Course Descriptions

Cultural studies is the exploration of "culture," what Raymond Williams calls nothing less than "one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language." Cultural studies analyzes the artistic, social, political, and historical texts and objects that help construct our contemporary lives, and it assumes that such objects go well beyond "mere entertainment" and affect deeply how we perceive class, race, gender, and other markers of identity. As an introduction to the theory and practice of cultural studies, this course will familiarize students with some of the most important thinkers and methodologies in the field and will allow students to use some of the tools of critical analysis to analyze different forms of cultural production, including literature, popular culture, and print and electronic media.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite: 6 credit units of 100-level English.
Note: Category 4 course.

An introduction to colonial and decolonizing literatures and their cultural and historical contexts. The focus will be on defining key terms such as coloniality, Empire, postcolonialism, and delcoloniality as they are related to a range of literary texts. There will be a selection of Anglophone texts from the regions that have been affected by colonialism and imperialism including sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Caribbean, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Category 5 course for the 2020-21 program year and later.

An introduction to literatures written between histories, geographies, and cultural practices and produced at the borders of nations and languages/lects, when authors move from one national and/or linguistic context to another, or when peoples are dispersed from their original homelands and settle in diasporic socio-cultural formations.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Category 5 course for the 2020-21 program year and later.

The term “literary canon” refers to a body of literary works regarded as significant, authoritative, and worthy of study. This course seeks to engage critically with changing expressions of canonicity over time. What cultural forces have affected canon formation? What do literary canons reveal about the values and biases of their societies? In what ways might decolonization and globalism shape the study of nationalistically based literary traditions?

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG
Note: Students with credit for ENG 204.6 may not take this course for credit. Histories of English course. Eligible to be used toward the College of Arts & Science English Language Writing Requirement.

This course is designed to introduce students to a history of English Literature through snapshots of historical and contemporary developments in the technology and impact of the book. It focuses on three aspects of the book’s history and its prospects: the evolution of media, from bound leaves of parchment or paper, to contemporary e-books and web pages; the relationship between the medium of expression and literary expression; and the relationships between the history of the book and the culture of digital texts. In the process, we will explore medieval scriptoria; the invention and impact of the Gutenberg printing press; the impact of mass-produced books and of digital texts; and the relationships between media and literature.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG
Note: Students with credit for ENG 204.6 may not take this course for credit. Histories of English course. Eligible to be used toward the College of Arts & Science English Language Writing Requirement.

This course surveys some aspects of the history of English as a language, from Proto-Indo-European to the present day, through exploring the formation and histories of English words. Students will learn skills and knowledge to study the lexicon and morphology of English, and will discover how the past of English affects its present.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG; or LING 111; or a senior course in a language.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 204.6 may not take this course for credit. Histories of English course. Eligible to be used toward the College of Arts & Science English Language Writing Requirement.

This course surveys some aspects of the history of English as a language, from Proto-Indo-European to the present day, through exploring how English has been and is pronounced and written. We will investigate methods for studying English phonology and orthography, ways in which the human history of English speakers has shaped the language, dialect variety and standardization, and past and present controversies surrounding spoken and written forms of English around the world.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG; or LING 111; or a senior course in a language.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 290.6 may not take this course for credit. Eligible to be used toward the College of Arts & Science English Language Writing Requirement

A study of the forms that life writing has taken from the Middle Ages to the present, with attention to such issues as constructions of the self, themes, language, and audience.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 370 may not take this course for credit.

A study of the mythology of medieval northern Europe, including a survey of the sources, an examination of several chief deities and myths associated with them, and a consideration of some old northern European literary evidence.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 317 may not take this course for credit.

A study of “reading like a writer,” this course explores two genres—typically, contemporary poetry and fiction—through the critical analysis and subsequent practice of literary technique. In addition to engaging with elements of style through lectures and workshops, students will explore the aesthetic and sociopolitical underpinnings of assigned readings to consider how form and content exist in a mutually enlivening relationship. Visiting authors may be invited into the classroom, and students will be encouraged to attend literary events in the community. By the end of the course, students will have completed at least one research essay and a portfolio of polished writing in two genres.

Weekly hours: 1.5 Lecture hours and 1.5 Seminar/Discussion hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units 100-level ENG.
Note: Prior completion of ENG 120.3 is strongly recommended.

This course will focus on the romantic comedies and English history plays that Shakespeare wrote for Elizabethan audiences in the first half of his theatre career; it will also include the darker, more tragicomic “problem comedies” that he wrote under James I.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 221.6 or 321.6 may not take this course for credit. Category 2 course.

Throughout his career Shakespeare wrote tragedies of romantic love, family and political conflict, and revenge, reaching his peak in this genre in the first decade of the seventeenth century. This course will focus on a selection of plays in this genre, and will also treat his late romances, a comic genre in which fateful adventures end in forgiveness and reconciliation between enemies.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 221.6 or 321.6 may not take this course for credit. Category 2 course.

An examination of literary genres that explore alternative worlds, experiment with the bounds of the real, and challenge the norms of reading. The course moves from precursors in legend, folktale, and romance, to Victorian fantasy, science fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, and late-twentieth-century feminist revisionary narratives.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.

A critical study of literature written or adopted for children and young adult readers. Emphasis will be placed on the historical significance of key forms, such as fables, folk stories, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes, as well as later developments in drama, poetry, and prose fiction, including fantasy, realism, animal stories, historical fiction, and the young adult "problem novel." The interplay between oral, written, and visual texts will be considered, as will the cultural contexts that inform changing attitudes towards children, childhood, and adolescence.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.

This course will trace the Gothic mode, in its various forms, from its origins in Britain in the 1760s through its assimilation into mainstream literature in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 332 may not take this course for credit.

A study of the Indigenous storytelling traditions in the prairie region, including oral traditions and written literature.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG OR 3 credit units of 100-level ENG and INDG 107.3.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 342 may not take this course for credit. Category 4 course. Meets the College of Arts & Science Indigenous Learning Requirement.

A broad introduction to the study of Indigenous literatures in the Canadian context, preparing students for more advanced study of Indigenous literatures in the discipline of English. Students will read and listen to a diversity of First Nations, Metis and Inuit texts and oral stories, and learn to understand them as part of Indigenous literary traditions and histories. They will learn key concepts and approaches in Indigenous literary study, including learning about the processes of settler colonialism past and present. A focus will be placed on students understanding the literatures in terms of their own position and context.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG
Note:This course is particularly recommended for students who plan to take ENG 335.3 or ENG 338.3. Category 4 course. Meets the College of Arts & Science Indigenous Learning Requirement.

This course examines the development of short fiction from its origins in myth, fable, and folktale to its flourishing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While some attention will be paid to works in translation, the emphasis will be on writing in English.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 346 may not take this course for credit.

A study of Canadian speculative fiction, including but not limited to such literary modes as science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, utopian and dystopian literature, and alternate history.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 298.3 – Canadian Speculative Fiction: Amazing Stories may not take this course for credit.

This course investigates works of prose and poetry that map not only geographical place in Canada, but also social and cultural positioning. Areas of study include Canadian regional literature; explorer-settler perspectives on Canada; Indigenous literature; Canadian nationalism after Confederation; Canadian manifestations of modernism and postmodernism; and literary contributions by diasporic writers.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG
Note: Students with credit for ENG 253 or ENG 353 may not take this course for credit. Category 4 course.

Through the study of novels, short stories, critical essays, and historical documents, this course explores the roots of the modern detective story, its “golden age” consolidation in the 1920s and 30s, and its recent variations.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.

An introduction to the theory of myth and selected examples of the classical and other myths most frequently adapted and reinterpreted in literature in English. Emphasizes the ways in which different writers can find quite different kinds of significance in the same myth.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.

This course provides a selective historical overview of literature by women studied together with key examples of feminist critical theory.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s):6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note:Students with credit for ENG 281.6 may not take this course for credit.

A study of Beowulf in Modern English translation, including extensive consideration of its cultural and literary backgrounds, and readings in related or pertinent heroic narratives, primarily of North Germanic origin.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 384 may not take this course for credit.

An examination of romantic love, chivalry, and the family during the Middle Ages. The course will focus on a number of medieval romances, but will also cover many areas of women's cultural expression, including musical composition and mystical visions, and the tensions between the various forms of medieval women's experience and models of clerical authority.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 386 may not take this course for credit.

A survey of world cinema from the silent era to the present and an introduction to the fundamental formal concepts of film analysis including mise en scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. Emphasis will be placed on historically important films, directors, genres, and movements.

Weekly hours: 2 Lecture hours and 2 Practicum/Lab hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.
Note: Students with credit for ENG 388 may not take this course for credit. Category 4 course.

This course instructs students in the critical methodology of the study of poetry. It examines such mechanics as rhyme, rhythm and meter, imagery and symbolism, figurative language, sound devices, and the conventions of verse forms. Students thus enhance their literary-critical vocabulary and learn a range of methods for building an understanding and appreciation of poems. The course uses as its primary texts Canadian poems that range from the sonnet to contemporary spoken word, and it engages with diverse poets, texts, and movements in Canadian poetry.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours
Prerequisite(s): 6 credit units of 100-level ENG.

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours

Offered occasionally by visiting faculty and in other special situations to cover, in depth, topics that are not thoroughly covered in regularly offered courses.

Weekly hours: 3 Lecture hours