Subjects Previously Taught

Literature

• Shakespeare: Hamlet
• Shakespeare: Othello
• Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
• Shakespeare: Macbeth
• Shakespeare: Richard III
• Shakespeare: Julius Caesar
• Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra
• Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
• Shakespeare: The Tempest
• Alan Moore, Watchmen (graphic novel)
• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
• Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
• Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• Michel Tremblay, Les Belles Soeurs
• Tomson Highway, Dry Lips Oughta Go to Kampuskasing
• Ian McEwan, Atonement
• Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Shyam Selvadurai, The Hungry Ghosts
• Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
• JK Rowling, Harry Potter Series (Books 1-7)
• Dante Alighieri, Inferno
• TS Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
• Homer, The Iliad
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Oscar Wilde, The Importance of being Earnest
• The Trojan War
• Nega Mezlekia, Notes from the Hyena’s Belly
• Chaucer and “The Wife of Bath”
• William Golding, Lord of the Flies
• Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
• Sylvia Plath, The Bell-Jar
• Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Purple Hibiscus
• Jorge Luis Borges, “Death and the Compass”
• Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life”
• JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
• Homer, The Odyssey

Speeches

• Martin Luther King Jr., “I have a dream” (1963)
• Malala Yousafzai, Speech at the UN Youth Assembly (2013)
• Barack Obama, Keynote Address for the Democratic National Convention (2004)
• Earl Spencer, “Princess Diana: The most hunted person of the modern age” (1997)
• Hillary Clinton, “Women’s rights are human rights” (1995)
• Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)
• John Kennedy, “We choose to go to the Moon” (1962)
• John Kennedy, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (1963)
• John Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you” (1961)
  

Visual Arts and Fashion

• Andy Warhol
• Salvador Dali
• Pablo Picasso
• Fernand Leger
• Damien Hirst
• Alexander McQueen, Isabella Blow, Philip Treacy
• General Idea
• Charles Pachter
• Louis Vuitton
• Manolo Blahnik
• Caravaggio: “The Calling of Saint Matthew”
• Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel Ceiling
• Michelangelo: The Last Judgement
• Leonardo da Vinci: “Salvator Mundi”
• Yayoi Kusama

Film and Television

• An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore
• The Handmaid’s Tale: Season One (Hulu)
• Boyz in the Hood: dir. John Singleton
• The Harry Potter series
• Amadeus (dir. Milos Forman)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick)
• Erin Brockovich (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
• The King’s Speech (dir. Tom Hooper)
• The Queen (dir. Stephen Frears)
• Concussion (dir. Peter Landesmann)
• Awakenings (dir. Penny Marshall)
• Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi)
• The Theory of Everything (dir. James Marsh
• Social Network (dir. David Fincher)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (dir George C. Wolfe)
• Rain Man (dir. Barry Levinson)
• Alice in Wonderland (dir. Tim Burton)
• A Beautiful Mind (dir. John Howard)
• Gorillas in the Mist (dir. Michael Apted)
• Super/Man: the Christopher Reeve Story (dirs. Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui)
• The First Star Wars Trilogy (dir. George Lucas)
• The Great Gatsby (dir. Baz Luhrmann)
• Sicko (dir. Michael Moore)
• Arrival (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
• The Imitation Game (dir. Morton Tyldum)
• Oppenheimer (dir. Christopher Nolan)

History

• Pierre Trudeau
• Richard Nixon and Watergate
• Afghan War
• Fake News and US Election 2016
• Francisco Pizarro
• The House of Windsor
• Canada’s response to 9/11
• The Great Law of Peace (aka the Iroquois Constitution)
• JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis
• Haile Selasie of Ethiopia
• Joseph Stalin and the USSR

Social Sciences

• Anti-Psychiatry movement
• Canadian Constitution
• Agustin Fuentes on race
• The Chinese educational system
• David Hare and the psychopathy checklist
• Animal liberation movement
• Non-Human Primate economic behaviour
• Native American spirituality
• Models of Attention in Cognitive Neuroscience
• South Korea and plastic surgery
• Amy Chua and the Tiger Mother
• Prison Industrial Complex in America
• Warren Buffett
• Steve Jobs and Apple
• Elon Musk
• Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens
• Oliver Sacks, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat

Young Adult Fiction

• Suzette Mayr, Monoceros
• Luda Mulally Hunt, Fish in a Tree
• Zalika Reid-Benta, Fried Plantain

Children’s Literature

• The Bible for Children
• Michael Bond, Paddington Bear
• Shakespeare for Children
• Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
• Katherine Applegate, The One and Only Ivan
• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
• Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories
• Dr. Seuss, Various books
• Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
• Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan
• Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby, Age 8

University Admissions

• Applying to the Oxford University BA program
• Preparing for the History Aptitude Test (HAT) for admission to Oxford University
• Application to medical school in Ontario (Toronto, Queen’s, Western, Ottawa University)
• Application to Masters of Social Work degree programs in Ontario universities
• High school application to Canadian university BA programs

General Academic and Editing Skills

• How to write an essay (general rules and organization)
• How to write an argumentative essay
• Developmental editing
• Substantive editing
• Overcoming writer’s block