university of toronto comparative essay

School of Graduate Studies

Comparative literature, program overview.

The Centre for Comparative Literature offers the Master of Arts  and  Doctor of Philosophy  degree programs to students qualified to pursue literary studies involving several languages. Students pursue research across languages and national literatures, and theoretical issues that cross traditional disciplines.

Admissions are selective; therefore, applicants with the minimum qualifications cannot be guaranteed admission.

Applicants, including those from the University of Toronto, must arrange for recommendations from two referees; must submit a statement of up to 500 words; and must submit a sample of written work, preferably a short essay on a literary topic. Admission to all programs for higher degrees will be based upon the applicant’s undergraduate and graduate records and upon the evidence of the references and statement. The deadline for receiving applications to both the MA and PhD programs is January 15.

All incoming students will meet with the Graduate Coordinator to discuss their program and to decide on their course of study before beginning classes.

Quick Facts

Master of arts, program description.

The Comparative Literature MA program is a course-based program that accommodates a diverse range of students’ interests. The interdisciplinary and transnational character of the program is reflected in the fact that students may take up to half their courses in other departments of their choice. Students work in languages other than English, and their study may include work in a non-literary discipline. The COL1000H The Bases for Comparison provides a basis for study in the program. All incoming students take this seminar course where they consider core theoretical problems of comparison.

All incoming students meet with the Associate Director to discuss their program and to decide on their course of study before beginning classes.

Minimum Admission Requirements

General Regulations of the School of Graduate Studies, provided that applicants also satisfy the Centre for Comparative Literature's requirements stated below. In all cases, programs of study must be approved by the Centre.

An appropriate bachelor's degree from a recognized university that includes courses in literature and languages with an average grade equivalent to at least a University of Toronto B+ in the applicant's overall program.

Demonstrated experience in the study of two literatures (or in comparative literature and one national literature) at the undergraduate level and an ability to work at the graduate level in at least one language other than English.

All applicants must register as full-time students.

Program Requirements

Students admitted to the MA must successfully complete at least 4.0 full-course equivalents (FCEs) including:

COL1000H The Bases for Comparison (0.5 FCE)

at least 1.5 FCEs in COL courses.

Students may pursue independent research for credit equivalent to 0.5 FCE at the MA level, under the direction of an advisor approved by the Centre for Comparative Literature.

A plan of study is defined by each MA student through consultation with the Associate Director in light of the student's particular areas of interest and background. This plan of study is subject to the approval of the Centre for Comparative Literature. In addition to the numerous courses in literary theory, methodology, and interdisciplinary topics offered by the Centre, courses may also be selected from departments of language and literature, as well as from other units in the humanities.

Average of at least B+ in coursework.

MA students who intend to pursue doctoral studies are strongly advised to make appropriate plans for the acquisition of graduate level competence in a second language and literature other than English. An adequate reading knowledge of this second language must be demonstrated before the MA is received.

Program Length

3 sessions full-time (typical registration sequence: F/W/S)

3 years full-time

Doctor of Philosophy

The Comparative Literature PhD program accommodates a diverse range of students’ interests united by a shared concern for comparative issues. The interdisciplinary and transnational character of the program is reflected in the fact that students may take up to approximately half their courses in other departments of their choice. Students work in at least two languages other than English, and their study may include work in a non-literary discipline.

The Centre for Comparative Literature only provides supervision in areas which fall within the competency, interests, or availability of its graduate faculty. The Centre supports research which engages creative practice with humanities-based theory and scholarship. Prospective students with an existing creative practice who are interested in using research creation methods are encouraged to contact the Associate Director to discuss the varieties of projects that can be supported. Fields of research creation may include, but are not limited to: architecture, design, creative writing, visual arts, performance, film, video, interdisciplinary arts, media and electronic arts, and new artistic practices (including experiments with the hard and social sciences). The Centre does not provide studio space or production facilities.

PhD Program

An appropriate master's degree with an average grade of at least A–. Normally, the master's degree will be in comparative literature; however, students with a master's degree in a humanities discipline involving literary studies, especially specific language and literature programs, will also be considered. Demonstrated ability to do advanced research in two languages and literatures other than English.

Applicants, including those from the University of Toronto, must arrange for recommendations from two referees; must submit a statement of purpose of approximately 500 words; and must submit a sample of written work, preferably a short essay on a literary topic.

The Centre welcomes applications from people with an established creative practice who would like to incorporate creative research methodologies into their dissertation work. Applicants who are interested in doing so must have the required expertise and resources to carry out the proposed creative work. Their letter of intent must 1) describe the type of creative research practice they intend to pursue so the Centre can determine whether it can provide appropriate supervisory and committee support. The applicant must 2) direct at least one reference letter writer to testify to the applicant’s competency in the relevant creative practice, and the applicant must 3) articulate how the creative practice may be employed as a method for elucidating critical questions animating the dissertation project.

A student with an MA in Comparative Literature or its equivalent must take at least 3.0 full-course equivalents (FCEs) , of which a minimum of 2.0 FCEs must be COL courses. A student who has an MA in a humanities discipline involving literary studies, especially specific language and literature programs, may be required to take more courses. The actual number of courses required for the PhD will be established at the time of admission through consultation with the Director/Associate Director.

Students may pursue independent research for credit equivalent to 0.5 FCE at the PhD level, under the direction of an advisor approved by the Centre.

Students define the scope and approach of their plan of study in consultation with the Associate Director and other faculty. During the first two years of the program, students complete coursework, language requirements, and prepare for the field examination. Coursework must be completed within the first two years of the PhD program. Students constitute a field examination/supervisory committee and submit a dissertation proposal no later than the end of Year 2 of PhD study. The field examination is taken ideally no later than the end of the first session of Year 3.

Students must demonstrate an ability to work at the graduate level in two languages and literatures other than English; students who are admitted with an established creative practice may substitute the second non-English language with their creative practice. An adequate reading knowledge of a third language other than English must be demonstrated before taking the field examination. For this last requirement, students who have not already substituted their creative practice for the second non-English language may substitute competency in a non-literary discipline. The Centre reserves the right to determine whether a student has met this requirement. Typically, it will be two graduate half courses in the non-literary discipline. These program requirements must be satisfied before taking the field examination. Certification of graduate-level competence and reading knowledge in languages is given to all students who qualify.

All PhD students are required to take their field examination by the end of the Spring session of Year 3 of the program. The examination consists of both a field paper and an oral component.

The field paper is a 30-page critical essay based on the candidate’s reading list that assesses the current state of research and delineates issues and questions pertinent to the thesis. The field paper must be submitted two to three weeks prior to the oral field exam.

The oral part of the examination begins with a textual explication by the student, no more than 30 minutes in length, of a specific passage or poem from a work in the primary reading list, assigned for preparation at least three days in advance. For the presentation, only notes or a general outline may be used. The rest of the examination usually consists of questions concerning the student's commentary on the text, the written field paper, the reading list of the original field proposal, and/or other aspects of the field. The oral exam lasts for two hours.

In the event of failure, the student will be given one more chance to take the exam within one year. Failure after two attempts will lead to the termination of the student's registration.

When the field examination has been completed successfully, the candidate will prepare and defend a dissertation which must be an original and significant contribution to the existing body of knowledge. This dissertation may include a creative research component .

Students' progress will be assessed at least once a year by the Centre's Graduate Academic Committee and/or their respective supervisory committees. Although the program has been designed for completion in four years, some students may require a longer period to complete all of the requirements.

The student must be geographically available , visit the campus regularly, and must register as a full-time student. In addition, a full-time student is not permitted to be absent from the University for an extended period or to participate in a program offered by another university without the explicit written permission of the Centre for Comparative Literature.

PhD Program (Direct-Entry)

Students coming directly out of an appropriate undergraduate program (direct-entry) who have a demonstrated, exceptional ability to undertake advanced research in two languages and literatures other than English may be considered for direct admission into the PhD program.

Applicants, including those from the University of Toronto, must arrange for recommendations from two referees; must submit a letter of intent not exceeding 500 words; and must submit a sample of written work, preferably a short essay on a literary topic.

A student with a bachelor's degree who is admitted directly to the PhD program must take at least 6.0 full-course equivalents (FCEs) , of which 3.0 must be COL courses. The actual number of courses required for the PhD will be established at the time of admission through consultation with the Director/Associate Director.

Students' progress will be assessed at least once a year by the Centre's Graduate Academic Committee and/or their respective supervisory committees.

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Some General Advice on Academic Essay-Writing

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• Miscellaneous observations on a topic are not enough to make an accomplished academic essay. An essay should have an argument . It should answer a question or a few related questions (see 2 below). It should try to prove something—develop a single “thesis” or a short set of closely related points—by reasoning and evidence, especially including apt examples and confirming citations from any particular text or sources your argument involves. Gathering such evidence normally entails some rereading of the text or sources with a question or provisional thesis in mind.
• When—as is usually the case—an assigned topic does not provide you with a thesis ready-made, your first effort should be to formulate as exactly as possible the question(s) you will seek to answer in your essay. Next, develop by thinking, reading, and jotting a provisional thesis or hypothesis . Don’t become prematurely committed to this first answer. Pursue it, but test it—even to the point of consciously asking yourself what might be said against it—and be ready to revise or qualify it as your work progresses. (Sometimes a suggestive possible title one discovers early can serve in the same way.)
• There are many ways in which any particular argument may be well presented, but an essay’s organization —how it begins, develops, and ends—should be designed to present your argument clearly and persuasively. (The order in which you discovered the parts of your argument is seldom an effective order for presenting it to a reader.)
• They start writing early , even before they think they are “ready” to write, because they use writing not simply to transcribe what they have already discovered but as a means of exploration and discovery.
• They don’t try to write an essay from beginning to end, but rather write what seems readiest to be written , even if they’re not sure whether or how it will fit in.
• Despite writing so freely, they keep the essay’s overall purpose and organization in mind , amending them as drafting proceeds. Something like an “outline” constantly and consciously evolves, although it may never take any written form beyond scattered, sketchy reminders to oneself.
• They revise extensively . Rather than writing a single draft and then merely editing its sentences one by one, they attend to the whole essay and draft and redraft—rearranging the sequence of its larger parts, adding and deleting sections to take account of what they discover in the course of composition. Such revision often involves putting the essay aside for a few days, allowing the mind to work indirectly or subconsciously in the meantime and making it possible to see the work-in-progress more objectively when they return to it.
• Once they have a fairly complete and well-organized draft, they revise sentences , with special attention to transitions —that is, checking to be sure that a reader will be able to follow the sequences of ideas within sentences, from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to paragraph. Two other important considerations in revising sentences are diction (exactness and aptness of words) and economy (the fewest words without loss of clear expression and full thought). Lastly, they proofread the final copy.

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COURSE DESCRIPTIONS 2024-2025

Course descriptions | 2024-2025.

Updated: May 22, 2024

Most Comparative Literature courses are taught at the Centre for Comparative Literature, Isabel Bader Theatre, 3rd floor, Linda Hutcheon Seminar Room (BT319) unless indicated otherwise below. Please click on the course code to see its descripti on.

COL1000H FACULTY SEMINAR: THE BASIS FOR COMPARISON Instructor: S. Dowling Time: Fall term, Wednesdays, 1-3

COL1000H is a general introduction to comparative literature, and to contemporary theory and criticism. Its purpose is to offer all incoming M.A. and Ph.D. students exposure to key issues in the discipline. Organized around the broad theme of “Bases for Comparison,” each of our meetings will explore a particular issue or problem addressed in contemporary scholarship. After briefly reviewing the history of the discipline, we will interrogate a number of the categories foundational to it: language, literature, aesthetics, theory, humanity/humanities, relation, and comparison. We will conclude by reading some exemplary new work in comparative literature, through which we will chart possible directions for our own scholarship, and new challenges for the field.

Evaluation: Participation: For every meeting of our course, please prepare the following: briefly outline and respond to the biggest question the author is asking in each of our texts, as well as one or two of the smaller/more local/resultant questions that the author asks. Comment on how and when these questions are posed; how/whether/to what extent they are answered; how these questions are positioned in relation to the works of other thinkers; and how the author demonstrates their relevance or importance. Because the theme of our course is “Bases for Comparison,” I recommend that you make a note of anything the text says about comparison, as well as about the kinds of comparisons it makes, and/or anything it says about comparative literature. Include any significant quotations in your document (with page numbers). Prepare this outline in writing and bring it to class every week. You will use this document for your own reference during class discussions—I will evaluate participation based on quality, not quantity. While I understand that life is complicated, please be aware of the general expectation that graduate students attend all meetings of all their courses. If you find it challenging to contribute orally or if extraordinary circumstances prevent you from attending class, you can email your document to me immediately afterwards. Outline for class contributions: ~1-2 pages, point-form. 20% of total grade.

Keyword Essay: Choose one important critical term from our readings (e.g., freedom, human, queer, form), or a significant/interesting term from a language that you are hoping to work with during your graduate studies (e.g., genre, âcimowin, relación). Write a short essay that synthesizes about three different uses/meanings of this term in order ask a question relevant for literary scholarship. What debates, problems, or important ideas cluster around this term? What do the different meanings of this term help us to see that we otherwise might not? How has the meaning of this term shifted over time, and what might these changes tell us? Are there any issues/problems in translating this term? If so, what do these difficulties indicate? How does this term help you to understand a theoretical issue in a new way? I will offer you an array of keyword essays to consult as you are writing this paper, and you will each meet with me (at least) once during the writing process. 6-7 pages double-spaced, in Times New Roman, MLA citation style. 30% of total grade.

Seminar Paper: Your seminar paper will analyze a text of your choosing (poem, story, novel, film, artwork, etc.). The goal of your seminar paper will be to show how this text addresses or exposes a particular problem or idea discussed in critical theory. Your paper should show how the text asks its readers/viewers to consider this theoretical problem in a new or interesting way. This is a research paper: survey the existing scholarship on the text you have chosen and contextualize your analysis within this ongoing conversation. Your analysis of the text should demonstrate that the existing conversation about the text is, in some significant way, incomplete. Your paper should show how our understanding of the text is improved through your approach. In addition, please also try to show how the existing theoretical conversation could be improved by attending to texts such as the one you are analyzing. In what ways does a text like yours offer its readers/viewers a new way to think about a significant issue? You are invited to use your keyword essay as work toward your seminar paper. Each of you will meet with me (at least) once during the writing process. 20 pages double-spaced, in Times New Roman, MLA citation style. 50% of total grade.

COL5018H GENDER, AGENCY, AND LIFE WRITING Instructor: B. Havercroft Time: Fall term, Tuesdays, 3-5

In this course, we will focus on issues that are situated at the intersection of four major trends in contemporary feminist literary studies : 1) the unprecedented interest in autobiographical writings, sparked by a profusion of the actual publication of such texts and by the development of a large body of criticism dealing with the numerous forms of life writing; 2) the rapid evolution of specifically feminist theories of autobiography (Gilmore, Smith, Watson) over the past twenty years; 3) current feminist theories of agency and subjectivity (Butler, Druxes, Mann); 4) the recent theoretical inquiry into the category of gender (Butler, Robinson, Scott), especially as it is represented in the literary text.

The seminar will begin with a critical study and problematization of the principal concepts outlined in these four theoretical groupings. We will then proceed with close readings of several works of contemporary life writing, drawn from the French, Québécois and German literary contexts, emphasizing the diverse textual strategies by which female autobiographical subjects are constructed and, in turn, make a claim to agency. In many instances, textual subjects merge both fact and fiction in an effort to become subjects-in-process, subjects with multiple facets that challenge androcentric theories of the supposedly unified, sovereign autobiographical subject ( Gusdorf ), while juxtaposing the personal, the political and the social in their texts. Notions such as the relational self, the writing of trauma and illness, performativity in autobiographical writing, the « death » of the subject and the author, and the problematics of memory (personal, historical, cultural, etc.) will be examined. While the focus will be on various forms of women’s life writing, we will also analyze one male author’s AIDS diary, not simply to further investigate the gendered basis of all writing, but also to examine the particular forms of agency mobilized in autobiographical accounts of illness.

PRIMARY TEXTS

Brossard, Nicole.   Journal intime ou voilà donc un manuscrit  (Montréal : Les Herbes Rouges, 1998 [1984]).  English translation :  Intimate Journal, or, Here’s a Manuscript ; followed by  Works of Flesh and Metonymies  (Toronto : Mercury Press, 2004).

Ernaux, Annie.   La Honte  (Paris : Gallimard, 1997).  English translation :  Shame , trans. Tanya Leslie (New York : Seven Stories Press, 1998).

Guibert, Hervé.   À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie  (Paris : Gallimard, 1990).  English translation :  To The Friend Who Did Not Save My Life , trans. Linda Coverdale (London : Quartet Books, 1991).

Wolf, Christa.   Kindheitsmuster  (Berlin/Weimar : Aufbau Verlag, 1976).  Two English translations exist : 1)  Patterns of Childhood , trans. Ursule Molinaro and Hedwig Rappolt (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984; and 2)  A Model Childhood , trans. U. Molinaro and H. Rappolt (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980).

N.B . The original German edition and English translations of  Kindheitsmuster  are available in the University of Toronto libraries, or you may order your own copy.  English translations of Ernaux’s, Brossard’s and Guibert’s texts are available in the U. of Toronto libraries, or you may order your own copies.  See the course schedule document (to be distributed at the first meeting of the class) for further details.

THEORETICAL READINGS A series of complete bibliographies dealing with the various different theories to be analyzed in this course will be distributed at the first meeting of the seminar. Students are advised to prepare for the course by doing some preliminary readings : Butler, Judith.  Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity  (New York : Routledge, 1990). ———.  Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits of « Sex »  (New York : Routledge, 1993). ———.  Excitable Speech : A Politics of the Performative  (New York : Routledge, 1997). Druxes, Helga.  Resisting Bodies : The Negociation of Female Agency in Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction  (Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 1996). Eakin, Paul John.  How Our Lives Become Stories : Making Selves  (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1999). Felski, Rita.  Beyond Feminist Aesthetics : Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1989). Gilmore, Leigh.  Autobiographics : A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1994). Gusdorf, Georges. « Conditions et limites de l’autobiographie », in Günter Reichenkron and Erich Haase (eds.),  Formen der Selbstdarstellung : Analekten zu einer Geschichte des literarischen Selbstporträts  (Berlin : Duncker and Humblot, 1956) : 105-123. (English translation in James Olney, 1980). Lejeune, Philippe.  Le pacte autobiographique  (nouvelle edition augmentée) (Paris : Seuil, 1996 [1975]). Mann, Patricia.  Micro-Politics : Agency in a Postfeminist Era  (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Olney, James (ed.) . Autobiography : Essays Theoretical and Critical  (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1980). Smith, Sidonie.  A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography : Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation  (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1987). ——. « Performativity, Autobiographical Practice, Resistance », a/b : Auto/Biography Studies, Vol. 10, no. 1 (spring 1995) : 17-33. Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson (eds.).  Women, Autobiography, Theory : A Reader (Madison : The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998). Watson, Julia. « Toward An Anti-Metaphysics of Autobiography », in Robert Folkenflik (ed.),  The Culture of Autobiography : Constructions of Self-Representation  (Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1993) : 57-79.

Evaluation: Written Response to a Theoretical Article: 15% Oral presentation  (30 minutes) :  25% Research paper (20 pages max.) : 50% Participation in class :                   10%

N.B . The participation mark will be based not only on regular attendance at the seminar, but also on ACTIVE participation in class discussion

COL5086H LITERATURE, CULTURE AND CONTACT IN MEDIEVAL IBERIA Instructor: J. Ross Time: Fall term, Tuesdays, 1-3

This course will examine the dynamics of cultural exchange between Muslims, Jews and Christians in medieval Iberia as manifested in the literatures produced by each group. Beginning with an introduction to theories of alterity and postcolonialism and their relevance to the medieval past, the course, through readings of Hebrew (in translation), Arabic (in translation) and Castilian literary sources will consider the way ‘others’ are represented, as well as the ways in which cultures come into contact in these texts through adaptation or hybrid literary forms. The course will move from Islamic Spain where cultural cross-fertilization produced such innovative, hybrid forms of poetry as the  muwashshahat  in Arabic with their accompanying Romance jarchas, and Jewish poets like Todros Abulafia who struggled to define himself and his writing within the dominant Arabic literary culture, to Christian Spain where the complex models of literary translation and transmission placed Arabic models at the centre of European intellectual culture. The course will follow the trajectory of Spanish history as Muslims and Jews were assimilated, converted or expelled by exploring the dynamics of conversion in poetry written by converted Jews in the 15th century and the domestication of the ‘other’ in such 16th-century Castilian texts as the  Abencerraje . In addition to texts already mentioned, other readings may include Shem Tov’s  Moral Proverbs , selections from the romances, and Juan Manuel’s  El conde Lucanor . A reading knowledge of Spanish is required.

This course explores the cross-fertilization of cultures and literatures in medieval Iberia, a focus that is central to the mandate of Comparative Literature. The study of Hebrew, Arabic, Castilian and Latin literatures in the Spanish Middle Ages is more usually carried out in separate departments of Spanish, Near and Middle Eastern Studies or Medieval Studies. The offering of this course through Comparative Literature enables a much fuller and richer exploration of medieval Iberian literary culture.

Evaluation: Seminar participation: 20% Response Notes: 30% Presentation: 15%

COL5100HF THE LATE BARTHES: THE NEUTRAL, MOURNING, AND PHOTOGRAPHY Instructor: J. Ricco Time: Fall term, Thursdays, 10-12

This seminar examines some of the principal themes in the work of Roland Barthes over what were to be the last three years of his life. Prompted and enabled by the recent publication and translation of his lecture courses at the College de France (in particular Th e Neutral; and Th e Preparation of the Novel), and the mourning diary that he kept in the wake of his mother’s death, the course seeks to understand the central importance of the notion of the neutral, the experience of mourning, the evidence of photography, and the notations on homosexual erotics in Barthes’ writing and teaching from his Inaugural Lecture at the College on January 7, 1977 to his seminal book on photography, Camera Lucida. Other texts by Barthes that we will discuss include: Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes; and Incidents. In addition, we will read critical works on Barthes by Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, D.A. Miller, Diana Knight, Eduardo Cadava, Geoff rey Batchen and others.

Evaluation :

• Preparation for, and participation in, weekly seminar meetings (10%)
• Leading 1 class discussion of reading assignment (10%)
• Weekly critical response papers (15%)
• Presentation of Research Project (15%)
• Research paper: approx. 20-25 pages (5,000-6,500 words); fully annotated with bibliography, (50%)

COL5101H DIASPORIC CITIES: ITINERANT NARRATIVES OF METROPOLES BY TRAVELLERS AND EXPATRIATES Instructor: A. Sakaki Time: Fall term, Tuesdays, 10-12

This course will look at six metropoles (Berlin, London, Paris, New York, St. Petersburg, Shanghai) from the perspectives of Japanese visitors such as Mori, Natsume, Nagai, Yokomitsu, Tanizaki, Gotô, Tawada, and Horie, and from those of natives and immigrants (e.g., Benjamin, Döblin, Nabokov, Woolf, Conrad, Rilke, Pushkin, Gogol, Shi). Those writers’ accounts of cities in the span of time between the late nineteenth century and late twentieth century are inflected by the itineraries of their movement before and after their experience of the cities and by their peripatetic as well as optical experience of urban spaces of varied historical, social, material and geopolitical conditions. They reveal cities not as cartographical spots but as sites in the traffic of bodies and sensations. The readings (all assigned are available in English, with additional materials to be introduced by the instructor) shall be arranged in such a way that participants can compare each city’s literary mediations by variably invested observers. Accompanying theoretical, critical and photographic texts (e.g., Apter, Atget, Benjamin, Brandt, Brassaï, Burgin, de Certeau, Doisneau, Gleber, Maeda, Ronis, Walker) shall define a conceptual framework for each session.

Class Participation 10% (each week’s performance shall be assessed accumulatively) Response Papers 20% Oral Presentation 10% (once during the semester) Term Paper 60% … …

COL5154HF: SEARCHING FOR SEBALD: FICTION, EXILE, AND THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION Instructor: J. Zilcosky Time: Fall Term, Wednesdays, 3-5

When the German-English writer, W.G. Sebald, began publishing in the late 1980s, readers reported never having read anything like him. What made his writing so unusual? Was it the unpredictable appearance of grainy photographs only tangentially related to the text? Was it the relentless blurring of fact and fiction, especially through autobiographical narrators, often named “Sebald”? Was it the flatly melancholic depiction of exile? Was it the mystery of genre: Were these autobiographies, novels, collages, travelogues? Or was it Sebald’s paradoxical style: postmodern self-reflection portrayed in elaborate nineteenth-century sentences, including one that extends for over seven pages?

In this course, we will search for “Sebald,” first by considering how his texts without apparent precursors indeed had them: the autofictions of Jorge Luis Borges, the periscopic monologues of Thomas Bernhard, and the photo-embedded stories of Alexander Kluge. We will then dive into Sebald’s great prose fictions – Vertigo , The Emigrants , The Rings of Saturn , and Austerlitz – examining his revolutionary style and the recurrent themes it describes: the unreliability of memory, the catastrophic history of humankind, and the conundrums of a non-Jewish German son of a Wehrmacht officer writing about the Shoah.

These themes touch on contemporary theoretical discourses surrounding trauma, war, postmemory, text-image, and autofiction. We will examine how these theories illuminate Sebald’s and vice versa: how his fiction prefigures such conceptual “discoveries.” By participating in own translations, Sebald likewise anticipates aspects of translation theory.

At the end of the course, we consider Sebald’s influence – following his early death in 2001 – on seminal contemporary writers such as Patrick Modiano, Rachel Cusk, and Jenny Erpenbeck.

Evaluation : Final Paper: 50% In-Class Presentation: 20% Critical Summaries: 15% Overall Class Participation: 15%

JCY5116H FREUD: CASE HISTORIES Instructor: R. Comay Time: Fall term, Thursdays, 1-3 Syllabus , p lease consult with  Comparative Literature  for course location

This course will be devoted to reading Freud’s case histories. We’ll be paying close attention to the unstable relationship between the theoretical and the clinical registers in Freud’s text, with particular emphasis on the psychoanalytic concepts of transference, resistance, repetition, working-through, “construction in analysis,” and the end-of-analysis. In addition to the major case studies — Dora, Anna O, Little Hans, Schreber, Wolfman, Ratman –we will also consider the snippets of Freud’s own auto-analysis (e.g. the “specimen dream” in the  Interpretation of Dreams , the  Autobiographical Fragment , and other first-person texts, including Freud’s early correspondence with Fliess). Our reading of the primary texts will be accompanied by recent theoretical and critical engagements with the case histories, including Jacques Lacan, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Jacques Derrida, Jacqueline Rose, and Eric Santner.

Evaluation : Class presentation with write-up 30%, participation 10%, final paper 60%

WINTER/SPRING TERM

COL5122HS TEXT AND DIGITAL MEDIA Instructor: R. Bai Time: Spring term, Thursdays, 11-1

This course examines new forms of textualities and textual practices that are emerging in the digital era. It highlights an understudied dimension of the text, i.e. the medium that forms its material and technological infrastructure such as scroll, codex, book, CD, e-book, the Internet, and smartphone. The course starts with a historical investigation into the printed text and print culture. Then it moves on to the question of how digital technologies shape reading and writing as well as other text-based cultural practices. While the course revolves around the mediality of the text, it distances itself from technological determinism by stressing the facts that digital technologies are always embedded in and shaped by historically specific political, social, and cultural conditions. This course is designed for students who are interested in questions and issues related to literary production in the digital era and more generally the materiality of the text. Theoretical and scholarly works we will engage with in this course include, but not limited to, Understanding Media: Extensions of Man (McLuhan, 1964), The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Adrian Johns, 2000), Writing Machines (N. Katherine Hayles, 2002), Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print (Jay David Bolter, 2001), Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media (Mark Hansen, 2006), The Interface Effect (Alexander R. Galloway), The Language of New Media (Lev Manovich, 2002), Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies (Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 2009).

Evaluation : Class participation (15%) Discussion leader (15%) Response Essay 1 (35%) Response Essay 2 (35%)

COL5124HS PUBLIC READING Instructor: A. Komaromi Time: Spring term, Tuesdays, 1-3

This course considers the formation of publics and public intellectuals, according to some leading theorists, asking: how do we adapt theoretical tools and insights to changing conditions and challenges within a globalized modernity?

A survey of theory and literary texts from western, Soviet and other sources will allow us to examine the concept of the “public” as a fragile construction within democratic society. We will consider how publics and subjects within them may be constituted through shared texts, private reading and public interventions, media, and social networks. Students will be encouraged to think critically about dichotomies of public vs. private, author vs. reader, and producer vs. consumer. We will aim to foster awareness of the potential for autonomy and a critical stance toward power in historical contexts and in the contemporary world of globalized networks and media. We will apply critical scrutiny to concepts of filiation and affiliation, citizenship and representation, asking what public reading means for the past and future of democracy. Readings may include selections from Jurgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Edward Said, Michael Warner, as well as literary readings from Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Walt Whitman, George Orwell, Russian futurists, Soviet nonconformists, and others.

You are encouraged to read in the original language(s) other than English where you can and to bring insights based on that reading into discussion.

Evaluation Participation – 15% Reading Responses – 20% Proposal and Annotated Bibliography (for Final Essay) – 20% Final Essay – 45%

COL 5125HS LITERATURE, TRAUMA, MODERNITY Instructor: J. Zilcosky Time: Spring term, Mondays, 3-5

In this course, we will examine literary representations of trauma from the early nineteenth century (the Industrial Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars) to the aftermath of World War I, when “shell shock” brought trauma irrevocably into the public eye. We will begin by examining the discourse of unrepresentability and doubt in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century medical literature, especially in Freudian psychoanalysis: if we can find no somatic source for trauma, how do we know that it exists? We will then investigate how the literature of this period – “modernism” – both reacted to and helped to shape this discourse. Rarely focusing explicitly on traumatic events, this literature only hints at traumatic occurrences – foregrounding instead the problem of representability at the heart of the modern age. Just as the traumatized body no longer points back to a physical pathology, so too does language itself seem to be severed from the object it aims to describe.

We will read literary and theoretical texts by writers such as Freud, Kafka, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Jean Laplanche, Catherine Malabou, Shoshana Felman, and Cathy Caruth.

COL5132HF ONE PHILOSOPHER, ONE ARTIST Instructor: E. Cazdyn Time: Fall term, Wednesdays, 1-3

This seminar will be dedicated to one philosopher and to one artist from different national situations and different historical generations. We will carefully work through the corpus of each figure and experiment with creating unlikely connections. In the process, we will question the boundaries of philosophy and art as well as the limits and possibilities of comparison. The idea is this: what kind of connections-comparisons (and what kind of theory of comparison) will emerge when we dedicate to two figures at the same time—even though these two figures have no obvious connections and have, most likely, never been thought together. Example pairings include the French philosopher Alain Badiou and Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul or American literary theorist Fredric Jameson and Japanese dancer Min Tanaka. For the Fall 2024, we will focus on the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro and either American conceptualist artist Dan Graham, Canadian artist Michael Snow, French filmmaker Claire Denis, Korean-American artist Nam June Paik, American artist Bruce Nauman, or American novelist Octavia E. Butler.  Check in over the Summer to confirm.

Assignments : Will likely involve a seminar presentation, short reflection papers, and a final essay.

COL5136HS SPACE, PLACE AND POWER Instructor: H. Bahoora Time: Spring term, Wednesdays, 1-3

This seminar provides an overview of scholarship in the spatial humanities, with a focus on the ways that theorizations of space and place have informed aesthetics, culture, and politics. The “spatial turn” in critical theory designates an increased focus on space, place and spatiality across various disciplines to emphasize a geographic dimension as an essential aspect of the production of culture and experience. In the first half of the course, we will read seminal theorists of space whose work reinserted spatiality as essential to the discursive constructions of the categories of modernity and postmodernity. We will then examine how their challenges to historicism transformed understandings of the space-time experience of global capitalism and provided frameworks for expanded and revised theorizations of colonialism and imperialism, gender and sexuality, urbanization and architectural history, geocriticism and ecocriticism, and literary studies. We will investigate how the spatial turn has in recent decades resulted in attempts to map new historical geographies of literary production, and we will consider the methodological implications the spatial turn has had on the transformation of theoretical interventions in literary studies, particularly in postcolonial theory. Authors will include Gaston Bachelard, Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Frantz Fanon, David Harvey, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said, Jean Rhys, Tayeb Salih, Nuruddin Farah, Amitav Ghosh, Assia Djebar, and Mahasweta Devi.

Evaluation : Attendance/Participation: 20% Three Response Papers: 30% Final paper proposal: 10% Final Paper: 40% … …

COL5148HS POST-CONFLICT LITERATURES: EUROPE, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAS ( Course cancelled) Instructor: C. James Time: Spring term, Thursdays, 1-3

Over the last four decades, a growing body of literary works which specifically engage the aftermath of political conflict has been produced by writers from different societies across the globe. Emerging from the space of horror left by ethnic, religious, intra-state and /or border conflicts, these works highlight the significant role that literature can play in the negotiating of peace and resolution of conflict. In addition to participating in the process of attenuating conflict and building peace, post-conflict literatures of the late 20th and early 21st centuries become crucial in rebuilding filial, social and communal relations. Significantly, post-conflict literatures also serve as conduits through which diasporic communities negotiate politics of identity and belonging with ‘home’ territories.

In this course we will study post-conflict narratives from Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic and Colombia. Drawing on recent theoretical conceptions of conflict geography, biopolitics and necropolitics, we will examine issues such as religious and state violence, violations of human rights, trauma, genocide and post-traumatic memory. But we will also be examining the therapeutic potential of imaginative literature as well as its role in facilitating processes of truth and reconciliation. Additionally, the course analyzes the variety of creative strategies employed by the different genres within post-conflict literatures (memoir, autobiography, autofiction, science fiction, crime drama) to make sense of the past and map a new future.

In exploring post-conflict literatures, we will draw on ideas from a wide range of thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Achille Mbembe, Antonio Negri and Sylvia Wynter, among others. The main texts for study will include Wendy Erskine Sweet Home (2019) [Ireland], Steven Galloway The Cellist of Sarajevo (2009) [Bosnia and Herzegovina – Canadian Author], Scholastique Mukasonga Our Lady of the Nile (2014) [Rwanda], Chinua Achebe There Was A Country (2013) [Nigeria], Evelio Roserio The Armies (2009) [Colombia] and René Philoctète Massacre River (2008) [Dominican Republic].

Evaluation : Attendance and Participation: 10% Class Presentation [plus written version]: 30% Final paper: 60% … …

COL5152HS WORLD LITERATURE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Instructor: Z. R. Mian Time: Spring term, Mondays, 1-3

This course will trace the emergence of World Literature as an integral subfield of contemporary literary studies, from the mid-20th century to the present. Contentiously depicted as either the antithesis or ideal of comparative scholarship, World Literature evokes less a singular approach than it does fecund questions concerning literary institutions, circulation, translation, and pedagogy. We will train a literary-sociological lens on the metropolitan production of World Literature while attending to new approaches that stress the latter’s subjective constitution.

COL5152H will acquaint graduate students with key debates in the study of World Literature. We will compare early models offered by Damrosch, Moretti, and Casanova with new work by Hayot, Beecroft, and others. How does a “literary ecology” differ from the “world republic of letters,” and what intellectual commitments configure the world in terms of “significant geographies” rather than as one “literary world system”? We will work through such macro-concepts by foregrounding specific historical debates. We will, for example, reappraise the Ngugi-Achebe debate on the language of African literature through recent work by Jeyifo and Mukoma. Paraliterary institutions such as UNESCO and the university will form significant sites of inquiry as we turn to Brouillette, English, Huggan, Shapiro, and others. The question of translation and the pedagogical stakes of world literature will be brought into focus through Spivak, Venuti, and Apter. We will conclude this comprehensive overview by engaging the contemporary emergence of Global Englishes through scholarship by Anjaria, Joshi, Walkowitz, and Saxena. Students will leave this course acquainted with the full range of methods and debates shaping the study of World Literature today. They will also have developed a considerable appreciation of the long-term constitution of the field.

Evaluation : Research paper: 35% Research Proposal: 15% Participation: 25% Review presentation: 25% … …

COL5153H LYRIC: POLITICS AND POETIC FORM (not offered in 24-25) Instructor: M. Nyquist Time: Spring term, Wednesdays, 3-5

Of the three large literary genres (epic, drama, lyric), lyric poetry tends to be the least studied; it also often triggers anxiety.  In this course, students will learn to identify a variety of lyric poetry’s sub-genres and formal features.  We will explore questions such as, what are some of the ways in which historical and political contexts matter? How do poetry’s rhythmical and musical elements manifest themselves, if at all? What social positions or ideological formations are associated with specific sub-genres or forms? In what ways have poets from marginalized communities eschewed or appropriated conventional sub-genres or poetic forms?  How have new forms of media contributed to debates about “formalist” and “anti-formalist” positions? To make this manageable, we will focus on (1) early modern and contemporary poetry (2) pastoral poetry, the sonnet, and elegy (3) Euro-colonial and post-colonial contexts. Students will be selecting many of the poems to be studied in class; if they were written in languages other than English, they will be accompanied by translations. 

For students of literature, lyric poetry is often radically under-studied, leaving prospective instructors and writers without the knowledge needed to understand, interpret, teach, or write lyric poetry. This course provides an excellent introduction to central formal features and literary debates. Students with advanced expertise will find many new contexts in which to experiment and learn.  

Course Objectives •Learn to reflect on a wide variety of issues relating to the writing and study of lyric poetry •Acquire the ability to identify a variety of poetic sub-forms and features •Develop a sense of the historically and culturally specific features of a given set of poems •Develop ability to analyze innovative appropriations of existing sub-genres, forms or poetic features

Method of Evaluation Two co-facilitations (25%) Participation (25%) Two exercises (10%) Short essay of 1000 words (15%) Final essay of approximately 3000 words (25%)

JFC5120H THE GIFT — LE DON Instructor: A. Motsch Time: Spring term, Tuesdays, 10-12

Marcel Mauss’ now “classic” essay on gift exchange inspired many debates in sociology, literature, critical theory, philosophy, anthropology and beyond. Theorizing the gift as a social and symbolic practice, as a fundamental way of establishing social relationships, Mauss’ essay allows us to rethink what constitutes an object, what is implied in the exchange of objects (and words), what is the role of such exchanges, and which kind of exchange speaks to what kind of social relationship and type of society. What is a gift, a commodity, a work of art, a fetish, a money transaction? How does the gift move from “primitive” to “modern” societies? Which socioeconomic models privilege gift exchange? What is the role of the gift in oral societies? Can speech be theorized as a gift and what does it mean “to give your word” to someone? What does it mean “to give life”?

Gift exchange is fundamental to all societies and these social transactions are consequently ubiquitous in any discourse relating to human beings. Some authors, cultural critics and philosophers have spent considerable effort to think about such questions in a variety of media and in many different artistic forms. Gide’s novel The Counterfeiters and Bataille’s essay on excess, along with all the literature on emerging capitalism by the likes of Balzac and Dickens, all the “rags to riches” stories and the literature on sacrifice in literature and anthropology, shine immediately in a different light. Never short of relevance, Mauss’ essay lends theoretical depth to contemporary debates on Settler-indigenous relations which inevitably turn to issues of gift exchange to rethink social relations and cultural exchanges.

This course will work through some theoretical readings and contrast them with primary examples mostly from literature, film and cultural studies, but also from anthropological and socio-political theory as well as the current debates in the wake of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation commission. The texts do not limit themselves though to any single period, nor to any particular national or theoretical tradition.

Evaluation : … …

JFC5129HS PERFORMATIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACTS: PAINTED AND PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS OF SELF IN PERSONAL AND POLITICAL TESTIMONIALS Instructor: J. LeBlanc Time: Spring term, Tuesdays, 3-5

“In my view, text and image complement, rather than supplement, each other; since reference is not secure in either, neither can compensate for lack of stability in the other. Because both media are located on the border between fact and fiction, they often undercut just as easily as they reinforce each other.” (T. Adams).

In the autobiographical and historiographic narratives chosen to explore the various ways in which text and image can interact with and reflect on each other, the writers use a highly metalinguistic discourse to discuss the problems of self-referentiality in language and in images in order to reflect on the use of images, paintings and sketches in their visualizations and articulations of selfhood. Edward Ardizzone, Annie Ernaux, Frida Kahlo and Jacques Poulin, all express an awareness of the auto-bio-graphical self as decentered, multiple, fragmented and divided against itself in the act of observing and being. The use of paintings, drawings, figures of ekphrasis and photos (portraits and self-portraits), operate as visual supplements (illustrations) and corroboration (verification) of the autobiographical subjects and their narratives. The introduction or the description of images in autobiographical and fictional autobiographical texts problematizes the status of the autobiographical genre, the complexities underlining the referential, representational, mimetic relationships between self-images and life-writings, etc. The study of theoretical texts pertaining to autobiography and self portraiture (paintings, drawings and photographs) and the relationship between words and images will serve as a basis for our analysis of Ardizzone, Ernaux, Kahlo and Poulin’s autobiographical and historiographic narratives.

Ardizzone, Ed. Diary of a War Artist. Fragments of this illustrated diary will be distributed in class. It will be studied in conjunction with the artistic production of E. Ardizzone conserved at the IWM in London. Copies of images will be distributed.

Ernaux, Annie. The years. Fragments of her illustrated diary published in Écrire la vie will enhance our study of Ernaux’s expansive use of photographic ekphrasis within her memoire.

Kahlo, Frida. Intimate Diary. English translation of her personal diary initially published in Spanish. This illustrated life-narrative will be studied in conjunction with Kahlo’s numerous painted self-portraits.

Poulin, Jacques. Volkswagen Blues. This illustrated text will be studied through historical documents pertaining to indigenous cultures referenced by Poulin.

THEORETICAL TEXTS

A more detailed theoretical bibliography will be provided. – Adams, Timothy D. Light Writing and Life Writing. Photography in Autobiography. University of North Carolina Press, 1992. – Doy, Gen. Picturing the Self: changing views of the subject in visual culture. London: I.B.Tauris, 2005. – Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion: A Study of the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. – Hughs, Alex and Andrea Noble. Phototextualities: Intersections of Photography and Narrative. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2003. – Kim, Yeon-Soo. The Family Album. Bucknell University Press, 2005. – Lejeune, Philippe. Je est un autre. Paris: Seuil, 1980. – Louvel, L. (Jean-Pierre Montier, et.al.) Littérature et photographie. Rennes, PUR, 2008. – Mitchell, W.J.T. The Languages of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. – Olney, James. Studies in Autobiography. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. – Sontag, S. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1977.

Evaluation : One essay: 65% One presentation: 20% Participation: 15%

*Please note that students are invited to work on a corpus of their choice for their final essay and presentation. However, a comparative study including one of the primary texts listed (Ardizzone, Ernaux, Kahlo, Poulin and Barthes) should be used if one chooses to use another text which is not featured in our list of primary texts. … …

Updated: June 4, 24

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Writing About Literature

Like all university essays, the English paper requires critical thought and strong argumentation, but its focus on language and close textual analysis makes it unique. Here are some tips that you’ll want to keep in mind when writing about literature.

Avoid plot summary. The main purpose of an English paper is to advance an argument. As a general rule, mention only plot details that are relevant to your argument. You may occasionally need to contribute a small amount of additional information about the storyline to make your analysis coherent, but keep the summary to a minimum, and leave plenty of space for your own ideas. You can usually assume that your reader knows the narrative well.

Master the art of the analytical thesis. A good thesis is a statement of roughly one to three sentences that says something intelligent about a literary work. It is not sufficient simply to identify a theme in your thesis. For instance, saying that a text deals with the theme of love or death or betrayal is not enough. (Instead, though, you might consider the ways in which love or death or betrayal come to be understood within the text.) A thesis must be complex enough that it would not be immediately obvious to a casual reader, but it must be simple enough that it can be stated in a relatively short amount of space.

Here is a list of possible questions around which you might construct a solid thesis: How does the author's or narrator's perspective on a given theme shift as the text develops? Are there any apparent tensions or contradictions within the text? If so, how might they be resolved? How does the text engage with the major political or cultural ideas of the era in which it was written? How does the text challenge or undermine the dominant conventions of the genre in which it was written? These are just a few suggestions. There are thousands of ways to craft a thesis, so don't feel limited to the questions above. Here are two examples of effective thesis statements:

By incorporating novelistic techniques—such as sustained imagery and character development—into a non-novelistic work, Alice Munro, in her short story collection Who Do You Think You Are? , subverts the narrative conventions of novelistic discourse.

Yeats's "Easter, 1916" appears both to condemn and to celebrate the revolutionary impulse in early-twentieth-century Ireland. It is neither a nationalist rallying cry nor an anti-nationalist cautionary tale. Rather it conveys profound ambivalence toward the Easter uprising.

Let the structure of your argument determine the structure of your paper. In most cases, you will best serve your argument by deviating from the chronology of events in the text you are critiquing. It is fully acceptable to pluck pertinent evidence from the beginning, middle, and end of a literary text and to use these disparate examples in the same paragraph. Sometimes you may be asked to provide a close reading of a given literary work. Often a close reading is structured the same way as any other English paper: you present a thesis and then defend it through detailed analysis of the text. But occasionally, your professor might ask you to do a line-by-line or paragraph-by-paragraph reading of a poem, passage, or story. This is one of those rare instances in which a more sequential approach is appropriate.

Opt for analysis instead of evaluative judgments. When writing a paper, focus on analyzing the work, not celebrating it. Instead of telling your reader that a given work is beautiful, lyrical, or timeless, focus on the ideas the text conveys and the ways it goes about conveying them. You may come across a line in a poem or novel that is so beautiful, or so sloppy, that you cannot resist commenting on it. If you're burning up to make an evaluative point, then do so. But keep it short and sweet (or short and snarky), and don't let it become the focus of your paragraph.

Don't confuse the author with the speaker. Often, particularly when you are analyzing a poem, it is tempting to assume that the author is also the narrator. This is usually not the case. Poetry, like the novel or short story, is a creative genre in which authors are free to inhabit the voice(s) of any character(s) they like. Most poems do not identify a narrator by name, but the fact that the speaker is unnamed does not necessarily imply that he or she stands in for the author. Remember, the person doing the writing is the writer, and the person doing the speaking is the speaker. In some cases, you may choose to treat the speaker as a stand-in for the writer. In these instances, make sure you have a reason for doing so—and consider mentioning that reason somewhere in your paper.

In the opening to Ezra Pound's short poem "A Pact," the speaker addresses the nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman, Pound's literary predecessor: I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman— I have detested you long enough. I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. (1-5)

Here, the speaker seeks to make amends with Whitman, whose poetry he once detested. Although the passage conveys a desire for reconciliation, it does not do so in an amicable manner. The writing is portioned out into short, terse statements, with little concession to diplomatic language. Consequently, the passage reads more like a pledge or vow than a peace offering. Moreover, Pound's verse is inflected with familial language. The speaker refers to himself as a "grown child" who is finally "old enough now to make friends," whereas he positions Whitman as the "pig-headed father." Clearly, the speaker is motivated not by a genuine need for conciliation but by a begrudging sense of familial duty toward a father whom he never respected.

Integrate quotations fully into your argument. Whenever you incorporate a literary quotation into your writing, you must justify its usage. First, be sure to contextualize the quotation by giving some information about it (who is speaking, what part of the text it comes from, etc.). Then, follow each quotation with a few sentences in which you unpack the passage and relate it back to your argument. In other words, a quotation should never speak for itself: you must do the necessary work to demonstrate what the quotation means in the context of your argument. The following passage offers an argumentative close reading of a quotation from Keats:

In the opening of "To Autumn," Keats depicts the harvest period as a "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun" (1-2). Here, the speaker juxtaposes images of seasonal abundance with notions of loss connected to the impending winter. The word "fruitfulness" has obvious associations with agricultural productivity; however, it is modified by the adjective "mellow," which limits the reader's conception of unbridled abundance. Moreover, Keats's phrase "the maturing sun" sets associations with warmth and comfort against notions of old age and declining prowess.

Written by Simon Lewsen, University College Writing Centre

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Critical Dialogues in Comparative Urbanism

This cluster expands on the established 'Critical Dialogues' collaborative partnership with the University of Toronto.

1 April 2024

• Builds on the strength of the established ‘Critical Dialogues’ collaborative partnership with the University of Toronto, which culminated in the edited book Critical Dialogues of Urban Governance, Development and Activism: London and Toronto (UCL Press, 2020)
• Widen to create an umbrella network for similarly dialogic city-based comparisons involving researchers from BSP and external colleagues
• Designed to be a fluid scaffolding that supports collaborative comparative research activities and outputs in relation to generative comparative urban studies
• Capacity-building network to enable comparative research that goes beyond static vignettes from different cities or projects, promoting research that is collaborative and diverse in team composition and disciplinary impact
• The core aim is to support high-quality and cutting-edge outputs – working papers, project reports, books, blogs, podcasts and host seminars, book launches etc.

Dr Susan Moore, The Bartlett School of Planning Send Susan an email View Susan's profile

Dr Michael Short, The Bartlett School of Planning  Send Michael an email View Michael's profile

• Canvas of ongoing comparative city research and established relevant 'dialogic' networks in BSP (particularly amongst members of the cluster). This is being done in consultation with GEO.
• Half-day workshop on comparative research and developing our agenda (i.e. discussion of themes etc.)
• Facilitate a critical dialogues online doctoral network for research exchange and collaboration
• Negotiate open access book series
• Host a small (limited number of attendees) conference/external workshop

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