First university-level Canadian Literature and Canadian Drama courses in Canada

[Don Rubin]

Hi Moira:

I go back to 1968 at York.  In about 1970 or 1971, Mavor Moore introduced a third year level course at York course in Canadian Theatre History.  Ross Stuart and I were his tutorial leaders.  The course was highly anecdotal.  

In about 1975  or 1976 (shortly after Ross and I started the Canadian Theatre Review) I took over the course and by about 1980 it had become required for all theatre majors. I continued to teach the course through 2016 when I retired. My own Canadian Theatre History:Selected Readings was the core text.  I also used Jerry Wasserman's Modern Canadian Theatre Vol 1 as the core play text (with some additions). Though when Talon started changing play texts every couple of years I simply created my own Course kit.

York's  grad program in Theatre Studies was begun by myself and Christopher Innes in about 2006.  We wanted Canadian to be the core of it and a grad version of the Canadian course was set up and taught by me and was required of all MA and PhD candidates in our department right from year one. A lot of important conference papers came from the grad version of that course and many were ultimately presented at TRIC and other conferences.  I maintained that course through 2015.

The future is unclear for both courses at this point.

I believe that U of T offered its first Canadian drama lit and history course through the Grad Centre (which began in about 1969 or so) but someone from U of T would have to confirm that. Did a Canadian course come in at U of T that early?  Earlier? Not sure. I know that they had a conference in about 1972 or so called Canadian Theatre Before the 60s.  CTR used some of the papers for an issue in 1974 using that same title.

Did any other university in the country specifically teach Canadian drama and/or Canadian theatre history prior to the 1970s?  Don't know.  Would be interested to hear what you and others turn up. I have no doubt that individual Canadian plays were taught here and there but I cannot tell you what went on with any certainty prior to about 1968.

Hope this is useful.  Happy to chat about it at any point. My own sense is that Canadian theatre studies is fading, fading, fading in Canada while interest in what we have done and are dong continues on in France, Hungary, Italy, the US and many other countries.

Best to all,

Don Rubin.



Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 20, 2016, at 3:22 PM, Day, Moira <moira.day at USASK.CA> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I was wondering if someone could direct me to information on the following:
> 
> When the first Canadian Literature courses at the Graduate and Undergraduate level were taught at the University of Toronto.
> When the first Canadian Drama courses at the Graduate and Undergraduate level were taught at the University of Toronto.
> 
> If different from above, where and when the first Canadian Literature and Canadian Drama courses were taught in Canada. 
> 
> I'm not finding it hard to find material on when specific drama programs were initiated in Canada - but discovering when specific courses were introduced has been a bit more difficult where I've not been able to get into archives to go through old academic calendars.
> 
> Any help on this would be much appreciated!
> 
> Moira