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Tuesday: 2.30 - 5.30
118 Founders College
Instructor: Professor Ioan Davies
Office: 326 Founders College
e-mail: idavies@yorku.ca
This Course will prepare students to explore the idea of Canada having its own popular culture by, first, providing a means by which popular is defined throughout the world, and second by inviting them to examine what it means to Canadians.
In doing this, the first part of the course will examine some of the seminal non-canadian texts which illuminate some of these issues. In the second part, students will actively explore the notion of the popular in Canada by examining instances which they take to be important, bearing in mind the theories and trajectories developed in the first part of the course. In other words, students will be expected to produce examples of popular culture which they see as uniquely Canadian or, if not, why Canadians should care about them. In this last segment, students will be expected to focus on Toronto as a laboratory of meaning and style.
Grading: 1 essay on the comparative perspectives: 50%
I essay, creative work on Canadian pop culture: 50%
Required Books:
Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to theories of Popular Culture. Routledge, 1995
Geoff Pevere and Greig Dymond, MONDO CANUCK. A Canadian Pop Culture Odyssey. Prentice-Hall, 1996
Jon Caulfield and Linda Peake (eds) City Lives & City Forms. Critical Research and Canadian Urbanism. University of Toronto Press, 1996
John Bentley Mays, Emerald City. Toronto Revisited. Viking, 1994.
A week-by-week breakdown of the class schedule will be made available for the Second week of class.
Students should also make a point of visiting Professor Davies' other web-sites.
Ioan Davies.
I. ix. 1999
