There are certain course policies that are identical across all the courses I teach. I provide links to the course policy pages through each individual course website, but I’ll also aggregate them here for easy reference:

Real-Time Comprehension Questions

Deadlines and Lateness

Engagement, Participation, Attendance

Remote Alternatives for Attendance

Alternative Avenues for Participation

Accommodations and Modifications

Instructions for Late Registrants/Waitlisters

Minimum Technical Requirements for Remote/Online Learning

Official University of Toronto Grading Scale

IMPORTANT: I can only hold undergraduate Office Hours during weeks that my undergraduate classes are in session. So I’ll begin holding Office Hours again in the week of September 9, 2024.

Unless you are a faculty member or currently enrolled graduate student, I cannot meet with you outside of my scheduled Office Hours (click here for an explanation of that policy), which I only hold during terms when I am teaching.

I will hold some Office Hours both in person and on Zoom—your choice! I'll keep the same Zoom room open (see link below) that I always keep open during class, so you can just show up there, though I prefer in-person meetings – just swing by during the above hours (if I’m already meeting with someone else, be sure to let me know you're there so I can adjust my timing accordingly!). All Office Hours are drop-in hours. If you want to be sure there’s time to meet, come at the very beginning. I do not make reservations ahead of time: if you want to secure a spot, you must either be present at the beginning of Office Hours that day or, if need be, email me just at the beginning of Office Hours (not earlier!) to let me know to hold a spot for you.

I restrict my Office Hours meetings to a 15-minute maximum per student per week. I cannot, under any circumstances, exceed that maximum meeting time – but I strongly encourage students to meet with me in pairs (in which case the three of us can meet for 30 minutes total) or in groups of three (in which case the four of us can meet for 45 minutes total!). Please be respectful and don't try to append "just one more quick question" when your time is up. On busy days, I will likely reduce meeting times (I'll usually do this by counting up the number of students currently waiting to meet with me, adding 2, and then dividing that day's available meeting time by that number).

There are no Office Hours on campus holidays; there are no Office Hours in weeks when classes are not in session.

If we are meeting on Zoom, for a class or otherwise — unless I’ve specified that we are meeting elsewhere — we are probably meeting in this virtual Zoom room (click here).

The Meeting ID is 989 3537 2626 and the passcode is gx6FbN (but you probably won’t need those — just open Zoom on your own computer and click on the link). If you don’t have Zoom — loathe as I am to be recruited into advertising here — you can download it for free at Zoom’s website (click here).

1. The best way to get in touch with me is to talk to me in person — by speaking up in class or meeting with me during Office Hours (see above)!

2. If that doesn’t work, check to see whether your course webpage provides an answer to your question (it likely does; see the links at the menu bar above) and check my FAQ (see below).

3. If that doesn’t work, then feel free to email me at my undergraduate contact address, sergi.utoronto@gmail.com — that email is reserved only for inquiries by my undergraduate students. I can usually only respond to emails with short (and sometimes terse) answers; bring up longer or more complicated questions during class or Office Hours.

IMPORTANT: If you are an undergraduate who wishes to contact me by email, be sure to only contact me at sergi.utoronto@gmail.com — my various email addresses have automatic email filing and prioritizing systems in place, so undergraduate inquires sent to the wrong address, or CCed to more than one email address of mine, will likely wind up heavily delayed or deleted entirely.

Response time for emails: During terms when I am teaching, I respond to emails usually within a week after they’re sent, regardless of the urgency of the inquiry (do not follow up before two weeks have passed; doing so messes with my email priority system and is more likely to cause delays than fix them). During terms when I am not teaching, responses may take up to a month (or, in some cases, the email account may be temporarily frozen, but you’ll get an autoresponse if that’s true).

If you are a graduate student, faculty member, or anyone else, please consult my official University of Toronto faculty page for contact info.

If you are a currently enrolled undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, please make sure to email me only at the undergrad email specified above; if you don’t, all emails you send may likely be misdirected, delayed, or deleted.

Most of the questions that undergraduates email to me can be answered pretty handily by one of my pre-written FAQ pages (click here). Please consult the list before you contact me — that way, I can focus my efforts on those student inquiries that require more immediate and particular attention.

Using an FAQ might seem a bit cold at first, I realize, but the reason I am usually able to respond to student emails with speed, warmth, and attention is because of the time the FAQ saves me!

Again, click here to access my FAQ page.

I’ve got specific and very thorough instructions for anyone who would like to request a reference or recommendation from me — click here to read them.

If you are planning to use information from a dictionary in an essay you’re writing, consult my “On Dictionaries” guide first.

DOE: The University of Toronto’s Dictionary of Old English (DOE), which covers words in English before the year 1100, is behind a paywall. University of Toronto students’ tuition includes access: go to the U of T Library Homepage (OneSearch) and type in these exact words: “Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online”. If you type in anything different, the library page may likely take you to the wrong resource.

MED: The University of Michigan’s Middle English Dictionary (MED), which covers words in English from the years 1000-1500, is available for free online: just click here to access it. (If you have trouble finding a headword, try replacing vowels with * or ? symbols; try leaving * at the end of the word you’re looking up, unless you’re looking up a verb, in which case you should use *n.)

OED: The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which specializes in words in English in use after 1500 (though its entries will track those words into their earliest history), is behind a paywall. University of Toronto students’ tuition includes access to the OED, but recent changes to web access on the part of both the U of T Library and the OED have created some frustrating issues with access (indeed, changing access twice in the middle of winter term 2024!). Kurt Jiang has kindly made straightforward video instructions (click here) for two different ways to access the OED now.

If those instructions don’t work for you, try the visual guide I have posted at the bottom of this page, visuals to accompany these OED instructions. I’m as frustrated as you are that OED access has been so messed up; hopefully, they’ll sort it soon, but by all means do send a letter of complaint to the U of T Library (as I have) about how these resources have been handled.

Some of the Records of Early English Drama are available only in hard-copy books; some are available only online. The successful researcher in early drama will consult both REED formats before moving forward with a research hypothesis.

To access the REED hard copies, the best place is in the REED offices themselves, in Suite 810 of the Jackman Humanities Building (JHB, at 170 St George St, 8th Floor, just beyond my office), because there is a whole library there dedicated only to early drama. Those offices may only be open at erratic times, though, based on when REED staff happen to be there. As of spring 2024, the most typical times are: Mondays, 10:30am-5pm; Wednesdays, 10am-1pm and 3:30pm-6:30pm; Thursdays 11am-5pm. But those times may be interrupted if the single staff member on duty happens not to be there. Especially if you’re commuting from far away, I recommend checking ahead of time with Illya for Mondays and Thursdays, and with me for Wednesdays, to make sure someone will be there to let you in ahead of time. I’ll share contact info in my classes as needed.

But you can also access the REED hard copies (though not necessarily all of them) at campus libraries, where they are non-circulating: Robarts (the main library), the Kelly Library (at St Mike’s), the U of T Mississauga Library, the Pratt Library (at Vic, usually housed within the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies), and PIMS (the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies). Those last two may be in areas that require an appointment ahead of time to access (but they’re quite interesting places and worth the trip). If you’re truly in a pinch, you can also find some REED hard copies in free (legal!) pdf format through the Internet Archive (click here), though these pdfs are huge and hard to explore unless you know what you’re looking for ahead of time.

To access the online REED archives, head to E-REED (click here). Note that the E-REED site is different from the older REED site (click here), which has some interesting resources of its own.

Housed at the University of Rochester, the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies (TEAMS) has produced excellent editions of many Middle English texts, including many of the ones I teach in my classes. All of the texts they publish are available for free online (click here), but remember: the free online texts are for individual use only — TEAMS’s copyright rules make clear that for course use, the texts must be purchased. So if you are enrolled in a course of mine that requires you to use a significant portion of a TEAMS text, you are required by law to buy that text; you can use the free online versions as companions to any hard copies you have bought, though.

Early English Books Online (EEBO) will give you access to many of the earliest extant copies of English printed texts (not manuscripts), as far back as the earliest days of print in England. University of Toronto students’ tuition includes access to EEBO (which is otherwise behind a paywall): go to the U of T Library Homepage (OneSearch) and type in these exact words: “EEBO Early English Books Online”. If you type in anything different, the library page may likely take you to the wrong resource.

Online access to early manuscripts will vary depending on the manuscript, but I often refer my students to the Macro Manuscript at the Folger Library, c. 1440-75, which contains the earliest extant copies of The Castle of Perseverance, Mankind, and Wisdom, and is available in an excellent online digitized copy (click here).

Students in my ENG 385 class frequently use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Two online resources are very valuable in that regard: Peter Isotalo’s Interactive IPA Chart (with audio examples; click here) and TypeIt’s Type IPA Phonetic Symbols site (click here).

We also make use of two linguistic atlases: EWAVE (The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English) for global varieties in current use; ELALME (An Electronic Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English for varieties in use 1350-1500.

I offer these twelve pages (click here) to any undergraduate student writing an essay for a literature class (though I’m told graduate students and high school students have also found them helpful) — but especially to any undergraduate student writing an essay for one of my classes. If you ask me what I’m looking for, or what I would like to see, in an essay you’re writing for me, these twelve criteria are my answer.

Starting in 2021, each of my graduate seminars will involve a collaborative “public-facing document” assignment—the students in the seminar work together to create an encyclopedia-style online reference page, envisioned as a jumping-off point for any new learners who’d like to know more about whatever that seminar’s subject was. We then use the new reference resource as a template for submitting large-scale edits and updates to the Wikipedia page on that subject, in the interest of improving and correcting general public knowledge of the subject. I’ll aggregate here the growing list of new reference resources generated by my graduate seminar students—explore as you please!:

Morality Plays (generated by ENG 1007, “Medieval Drama: Morality Plays,” Winter 2021 / see also the Wikipedia entry on Morality Play)