Course Descriptions for the
Master of Arts in Teaching Program
Please note: The inclusion of a course description in the following list does not indicate that it will be offered in any particular year.


CTL5000 Y History and Theory of the Study of English
An investigation of the theoretical principles and practices of literary criticism that have informed the cultural history of the study and teaching of English. By problematizing the institutional, pedagogical, and cultural history of English as a discipline, we will focus our attention on several major schools of thought within Twentieth-century literary criticism, including New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Poststructuralism, Psychoanalytic criticism, Feminism(s), Marxism, New Historicism, Gay and Lesbian Theory, Postcolonialism, and Cultural Studies. Our examination of these various hermeneutical approaches to interpreting text and textuality will focus not only on understanding the methodologies of each, but also on identifying what is at stake in any given reading and for whom. That is, by asking questions such as “What does a text mean?” and “How does a text mean?” from different theoretical perspectives, we will interrogate the ways and means whereby the act of literary criticism reproduces and institutionalizes as well as challenges and transforms cultural values of English as a discipline of study.
P. Trifonas and R. Morgan

CTL5001 H Approaches to Shakespeare
A study of selected Shakespearean plays. Questions concerning the historical and literary contexts of the plays as dramatic or performative texts will be addressed. Close attention will be given to the dramatic sources and structures of the plays including a consideration of their stage histories and adaptations.
J.H. Reibetanz

CTL5002 H The Origins of Modern English
A survey of English linguistic theory. The course begins with an examination of contemporary English and traces in reverse chronological order developments in the language between the present day and the Old English period. Emphasis will be placed upon the significance of linguistic change for the study of literature.
D. M. McDougall and I. C. McDougall

CTL5003 H Approaches to the Novel
A study of various critical and theoretical approaches to the interpretation, analysis, and teaching of prose fiction. Underlying concerns are the relation of the reader’s experience of the text to the text itself, the relevance of critical theory to analyzing and reflecting on the sources of that relationship, and an exploration of ways of addressing and mobilizing these considerations in the interpretation and teaching of narrative texts.
C. Kanaganayakam and G.E. Henderson

CTL5004 H Approaches to Poetry
Explorations in the close reading and analysis and the discussion of poetry, emphasizing the indivisibility of content from the means of expression. There will be consideration of the differences between three kinds of reading: reading poems (the uniqueness of the poem); reading the poet (the distinctiveness of a poetic oeuvre); reading the age (the poetic style and character of a particular literary period).
Staff

CTL5005 H,Y Approaches to Canadian Writing
A study of Canadian writing across literary genres and sub-genres. The course introduces students to the various and shared ways in which Canadian writers have re-written personal and cultural histories. The representation and articulation of various ethnic, gender and regional identities and communities within a range of contemporary Canadian fiction will be considered. The challenge of the course is to render the complexity of Canadian identities and of writing/re-writing specific Canadian histories from a variety of cultural, geographic, “classed,” and gendered locations.
Staff

CTL5006 H Studies in Mythology and Legend
Mythology, legend, and fairy tale are the creations of human consciousness that have informed the historicities and forms of literature across the space and time of culture and its diversity. The themes and shapes of myth, legend, and fairy tale found in novels, plays and poems, film, and other media productions of contemporary cultures will be studied.
Staff

CTL5007 H Approaches to Drama
This course investigates the nature and variety of drama through an intensive study of selected plays drawn from a broad chronological and historical range—from Greek tragedy to the drama of the absurd, and from elaborately plotted comedy and tragi-comedy to pared-down works of character study or symbolic vision.
Staff

CTL5008 H Teaching Writing
This course assumes that writing is a process that forms substance and that style is functional, not a mere ornament but an integral component of the writing and thinking process. To teach writing effectively, we need to understand how formal and stylistic structures function in creative and communicative processes that are both individual and social. This course seeks to integrate models of composition into a pedagogy that regards writing as at once process, structure and strategy.
Staff

CTL5009 H Approaches to Women’s Writing
This course deals with three approaches to women writers. The first, with which most participants will be familiar, is "textual" study -- of genre, language, figuration, for example. The second is "production" study, which involves thinking about women’s writing in terms of their historical and material circumstances and lived experience. A third approach is "reception" study, which involves thinking in a more general way about how women have been read and reviewed: the more specific question of women’s reading and interpretive practices may also be considered under this heading. Consideration of the role of women in education, and particularly as students and teachers of literature, will frame these discussions.
H. Murray

CTL5798 H Individual Reading and Research Course in Master of Arts in Teaching: Master's Level
A course designed to permit the study (in a formal class setting) of a specific area not already covered in the courses listed for the current year.
Staff

CTL5799 H Special Topics in M.A.(T.)
A course designed to permit the study (in a formal class setting) of a specific area of curriculum or instruction not already covered in the courses listed for the current year. (This course does not fulfil the purpose of CTL5798, which in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning is normally conducted on a tutorial basis.)
Staff