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Once dubbed
a hip
contemporary
Dickens by a
critic,
Susan Swan
is one of
York
University's
most
celebrated
public
intellectuals.
Swan has recently given talks at such venues as the Conference of Commonwealth Literatures at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park, UK; McNally
Robinson bookstore, New York city; UNESCO book festival, Montreal; Humber College, Toronto; Banff Arts Centre, McGill Alumni celebration;
Freedom to Read Week Celebration; and the Vancouver Writers' Festival. In
1999-2000,
she was
awarded
York's
prestigious
position of
Robarts
Chair in
Canadian
Studies.
Sponsored by
York's
Robarts
Centre, Swan
held a
moveable
millennial
wisdom
symposium at
York
University
and the
Royal
Ontario
Museum,
featuring
eighteen
prominent
novelists,
historians
and
archeologists
speaking
about the
way we
recreate the
past in
popular
culture
through
literature,
archeology
and history.
At ten
public
events,
writers like
Anne,
Michaels,
Alberto
Manguel,
Ronal
Wright, Guy
Vanderhaege,
Carol
Christ,
Tomson
Highway,
Rosalind
Miles and
Dionne Brand
talked about
whether we
ever learn
from the
past, and if
so, what
wisdom does
the past
have to
offer us as
we enter the
Twenty-First
century.
Swan gave
the
concluding
Robarts
Lecture
March 21,
2000..
Students
who want to take Making
Yourself Up, Swan's
popular course in the memoir at York University
should apply well in advance to the graduate
English program at York University. Swan will
not be available through Humber College's correspondence
course in creative writing until 2006.
A complete list of Swan’s activities as a teacher
and public intellectual may be found on her
Curriculum Vitae, available in the section
About Susan Swan.
It includes details on the following information:
• Membership In Professional
Organizations
• Contributions To The Editing
Of Literary Work And Scholarly Journals
• Teaching
• University Service
• Pedagogical Innovations
York
University
is the home
of Swan's
literary
archives as
well as the
university
at which she
teaches.
Information
about Susan
at York may
be found at
the
following
links:
-
Selected
Publications
-
Faculty
Profile
-
Canadian
Literary
Papers in
the York
Archives
-
The
Millennial
Wisdom
Symposium:
The Writer's
Conscience:
or why
reports of
the death of
the author
have been
greatly
exaggerated
by Susan
Swan
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The following
quotes are statements on a wide range of topics
recently addressed by Susan, and indicate the
breadth of her expertise and concerns.
On travel:
Travel is a form of love. If you follow Casanova's
Ten
Principles of Travel, you will move in the world
in a way that
emphasizes the romance of cultures instead of
the clash.
On Canadian Literature:
In Canada, the literary
imagination is the writer's conscience in action.
On Fiction on the Internet:
As a form, hypertext fiction is closer to performance or installation art, which blends several disciplines like images, sound and text, than literature. But like it or lump it, the frontier of the net is still creating a whole new way to tell a story.
On Sexual Gothic:
It's fiction that uses the body as a central metaphor for pleasure and trauma. In nineteenth century gothic stories, it was castles and ruins not our physical selves that provide the symbol of uneasiness for the reader.
On politically incorrect art:
All art and literature asks for some adjustment on the part of the viewer or reader to make it understandable in terms of their own sensibility and morals. But instead of recommending censorship in the case of sexist or racist art where the burden of adjustment may be grave, I suggest asking the question “what are we going to get in
return?”
• NOTE TO RESEARCHERS AND WRITERS: If you would like to quote Susan in your own work, please do let us know via email and credit accordingly. Thank you!
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For
the academic year of 2004-2005,
Susan Swan will be teaching a fourth year fiction
class (AS/HUM 4630 6.0A Senior Prose Workshop:
Fiction) and a second year course in creative
writing (AS/HUMA 2900 9.0A Introduction to Creative
Writing) at York University. Her popular course
in the fictionalized memoir will not be available
this year through York's Graduate English Program.
English 6592.03 Special
Topics: Making Yourself Up: The Fictionalized
Memoir (Winter 2003 - half course)
Professor Susan Swan (212
Vanier College, 416-736-5158, ext. 77553, sswan@yorku.ca)
Tuesday 2:30-5:30 pm (Room
TBA)
The focus of the course will
be upon the fictionalized memoir as a form of
autobiographical narrative or life writing,
using primarily Canadian examples. The course
will engage critical discussion of the poetics
of self-developed in the memoir form. A form
of literary solipsism begun by St. Augustine,
this tradition of prose narrative views the
interior self as the central canvas for political
and social dramas, as well as spiritual and
emotional ones, and is closely linked to the
confessional novel. The course will devote particular
attention to the issue of narrative form and
strategy in the production of the fictionalized
memoir.
The relations between "autobiography"
and "fiction" have provoked considerable
debate and discussion in recent criticism, and
the course will engage a range of questions
arising from this critical work. Jill Ker Conway
opens When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography
with a provocative question: "Why is autobiography
the most popular form of fiction for modern
readers?" The course will examine a selection
of fictionalized memoirs in the interests of
developing a range of responses to this query.
Attention will be directed to the issue of genre
in relation to life-writing and the fictionalized
memoir, to the issue of the representation of
"reality" in the memoir form, and
to the issue of gender as it concerns the production
of the memoir narrative.
Evaluation
Comparative Analysis of two
course texts (20%) (10 pages)
Fictionalized Memoir OR Major Research Paper*
(50%) (16-20 pages)
Class participation: (30%)
* Students can choose to
write a fictionalized memoir OR a major research
paper addressing key critical and theoretical
concerns related to the tradition of the fictionalized
memoir. Students electing to write a fictionalized
memoir will be expected to workshop the memoir
in a seminar, while students choosing to submit
a major research paper will be expected to present
their research-in-progress in a seminar.
Reading List:
Aciman, Andre. Out
of Egypt. (Riverhead
Books)
Brodkey, Harold. This
Wild Darkness, The Story of My Death.
(Metropolitan, New York)
Butala, Sharon. The
Perfection of the Morning: an apprenticeship
in Nature. (Harper
Collins Canada)
Callaghan, Barry. Barrelhouse
Kings. (Little Brown)
Callaghan, Morley. That
Summer in Paris. (General)
Casanova, Giacomo. History
of my Life. Vol. 1.
(Selections) (Penguin)
Conway, Jill Ker. When
Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography.
(Vintage)
______________. The
Road from Coorain.
Gildiner, Catherine. Too
Close to the Falls.
(ECW Press)
Kadar, Marlene, ed. Essays
on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice.
(U. of T. Press)
Ondaatje, Michael. Running
in the Family. (McClelland
and Stewart)
Smart, Elizabeth. By
Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.
(Random)
Wiwa, Ken. The
Shadow of a Saint.
(Knopf)
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