{"id":14,"date":"2014-10-16T18:07:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T01:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/?page_id=14"},"modified":"2025-06-11T15:42:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T22:42:32","slug":"teaching","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/teaching\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Tout est construit” –Gaston Bachelard (La formation de l’esprit scientifique, 1934)<\/em><\/p>\n

I teach graduate and undergraduate courses in the Department of English in modernism, 20th-century studies, literary and cultural theory, and\u00a0historical\u00a0surveys of Anglophone literature. I have longstanding interests in active learning methods, research-supported best practices\u00a0and effective instructional technologies. My undergraduate students have called me \u201ca great instructor,\u201d \u201cvery knowledgeable,\u201d \u201cenergetic,\u201d \u201capproachable,\u201d and said my courses have \u201cgreat content\u201d and are \u201cthought provoking.\u201d My teaching is built on a commitment to educational equity that provides a diverse body of university students with a climate of high expectation and useful\u00a0scaffolding, asking students to take creativity-enhancing intellectual risks in response to challenging assignments. I welcome graduate projects in modernism, understood broadly, twentieth-century Anglophone literatures, postcolonial, cultural, and material studies, intersectional work in feminism, gender, race, and sexuality, and media and technology studies.<\/p>\n

2025-2026<\/h2>\n

Course Descriptions, Winter Session 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

Term 1:<\/strong><\/p>\n

ENGL 300 Introduction to Critical Theory<\/strong><\/p>\n

This introduction to critical theory is themed around crowds, democracy, and politics. We will explore theories of agency and forms of democracy, phenomena such as group aggression and utopianism, technologies for the persuasion and control of crowds, ideologies underlying populisms and authoritarianisms, and philosophies of bare life and biopolitics. It seems an appropriate moment to rethink the crowd and its history, when asylum seeking and global migrations, d\/evolving democracies, virtual-digital crowds, and crowd-based political movements around the world are calling for our attention. We will also draw on the literary as a productive archive for this critique. As we proceed, we will build a theory of the performativity of the crowd.<\/p>\n

Readings and films include selections from Marx, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Le Bon, Virginia Woolf, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Fritz Lang, Sean O\u2019Casey, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler, Jacques Ranci\u00e9re, others.<\/p>\n

ENGL 490 Seminar for English Majors<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I have read James Joyce\u2019s Ulysses<\/em>.\u201d Let\u2019s just admit this seminar is for a lifetime\u2019s worth of bragging rights, but also because I know you will discover what fun it is to read and understand Joyce\u2019s great book. It\u2019s daunting, clever, about everything and nothing, completely frank, silly, shocking, obscene, intellectual, and really, really funny. Do you care about other people and enjoy their variety? Do you wonder about the universe? Do you like to try to make some sense out of a chaotic and often tragic world? Do you enjoy wordplay, puzzles, and games? Then Ulysses<\/em> is for you! This is the book you\u2019ll never forget reading\u2026 but it\u2019s nice to have a guide along with you the first time you read it.<\/p>\n

Term 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n

ENGL 100 Reading and Writing about Literature<\/strong><\/p>\n

This course reads fantasy and speculative fiction to explore the many ways in which writers imagine how societies and cultures might be… otherwise. Fantastic and speculative worlds are some of the richest forms of experimental thought, problem solving and storytelling in which we engage. How do writers make these worlds persuasive? What kinds of connections do they expect us to make between their storyworlds and the actual world? What influences differences among the ways they take up similar themes? We will discover multiple answers to these questions. Along the way, we will also learn general principles about narrative and fiction as they are theorized in English, and how writing works at an analytical level, by discussing matters such as plot, figuration, character, point of view, and setting. Writers include Le Guin, Bradbury, Orwell, Angela Carter, Vonnegut, Ishiguro, Karen Tei Yamashita.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>ENGL 365 (Online) Modernist Literature<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some descriptions of modernism are bloodless abstractions about formal experimentation, academic disruption, and modernist reaction against a too-rigid bourgeois morality. This course concentrates on the wildly passionate commitment of moderns to changing the world, to finding new sensations and affects, to overcoming historical evils and biases, to appreciating with sincere admiration other arts, other peoples, cultures and languages, and other places.<\/p>\n

Topics include Decadence, the New Woman, Expressionism, Dada, Manifesto Modernism, New Objectivity, Impressionism, the Surreal and Psychoanalytic, Gesamtkunstwerk and Encyclopedism, Minimalism, Montage, Technological Moderns, Graphic Modernisms. Writers include Stein, H.D., Loy, Conrad, Woolf, Joyce, Pound, Eliot, O\u2019Casey, Beckett, Barnes, Stevens, Larsen, Rhys, others.<\/p>\n

2023-2024<\/h2>\n

ENGL 365-99A.\u00a0 Modernist Literature.\u00a0syllabus 365 1W2023<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 490. Literature Majors Seminar. \u201cModern Political Fictions and Democracy\u201d\u00a0Syllabus ENGL 490 1W2023<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 100-012. Reading and Writing about Language and Literatures. \u201cBooks and Friendship\u201d<\/p>\n

ENGL 200-011. Principles of Literary Studies. \u201cCreation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding\u201d<\/p>\n

2022-2023<\/h2>\n

Term 1: Study Leave<\/p>\n

Term 2: English 300 Introduction to Critical Theory\u00a0Syllabus ENGL 300 2W2022<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 539 Studies in the Twentieth Century: Exilic Modernisms\u00a0Syllabus-ENGL-539-2W2022<\/a><\/p>\n

2021-2022<\/h2>\n

Term 1: Study Leave<\/p>\n

Term 2: ENGL 211-001\u00a0Seminar for English Honours: Introduction to Literary and Critical Theory ENGL 211 syllabus 2W2021<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 365-99C Modernist Literature Syllabus 365 99C 2W2022<\/a><\/p>\n

2020-2021<\/h2>\n

ENGL 365-001 Modernist Literature: Modernist Movements\u00a0 syllabus 365 001 1W2020\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 539 Studies in the Twentieth Century: Modernism and the Minor \u00a0syllabus 539B 002 1W2020<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 211-001\u00a0Seminar for English Honours: Introduction to Literary and Critical Theory syllabus ENGL 211 001 2W2020 Paltin<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 377-001 World Literature and Social Movements: Democracy in the Writerly Imagination syllabus 377 2W2020<\/a><\/p>\n

2019-2020<\/h2>\n

ENGL 110 Approaches to Literature: Speculative Societies and Possible Worlds: syllabus 110 1W2019<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 224 World Literature in English: Near and Far: syllabus 224 1W2019<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 365 Modernist Literature: Modernist Movements: syllabus 365 001 2W2019<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 491C Senior Honours Seminar Lit: Books and Friendship:\u00a0syllabus 491H 003 2W2019<\/a><\/p>\n

2018-2019<\/h2>\n

ENGL 100:\u00a0 Fantasy, Satire, and Play:\u00a0Syllabus 100-005 1W2018<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 365: Aesthetic Modernism:\u00a0ENGL 365 1W2018 syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 224: World Literature in English: Near and Far: Syllabus 224-005 2W2018<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 539: Studies in the Twentieth Century: Figuring Modernism (Graduate-level seminar): ENGL 539A-001 2W2018 syllabus\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

2017-2018<\/h2>\n

ENGL 561-921 – Topics in Science and Technology – Assemblage and Other Fluid Materialisms (graduate-level seminar):\u00a0ENGL561A1S2017Syllabus.docx <\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 100-001 Reading and Writing about Literature:\u00a0Books and Friendship:\u00a0Syllabus 100-001<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 224-002 World Literature in English:\u00a0World-Breaking Literature:\u00a0Syllabus 224-002<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 464A-001 Twentieth-Century Studies:\u00a0Modernism and the Political Novel:\u00a0Syllabus 464 1W2017<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

2016-2017<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

ENGL 464. Women’s Writing and Media: From Fordism to Cyber-culture:\u00a0464 syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 100. MakerSpaces: Literature and Transformation:\u00a0100 Syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 491. New Masses:\u00a0Modernism and the Crowd: ENGL 491 Syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 221-011.\u00a0English Literature from the Eighteenth Century to the Present: ENGL 221\u00a0Syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

2015-2016<\/h2>\n

ENGL 221 (English Literature from the Eighteenth Century to the Present)<\/a>\u00a0— Paltin_Syllabus_221 2015W1<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 464 (Twentieth-Century Studies): “Acting Out in Groups”: Subculture, Narrative, Style<\/a>\u00a0— Syllabus-final<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 539: Modernism, Mass Bodies and Crowd Politics (Graduate-level seminar) — ENGL 539 W15-16 Syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

2014-2015<\/h2>\n

ENGL 221 (English Literature from the Eighteenth Century to the Present)<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 462 (Twentieth-Century British and Irish Studies): The Postcolonial Metropole<\/a>\u00a0(W15) —\u00a0Paltin_Syllabus_462 W15<\/a><\/p>\n

ENGL 466 (Studies in a Twentieth-Century Genre):\u00a0Society of the Spectacle and Modernist Shorter Fiction<\/a>\u00a0(W15) —\u00a0Paltin_Syllabus_466 W15<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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“Tout est construit” –Gaston Bachelard (La formation de l’esprit scientifique, 1934) I teach graduate and undergraduate courses in the Department of English in modernism, 20th-century studies, literary and cultural theory, and\u00a0historical\u00a0surveys of Anglophone literature. I have longstanding interests in active … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25013,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":233,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":748,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14\/revisions\/748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jpaltin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}