Course Outline
ENGL 426 — Reconciliation: creative practice from near and far
Professor: Ashok Mathur
Phone/Voice Mail: 6284
Office: OM1487 (CiCAC)
E-Mail: amathur@tru.ca
Website: cicac.tru.ca
Office Hours: Tuesday, 5 to 6 pm or by appointment
Course website: http://cicac.tru.ca/engl426.php
Moodle website: http://moodle.tru.ca/course/view.php?id=709
Course Description Beginning with an investigation of the act of official 'apology', this course will follow with the possibilities and problematics of "reconciliation" as a form of addressing historical events in Canada and internationally. A key consideration in this course will be how writers and artists take on such historical moments with creative practices that complement and/or lend insight into existing critical analyses. As reconciliation is a wide-reaching notion, this course will touch upon numerous events in Canada -- including Residential Schools, the Komagata Maru incident, the Chinese Head Tax, Japanese Canadian internment and redress movement, the 'extraordinary rendition' of Maher Arar and subsequent developments -- as well as international conceptions of truth and reconciliation in South Africa, Northern Ireland, South America, and elsewhere. Course content will be an amalgamation of novels, plays, poetry, performance, film, critical work, and guest speakers. Reading materials will include purchased books and coursepack as well as various materials available online. Apart from core texts, students are encouraged to bring in other Canadian or international creative works that will supplement our collaborative learning process.
Educational Objectives/Outcomes This course is intended to foster awareness and understanding of the underlying conditions and circumstances that give rise to official apologies and attempts at reconciliation. Using literature and other creative practices as a focal point, this course will employ a variety of strategies and methodologies to question, critique, and discuss historical inequities and their aftermath.
Prerequisites Any two of ENGL 110, 111 or 121 in addition to third-year standing.
Texts/Materials
Available in the Bookstore:
Jack, Agnes. Behind Closed Doors: Stories from the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Penticton and Kamloops: Theytus Books and the Secwepemc Cultural Education Society, 2000.
Miki, Roy. Saving Face. Vancouver: Turnstone, 1991.
(Out
of Print, ordering to be arranged)
Johnson,
Basil. Indian School Days. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2002.
Pollock, Sharon. The Komagata Maru Incident. Toronto: Playwrights, 1978.
Coursepack: selected readings from Arundhati
Roy, David Jefferess, Dave Duggan, Priscilla Hayner, Celia Haig-Brown, Sam
McKegney, Wilhelm Verwoerd, and others.
Available online:
Morgan,
Meeka. "Making Connections with Secwepemc Family Through Storytelling: A
Journey in Transformative Rebuilding." (MA Thesis)
Rungh, 2.1-2 (section of articles) "The
History of South Asian Immigration to British Columbia"
Dulai, Phinder. "A Letter to the Maru, 1914, dated 1994" Rungh 4.1-2.
Films/Video:
Continuous Journey, dir. Ali Kazimi
Rabbit Proof Fence, dir. Philip Noyce.
A Dry White Season, dir. Euzene Palcy
Lotus Blossom Special (David Bateman performance)
Guests:
The task
of reconciliation is, at best, an opportunity for collaborative learning. As
such, we will bring in a number of guests to talk and workshop with the class.
Invited speakers will include most, if not all, of the following:
Shane
Rhodes (poet, cultural worker, policy advisor, Ottawa)
Roy Miki
(professor emeritus, English Literature, SFU): Japanese Canadian internment and
redress movement
Phinder
Dulai (poet and cultural worker):
the Komagata Maru incident
Meeka
Morgan (educator, artist), Greg Young-Ing (Indigenous Studies, UBC-O), Pauline
Wakeham (English Literature, UWO), and Sam McKegney (English Literature,
Queens): Residential Schools
Ayumi
Goto (Community Health and Humanities, Memorial U), and David Jefferess
(Critical Studies, UBC-O): the theory and politics of South Africa and
reconciliation
Student Evaluation
As the pedagogical methodology employed in this
course is student-centred, you will have considerable latitude around the scope
of your assignments. Over the course of the term, you will construct a
portfolio of work -- an assessment of this portfolio will be done conjointly
between the student and instructor. The portfolio will consist of core
essentials, but may also include any creative or critical additions you feel
add a dimension to your production in this class.
Portfolio core elements:
Response statements
Description of Participation and Group Work
Term Project
(Additional elements may include creative writing,
art work, research notes, interview transcriptions, or any other item you feel
complements your learning process in this course)
Evaluation:
Your portfolio is worth 100% of your grade, but the
general breakdown is yours to ascertain. For instance, some students feel that
they have put far more time into response statements than anything else, so
rather than assigning only a small portion of their grade to this, they may
want that work to be seen as their major contribution. In general, however, the
instructor and student will look at the portfolio holistically, rather than as
discrete components, and together will determine what grade to assign.
Assignment Details:
Response statements: each week there will be a number of 'texts' to consider, including
critical articles, creative works, film and video, guest speakers, and other
work brought in by the instructor and class members. Each student should write
a minimum of eight response statements over the term addressing this work.
These response statements are not formal essays, but should be written on/about
some of the material of the given week, and should reflect a critical awareness
of the learning process. For instance, a good response statement might outline
three elements of a critical article that provided insight for the student in
the context of the course, mapping how these elements are useful in the
learning process. A strong response statement is not merely a judgement or
opinion (i.e. "I liked this work because it made me laugh") but
critically self-reflexive ("I found myself laughing at the stereotyped
characters, so that made me think about how such devices work to undercut mainstream
narratives..."). A response statement need not be lengthy -- often a typed
page or two can suffice -- nor do they need to be exhaustive, trying to
encapsulate an entire three-hour class, but they should be something that
focusses on a particular element of the readings, guest lectures, class
contexts, and shows how you are developing that.
Description of Participation and Group Work: Rather than have a separate entry for
participation and group work, these elements are combined since they are
related. In this one-page narration, describe how you have participated (were
you comfortable with your contributions? could you have done more,
differently?) and what that experience has given to you and others. In terms of
group work, describe the dynamic and how you felt you and others contributed to
your group -- amount of work, helpfulness to one another, how you learned, etc.
Term Project: A senior level English literature class usually requires one term essay
involving relatively engaged research and a cogent argument, often resulting in
a 2500-word paper. You may choose to do such a term paper or any other project
that involves a similar amount of time in research/production. This might be a
creative endeavour like a video or artwork, or it may be a series of writings
that do not compile into a single paper. The idea here is to allow you to use
your expertise from your educational background to produce work that is
important to you.
Additional Elements: When comprising a portfolio, many students find they want to include
additional material to illustrate the type of work put into the course. The
advantage of such additional elements is that they can be very informal
(sketches, rough outlines), unfinished pieces of work (eg. an abstract for a
conference paper), or related obscurely to the course (eg. a video project that
you are editing for a poli-sci class) as they are not intended to be
final/polished products. Additional elements are not required, but they can
help you to articulate a vision for your portfolio.
Use of Technology
There will be considerable use of the internet,
through the class website and/or through WebCT, depending on student needs.
Some reading material will only be available on the Web.
General Syllabus: (subject to change or redirection)
Sept. 9 Intro
Sept. 16 Group construction, dynamics. Core articles on reconciliation: Hayner, Verwoerd, Roy.
Guests: Ayumi Goto and Shane Rhodes
Sept. 23 Komagata Maru / Viewing of Continuous Journey / Guest: Phinder Dulai
Sept. 30 Residential Schools + Stolen Generation
Oct. 7 RS + SG cont'd
Oct. 14 Viewing Rabbit Proof Fence
Oct. 21 Chinese Head Tax
Oct. 28 South Africa TRC: Viewing A Dry White Season (additional class to be scheduled)
Nov. 4 Canada:
race/gender/sexuality: Viewing Lotus Blossom
Special
Note:
Special Panel proposed for Nov. 10 featuring
Meeka Morgan, Greg Young-Ing, Pauline Wakeham, Sam McKegney, David Jefferess.
Nov. 11 Remembrance Day (no class):
Nov. 18 Symposium: Groups A, B, C
Nov. 25 Symposium: Groups D, E, F