All English Courses Offered

English Courses @ X 

This page provides general course descriptions as they are listed in the Academic Calendar. Detailed course descriptions can be found on the Courses Offered in 2023-2024.

ENGL 111, or ENGL 100, or equivalent is required for entrance to all other ENGL courses. A student should have either ENGL 111 and 6 cu at the 200 level or ENGL 100 and at least three credits at the 200 level before taking a course at the 300 level. Some exceptions apply; see course descriptions. A student must have at least 18 credits of ENGL for admission to a 400-level course.

All students seeking admission to honours and advanced major programs must consult the department chair by March 31 of the second year to obtain approval for proposed course patterns, and again in March of the junior year for advice on thesis and senior seminar requirements.

Courses designated (P) fulfill the pre-1800 degree requirement. Courses designated (PCC) fulfill the Postcolonial/Canadian requirement. 

Note: ENGL 100, 111/112, or equivalent is required for entrance to all other ENGL courses. See Academic Calendar. 

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100-Level Courses

ENGL 100H Introduction to Literature and Critical Writing
This course introduces students to the critical tools and methods of literary study, including close reading and argumentative writing. Students will learn about the history of genres (e.g. poetry, drama, and the novel) and forms of literature (e.g. tragedy, realism). Texts may include the earliest writing in English to more recent works in various media. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 100, ENGL 110 or ENGL 111/112. Restricted to students in the Humanities Colloquium. Six credits.

ENGL 111 Literature and Academic Writing I
This course provides students with the key skills needed to succeed at university. You will learn how to write argumentatively; how to build a question or problem from a close-reading of a literary work; how to develop that argument by presenting and analyzing evidence; how to engage in scholarly debate; how to do university-level research. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 111, 100 or 110. Three credits. This course is offered in themed sections.

200-Level Courses

Prerequisite: ENGL 100, 111/112, or equivalent.

ENGL 201 Science Fiction and Fantasy
This course will examine the history of speculative literature, including the relationship between science and narrative, the rise of ethnic science fiction and fantasy, and ways in which the future and the past might be imagined. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 204 Shakespeare on the Page, Stage and Online (P)
In its first printing, Hamlet’s famous speech runs “To be, or not to be, Ay there’s the point.” This course explores how Shakespeare’s plays make meaning in different material and digital contexts: in print and manuscript, in performance on stage and screen, and online. Topics covered will include the history of printing Shakespeare’s works, their early reception, current editorial practices, and how that informs performances of Shakespeare’s plays. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 205 Shakespeare Today (P)
Who was Othello’s first wife? What would happen if Shakespeare’s characters teamed up to murder their creator? In this course, students read a Shakespeare play paired with one or more adaptations, which could include films, graphic novels, plays, poems, and prose texts. Students will interrogate ideas of high- and low-brow culture and literary canon and learn to think critically about literature, adaptation, popularity. What does Shakespeare mean to us today? Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 207 Literature and Myth: World Masterpieces II (P)
We will begin with a short overview of myth as defined in literary theorists from Aristotle to Freud and Jung, say, and then focus on literary works in three genres, prose, poetry, and drama, for example. We would discuss the concept of the sacrifice of the innocent hero in, for example, the Osiris narrative, St. John’s Gospel, Beowulf, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Hamlet. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 208 Sex, Love, and Literature
This course will consider how modern culture, from the eighteenth century to the present, imagines sex and love. Readings will involve stories of happy and unhappy love, impossible love, unrealized love, sexual fantasies, desire and its frustration. Material covered will range from major modern novels addressed to the complexities of sexuality and desire, to recent film and television. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 210 Bodies and Words
What does it mean to put bodies into narrative? How does literature figure the body and how have literary forms and figures been taken up in other fields concerned with bodies? To answer these questions, the course will draw both on literature and other fields (medicine, psychology, the use of science to support racialized or racist discourse) that have scripted bodies in a variety of ways. Topics will vary from year to year. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits

ENGL 212 Blindness and Insight in Shakespeare's Tragedies (P)
Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and The Tempest examine how the desire to know the truth leads to tragedy. Who killed old King Hamlet? Is my wife having an affair? Which of my daughters loves me most? How does one dispel the desire for vengeance over one’s oppressors? One never discovers the truth, so one acts blindly, which brings unbearable suffering. But suffering brings insight: the reader is instructed how to live with patience and equanimity. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 213 Adaptation: Myths, Film, and Popular Stories
Thomas King reminds us, “you have to watch out for the stories that you are told” because “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” But what happens when the stories we are told—histories, myths, and popular stories of forebearers—only help us to lie to ourselves about our values, past, and identities? This course examines multiple genres, including fiction, film, and theatre, in order to examine how stories change the way we think about gender, race, sexuality, indigenous culture, and nationalism. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 214 Contemporary Film
This course will examine contemporary cinema from various national locations. Attention will be paid to the development of film genres, to formal issues, the state of different national cinemas, and links between contemporary film and twentieth-century cinema. The course will provide an introduction to film studies, in particular the history of film and major distinctions that have developed in thinking about film form. 

ENGL 215 Principles and Practices of Literary Criticism
This course builds on the skills acquired in first year English. We will broaden our understanding of what literature is and how it works. We will develop our abilities to see how different approaches to texts allow us to understand their formal, gendered, historical, political, psychological, racial and sociological impacts. We will expand our practical skills by: enlarging our critical vocabularies; sharpening our argumentative writing abilities; and increasing our proficiency with sources and databases. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits.

ENGL 218 New British Fiction 
This course will consider contemporary British and Irish fiction, focusing especially on fiction of the last five years. We will be concerned in particular with the following questions: what is the role of experimentation in the literature of this period? How does recent fiction think about sexuality and sexual identity? About racial, ethnic, and national identity? What relationship is there between the recent evolution of British fiction and pressing contemporary political issues? Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 218 or ENGL 350. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 219 How to Tell a Story
Chefs on Top Chef, athletes on ESPN Stories, corporate brand spokespersons, politicians and orphaned wizards: despite their differences, all these persons are tasked with telling stories. But what makes one narrator more compelling than another? How does the order and speed in which a story gets told affect its meaning? Does knowing one’s audience matter? Grasping how narrative works is crucial to understanding why only some stories capture attention. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 220 The Horror, The Horror
Horror is closely connected to science fiction and fantasy. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the founding text of science fiction, but its central monster belongs generically to horror. In this course, we will discuss horror’s evolution, the reasons some people love scary stories while others avoid them, and how horror functions as a genre. The course will contain texts that some students may find disturbing, including violence. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

ENGL 223 Creative Writing: Nature, Ecology, Climate Change
--Also see Creative Writing Courses @ X
This course will require students to write fiction, poetry, and personal essays on the topics of Nature, ecology, conservation, and climate change. Students will be required to conduct research in these areas and apply it to their personal views and convictions. Students will conduct individual and collective in-class editing of their submitted written work on a weekly basis. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 224 Short Stories, Big Effects
This course will explore the development of the short story, from Poe to today. We will examine the formal features of short story (e.g. length, effect); the distinctiveness of the genre (as opposed to the tale, flash fiction, the novella, the novel); the genre’s development in different national contexts; and its ongoing importance for contemporary culture. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 225 Creative Writing for Young Adults 
--Also see Creative Writing Courses @ X
Students will write stories and/or poetry, in a weekly workshop setting, whose audience is children and young adults, using best-selling books in these categories as models for their work. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits

ENGL 226 From Tablets to Tablets: Texts and Technology
This book history course examines how texts have been disseminated over time in order to demonstrate how material contexts affect textual meaning. Topics might include changing practices and ideas of authorship, publication, and reading. Evidence considered could span from early textual objects (clay tablets) to today’s technologies (computers, tablets, phones). Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 227 Writing From "Here": The Literature of Atlantic Canada (PCC)
This course will consider the rich literature of the Atlantic region with particular focus on the many and diverse voices (including African Nova Scotian, Mi’kmaw, Scottish and Irish Gaelic, and Acadian in translation) emerging in the post-Centennial era of Atlantic Canada. Various genres including poetry, novels and short story along with art and film will be encountered. Students will be encouraged to participate actively in discussion and original research. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 232 Why Care About Literary Characters?
Why do we develop such strong attachments to literary characters? They aren’t real. Their stories don’t continue. They don’t interact with us. And yet often keep them closer to us than people we know. In this course, we will try to sort out why characters – from Emma to Harry Potter – matter so much in both our imaginary, real and virtual lives. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 232 and ENGL offered in 2017-2018. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 233 Children's Literature: 1865 to the Present
Using the landmark publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a starting point, this course provides a critical survey of children’s literature in Britain, America, and Canada. Authors to be studied may include: Carroll, L.M. Montgomery, Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl, R.L. Stevenson, E.B. White, and various picture books. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 233 or ENGL 234. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 236 Children’s Film and Television
Children’s film and television are highly lucrative and competitive fields. This course will survey landmarks in children’s media across the world, looking at questions of adaptation, suitability, merchandising-driven story, and franchising. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 240 Literature of the Middle East (PCC)
This course will introduce students to the rich literary heritage of various countries in the Middle East. In addition to the geographic range, the course will also introduce students to various kinds of literature including traditional poetry and folk tales, but the main focus will be the novel and the short story of the twentieth century. Writers to be studied may include Najib Mahfuz, Elias Khoury, Hanan al-Shaykh, Ghassan Kanafani, Tayeb Salih, Muhammad Shukri, and others. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 248 Climate Fiction and Environmental Literature
This course introduces students to some of the central texts and debates in two connected fields: environmental literature, a longstanding, rich facet of the literary field sometimes also identified as “ecofiction,” and climate fiction (cli-fi), a recent, currently booming sub-section of environmental literature. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 249 Detective Fiction and Film
This course examines a figure who haunts modern culture from the nineteenth century to the present—the detective. Ranging from Poe’s important nineteenth-century detective stories, to Sherlock Holmes, to present-day fiction and film, course discussions will consider why the detective develops as a cultural phenomenon in this period, how the figure of the detective changes over time, and what cultural problems detective fiction addresses. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 253 Coffeehouse Culture of 18th Century England (P)
The focus in 2023-2024 is Conversation. Using the 18th century coffeehouse as our starting place, we will study the period’s obsession with conversation. By reading The Spectator, a periodical that aimed to formulate middle class culture, and essays designed to teach readers how to interact socially and politely, we will examine how conversation is modelled, performed, and satirized in a variety of 18th century works, including a card game. The course, like the coffeehouse, will encourage conversation and discussion in class. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 254 Topics in 18th Century Literature (P)
Women in the Margins. We will explore some early modern women writers who were marginalized, chastised, and ridiculed for their gender and daring to write, publish, and flourish in aman’s world. Featured are “Mad Marge,” the “crack-brained” Duchess of Cavendish, author of early science fiction; Aphra Behn, a successful playwright, novelist, and poet who demanded respect for her “Masculine Part:” and Eliza Haywood, a prolific writer deemed “the Arbitress of Passion” for her novels. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

ENGL 257 The 21st Century American Novel
This course will introduce students to recent formal and generic developments in the American novel and situate these trends within the history of the novel as a literary form. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 258 Television Today
This course introduces students to current debates about television and its role in contemporary culture. We will emphasize the manner in which programs develop narratives (episodically, serially, in story arcs) and the manner in which they are received (weekly, binge watching). Subscription fees for online content providers may be required. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 258 and 297 offered in 2016-2017. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 259 Gender, Literature and Culture
What makes gender meaningful and what has literature got to do with it? How do literary works and other cultural texts (film, television, music, social media) represent and / or transform gender in a given time and place? What can such works tell us about how gender is imagined, experienced, circulated, challenged? This course will address these questions by studying selected texts in the context of historically-specific understandings of masculinity, femininity and non-binary identities. Cross-listed as WMGS 259. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 261 Hollywood Film
This course will examine Hollywood film from its origins to the present, focusing on the period that has come to be known as the era of “classical Hollywood cinema” (1927-1960). The course will provide an introduction to film history and to the analysis of film. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 262 Imagination, Dream and Vision in English Literature
This study of the emerging power of the imagination in English literature focuses on the importance of dreams and visions as loci or places in narratives that are invested with ethical significance. As images of the divine, sacred world diminish in stories over time, writers adopt a more a secular consciousness, exploring the creative power of the mind as it manifests itself in the dreams and visions of the modern world. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 267 Introductory Creative Writing 
--Also see Creative Writing Courses @ X
Students are introduced to the techniques of writing creatively in the genres of poetry, short stories, drama, etc. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 268 Marriage, Murder, Justice: Law and Literature
Why do literary works feature stories about legal dramas? Why has the law turned to literature to understand how narrative affects the rendering of justice? In this course we will read texts to examine how law and its interpretation make the rendering of justice difficult in cases involving marriage contracts, race, gender, and intention. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 269 Me You Us them: Self & Society
What defines individualism? How does one become self-reliant? Is selfishness inherently wrong? What do I owe society and what can it demand of me? How are group attachments – racial, national, gendered – formed and how are they maintained? These are questions that novelists, poets, and essayists have taken up with energy and intensity since the 18th-century. This course examines why literary works provide particularly powerful answers to these sorts of questions. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 270 The Romantic Gothic: Poetry and Short Fiction
This survey of the emergence of the Gothic in poetry and short fiction by various 19th-century authors will examine how social and cultural anxieties about the female body, social degeneration and the criminal underworld, marriage, the advancement of science and medicine, and other spectres that haunt us are translated into literature about the supernatural, doppelgangers, and madness. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 271 Gothic Fiction: 18th- and 19th-Century Novels (P)
An examination of the Gothic novel and the cultural forces that produced it. The course will explore supernatural tales from the classical and medieval periods which acted as forerunners to the genre. Authors may include: Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew “Monk” Lewis, and Jane Austen; students may also read Frankenstein and Dracula. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 272 Melancholy and Madness (P)
A survey of how the psychological and physical states of melancholy feature in literature through language, imagery, metaphor, and by gender. Medical treatises, plays, poems, and novels present melancholy variously as consciousness of the existence of the soul, a sensitivity for the human condition, a rich source of creative inspiration, or the ‘black dog’ of overwhelming despair. The course explores foundational literary figures to examine melancholy’s many faces: the lover, the artist, the madman. 

ENGL 275 Shakespeare and Sex: Love and Lust (P)
The Victorians censored Shakespeare. A rediscovery of his sexual references tells us not only about Elizabethan England’s sexual mores, but also about its diversity of thought around sexuality. We discover that the Renaissance was much more open and accepting of sexuality than our age. The course will discuss the relationship between love and sex, the nature of desire, the perception of sexuality, the question of consent, perceptions of gender, and perceptions of sexual diversity. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits.

ENGL 276 Shakespeare on War and Peace (P)
Shakespeare was a serious political thinker. We will study his political thought through a close reading of five plays. We will discuss themes such as political ambition; the nature of the political regime and its influence on the public; monarchy and republicanism; the relationship between politics and violence; the causes of political success and decline; the relationship between philosophy and politics and between politics and religion; and the relationship between private and public virtues. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 277 Shakespeare’s Subversive Poetry: A Study of his Narrative Poems, Sonnets, and Love Lyrics (P)
Shakespeare’s poetry breaks with tradition by rejecting the formal, thematic, and mythical conventions of the past. Here we find inversions of gender roles, including aggressive and seductive heroines; lengthy and entirely empathetic portrayals of victims of sexual violence; and provocative meditations on love that have gone wildly out of control. These poems focus on the complex nature of human desire in a manner that anticipates our own plight in the modern world. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 278 Short Turns: The Short Story in Canada (PCC)
The short story is the literary form that has arguably won Canadian Literature the highest sustained international recognition both critically and popularly. This course will engage in in-depth analysis of profound expressions of the construction of the self (or selves) in the modern world. Various voices and narrative modes in dialogue with such questions will be encountered, arising in works from writers of diverse backgrounds and social strata. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 279  What’s Canadian about Canadian Literature? (PCC)
Margaret Atwood asks “What’s Canadian about Canadian literature, and why should we be bothered?” This course tackles this question by examining a variety of forms, such as Canadian fiction, film, art, poetry, music, and drama from the 20th and 21st centuries. Stories define what it means to live in Canada or identify as Canadian. This class concentrates on how the stories we tell shape our own sense of who we are and where we belong. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 280 Introduction to Contemporary Multiethnic Literatures in the United States
This course will provide students with an introduction to contemporary African American, Asian American, Native American and Indigenous, and Latino/a literatures in the U.S. The course will frame the literary material with examinations of current debates (and their historical antecedents) regarding race, racism, race and culture, and the politics of multiethnic literatures, and race in the age of neoliberal diversity management and multiculturalism. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 280 and ENGL 295 offered in 2011-2012. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 282 Literatures of Global Justice: Human Rights, Asylum, Self-Determination​ (PCC)
Can literature help us see others as equal human beings? From abolitionist literature to contemporary narratives about asylum seekers and refugees, literature has long been a means of advancing claims for justice and fostering understanding across global divides. Focusing primarily on twentieth- and twenty-first century texts from around the world, and covering a range of topics from colonialism, gendered oppression, to conflict and displacement, and environmental racism, this course will ask how literature serves justice. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

ENGL 290 The Canterbury Tales (P)
This course will introduce Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but it does more than that. The generic and formal diversity of Chaucer’s collection allows for discussion of medieval literary form and content, while also introducing significant aspects of medieval culture (the problem of “courtly love,” medical theory and political life). Further, the course allows discussion of manuscript tradition and theories of influence. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 290 or ENGL 390. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits. 

 

300-Level Courses

Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 plus at least three credits at the 200 level unless otherwise noted.

ENGL 301 European Film
This course will examine European film from the 1940s to the present. Works to be screened include love stories, crime films, and science fiction. We’ll consider, for example, crime thrillers such as the iconic film Breathless, and the classic mind-bending time-travel film La Jetée. Some films will be screened in class, others through online streaming services. This course will provide an introduction to film studies. It will be useful to anyone interested in thinking about cinema and contemporary culture (or just watching some great movies) but it will be of particular interest to students thinking about pursuing careers in film, media, education, or other cultural fields. No previous background in film studies is required. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.  https://twitter.com/mdarcy4/status/1691889062435496071?s=20

ENGL 302 The Fantastic: Genre and Form
The Course of Cthulhu: Race, Misogyny and Cosmic Horror following Lovecraft. Can H. P. Lovecraft’s influential work in horror and science fiction be salvaged? This course will try to answer that question. Pre-requisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 304 The Early Tudor and Elizabethan Renaissance (P)
A study of texts produced during the Tudor dynasty. Authors may include Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, Edmund Spenser, and others.  Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 308 Milton and His Time (P)
This course will provide an intensive study of Milton’s life and major poems, especially Paradise Lost, and some of his polemical prose. The course will also focus on the historical and political contexts of this revolutionary age, and Milton’s contributions to the Republicanism of the era. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 308 or ENGL 312. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 309 Film Noir
This course will consider the evolution of film noir, focusing on the classic period of film noir, the 1940's and 1950's, and the crime films from this period that have come to be seen as defining film noir. Class discussions will also address the hard-boiled crime fiction of the mid-twentieth century that was intrinsic to the development of the noir aesthetic, as well as later developments of noir cinema. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

ENGL 314 Contemporary Literary Theory
This course introduces students to current directions and interests in literary and cultural criticism, including eco-criticism, theories of film and visual culture, gender and sexuality, psychology, and digital culture. Besides reading relevant theoretical texts, we’ll examine works of contemporary television and film, literary texts, and contemporary music. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 314 or ENGL 445. Prerequisite: 9 credits of ENGL; ENGL 215 is recommended. Three credits. 

ENGL 315 Fashion and Fetishism
This course will consider how fashion and fetishism are intrinsic to the literature and culture of modern societies in the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries. Class discussions will consider: the ways in which fiction and poetry mutate as the dynamics of fashion become important for the literary culture this period; the relationship between fashion and fetishism; the role of gender in the dynamics of fashion and fetishism; the importance of fashion for twentieth-century visual art. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 316 How to Judge a Book By its Cover
In this course, we will “read” the material contexts and paratexts of literature that influence how we think about the books and texts we read. We will discuss book history, anthologies, and the literary canon. This course offers a broad overview of the importance of paratexts--from advertisements to indices--from the middle ages to the present. Students will analyze texts from a book historical perspective, considering how presentation affects reception and meaning. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 316 and ENGL 397 (offered 2019). Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 322 Intermediate Creative Writing
--Also see Creative Writing Courses @ X
Students will be expected to choose one genre through which they will continue to explore and develop the basic elements of composition learned in ENGL 231. Prerequisite: ENGL 100, 110, or equivalent; three credits creative writing. Three credits. 

ENGL 323 Victorian Medievalism (P)
This course will examine Victorian treatments of the medieval. Texts studied will include non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. We will also consider the Gothic Revival in architecture and the Pre-Raphaelite movement in painting. Authors may include Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Lord Tennyson, E. B. and Robert Browning, John Ruskin, George Eliot, Edward FitzGerald, William Morris, and Christina and D. G. Rossetti. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 325 The American Novel, 1850-1940
What kinds of social creatures are people? What causes our social lives to fall into patterns, shapes, and configurations? How do these forms define our social worlds? In this class we will look at American novels written at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century as resources for understanding the complexity of modern social life. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 329 Studies in Women Writers: Feminisms and Their Literatures
How do the struggles feminists engage in inform literary works? An introduction to diverse feminist debates within their historical, cultural and political contexts, this course explores the relationships between particular feminisms and the literary texts that exemplify or extend them. The particular focus on a feminist struggle and corresponding body of literary works will vary, depending on the instructor. Cross listed as WMGS 329. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 334 The Western
This course will survey the western, from its contemporary origins in newspapers and dime novels through to the revisionist texts of the 60s-80s, and then to current generic mash-ups (the horror western, the curry western). Texts could include novels (Wister’s The Virginian), radio and TV (The Lone Ranger), film (The Searchers, Pale Rider), and graphic novels (Preacher). Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 338 Performing Canada (PCC) 
What is performance and why/how do we study it? In this class, students will explore how performance reflects and impacts all of our identities in Canada today. Considering that Nova Scotia was the site of the first documented performance in what we now call Canada, this course investigates the long-standing political work of theatre as history-making and nation-building acts. Introducing students to theatrical forms such as vaudeville, minstrelsy, and verbatim theatre, this course will simultaneously consider how theatre contributes to social justice issues of race, culture, and gender. With real-world examples like Justin Trudeau’s boxing match, students examine the performativity of politics as well as the politics of performativity. Cross-listed with the Women’s and Gender Studies Department. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 338 or ENGL 366. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 339 Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
This course introduces students to the classical texts of and contemporary developments in cultural theory. The course will practically apply these theories through the study of popular culture. Students will learn the basics of cultural analysis and familiarize themselves with what theorists have come to understand as the “critique of everyday life.” Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 339 and ENGL 318. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 341 Shakespeare and Marlowe (P)
A study of Shakespeare’s work in comparison with his early contemporary dramatist and poet, Christopher Marlowe. Prerequisite: 9 credits English. Three credits. 

ENGL 347 The Aftermath of Slavery & 21st Century Black Literature: Reading Africa and the African Diaspora (PCC)
A study of the literature of sub-Saharan Africa and / or the African Diaspora, including African-Canadian, African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Black British literatures. Topics will vary from year to year. Prerequisite: 9 credits of ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 353 Tolkien and the Inklings
"Inkling Relevance." This course will read work by Tolkien and C. S. Lewis with their continued relevance in mind, for what their work says about politics (especially the rise of fascism), racism, the environment, feminism, and more. Texts will include their correspondence and lectures, and reference to later authors influenced by them. Prerequisite: 9 credits of ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 355 Restoration and 18th-Century Drama and Prose (P)
The libertine is the Restoration’s bad boy and its cultural icon. This course explores the character and philosophy of the libertine as depicted in several Restoration plays, and modeled on the real-life Earl of Rochester. Womanizer, drunkard, poet, wit, and master of masquerade, the libertine embodies the attractive and repulsive aspects of masculinity. Plays include Wycherley’s The Country Wife, Shadwell’s Libertine, Etherege’s Man of Mode, Behn’s The Rover, and the movie, The Libertine. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 356 18th-Century Novel and Poetry (P)
This course will explore, through a variety of lenses, the novel Tristram Shandy, a fictional autobiography that ends four years before the man writing it is born. Bawdy, digressive, philosophical, provocative, sentimental and silly, Tristram Shandy explores how we attempt to connect with one another when words just aren’t enough. Can writing, reading, and conversation save us from solitude and despair? Is laughter the best medicine? Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 365 Canadian Fiction (PCC)
This course focuses on later 20th and early 21st century Canadian prose fiction in English, including novels, short stories, and memoir. Many of these works invite you to explore ideas of the construction of the self, the use and development of voice, and the challenge of delineating identity or identities in relation to place, time, and community. Various aspects of narrative technique and of ways of entering and conveying a story will be explored. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 365 and 367. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits 

English 378  Human Scale: Contemporary American Literature
Human scale is the practice of measuring and designing things to match the physical and cognitive characteristics of humans. But what happens when the world falls out of scale? When cities become too large to be knowable? When memories start fading away? When the internet becomes so large as become infinite? When multinational corporations become so large that they no longer resemble persons? Students will read two great American novels that take up these questions. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits. 

ENGL 379 The Return of the Serial
The topic for 2023-2024 is Happiness. This course examines the very recent interest in happiness studies. We’ll think about what happiness entails and the difficulties involved in its achievement. Topics discussed will include: sex, money, occupation, marriage, music, family, the quotidian and authenticity. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

ENGL 388 Heroic Literature of the Middle Ages (P)
This course focuses primarily on medieval romance – stories of chivalry, courtly love, and adventure – while focusing on how they both encourage and disguise how medieval knighthood really worked. In addition, the course will discuss medieval ideas of gender, politics, and ethnicity. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits.

ENGL 391  Selected Topics (PCC)
The topic for 2023-2024 is The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. See ENGL 491 for course information. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits 

ENGL 397 Selected Topics in Literature I (P)
The topic for 2023-2024 is The Coquette. See ENGL 492 for course information. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits

400-Level Courses 

NOTES: Normally students enrolling in a senior seminar will have third-year standing and have taken a minimum of 15 credits in English. The senior seminars are offered on a priority basis to senior Advanced Majors and Honours students in English who are required to take one 3-credit senior seminar in Fall term, and another 3-credit senior seminar in Winter term.  All other interested students should inquire with the departmental chair (@email) or administrative assistant (@email) about availability and prerequisites.

All students seeking admission to honours and advanced major programs must consult the department chair (@email) by March 31 of the second year to obtain approval for proposed course patterns, and again in March of the junior year for advice on thesis and senior seminar requirements.

ENGL 400 Honours Thesis
Honours students write a thesis under the supervision of a faculty thesis director. Students must meet the thesis director in March of the junior year to prepare a topic. Honours students must register for the thesis as a six-credit course in the senior year. The thesis must be submitted no later than March 31 of the senior year. See chapter 4 of the Academic Calendar and Honours and Advanced Major Theses. Six credits.

ENGL 422 Advanced Creative Writing 
--Also see Creative Writing Courses @ X
Explores the techniques of writing prose narrative, poetry, and drama to help students develop their powers of creative expression. Techniques include regular exercises, set assignments, free submissions, parodies, and imitations. Occasional guest writers. Prerequisite: ENGL 100, 110 or equivalent; six credits creative writing. Three credits. 

SENIOR SEMINARS:
ENGL 491  Selected Topics I (PCC)
The topic for 2023-2024 is The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. The Atlantic region is an oft-overlooked geographic and cultural locus of emergent and divergent voices in the literature of Canada. We will examine the rich development of Atlantic Canadian poetry from colonial to post-colonial eras, encountering a variety of poetic forms and genres, Mi’qmaq and African-Canadian voices, along with those of women and men from settler societies. This course invites you on an exploration and discovery of the voices of this region through time and space. Prerequisites: third-year standing and 15 credits ENGL. Three credits.

ENGL 492 Selected Topics II (P)
The topic for 2023-2024 is The Coquette. The 18th-century coquette, a woman who transgresses social and gender boundaries, is also a trope for modernism. Using Eliza Haywood’s novel The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless as our central text, we will examine how the coquette is characterized variously as inconsequential, threatening, flighty, flirty, feminist, and in need of reform. A conspicuous consumer, she resists marriage, refuses to settle, and “chooses too much.” The coquette is damned or delightful depending on who judges her. Prerequisites: third-year standing and 15 credits English. Three credits. 

ENGL 497 Advanced Major Thesis
Advanced major students write a thesis as part of the senior seminar. No credit. See chapter 4 of the Academic Calendar or see note on thesis requirement under Honours and Advanced Major Theses.

ENGL 499 Directed Study
In consultation with the department and with approval of the chair, students may undertake a directed study program in an approved area of interest, which is not available through other course offerings. Three or six credits.