The selected short stories by both world-renowned and new African writers often have a strong social content and share “a pervasive atmosphere of pain and life’s injustice” (Chinua Achebe). What makes a mad scientist? And why do we enjoy hearing about people who challenge these norms, even if they are norms which meet our more objective approval? The emphasis is on understanding cutting edge imaginative visions, principles, metaphors, and approaches that students can apply to their personal and professional lives. Major themes and issues include: war, tourism, memory, history, gender roles, public space, eroticism & romance, evil, ideology, religion and racism; major texts and genres include: Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (drama), Waltz with Bashir (animated documentary film) Rawi Hage’s DeNiro’s Game (novel), longer stories by Henry James and Thomas Mann, as well as various short stories, essays, and excerpts from non-fiction prose (historical, & theoretical). She has taught at a number of universities in Canada and the US, and she now teaches courses at John Abbott that feature contemporary poetry, British novels, current and seminal works of science fiction, medieval stories of knights, and Shakespearean tragedy. Might one word conjure a thousand pictures? We will examine how writers in these different genres have reacted to the two World Wars, the creation of the Eastern Bloc, the so-called end of communism and the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia. Our texts include different kinds of ekphrastic writing— fiction and nonfiction—and the visual artworks that were their inspiration. This introductory course will challenge students to read, write, and think critically as they explore the theme of water in literature and consider current water-related issues around the world. This course can then be used for co⦠Through the study of the mythological source of literature as well as stories and a novel by Native Canadian and American, Latin American, African and European authors, we will learn to appreciate different ways of seeing and speaking about the world, the world around us and the world inside us. In this class, we will study a series of Shakespearean plays that query the stability of strict categories of “maleness” and “femaleness,” while also thinking about how these plays relate to contemporary discussions about gender. And, ultimately, how meaningful is this distinction? The artists who wrote, painted, designed, composed, and crafted during this period shaped their age. Cégep régional de Lanaudière à L'Assomption: Virtual open house. This course will allow us to explore three literary genres and write two college level essays—in stages and via organized revising and editing activities. In this class, we will study Shakespeare’s own plays alongside the texts from which he drew his inspiration. vs. Covid-19 - Due to Current restrictions all Games Are Postponed until further notice John Abbott. In this course, however, we will focus on stories that purport to be true in a literal sense – those that fall under the umbrella of creative nonfiction. In editorial teams, you will work together to become intelligent consumers of the mass media & learn to master, among other techniques, the elements of lead writing, inverted pyramid structure, news story construction, & appropriate newspaper style. Students will learn to appreciate the period studied in its own right and in relation to our own time. In a time where texting and emoticons are replacing well thought out and deeply introspective forms of communication, a return to, and a respect for, the roots of writing will intensify the meaning and experience of life. In this course, we will both examine traditional literature on yoga and use the physical practice of yoga to inspire our own creative writing. In this course, we will look at various types of writing on the topic of bicycles: fictional, scientific, cultural, historical, political, and personal. Wells and ending with more contemporary authors. Students will learn strategies for active reading and methods of analysis to apply to a variety of literary genres. In “Zombies: Our Rotten Selves,” we will trace the development of the zombie genre from its (North American) beginnings in pseudo-anthropological travel-writing about Haiti to its more recent manifestations in contemporary films and video games. Through the study of these diverse tales of African people – children and adults, men and women – we might be able to shed damaging stereotypes and gain knowledge and appreciation of the diverse and colourful literature from that far-away continent. This course explores what happens when literary works are seen again through different perspectives, media, and time periods. The course attempts to explore a few examples of stories by Native writers in order to look more closely at the place of mythology in native storytelling and its role as a source of spiritual strength. This course introduces students to common themes in medieval literature, including the inconstancy of this world we live in, the life of the mind, the pursuit of ideals, and the corruption of authority. In this unit, we will consider connections between obscenity and truth, censorship and cultural value systems. Often characterized as the great leveler, a virus, for the most part, does not discriminate when infecting a host. On the crossroads between both East and West, and North and South, the once mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire was a political formation of chance, intrigue and mostly compromise. Much emphasis will be put on writing exercises that will contribute to sharpen your analytical skills and capability to write effective responses to texts. If we continue our personal growth throughout life, we may find ourselves recognizing and integrating our “dark side”; transforming our lives to make room for our highest potentials; and progressing to ever wider and deeper perspectives on our religious tradition, whatever that tradition may be. This course will examine the development of nature writing in North America through a variety of literary genres (poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction) as well as introduce students to the field of ecocriticism. Our main objects of study are early modern poems and plays, but we will also make reference to news broadsides and other non-literary texts that feature faeries, monsters, cunning women, and other occult figures. While a suburb is a (largely) residential area located outside of, but in proximity to, a larger urban centre, Suburbia as a concept is much more difficult to define. While the cultural movement of hip hop includes other arts such as breakdancing and graffiti, we will focus on the poetry of hip hop music, namely in the music’s wordplay, patterns of stress, and thematic meaning. In this class, we will study the cultural context that gave rise to this figure and reflect on how the social construct of “adolescence” engages various themes, such as sexuality and gender, power, independence, rebellion, violence, and racism. There are numerous sub-genres within these broad categories. As well as reading each play text, students will read a textbook, The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare, whose content will be the subject of a number of comprehension tests. John Abbott. The English department at John Abbott College offers our very best students the opportunity to assemble an English Honours Portfolio. This course explores the relationship between contemporary stories and the society which informs them. The course will also give students the opportunity to further develop their writing skills. In this course students will begin by learning the basics of Shakespearean drama, then quickly move on to examine Shakespeare’s dramatization of family relations in two or three plays. How do authors combine strong story telling techniques with accessible but interesting language to lure young readers? John Abbott College is a public Anglophone college serving students since 1971. (McGill, 1995), MA (Concordia, 2000), Selected publications: Pollen (DC Books, 2011) - short fiction, Current and recent courses: The Beach (101), Poem, Prose and Play (102), 18th & 19th Century Literature (103), Brave New World (102), Creative Writing A (cwa) , Creative Writing B (cwb), The Novel (NVL), Naz likes using words like âineffableâ and âtatterdemalion.â, BA in English and Liberal Arts (Concordia University, 1999), Masters in English Literature (Queenâs University, 2000), Masters in Education (University of Sherbrooke, 2015). This course presents a formal introduction to the fable as a genre of moral tales with talking animals and other fantasy elements. Imagining the end of the world has been a central preoccupation of Western culture for over two thousand years. admissions@johnabbott.qc.ca, COMMUNICATIONS Fall 2012. I have also been able to teach for varying periods of time in California, Saudi Arabia, Austria, and South Korea. 150$), indicates the level of commitment that the student registering for this course is expected to bring. Foundation How do they experience the world? It is, of course, the cultural baggage that makes all the difference. We will also put our theoretical knowledge of rhetoric to practice in a series of in-class and take-home writing exercises. Through the reading of representative works, from fiction to non-fiction, from poetry to plays, we will investigate how their formal properties (point of view, imagery/metaphor, structure, etc.) This course is designed to allow students to consider the importance of the anti-hero in contemporary literature. The course will focus on the application of current contemporary theory to texts of the 20th century that will be selected by the instructor. Is genre a natural kind, for example, or is it established through social negotiation? The objective of the course is to de-mystify the whole genre, overcoming the supposed ‘difficulty’ of poetry. In these courses, the focus may be on either one genre (e.g., short fiction, comedy) or on a variety of genres. Since 2012, WID participants have learned and developed strategies for using writing in their own courses and have assembled portfolios to share with their colleagues. At the end of the course, students will be invited to attempt to creatively revise a text of their choice. Students will also have the opportunity to study literature at an enriched level. This class looks at the connections between literature and the other arts in the Victorian era and beyond. What is innocence? Literature and popular culture are littered with these symbolic metamorphoses and we will examine the literary, social and psychological reasons that trigger these transformations. For example, Isaac Asimov literalizes Ben Jonson’s praise of Shakespeare, as “not of an age but for all time,” by making him a time-traveler. Authors and filmmakers frequently use symbolism, imaginary places and altered realities to present their audiences with a specific perspective on the human experience and the nature of the universe. Blake all but equated creative imagination with God, and the mythological figure that represents this energy in his work is Los. The CEGEP shares grounds with McGill University's Macdonald Campus. Young adult fiction is a hot new genre on the literary market. The course concludes with Hunter S. Thompson’s work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. The real world is a messy place where dust accumulates, people die for no good reason, crime often pays and true love doesn’t conquer much. Sandboxes. In the latter half of the term, we turn to the non-fiction genre of the Memoir and address questions such as: What does the current popularity of memoirs reflect about society? More specifically, the course explores the intersection between personal experience and literary and artistic experimentation within the Modernist genre. Our analysis will consider how friendship is represented, celebrated and fictionalized as one of the most important and archetypal relationships in human life. He enjoys all things dark and scary, and likes to teach courses about them. This course will examine the extent to which literature reflects, bends, shapes, in short, is symbiotically linked to the socio-cultural context within which it is conceived, performed, and ultimately consumed. Home. Some of the topics we may cover in this course are natural and human-made crises, natural resources, waste, nature versus environmentalist writings, species endangerment/extinction, climate change, and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic/dystopian wastelands. This course will look at what this refusal to accept and/or inability to conform to social norms says about the society itself. Moving through one decade at a time, we will read short stories, poems and a play, and learn to write productively about texts, ideas, and arguments. Students will also have the opportunity to study literature at an enriched level. As a state of being, we cannot know innocence until we lose it. Students will also learn how to write well-organized interpretive essays. “Introduction to College English” is the entry-level course in which students learn to read, analyze and write about literary works at the college level. This course is an introduction to the analysis of contemporary poetry & the craft used to create it. This course focuses on the relatively recently identified genre of the graphic novel, or the comic book as serious literature. Skip to main content. This course aims at introducing the students to College English through the symbolic value of friendship in literary narratives and poetic works. Students in this class will get the chance to discover and explore the work of this significant literary figure who author/actor Stephen Fry has called “one of the most underrated writers of the [twentieth] century.”. Drawing from the tradition of classical rhetoric, the course considers such topics as finding and developing arguments, avoiding logical fallacies, and suiting the style to the occasion. In this course, we will take a close look at this pattern of figuration and at the literary representation of textiles and clothing. Some of the topics we may cover in this course are natural and human-made crises, natural resources, waste, nature versus environmentalist writings, species endangerment/extinction, climate change, and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic/dystopian wastelands. An important part of the discussion will also be directed towards the reconciliation process that is so crucial for victims of trauma. It will explore the ways that our physical houses and concepts of home work together to shape personal and communal identities. His teaching interests include medieval literature, history of the book, poetry, science and literature, children's literature, and cinéma. This course explores the idea of solitude in literature. Centering on select texts that reflect changing attitudes toward science through the ages.– including excerpts from the Laputa episode in Gulliver’s Travels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and James Watson’s Double Helix– this class explores the productive overlap between science and literature as forms of discourse. A character might start off young and naïve, and become, as one would expect, older and wiser. Likewise, the authors of literature covered in this course employ imagination, metaphor and allegory to elaborate philosophical, religious, spiritual and political subjects from the vantage point of imaginary places that do not conform to the natural laws of our world. Courses 345-101-MQ and 345-102-MQ may be taken in either order, but both must be successfully completed before registering in 345-21_-AB. This class will introduce you to a variety of traditional and innovative short stories. Students will study the works by the canonical poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Blake while also exploring female writers, such as Letitia Landon, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Robinson. As with all English courses, another aim is to refine the reading and writing skills students will need in all future analytical work. Thomas Abray. Why are we drawn to true crime stories? We will read a wide variety of texts where writers look at Science and at its inventions through a wide range of emotions: caustic sarcasm, awe at its novelty, and downright fear at its intrusion into human emotions and thoughts. And what do we mean when we call a work of literature “modern”? The course aims to heighten awareness of the complexities of the writing process, as well as to provide an important service to students who wish to develop as writers. Students of this course will explore the thematic and metaphorical use of food in literature. Students are required to successfully complete four (4) English courses to obtain their DEC. Listening and writing exercises involving words and lyrical sounds will help students to develop an educated ear. And, most importantly, what do their works tell us about Canada in the time in which they lived? Some of the writing fundamentals that will be covered in the course include sentence structure, paragraphing, quoting, essay structure and the writing process. The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald will allow us to dip into the prohibition era and Jazz Age of the American 1920s. My PhD dissertation (1999: Texas Christian University with the Ida Green Doctoral Fellowship) was on Diaspora literature, specifically on first generation American immigrant writers. Expect to learn about generic conventions, literary history, reader participation and response, as well as transcultural convergences of forms. Ever since we were young we have listened and sung along to songs but how often have we stopped in the middle of doing so, ignored the melody and beat, and reflected on the words themselves to ask: what are these lyrics actually saying? Your job is to read, be critical, and actively express your opinion on the themes and issues you’ve indentified, in both voice and print. Instead of listening to songs, we will read – closely – to engage with the words and consider what is being said and how the lyricists are saying it. Tropes of the grotesque in literature take many forms: Melville’s unproductive scrivener, Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, Angela Carter’s shapeshifting werewolves, Gogol’s social-climbing nose, and Kafka’s terrified and terrifying bug, among many others. This urge to travel, to describe what one sees and feels, has animated men and women of all cultures and eras. This is a first-semester English course where students will read a variety of genres: short stories, poetry, film, and a novel. Dressed in garish book covers, some fantasy literature may be considered formulaic and lowbrow, but this genre has its roots in the oldest and most influential forms of literature of all times: myths, legends, hero tales and fairytales. Is product worship getting out of hand? The writing assignments for the course include analytical essays, journal responses, some creative work, and an anonymous correspondence with a member of another section of 101. The fear and panic that these texts portray are important cathartic outlets when faced with the unknown, and also help us remember that none of this is new. Certain questions seem universally to have occupied people’s minds since prehistoric times. One of the most fundamental elements in literary criticism is the study of character. Born out of sheer necessity, namely the desire of the ruling elite to be able to hang onto power without popular support, it nevertheless managed to waltz into a golden age of unsurpassed intellectual production. Together we will investigate what made this time so remarkable, engaging our literary past with an eye toward improving our writing in the present. By making a more-or-less chronological investigation into some of the poetry produced in the 20. Honours in Neuroscience, and McGill University, where he took his PhD in English. ARE YOU A STUDENT STRUGGLING WITH FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES? Despite what many might like to think, it is clear that the Western world is still far from being an entirely peaceful place. In his tales of adventure written during the Great Depression and the time when Fascism was gathering strength in Europe, we find a raw, powerful reaction to the disillusionment with civilization that followed World War I. Each work will be considered in relation to its appropriate cultural and historical context. In this course we will study fictional and non-fictional texts that explore themes of power, justice, and equality in society. While the term ‘Gothic’ often conjures up images of ruined castles, damsels in distress and supernatural forces, the genre referred to as American Gothic is an entirely different beast. Although these are credit courses, they cannot be taken as English credits. Students will read haunted house stories from the 19th and 20th century and together we will identify genre-defining features which reappear in film and television. Several famous writers, in fact, were also photographers, such as Lewis Carroll, Eudora Welty and Allen Ginsberg, while numerous others included photography as a central topic of their novels, poems and essays. Finally, we will read two plays: Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. The philosopher and first drama critic, Aristotle, argued that the purpose of performing tragedy on stage was to promote feelings of pity and fear in members of the audience who tended to be sympathetic to characters in the plays, seeing in them their own strengths and weaknesses. Our texts include a representative play by Shakespeare and at least one contemporary text. Belonging to a minority culture brings added complications to such a development. Is advertising cleverly controlling us? Much emphasis will be put on writing exercises that will contribute to sharpen your analytical skills and capability to write effective responses to texts. What brings these two texts together in this course is our approach to them: we will examine them in light of how they, as works of literature, intersect with political, social, and cultural history, or in other words how each work is bound up with the life and thought of its own culture. Before that he was a lay church minister, a rock n' roll tour manager and a speculator in antique ornamental jade. ): Valerie started at JAC in 2015. It is important to close your session as soon as you are done using or when you must, in the course of using, leave for a moment. We maintain coherence through this somewhat eclectic survey by focusing on the form and technique of poetry and the novel, the relations between Europe and the Americas, issues of gender, colonial and geo-political history, nature, selfhood and subjectivity, discovery, symbolism, realism, reason and the imagination. It’s both good and bad, light and dark – and almost always at the very same time. This course introduces the student to the literature of the Middle-East, predominately from Persian and Arabic traditions (often Islamic), but including works from various countries. In this course, students will read and respond to a broad selection of speculative fiction, beginning with H.G. Cry? Police Technology. The second is to provide students an opportunity to explore career options so that they can make more informed program choices. Convincing Words teaches rhetoric, that is, the art of using spoken, written, or other forms of discourse to inform, motivate, or, most importantly, persuade an audience. Could time travelers eliminate themselves from their own future by changing the past? What can they teach us about human nature? As a social judgement, innocence is far from stable, since what constituted innocence at one point in history may later be the very be the very condition of guilt. (Concordia) in Canadian Literature and has been teaching at John Abbott since 2013. Students will be exposed to diverse examples of the genre in question and explore its parameters. In this latter sense, one story risks becoming the only story. Us believe that violence must sometimes be used for co⦠John Abbott Collegeâs Department English. 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