language—of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). Since the murder of Mr. George Floyd and the ensuing protests, Linguistic Justice has become central, if not a corner stone, in teaching college writing. Three other recent position statements exemplify this movement: CCCC Statement on White Language Supremacy (2021); This Ain’t Another Statement! This is a DEMAND for Black Linguistic Justice! (2020); and CCCC Black Technical and Professional Communication Position Statement with Resource Guide (2020).

The foci of this course are linguistic justice and writing assessment. Students will read both historical and contemporary theories in composition, linguistics, sociolinguistics, and writing studies that focus on assessing writing as an act of social and linguistic justice. Students will also meet and discuss theories with practicing scholars, which may include Asao Inoue, April Baker Bell, Karmen Canard, Peter Elbow, Aja Martinez, Frankie Condon, Keith Gilyard, Hanna Watts, Staci Perry-Man Clark, and others.

One of the controlling questions in the early days of Game Studies (i.e. about a quarter-century ago) was whether or not games tell, or indeed could tell, stories. On the one hand, this is question without much of a point, since anyone who has played even a card game such as Euchre can usually craft a story about how one or more hands were played. But because of the desire at the time to cast games in the media focus given to film, television, and even novels and short stories, it was probably inevitable that narrative become a studied element of how games function. English 794 examines the constantly growing body of scholarship devoted to the idea of story in games, drawing together strands ranging from the design of game content through the design of game mechanics. A central question guiding this course will be if we can identify a narratology of games; we will focus on digital games but address several boardgames as well. The course will also address how games adapt existing stories from literature, film, comics, history, and more. To these ends, the course combines game studies, narratology, adaptation studies, and transmediality studies.

The Rhetoricon is a Platonic Realm of the Forms, except that the realm is on  the web and the forms are rhetorical figures.  The idea behind this course is a usage-based ontological website of rhetorical  figures that is both public- and scholar-facing, with an  emphasis on cognitive stylistics, intersections with  linguistics, and a grounding in the form/function  theory of figuration; and, ah, there is a game on the  side.

Hence, our spirit animal is the Cat-in-the-Hat,  especially because of his totemic balancing act,  keeping aloft all the paraphernalia and debris of  Thing One and Thing Two’s crazed rainy-day party.  But we aren’t there yet. This course is to help figure  out what needs to be kept aloft. What is the rake?  What is the umbrella? Who is that fish? The one thing  we do know is that the book on the bottom is Jeanne  Fahnestock’sRhetorical figures in science.

We will start out with rhetorical figures, especially schemes, as they overlap  with grammatical constructions, and see where that takes us. The term is  planned out with topics and readings that develop in a systematic way, but it is  wide open to suggestions for replacing modules  that serves student interests better, or moving readings in or out  of the ‘required’ category. 

Evaluation will depend on your participation in discussions and on projects of your own design and development (three  microprojects, one term-culminating project). For PhD candidates and for MA  students who plan on a PhD trajectory, it is best to design and  develop an essay of publishable length and quality as your term-culminating project. For MA candidates with non-academic trajectories, such essays are  still good preparation for professional life, as well as just a great way to deepen  your understanding about the phenomena you explore and improve your  research chops. 

But for both constituencies there will be possibilities for various implementation projects or  alternate-genre writing projects.  Students can also mix and match the assignments to some degree—maybe trading  off one microproject for a higher weighting (and greater expectations) for your  term project, for instance; or vice versa.  Collaborations are highly encouraged, but only with prior approval.

This course provides an overview of critical approaches to technoculture from an intersectional and multidisciplinary perspective. We will look at topics such as racially biased algorithms, political polarization in social media, gendered device design, and more generally, the power asymmetries that fuel contemporary technocapitalism. Students will read a variety of texts, from popular press articles in The Atlantic and Slate to recent book chapters from media theorists such as Ruha Benjamin, Wendy Chun, and Adam Greenfield. We will also look at how practitioners of critical design have responded to issues in technoculture. Through a variety of writing assignments, design projects, and a certification program in Tech Stewardship, students will emerge from this course with critical tools and credential necessary for responding carefully to the innovation ecology in which we are all entangled.