多倫多大學(xué)

Literature and Critical Theory Program

The Literature and Critical Theory program (formerly Literary Studies) is based on a pair of ideas. The first is that many of the most important issues that engage our attention call for a multidisciplinary approach. The second is that the kind of critical analysis demanded by the study of literary texts offers powerful tools for investigating other cultural and social forms, both past and present. Central to the program is the comparative study of forms of representation – texts, media, institutions, and theories — in diverse cultures and historical periods. This requires thinking seriously about what it means to compare and what it means to translate.

The Literature and Critical Theory program will attract students who are interested in exploring and generating links between literature and historical, cultural, political, social, and psychological forces. The program trains students to think about how problems of the present are tied to those of the past, and to consider critically how we both represent this past and imagine possible futures. Students will be engaged in the practice of close, contextualized analyses of literary texts and other discursive forms, including artefacts, institutions and social practices, originating in different languages, geographical locations, and historical periods.

Literary production, like all forms of cultural production, invariably exceeds the boundaries of the nation, and increasingly so in today’s globalized world. The boundaries between various cultural media are similarly porous, and the aesthetic values by which we identify, judge, and classify literary and cultural objects are historically shaped. For these reasons, students will be encouraged to study in more than one language and to work with a variety of media. Our courses explore literary and cultural movements across languages, geographical regions, epochs, media, and disciplines.